movietalk

Sad But True....

2010-09-19T21:21:00.002-05:00

I have abandoned this blogger interface to blog over at WordPress. I'm not abandoning blogger altogether. I still appreciate so much about her ethos, but WordPress is really great too.

If you want to read my reviews....check out the new site. (I'm still catching up on writing a ton of reviews...so more content should be emerging.)

A Serious Man

2010-06-03T05:40:00.002-05:00

Many frustrating and terrible things happen to Larry Gopnick in this deeply spiritual movie situated in a very particular place and time - 1967, Midwestern, suburban, Jewish America, and while the ending is more Biblical than Hollywood, it doesn't make the movie any less satisfying for the *serious* viewer. The production design is a wonder; the storytelling is Coen Bros. at their finest; I honestly don't have a complaint about this movie; not one.

++++1/2

(I may go up to five later: I just don't want to be rash. I'm trying to be a serious man here, you know? And sometimes my reputation as a hyperbolist gets in the way.)

You Won't Miss Me

2010-05-25T04:55:00.005-05:00

This film dares more and achieves more than the Joe Swanberg films (which are its close, mumblecore-inbred-cousins), travelling through an impressionistic personal journey with a young woman battling the twin demons of mental illness and unrealized (unrealizable?) acting dreams; unlike Swanberg's visions, there seem to be genuine problems and issues here (as opposed mundane drama circulating amongst young hipster boho's), and director Russo-Young also seems willing to be more cinematic than the average mumblecorps film. Ultimately, though, I did not like this woman (Shelley, the protagonist) -- I could not bear her nor muster compassion for her self-destructive and self-deluding narrative -- and so, in reflection, the innovations in the storytelling seemed as self-indulgent as she was.

++1/2

The United States of Leland

2010-05-21T05:27:00.005-05:00

It's rare that I can find so many faults with a film (awkward transitions, heavy exposition in the dialogue, writerly voice protruding into the dialogue in ways both pedantic & exposition-y, too many two-shots, uneven handling of narrative time, loads of voice over) and yet, in the end, *really* like it. I liked the subtlety of the ending, the stellar performances all around, the stubborn refusal of genre-convention; in some ways this network-narrative tale of the underside of suburbia is studio/indie cinema at its best.

+++1/2

Eraserhead

2010-05-15T15:50:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why it took so long for me to watch this classic, but it was one of the most off-putting, hilarious, brilliant, unnerving, enjoyable films I've seen. Henry Spencer lives in a shadowy, overwraught post-industrial dystopia and when his girlfriend reveals that she is pregnant, the two of them must care for a hideous squalling baby-like, alien-like creature which ultimately is too much for either of them to bear; but articulating plot does nothing to explain how perfectly Lynch captures real human interaction patterns & deep, desperate emotional urges & the way that fear trembles at the edge of almost everything that humans do together -- beautiful, absurd, hilarious, awful.

++++1/2

Tokyo Sonata

2010-04-18T08:36:00.004-05:00

Kurosawa's melancholy sonata intertwines repression, disappointment, and failure in the most inevitable and beautiful arrangement of post-corporate suburban japanesse angst that one can imagine. The subtle stains of his horror roots lurk and surface throughout the first two acts, but when they come to their cathartic fruition, he maintains a masterful insinuation of his (typical) urge supernaturally horrific disaster in a series of outlandish disastrous intertwined experiences; all of which find a satisfying subtle resolution.

++++

Thelma & Louise

2010-04-09T13:43:00.002-05:00

I'm so glad that I returned to this great road-trip, come-uppance, getaway, feminist film; the way the performances, script and directing manage to employ every genre cliche in the book, and yet spin them in fresh fierce directions makes every moment worth the ride. Are all road trips this much like a string of pearls, delightfully meandering journeys punctuated by beautiful poignant moments?
++++

An Education

2010-04-02T07:40:00.006-05:00

Jenny meets David at precisely the moment that her wide-eyed wanderlust leads her haplessly into his fanciful empire of worldly delights where she learns to ask worthy questions of her formal education and her middle class destiny; while the story has a satisfying arc, those worthy questions are unworthily brushed away with arguably one of the most hegemonic voiceover endings ever used to sell-out an indie flick to a uplift-greedy mainstream art house audience. The period elements are sumptous, the performances of Seymour, Molina, Mulligan and Saarsgard are particularly subtle; overall a delightful taste, but dangerous to swallow.

+++1/2

The Hurt Locker

2010-04-02T07:02:00.004-05:00

In this procedural drama thriller about a cowboy-of-a-bomb-diffusing-specialist in vaguely-anywhere-Iraq, every episode of suspense produces precisely the sort of suspense we hope for in such a film; side benefits include a conceptual tour of the varieties of everyday tension typical (?) of Iraq and an assurance that the realest of the real American Men, while they may have some gooey marshmellow-y inside, their essence is as leathery and sinewy as their exterior. I can't imagine a better marriage between camera work, direction, performance and mise en scene for *this* script; I'm just a little surprised that a film with so little *depth* can sweep so many awards in the film industry.

+++1/2

Z

2010-03-19T05:08:00.004-05:00

After a peaceful presidentially-aspiring senator is brutally murdered in a public place, the militarized government and the radical resistors work (respectively) to cover and reveal the sources of his murder, while a plodding deliberative judge sorts through the zigzagging evidence. This elegantly-crafted, politically-tinged, historically-rooted, oscar-winning film careens from broad comedy to procedural thriller while breaking every Robert McKee story rule ever pompously dictated and keeping the audience in its cinematic grasp every moment.

++++1/2

Daytrippers

2010-03-19T04:56:00.004-05:00

When Eliza finds a suspicious note beside her husband's discarded pants, her working class New Jersey family decides to accompany her into the city to find her husband and find some answers; while their mishaps feel a bit like familiar-indie all-in-a-day conventions (by now), the performances are subtle and the plots gentle ambling toward its inevitable-feeling ending, *doesn't* feel predictable or telegraphed - just true. The filmmaking is unselfconscious and allows the actors and the story to take center-stage, and with a cast this good, any other choice would be a sin; particularly commendable is the inobtrusive and yet none-too-hipster use of music, reminding that music can just serve an indie story, not serve as a token-cum-advert for the next soundtrack album of the month.

++++

Sunshine

2010-03-11T06:12:00.004-05:00

When astronauts take a nuclear payload to attempt to ignite a dying sun, the challenges they meet turn their spacecraft into a drifting space-version of SURVIVOR, with the stakes higher in every imaginable way. I found the pacing and dramatic tension to be clearly from the GOOD Danny Boyle oevre, loving the mise en scene, the characters, the plot roller-coaster, but was most bumped by the question (subtly?) introduced by the antagonist: is God speaking through a Freddy Krueger-style prophet of apocalypse or through the welcoming light of a needy mother sun?

+++1/2

Moon

2010-03-04T08:15:00.003-05:00

This dystopian fable combines important elements of 2001 Space Odyssey and Solaris in a meditation about aloneness, longing, memory and hope as they affect a solitary hydrogen3 miner on the lunar surface. I was surprised by how riveting and grueling this story managed to be while also remaining so patient, simple and focused; a beautiful sinister score underscores subtle and demanding performances, filmed, and directed with a precise balance of beauty and tragedy.

++++1/2

Diabolique

2010-02-15T05:28:00.000-05:00

This haunting film precisely crafts a perfect murder mystery in the uniquely specific world of a French boarding school just after the war. Rarely have I felt so tense and suspenseful during such a patient stylish movie; it's a feeling and a world I'd choose again and again.

++++1/2

Suture

2010-01-31T06:13:00.005-05:00

This clever, meticulously-shot drama about identity, lost and regained (?) should have been a thriller and then it would have been amazing. As it is, many of the elements are a good film are here: an interesting story, solid performances, decadent sets, but for me, it was too: perpetually self-aware, posturingly stylish, and slow-without-the-suspense-it-needed-as-an-engine.

+++

GINA, AN ACTRESS, AGE 29

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

2009-08-06T09:03:00.007-05:00

Herzog's recounting of Dieter Dengler's harrowing crash, capture, escape and rescue manages to endear the unique specificity of Dieter's humanity to the audience more than allowing us very close to the story or experience itself. Though he employs many inventive devices (taking us through the footsteps of the experiences, hiring locals to "play" his captors), I felt the devices push me farther the experience and emotion of the story which had the effect of focusing most of my viewing on the person Dieter is now and how distant he seems from the whole experience, too.

+++

Harlan County USA

2009-07-21T06:21:00.004-05:00

This Oscar winning documentary blew me away with it's pastiche of protest music, raw human spirit, collective struggle and sense of authentic place. The movie astonished me both because it successfully transcended so many conventions of cinematic storytelling (no main character, only vague allusions to sequentiality), but it also successfully located me in a very specific world and depicted many human beings doing their best, doing true things and speaking with the sort of local eloquence that is rarely found in any contemporary public sphere.

+++++

Make-Out With Violence

2009-05-21T04:26:00.002-05:00

The Dougal Brothers (a media-making collective) have created a sumptuous feast in their first feature: a coming of age zombie flick crafted from (the unexpected combination of) generous portions of John Hughes 80s teen-angst and Tarkovsky's Solaris. Through the entire experience, I experienced pleasure overload - gorgeous photography, indulgent (in a good way) pacing, a music score that haunted me for weeks, and a ridiculously fun, aching lovestory about growing up or becoming a zombie, choices about which this film doesn't make any judgements.

+++++

Times & Winds

2009-04-08T04:30:00.003-05:00

Three young adolescents, having subconsciously recognized some of the ugly contracts that have bound their families, village and society together, keep their lives meaningful by escaping to each other, nature and work. The rhythmic experience of time, behavior and place gradually make this meditative story so rich and resonant and feeling that all its ambivalence, all of the ways that the photography renders the ugly world beautiful and all the complex and tragic characters feel rewarding and resonant.

++++

Revolutionary Road

2009-03-28T06:08:00.002-05:00

Revolutionary Road follows the rhythms of a married couple who recognizes the hopeless emptiness of their middle class suburban lives, almost chooses a different path, but threats from within and without make the status quo seem both attractive and inevitable. The veneer of the art direction is beautiful and works well with the lush color and light of the cinematography, Kate's performance is layered and outstanding while Leo's feels mostly Big; in typical Hollywood style, the (beautiful) score is too close, the camera sweeps in for closeups too often and the ending drags on to very specific conclusions for about 10 minutes longer than is needed.

+++1/2

THE CONFESSION

2009-03-26T06:01:00.008-05:00

This very thin short short has fine production values but a premise that makes it only worth the shortest youtube treatment, certainly not the full fledged production treatment that it's credits indicate it received. Everything about its execution is competent and engaging; the premise just feels tired.

+

Herb & Dorothy

2009-03-26T05:57:00.006-05:00

This documentary tells the story of how Herb, a NYC postal worker and Dorothy, a public librarian, were able to, on their meagre salaries, amass a significant collection of art; ultimately the story is more of a celebration of sacrifice, passion and commitment. The narratives by so many important artists, collectors, exhibitors and agents is perfectly counterbalanced by the utter unpretentious ordinariness of Herb & Dorothy themselves.

++++1/2

(website to find out when it will screen near you, or on PBS. See it!)

Sparrow

2009-03-26T05:56:00.004-05:00

Con-men brothers meet their match in a mysterious woman who is followed by a cadre of destructive body guards; mixing visual tropes from the French New Wave with contemporary conventions of the heist film, the movie twists and turns toward a conventional and satisfying conclusion. The music and cinematography are delightful, and in many ways the film is just off-beat enough to win the weary-of-cliche' viewer -- but the character-weakness in one particular character (I don't want to spoil, here) annoyed me to the point of being bumped out of about 15 minutes of the film...

+++1/2

PIG

2009-03-23T06:02:00.000-05:00

A fairy tale return of a girl to her childhood neighborhood slowly turns as dark and foreboding as the original Grimm's. The pacing, artistic direction and performances from this film are standouts, it manages to coax a kind of emotional response from the audience that shorts can rarely build, and after building such high stakes, also manages to finish with an ending that both satisfies and feels honest.

+++++

Good Bye Solo

2009-03-21T20:46:00.007-05:00

Within the first minute the film, William has asked Solo to take him somewhere so that he can commit suicide; it's a rich premise, but it unfolds into a far more insightful, beautiful, carefully-earned story about our ability to change ourselves, and our ability to change those around us. In Barhani's third film, he brings his commitments to realistic mise-en-scene, characters and acting to a story that allows two adults to navigate a complex, deepening relationship at a moment when some of their best and worst moments converge; the holy moments in this film manage to be both mythic and mundane and (as always) drenched in ordinary beauty.
+++++

Chop Shop

2009-03-21T20:46:00.005-05:00

Ale and Izzi dream and laugh together in the happiest moments, but Bahrani's close examination of their life in Willets Point in the yards of the chopshops never makes their work and hope out to be a drudgery or misery; he invites us to reconsider the meaning of good work, good dreams and what-should-be-enough by looking at lives poised more precariously on the boundary of safety and security. The naturalism of the mise en scene and the acting style are masterfully balanced by sophisticated cinematography and a rigorously cohesive aesthetic sensibility; the spiritual power of this film seems to eminate equally from the subtle narrative intensity and the visual insistence of beauty's stubborn persistence.

+++++

Milk

2009-03-21T20:45:00.002-05:00

This Gus Van Sant biopic of the life and achievements of Harvey Milk manages to retain the beautifully gritty realism that defines the mise en scene of most of Van Sant's oevre, but trades in the arty meditative tone from some of his best pictures for the accessible and winning pacing he used in Good Will Hunting. Besides the remarkable music, camerawork, directing and (most of all) performance by lead Sean Penn, I think the most laudable feature of this flick is the way it connects middle mainstream America with a time and a place and a cause that still feels faraway from most of our stripmall inflected, zoning-law-lovin', suburban conformist lives.

++++

The Wrestler

2009-03-09T18:09:00.003-05:00

The Wrestler tells an epic story, but about a decidedly un-epic world, a world that feels like it could only be the underbelly of a better world, or maybe an unflinchingly honest look behind the facades that we all arrange to make sense of our worlds. The truth of every performance (in a story about how performances can swallow performers) moves incrementally, inevitably toward a tarnished glory that feels utterly earned and hopelessly true.

++++

Sukiyaki Western Django

2009-03-09T10:39:00.002-05:00

This mythic tale of greed, war, love, betrayal and revenge includes shoot-outs and duels shot in visuals superceding the imagination of even visual hyperbolist Zack Snyder (the answer to the question of how a culture steeped in internationally produced Westerns might respond -- in hyperrealistic terms); a breakneck ride through an unforgetable world.This stylized Western spares no moments in numbing any expectation of realism regarding sets, acting styles or violence, and the sooner you are relieved of these mainstream Western conventions, the more you'll enjoy the indulgent spectacle that this film provides.

+++1/2

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

2009-03-09T10:24:00.004-05:00

Bunuel's classic resonates more the longer I tread water in suburban middle age; the understated humor and the poses of the characters and the sets delight throughout. The film, which follows a set of upper class friends through a series of soirees, often thwarted or almost thwarted by the social unrest and ferment that their lives of luxury and oblivion casually ignore and suppress, has been labelled surrealist, but it's tone, timbre and critique are so poignant that it looks more like "reality" than absurdity -- oh wait -- are those two the same thing?

+++++

Ikiru

2009-02-13T06:32:00.004-05:00

This story about a late-in-life bureaucrat, who, after finding out that advanced cancer will kill him soon, leans into a quest to make sense of what his life has become. Kurosawa structures a slow, empathy-inducing journey that stays close to Ikiru, then, curiously (and unexpectedly) spends a long lingering third act far from his perspective, but close to the work that he finally accomplished; the narrative is, in this feat, impressive and reflection-inducing
++++1/2

TranSylvania

2009-01-21T08:27:00.004-05:00

Zingarina, a lost and hopeful French bohemian, travels to Transylvania to find something -- she thinks it's a former, deported boyfriend, it turns out to be much more. The journey she takes transforms her from a hungry malcontent to a satisfied nomad, and the road trip transforms our imagination as incrementally as it overwhelms our expectations with gypsy culture.

++++

Into the Wild

2009-01-12T05:59:00.003-05:00

The movie adaptation of this story of a young man's trek into the wilderness & shaking-off-the-shackles-and-hypocrisy-of-society works not only because of the subtle and harmonious performances of actors, cinematographer and musicians (all of which are devastatingly beautiful), but also because the thematic questions manage to stay alive in our hearts throughout the story: isn't it better to live a life of purity? beauty? experience? Given our understanding of the ending and the presence of wise voices like Chris' sister and his final friend, I am amazed at how passionately I still wanted the social experiment to work.

+++++

Smart People

2009-01-10T07:52:00.004-05:00

It's hard to see through lackluster performances and missing chemistry between the romantic leads to a solid, understated structure with richly written characters and worlds; Ellen Page's performance is one of the truest, and if Thomas Haden's character didn't feel so I've-seen-you-do-this-before-at-least-three-times, it might ring true. The wold is nicely constructed, but the directing/editing-pacing is too rhythmic and conventional and the music (though it's a great soundtrack) invades almost every scene, insisting on a particular appropriate response from the viewer.

+++

The Prizewinner of Defiance, OH

2009-01-09T05:35:00.003-05:00

For a film so celebrative of heartwarming uplift of a story, Prizewinner manages to maintain a sufficiently distant tone through narrative devices crafted in post-production, a great art design and a great tension between the clear-eyed sullenness of the adolescent narrator daughter and the clear-eyed forgiveness of the title character, played (as ever) unflinchingly frankly and honestly by Julianne Moore. The only difficulty in this story springs from it's divergence from the conventional Hollywood narrative structure -- no one kicks off the story with a goal or an aim of any kind; the result works (and doesn't) in a strange way, we (the audience) feels like the unrelenting (yet understated) tension between "Mother" and "Father" can only be survived - never overcome -- a difficult narrative burden to bear, but it does lock us into an empathetic solidarity with "Mother"'s position.

+++1/2

Man Push Cart

2009-01-07T05:33:00.004-05:00

The ambivalence, pacing, truth-from-the-margins and attentive beauty of this film devastated me. The performance and the script are subtle but the directing and the photography are inspired: beauty drenches this despondent story about the slippery rungs on the ladder of the American Dream; the shape and experience of the exilic Pakistani community and their dreams are always hinted at and insinuated - seemingly as impenetrable for my outsider sensibilities as they must be resonant for those who are the longing insiders.

+++++

Easy Rider

2009-01-06T08:50:00.003-05:00

Like the title, this road trip movie doesn't ask too much of it's viewer for the first half of the movie, the road unspools with minimal character development or plot interruption, and so, on some level, the Major Dramatic Question that kept me engaged was -- do I like this movie? I think I like this movie. Once the riders hit small town texas and a patriotic parade, the story turns and twists in ways I wasn't expecting, and loved all the more because of the unexpected and true way that they played out.

++++1/2

Raging Bull

2008-10-22T12:15:00.003-05:00

Scorsese shapes this brutal epic morality tale with such lovingly indulgent and elegant images that we cannot help but fall in love with every lead character and then have our hearts broken as each of them betray us and each other. Jake LaMotta's story seems to powerfully presage the dominant rise-and-fall-from-fame narrative that defines our lurid voyeuristic era, but with these lights, sets, performances and music this story provides a vision of clarity about the ways our culture shapes our hungers and fears in powerfully self-destructive ways.

++++1/2

The Thin Blue Line

2008-09-04T04:42:00.005-05:00

Errol Morris' documentary investigation of the wrongful conviction of Randall Dale Adams is patient in arriving at conclusions (inviting the viewer to experience the case chronologically in the way that the investigating police did first and later in the ways that Randall Adams did), and brilliant in it's storytelling structure. The fabrications of Morris' reenactments and mise en scenes are so convincingly and poetically rendered that the film manages to do great honor to the fallen policemen while subtly allowin shame to accrue where it belongs - on the bloodthirsty hands of the DA and in the lap of the presiding good-ol-boy-judge.

++++

Waitress

2008-08-30T22:04:00.003-05:00

I think that the lush production values, mythically american mise en scene, and conventional narrative structure allows this film the latitude to perform some of the most dazzling subversive moral advocacy imaginable: the film manages to structure a place of ambivalence in us toward extra-marital affairs, and (even more subversive in american culture) a preference that the guy not get the girl at the end. I'm not just referring to the pie when I say that this is third wave feminism at its most delicious.

+++1/2

Metropolis

2008-08-30T22:03:00.004-05:00

The classic German Expressionist tale of oppressed workers enslaved to machines, industry & elites, charts failed attempts by the workers to shift their own destiny, and finally redemption for them when the son of the overlord falls in love with one of their own. Of course I left out the robot, the riot, the flood, the chase sequence, the horror film genre and the outrageously creative sets (influencing sci-fi visions of the urban future from Blade Runner to Star Wars to Batman and Minority Report), so while ultimately delivering an outrageous amount of bang-per-buck, the film ultimately feels unsettling in that repressive unchallenged assumption that the world's best helper is the rich, educated white man.

+++1/2

Karate Kid

2008-08-29T04:36:00.000-05:00

This eighties classic coming-of-age film has become laughable because of how much it embraces the popular culture moment of its' release, but the quiet way it interrogates race, gender and class, give its Rocky-structure-storyline a bit more punch. The cinematography and pacing almost sustain the film despite it's melodramatically evil villains and occasional cheap shots at ethnic stereotyping humour.

+++

Bright Future

2008-08-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

A story about two disaffected friends in an angst-producing low-wage job offers a few twists before it pays off the premise in a way that feels poetic and just. The visuals vibrate with saturated pop hues and carefully filmed carelessness while the pacing and the sets and the music map out an experience so specific and unusual that just living in this world for 92 minutes made me a salivating fan of this new Kurosawa.

++++1/2

Bible Salesmen

2008-08-27T05:17:00.004-05:00

This classic Mayles brothers piece follows a group of Salesmen as they sell expensive illustrated Bibles to catholic parish members, first in a Boston neighborhood and then in a Florida neighborhood. The film is patient and honest and the images that emerge seem archtypally American - the lone ranger meets the death of a salesmen in suburbia.

++++

The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters

2008-08-20T04:25:00.002-05:00

KING OF KONG articulates contemporary form of documentary filmmaking chronicling American subculture with one of the most compelling storytelling efforts I've seen. The filmmakers accomplish the astonishing feat of *both* showing some of the most idiosyncratic and self-involved ambition in a light that is alternately absurd, frank, outrageous and compassionate; the story that emerges carries the audience along a quest that seems so mythic and yet so middle-class American that the emotional payoff (both disappointment and elation) feels completely earned.

++++

Volver

2008-08-18T06:55:00.003-05:00

Almodovar tweaks the melodrama in all the right ways -- adding a touch of suspense, a hint of fantasy, and fantastic performances by all involved. This story about women's work, lives and survival requires a willing surrender to the glamourous conceits of contemporary Chick Flicks, but once ceded, the payoffs are both satisfying and indulgent.

+++1/2

Redbeard

2008-08-13T06:32:00.007-05:00

Kurosowa's uplifting epic about an urban doctor's honest work resulting in pay-it-forward ripples looks subtle and beautiful in the camera work and the performances of the major players. The bit players fulfill conventions from all sorts of more mainstream and popular Japanese movies, and occasionally the musical swells seem overwhelmingly Western and like Emotional Telegraphs, but the long takes, gorgeous sets, deep focus, and complex mise en scene work make it more than worth it to invest the 3 hours this movie demands.

++++

Dr. Strangelove

2008-07-25T06:14:00.004-05:00

Kubrick masterfully balances a straight faced comedy about the sort of people and the sort of situation that don't seem to merit the comic touch. The committed performances and cinematic realism makes the scenario feel unnervingly real -- even the absurd bits of comedy end up feeling absolutely believable -- all a masterful set-up for the even more unnerving and unsettling and unbelievable-because-of-what-he's-saying, but believable-because-of-the-set-up final speech of Dr. Strangelove.

+++1/2

The Dark Knight

2008-07-24T05:56:00.002-05:00

Christopher Nolan's sequel exceeds his excellent reboot of the Batman franchise in faithfulness to the mythology, in coherence of story-telling and in creative choices. The story of a complex love triangle, of the nuances of good and evil within institutional life and without (particularly the ugly and heroic outlaws -- Batman & Joker) all are bound together in a well paced story, impeccable art design, and psychologically rich writing and acting.

++++1/2

Paris, Je' T aime

2008-07-20T06:11:00.003-05:00

A festival of shorts all celebrating love and paris, albeit many different aspects of both. This seemed like the absolutely perfect date movie both because short films have such a remarkable ability to stir up conversation (and these are Great Short Films) and because so much about love and relationships is articulated and undermined in these moments.

++++

Standard Operating Procedure

2008-07-19T06:38:00.006-05:00

Using gorgeous photography and staging to document horrific images and events, Morris pieces together a coherent narrative about collective fantasies and how they develop, by interviewing and analyzing the photographs taken by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, the themes he manages to masterfully explore include: the complexity of human motivation, the partiality of visual representation, the ways that structures of oppression manage to replicate themselves within isolated enclaves, and the (sometimes unexpected) agency and victimage that defines the anxieties of being a woman in the army. I was disappointed that Morris allowed the character of Grener to function as such a pure villain in the story; it seems like in a story about the ambivalence and nuance of motivation and morality, the Standard Operating Procedure of Hollywood Filmmaking (where villains are purely villainous and reinforce audience faith in moral clarity and violent retribution) should not proceed unchecked.

+++1/2

WALL*E

2008-07-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

I loved WALL*E despite the humans: I loved it for it's outrageously, unbelievably realized mise en scene of a trashed version of earth, I loved it for its bold choice to embrace cinematic storytelling for such long, unflinching sequences, I love the subtle message that Even-A-Machine-Will-Learn-That-Love-Is-The-Answer-If-Left-to-the-Tutelage-of-Human-Trash, I love that Trash-Made-With-Love stands out against the wasteland of consumption and pollution and mindless mechanization, I do find WALL*E himself delightful, and I love that such a dystopian parable can muster such hope from its characters and for its audience. While I initially loved the joke about fat, lazy humans addicted to television homogeneity, I found that it wore thin and unbelievable later when these same humans tried to stumble and lurch toward a too-realistic and difficult kind of agency, but let's not dwell on the downside, because this animation and story are definitely worth your time.

+++1/2

Persepolis

2008-07-13T06:33:00.002-05:00

This coming of age animated feature manages to be subtle, honest and devastatingly beautiful, so I'm not sure why I never felt profoundly moved -- I wonder if it is the sort of movie that will seep into my soul gradually, though. I most loved the style and textures of animation: using such iconic and magical imagery to depict events and places so full of the ugliest things humans can do to one another seemed a perfect illustration of the ability of storytelling to both fully articulate and hopefully transcend the mire of the human condition.

++++

12 WAYS TO SAY I'M SORRY

2008-07-12T10:06:00.005-05:00

Technically I really appreciated the narrative structure of this film, the narrator device, the actors-in-multiple-roles, the breezy, believable, middle-class-professional mise en scene, but ultimately these elements failed to amuse. I'm open to the possibility that my non-Canadian status is what rendered the jokes impenetrable to me, but I suspect that they were just insufficiently conceived or developed (like the jokes about United Statesians which I was ready and willing to laugh at, but which were also under-developed).

+++

available on hulu

Giant

2008-07-12T06:47:00.001-05:00

This epic tale of Texas chronicles the lives of privileged millionaires and the subtle ways that American Culture gradually consumed and homogenized so much of their culture; at its core, the film turns on the relationship between Texas Billionaire, Jordan Benedict (Rock Hudson) and his Eastern Millionaire wife, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor). While their chemistry and conflict do a good job making some dramatic unity out of the epic sprawl of this story, I could attach emotionally to anything -- performances, story, cinematography or even thematic points -- despite all of the above being admirably executed.

+++

WALKING ON THE WILD SIDE

2008-07-11T21:28:00.001-05:00

This near perfect short manages to exploit a simple premise with utterly perfect comic timing, quirky chemistry, physical humor and utterly cinematic articulation. This short should be canonized for such brilliant execution of such a simple premise.

++++1/2

available at hulu.com

Born on the Fourth of July

2008-07-05T07:09:00.005-05:00

Tom Cruise's performance was the best thing about this rambling, unfocused, over-scored epic coverage of the Vietnam War. Though the visual images were arresting, Stone's inability to find any significant Unity in the story irreparably ruined the sccript's ability to carry the audience's concern across a genuine narrative arc (as opposed to achieving the POP! and WOW! emotions that come with well-arranged cliche's).

+++

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

2008-06-16T04:50:00.002-05:00

While I love most of the players here (Jake Kasdan, Judd Apatow, John C. Reilly, etc...) I was keenly disappointed in how closely this film keened to both the structures and conventions of Walk the Line; it felt less like a satire and more like derivative tripe. Perhaps this reading emerges from the impressively accomplished singing, songwriting and filming, on the other hand, it more likely emerges from my natural predisposition to scorn satire as a waste of the energy and resources it takes to make a film -- I never *laugh hard* enough to make a *walk hard* worthwhile.

++1/2

The Five Obstructions

2008-06-14T04:52:00.002-05:00

Lars Von Trier challenges Jorgen Leith to remake his classic film The Perfect Man: the result is a compelling exploration of the relationships between the artistic process and constraints, but not (as Von Trier hopes) a convincing explication of Jorgen Leith's psyche. The films Leith makes, though, more than make up for Von Trier's phoniness.

++++

The Other Boleyn Girl

2008-06-13T04:51:00.004-05:00

I never realized how profoundly we expect an Uplift from a good Costume Drama until I watched this film, which I might re-title: The Tragic Unspooling Of The Boleyn Siblings Because of The Class-Grubbing-Greed of Their Upwardly Mobile Father (subtitle: with an uplifting, yet dramatically unseemly twist at the very end). I loved Kieran McGuigan's photography, and found all other technical and artistic elements to be well-executed; I was ultimately disappointed, though, in the film's inability to commit to a protagonist and (the profoundly related) inability to commit to a genre (tragedy or uplifting-costume-drama).

+++

Margot at the Wedding

2008-06-11T04:51:00.002-05:00

Baumbach's exploration of a loving (?), dysfunctional (!), surviving (?) sibling relationship -- includes nuanced, multilayered characters, a particular, believable world of social and geographic relationships, a conflict with rising stakes, and just the right moments stitched together onscreen to create a nuanced, ambivalent observation of a family in transition. With the possible exception of the too-on-the-nose tree-arc-ending, I loved every moment of the story, with particular affection for the performances of the actors and the ability to capture such telling performances on film.

++++1/2

Rio Bravo

2008-06-07T05:13:00.002-05:00

I never would have predicted how much I enjoyed this film -- this Western manages to be more of a buddy movie and a romantic comedy than a shoot-em-up, epic metaphor for foreign relations or imperialism or the triumph of the individual by-way-of a Good versus Evil battle. I found everyone delightful, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson & (!) John Wayne; the screenwriting includes a brilliant marraige of well-constructed plot & characters with long histories and great nicknames.

++++

Shane

2008-06-02T16:00:00.003-05:00

A morally ambiguous outsider (Shane) arrives in a tiny settlement town hoping to find some peace and quiet, clearly something he hasn't been experiencing; when it becomes apparent that the peace of this town is premised upon a subtle, inarticulated oppression and tyranny, the stranger takes it upon himself to challenge the status quo, even though it means losing his shot at peace. While I occasionally found the child's performance to be grating and sentimental, the restraint of the rest of the performances, the beautiful construction of the shots and scenes and the patient pace of the movie drew me in, so that the final words (of the child) were both affecting and satisfying.

+++1/2

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008-06-02T15:59:00.002-05:00

I prefer my laughter to be twinged by sadness, and that seemed to be this film's speciality: a pathetic dumped boyfriend finds out that he is neither pathetic nor lonely, but once the dumping girfriend realizes these things, he may have screwed up a better thing than he had before. The film is driven by story and character, not particularly cinematic to the eye, but definitely built to be watched by a crowd; once again the Apatow crowd manages to make a lewd morality tale, out of a barely-tweaked-formula piece -- the ending is the right length and includes satisfying payoffs, but the fast-foward six months resolution always feels like cheating to me.
+++1/2

Contempt

2008-05-21T05:25:00.002-05:00

Godard's visual style reaches a maturity in this film that invites and requires a patient indulgent viewing: epic vistas, strikingly contrasting compositions, sets so indulgent that they verge on the fanciful, takes so long that they verge on life-as-reality-instead-of-life-as-film. The plot moves slowly and indeterminately, luxuriating in speculation and only hinting toward closure for the most important dramatic questions and, conversely, mocking Hollywood conventions at almost every turn.

+++1/2

Fix

2008-03-23T12:25:00.003-05:00

Ferris Bueller meets Trainspotting in this kinetic 24 hour film about a socially conscious documentarian brother and his drug-addicted brother trying to raise enough money to enter a rehab clinic before the judges orders run out. The beauty of the cinematography, the difficult-but-well-executed narrative style, the menagerie of intriguing characters and the complexity and poetic parallelism of the sibling relationship, all more than overcome the movie's occasionally overly-stylized and on-the-nose moments.

++++

How Ohio Pulled it Off

2008-03-23T12:24:00.002-05:00

This documentary chronicles how the 2004 presidential election was compromised and how Ohio voters impeached Kenneth Blackwell, the man ultimately responsible for that compromise in his 2006 bid for senate; in doing so, the film champions the ultimate power of grassroots movements to correct corruption in political processes. The film is well paced, the story is transparently narrated and even though this doc suffers from the (often fatal) problem of being issue-centered instead of focused on one particularly empathic character, it manages to be engaging and intriguing from start to finish.

Site Link

++++

August The First

2008-03-22T04:59:00.003-05:00

When Tunde's father returns after ten years of absence in Africa for a graduation party, the family suspects he's up to no good and together spend the rest of the movie trying to discover his malevolent intention. The diegesis of the gently fading suburban home, the subjective and improvisational photography, the impressively organic editing, the depth of the characters and the (mostly) subtle performances all serve the story well, but after the films midpoint the hysterics go up, the plot twists start to feel contrived and the resolution feels too neat.

++++

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008-03-07T06:06:00.003-05:00

Schnabel's film beautifully balances the tension between the idea that a long slow death offers both the beautiful opportunity to puzzle over the beauty and meaning of one's life and it offers the tragedy of watching all of your relationships stall and frieze and drift away from your control. The art direction, cinematography and pacing worked together so well that I genuinely forgot myself and the theatre-going several times -- joining my heart and hopes utterly with Jean-Do.

++++1/2

My Son the Fanatic

2008-03-04T05:40:00.004-05:00

A middle-aged immigrant taxi driver watches in astonishment as his only son becomes an Islamic extremist; his only happiness comes to him through a friendship with a high class prostitute. The perfectly structured story and the inobtrusive production values allow the relationships to lay out a complex and nuanced description of contemporary relationships between idealism and opportunism, between democratic values and traditional values, between blind faith and fractured hope.

++++

Lars and the Real Girl

2008-03-03T06:20:00.004-05:00

Who knew that "sweet," "gentle," & "heartwarming" would describe a small northern town supporting the sex-doll delusion for one of it's residents? The performances engaged me, loved the art direction, the cinematography left me disappointed, the premise was astonishing, the actual structure of the story was only good; the stakes never rose after an early decision in the second act, so the emotional plateau the film stalls on feels gentle and heartwarming and even makes a good point about community and collective projections, but lacks the engine that the story could easily have had.

+++

Hoot

2008-02-24T08:38:00.003-05:00

The newkid teams up with the local Boo Radley to overcome first the runofthemill schoolyard bully-Goliath, but then the more overwhelming corporate monolith pancake chain; the unwitting aid of Luke Wilson's keystone-cop, barney-fife mostly provides comic relief. The broadly comic performances, production gaffes and unlikely inspirational moments in the third act can be forgiven if the audience is only intended to be eight and under.

++1/2

The Fountain

2008-02-21T06:07:00.004-05:00

I admired the cinematography, effects, art design and even the structure of the story (classic narrative to metanarrative to post-narrative), but didn't ever truly emotionally care about the characters or what the stakes were for them. My dispassionate (even rational?) engagement may have been the preferred subject position (a zen point of view? and if that was the intent -- Kudos, Aronofsky!) or it may have been that the slimmest of stories (a woman dies, her husband cannot let go) was overwhelmed by the epic treatment.

+++

Becoming Jane

2008-02-15T23:08:00.004-05:00

This film does everything it should do, and well: tells a cinematic story about well-beloved author, focusing carefully upon a pivotal moment in her life and providing insight about her oevre while also honoring the genre that has emerged in other cinematic translations of her works. The script and the direction and the performances may be too carefully appropriate to engage our emotions in a way that transcends the genre, though there are camera sequences (almost always shoulder-mount approaches unusually above the eye level of the actors) which break the generic monotony and give the viewer a moment of genuine interest.

+++

Rocket Science

2008-02-11T06:44:00.000-05:00

I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the color-by-numbers indie coming-of-age flick, but this movie so carefully weaves together elements from the fish-out-of-water, coming-of-age & crucible-of-competition genres, while still retaining the neccessary indie cred through soundtrack, an unlikely protagonist, a quite specific (and not a little quirky) world, likeable secondary characters, carefully stylized camera work ...that this movie felt like an almost too-perfect set-up for me.

That Jeffrey Blitz manages to *both* undermine all of our genre expectations in the third act *and* payoff all of our expectations in a fulfilling way is what makes this filmmaking actually seem as hard as Rocket ...

+++++

The Jane Austen Book Club

2008-02-11T06:41:00.000-05:00

Within the first few minutes we meet enough characters with enough disparate problems to believe that the film might be a network narrative, but by the time enough of them convene at the book club, we recognize that the story will play out much more like a romantic comedy -- or, indeed, like it's projenitor, a Jane Austen novel. There were only a few moments where I was bumped from the personal and romantic tensions by the careful plotting, the not-so-subtle thematic braiding with Austen's themes, plots and characters; in all I found the dense plotting and complex characters to provide a deeply satisfying romcom experience.

+++1/2

There Will Be Blood

2008-02-08T05:45:00.000-05:00

Daniel Plainview calls himself "the third revelation" and by the time he does so, his claim does not seem far fetched: he is the American Dream, he is Oil, he is Capitalism, he is Industry, he is Transportation, he is Advertising, he is Blasphemy who is only too willing to be Baptized for a Profit. That Paul Thomas Anderson manages to infuse a character with such iconicity, such thematic clarity and such tragic purity while telling a simple, straightforward, twist-less story does make this film seem unimpeachable.

++++1/2

Killer of Sheep

2008-02-04T05:40:00.000-05:00

Burnett translates the mundane details of a slaughterhouse worker's family and neighborhood into such astonishing cinematic icons that every second of this movie can be watched as a purely aesthetic experience. Because the narrative and the performances also deliver such subtle power, it isn't difficult to discern why this (only recently released to DVD) 1977 film merited such critical accolades, but also seems utterly topical.

+++++

Making documentary films...

2008-02-03T07:25:00.000-05:00

Henry Jenkins interviewed Matt Ogden & this Q & A captured my attention. The degree to which the documentarian pre-structures the formal elements of their films always fascinates me.

One of the striking components of the film is the visual style -- especially your use of still photographs and oversaturated colors. How did these two stylistic choices come about and what do they signal about your relationship to this content?

From the moment the idea came to me, I knew I wanted this to be a visual documentary. In my opinion, a film should look as good as the story its telling. Charlie Gruet, the director of photography and a producer on the film, set out to give a style to the film, and not just shoot willy-nilly. The idea was to make this look cinematic, filmic, like you're watching a narrative film, not a talking head corporate video. All of the verite moments on the boulevard were shot handheld, in a fly on the wall style. The sit down interviews, scenics of Los Angeles, and specialty shots were more set up and art directed. But we didn't make things look "cool" for the sake of it. Each set, if you can call it that, was discussed and reasoned. Superman was interviewed on a vinyl couch against patterned wallpaper as if he was in Martha Kent's country home in the movie or comic book versions of Superman. Batman was shot in a cavernous warehouse (instead of a cave), but you get the point. Batman's past is dark. And we wanted a darker setting for him.

In addition to directing, I also shoot stills and we always shot during production for marketing materials, the website, posters, etc. The idea to use stills within the film didn't come until late in the process. We didn't settle on using still photos for the transitions until a month before we locked picture. We felt the composition of the photos complemented the sit down interviews and helped tell the story.

Haven't seen The Secret Lives of Superheroes yet, but want to.

Charlie Wilson's War

2008-02-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

This story admirably articulates a cultural plight in the popular vernacular by telling a story about Afghanistan's overdetermination by the Superpowers of the Cold War through the lens of One Man Facing and Overcoming Insurmountable Odds. The story works best because of the popular vernacular it employs -- the unbearable light of double AA star wattage, the brisk-almost-television writing of Aaron Sorkin, the overly-obvious, conventional and melodramatic orchestral score, the bemused, but lighthanded mise en scene of the 80s; the story fails most in it's fundamental (though admirable!) conceit -- because the stakes of Afghanistan are never personal enough for us to care enough about Tom Wilson's struggle, and conversely the Afghans themselves are never more than set pieces.

+++

Manhattan Murder Mystery

2008-01-29T06:28:00.000-05:00

The first time I saw this movie, it was revolutionary to me -- I had just discovered Woody Allen, and for some reason was able to recognize a number of the brilliant use of directorial conventions that he utilizes in this film -- long takes of overlapping conversation, long takes that sumptuously celebrate the New York locations just as much as the story, the thematic parallelism between the various couples on screen, the allusions to so many classic noir thrillers in the theatre set, the use of intertextuality from Double Indemnity. What a disappointment, to, upon second viewing, realize that this was warmed over Woody Allen at its most tepid: Allen never commits to the genre and to solving the storytelling problems enough, instead choosing to take refuge in his own pre-fab genre as a kind of auto-critique of the genre in which he dabbles; the result? storylines left dangling, long passages of tedious exposition, a laborious and awkward denoument and an embarrassingly Deus Ex Machina revelation / twist in the final moments.

+++ (still! nostalgia counts for something!)

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2008-01-25T06:24:00.000-05:00

While the story drags you violently into and through its chaos, the most the viewer can hope to say is that they see and recognize (narrative and moral) truth amongst all the wreckage, because there's nothing and no one to actually like. While the tight structure of the screenplay, editing and direction are admirable, moments of excess in each threaten the viability of the whole: the IRS audit? really? just *so* happens to be right now? and *must* we see Ethan Hawke do morose *again*? as PSHoffman chews the familiar scenery around him at the bar? (God Bless Them Both Though! Two of my favorite working actors! And generally very heartfelt performances - regardless of how winning they sometimes failed to be...)

+++1/2

Gloomy Sunday

2008-01-23T06:21:00.000-05:00

On its surface a film about a delicately balanced successful love triangle, the film opens up into a much more rewarding and tangled story about persistence in the face of great sorrow. The dark, almost comically exaggerated storyline about the potency of the title song buoys the film along at an accessible, melodrama pitch, and ultimately, the final twist (unfortunately?) rewards that broadest audience's expectations in a way that undermines some of the most noble sentiments that Laszlo offers Weick during his send-off at the train station.

+++1/2

Grease

2008-01-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

Since my kids have loved High School Musical, the sequel and Hairspray so much, we decided to let them in on this "classic" expecting it to be as earnest as a Disney product and as saccharine. So the artfulness of the direction happily surprised me as did the ironic tone of whole enterprise and the ribald sexual energy eminating from the script and the performers; Grease is still no Hairspray -- individual sexual liberation is a much less ambitious reach than the confrontation of racial and gender discrimination that Hairspray addresses directly and indirectly respectively.

+++

Gabbeh

2008-01-21T23:57:00.000-05:00

A rich beautiful small story whose self-conscious storytelling masterfully weaves the formal elements of the telling with the beauty of the gabbeh itself (a traditional rug). The colors, music, repetition of plot points, and gradual revelation of the characters feels both beautiful, but sometimes too performatively exotic and self-conscious, but that feeling may well emit from the position of this viewer more than from the film or its context.

+++1/2