Marie-Antoinette: “This is ridiculous.”
Comtesse de Noailles: “This, Madame, is Versailles!”
It’s actually quite astounding how one could assume Coppola’s latest film draws inspiration from her own personal life, starting with her father’s startling decision to cast her in The Godfather Part III serving as the equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s arrival at Versailles to the distain of a great many gawkers. Much like my prior experience with Lost in Translation, I walked out of the theatre after watching Marie Antoinette feeling really sorry for Spike Jonze.
Adam’s Thoughts | Beth’s Thoughts
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Sony Pictures 35mm Print
30 Nov 2006 5:56 PM | Comments (3)
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Warner Bros 35mm print
29 Nov 2006 1:50 PM | Submit Comment
The screener I received was enclosed in a cardboard sleeve wrapped in cellophane, and both are 100% post-consumer materials. This coupled with the final credits — which punctuate the filmmakers’ names with instructions on how you are able to nourish the environment — resulted in my guilt for having watched the film with both a 5.1 receiver and subwoofer activated. My shower this morning was lukewarm, and at least a few minutes shorter than usual.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
29 Nov 2006 1:03 PM | Submit Comment
From the start this seems to have been a project perpetually cursed by risk, from the principle cast of boys (none of whom, I believe, had acted before) to the near-disastrous New York premier, which was initiated before the final reel was even printed. The risks contribute immeasureably to a pervasive anticipation of tragedy. The entire enterprise is consistently and deftly unsettling.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: The Criterion Collection DVD
29 Nov 2006 12:51 PM | Comments (1)
You might reject Godard’s melancholic spirit, his elegy on cinema as the 20th-century art form that is now over, but who can doubt (well, I can’t) after viewing In Praise of Love, Our Music, and now this that he’s simply the greatest director alive today. The clash of imagery and spoken and written text is simply dazzling, and way beyond the abilities of the English subtitles on this print — which a lot of the time simply gave up trying. You need a modicum of French (and some German, for the beautiful Celan poem) to just begin to parse some of the meanings and beauties here. I only wish my French was better.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
28 Nov 2006 1:26 PM | Submit Comment
Following on from Uzak another study in the solipsistic middle-aged middle-class male. Strikingly effective, and of great beauty, especially in the latter part of the film set in the snow-bound east of Turkey; my one reservation is that it’s a little lacking in surprise.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
28 Nov 2006 1:14 PM | Submit Comment
Here is quintessential Garrel, all reduced down to his core concern (inevitable in a film that is both dedicated to the memory of Nico and based on his relationship with her), the nature of love and the couple: how we try to find words to describe a love that is already slipping away; the inevitable shifting contours of love and relationships; the loss and regret we experience as the years part. There’s an impressive intensity here, a sombre austerity whose pause-filled dialogue scenes can sadly (as I’ve just experienced) make a Film Festival audience very restless.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
28 Nov 2006 1:10 PM | Submit Comment
Always a pleasure: a film series finds it’s feet, recognises it’s own iconic nature and goes all out to thrill. The now familiar odd=bad, even=good template was established here, and worked steadily until the godawful Nemesis broke the mould and killed the franchise. But what people seem to miss is that, with the exception of First Contact, all the even entries were either written or directed (or both) by Nicholas Meyer, a man who seems to have done absolutely nothing else of great note in a long, varied and fairly weird career, but who pretty much single-handedly saved the Trek series on no less than three separate occasions. Is there no chance they can bring him back for the next one?
This is the baddest, bloodiest entry in the saga, genuinely frightening for small children (I had earwig nightmares for weeks), and sporting the most satisfying villain of the lot, thanks largely to Ricardo Montalban’s ability to masticate the décor almost as voraciously as the ham- God Shatner. It retains the grandiosity of it’s self- serious predecessor but jettisons the po-face, exulting in it’s own absurdity all the way to the genuinely affecting conclusion.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: Sci-Fi Channel
27 Nov 2006 5:53 PM | Comments (1)
The critical community seems to be having kittens over this one- on BBC2’s Culture Show, Mark Kermode attempted to make the case for Del Toro being the new Orson Welles, an argument I utterly fail to see, other than the fact that they’re both pretty wide in the trouser. Pan’s Labyrinth is a strange, frightening, often very beautiful film, but it’s also fairly flawed, mostly in the story department: Del Toro never quite manages to successfully marry the twin strands of his convoluted narrative.
Perhaps it’s the weight of expectation, but I never experienced the sheer astonishment that his earlier Devil’s Backbone provoked. This time the fantasy element is stronger and the horror more explicit, but it also feels more predictable somehow, the fairytale structure forcing a conformity to genre stereotypes in a way the earlier film was never forced to. That said, the design is flawless, the characterisation broad but effective- this is one of the best films of the year, whatever it’s drawbacks.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 5:50 PM | Submit Comment
The return flight: this is not quite as painful as it could have been, but it’s not far off. Luke Wilson manages to hold his head above water, despite the fact that he’s got a desperately mugging Uma Thurman (who seems to look weirder and more exhausted with each new role) trying with all her might to drag him down. The shark- through- the- window scene almost makes everything worth it.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: Inflight DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:49 PM | Comments (1)
The thought of major awards for this film feels vaguely outrageous: are there no more important films to reward than this slick, effective but rather bland police procedural? Scorsese’s Oscar winning days should be far behind him now, and the Academy must be kicking themselves that they didn’t get it out of the way earlier- now every half- decent slice of noisy Americana the onetime master manages to churn out gets dissected for it’s Best Picture potential.
Admittedly, this is more fun than anything Marty’s managed since Goodfellas, but that’s really not saying much. There’s precious little insight, and the let’s-kill-everyone ending gets daft fast. None of the cast gets the chance to push themselves, and Nicholson in particular seems to be reliving past glories. All in all, it feels more suited to TV than the big screen, like an overlong episode of Brotherhood with a bigger song licensing budget.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 5:48 PM | Submit Comment
I went to see this film with a pair of identical twins, who used the fact of their similarity to fox the cinema staff and get in half price. Astonishing serendipity, considering the subject matter.
This is one of those films where you spend the entire time trying to figure out the twist, rather than appreciating the film itself. Not that there’s a huge amount to appreciate, it’s entertaining enough but suffers from Nolan’s usual habit of taking potentially exciting material way too seriously, and ruining it for everyone in the process. The twist, when it comes, is dumb and sort of ludicrous, and there’s still too much in the film that just doesn’t make sense. But there are worse ways to kill two hours.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 5:46 PM | Comments (1)
A neat idea, and a well constructed documentary. There’s nothing radical here, but it passes the time pleasantly enough. But why on God’s earth did they have to halt proceedings halfway through to bring us an interminable acoustic rendering of Talking Heads ‘This Must Be The Place’?
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:46 PM | Submit Comment
Nothing in Pixar’s track record had prepared me for this- there have been glitches before, most notably the fairly underwhelming Bug’s Life, but overall it’s been a pretty good run. Until now. Cars is everything a Pixar movie shouldn’t be: loud, annoying, emptily flashy, populated by thin, obvious characters spouting the lamest clichés imaginable. The plot is stolen practically scene for scene from Doc Hollywood (and was hardly the most original idea to begin with), the script is lazy and way overlong. The anthropomorphisation of the vehicles ranges from annoying to confusing (how do they build stuff?) to downright creepy (sexual innuendos are rife, and deeply inappropriate). The animation is far too bright and colourful, inducing dizziness. But worst of all, the film is just plain boring, every scene predictable, every joke signposted, every sentiment sickening.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:45 PM | Submit Comment
A weak attempt to do the Woody Allen insightful New York intellectual romcom thing. David Duchovny and Billy Crudup are probably glad of the work, and Julianne Moore’s married to the director. But what’s Maggie Gyllenhaal’s excuse? She’s so much better than this.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: Inflight DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:44 PM | Submit Comment
A new low for all concerned, particularly Owen Wilson, who really should know better. Tired jokes, zero characterisation, lame and desperate scenes of mayhem. Just awful. And apparently the whole idea was stolen from Steely Dan.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: Inflight DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:43 PM | Submit Comment
A Northwest Airlines flight to the US yielded an unexpected trove of movies to watch on the back of the seat in front- there were some genuine classics on offer, including The Seven Year Itch, some interesting- looking 60’s Westerns and a number of enticing French and Indian movies. But who needs intellectual stimulation on a long haul flight? I went with the lowest-rent Hollywood crap available, as the night wore on and my brain gradually deteriorated.
I wasn’t expecting much from Talladega Nights, despite the fact that Will Ferrell might actually be one of the more reliable FratPack members (he’s not yet succumbed to the paycheck desperation of, say, Starsky And Hutch or Dodgeball). But the film surprised me- consistently funny, particularly in the scenes where Ferrell gets to improvise with his dependable costars: the family dinner scene is priceless (“dear 8 lb 6 oz baby Jesus…”).
by Tom Huddleston | Source: Inflight DVD
27 Nov 2006 5:42 PM | Submit Comment
So ephemeral that it’s almost nonexistent, Old Joy is a good hearted slice of life, which could be classed as indie- drama if anything dramatic actually happened. If nothing else it’s nice to see Will Oldham acting again, lending real charm to his scattered, doubtful portrayal.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 5:41 PM | Submit Comment
As I once expressed a certain degree of skepticism as to whether or not the Bond franchise could hack it in the 21st century, Casino Royale came as something of a shock to me: here is a James Bond film I actually liked. For once, 007 spends more time in a swimsuit than any of the Bond girls, and the gadgets that cluttered so many of the previous films have been reduced to an absolute minimum. Daniel Craig gives an emotional depth to a character that was fast becoming a cartoon, and the flirtation between Bond and Vesper Lynd has a certain screwball quality to it, which ultimately blossoms into a romance the audience can actually invest it. In short, it’s the first female-friendly (though by no means feminist) Bond.
For the above reasons alone, I suspect many Bond purists will balk, but for me these things represented a refreshing – and much-needed – change of pace.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: MGM 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 12:28 PM | Submit Comment
Not nearly as atrocious as some reviews have made it out to be (I suspect some people had trouble adjusting to Russell Crowe in warm & fuzzy mode). Although the film occasionally resembles a live action version of Town & Country magazine, it is nevertheless a fairly enjoyable piece of fluff, with Crowe displaying a surprising flair for comedy.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Fox 35mm print
27 Nov 2006 12:07 PM | Submit Comment
The difficulty in making a comedy is that, unlike other genres, humor has a time limit; no matter how many jokes or sight gags a director wants to include, everything must be wrapped up in a short amount of time, preferably ninety minutes. Hilarity expires quickly—precisely why there are no four-hour Chaplin films.
Guest suffers under the assumption that audiences will accept a massive throng of characters, as long as they’re funny. And while they are hilarious—I particularly enjoyed the wink-wink rapport between Michael McKean and Bob Balaban—most are too underdeveloped to be entirely memorable. I would’ve liked to have seen more from Ricky Gervais and Larry Miller as studio executives, and Richard Kind and Sandra Oh as a graphic artists. All four are obviously funny; yet here they have almost no dialogue. Still, Catherine O’Hara manages to be exquisitely funny and, in one short moment near the film’s end, candidly heartbreaking. (Guest, admirably, gives himself a few amusing lines without stealing the spotlight.)
What I find increasingly interesting, however, is how critics have summed up their dislike of this film: “too insider.” Because, until now, I didn’t realize that producers were sly control freaks, that agents were greedy idiots, or that actresses would mangle their faces for the sake of fame. Oh, how little we know…
by Adam Balz | Source: Warner Independent 35MM Theatrical Print
27 Nov 2006 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
Ripe for plot development, screenwriter Zach Helms and director Marc Forster choose instead to forgo any attempt at completeness to craft a naggingly vulnerable yet wholly enjoyable film. (To be fair, I’ve heard the film was hurriedly edited for release.) Is Harold Crick a fictional character, or is he simply a real person unexpectedly caught in an author’s story? If the former, are those who interact with him on a daily basis real…and if so, how is Harold’s pre-novel relationship with them explained? If Harold is an unfortunate member of reality, then in theory couldn’t I write a novel about Paris Hilton disappearing and seconds later hear about just that happening?
Not that our empathy towards Harold Crick would lessen any should his existence be established—we all see he’s alive, capable of love and sadness. He has dreams, fluxes in attitudes, and so on. He’s even likable. But the finale, in which Karen Eiffel must decide Harold’s fate, becomes convoluted when her emotions take hold. (Perhaps it would’ve been more appropriate for Eiffel to research how many people her creativity has actually killed, thus making distinctions between fiction and reality, as well as the odd Creator-Creation relationship that lurks beneath Helms’ storyline.)
Emma Thompson is a great actress who embodies the ascetic Karen Eiffel with a depressed fierceness—reclusiveness, that eternal sign of genius—while overshadowing Queen Latifah and Dustin Hoffman. Will Ferrell succeeds mainly because he’s so normal-looking, which adds legitimacy to his character’s relationship with Anna (Maggie Gyllenhaal). But they couldn’t give Linda Hunt a single good line?
by Adam Balz | Source: Sony Pictures 35MM Print
27 Nov 2006 10:59 AM | Submit Comment
Though Allen’s oeuvre is a long and varied catalog, I consider this the director’s best (though Deconstructing Harry isn’t far behind). He pays homage to one of cinema’s masters while maintaining his own creativity and independence. Plus, the duel between Allen and the always hilarious Harold Gould continues to leave me in stitches.
by Adam Balz | Source: MGM VHS
27 Nov 2006 10:43 AM | Submit Comment
Before Sean Connery was Bond, Criag Stevens was Peter Gunn, or Steve McQueen was Bullitt, Ralph Byrd as Dick Tracy was the essence of cool. Too bad he couldn’t act.
by Adam Balz | Source: Alpha Video DVD
27 Nov 2006 10:36 AM | Submit Comment
Gabrielle’s stylistic features – the slipping between black-and-white and colour, the large white text that appears at times over the image, the obtrusive, excessively operatic music – is a sticking-point for many in an appreciation of this film, but I thought it was tremendous. Above all, Eric Gautier’s cinematography, whether it’s the Visconti-like movement around the golden glows of a society dinner table, or the dark tones of the icy-cold loveless mansion, is amazing: there’s a particularly striking sequence where two maids carrying a single lamp move up the levels of the house extinguishing the lights until the camera returns downstairs to the darkened hall and the frozen figure of the husband. I like the constant shifts in tone, shifts between loquacity and a sullen inarticulateness, and I like the way the film refuses the now standard if not traditional Ibsenite path of the liberation of the wife from an oppressive husband. Apparently, Chereau conceived the story more along these broadly feminist lines, but it’s not apparent in the film itself. The characters of wife and husband (a superb Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory)are ambigous and never entirely clear-cut, always refusing an easy analysis on our part. Our sympathies likewise keep moving and shifting, right up to an emotionally shocking finale.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
26 Nov 2006 11:14 AM | Comments (5)
An effective drama from S. Korean director Yoon (or “Yun”) Jong-bin, of two former junior high classmates who meet up again when doing their military service. The film smoothly slips back and forth between two time periods, the “past” of the two friends’ time together in the army, and the “now” as they meet up again, one back in civilian life, the other still serving; which nicely mirrors the twin themes of the brutalisation you undergo in the army, and the degree to which for most that experience loses meaning as it’s left behind in the past. Not for all of course, which is the core to the tragedy in the film’s story. But I think The Unforgiven goes on for about 15 minutes too long. The image of one friend slumped on the bathroom floor as the other lies dead, a suicide, in the bath was the right tragic note to end the film on, rather than to then extrapolate this, at too great a length, into the survivor’s relationship with his girlfriend.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
26 Nov 2006 10:53 AM | Submit Comment
Perhaps any comments should be very provisional on this English-language “producer’s cut” (a full 30-minutes shorter than the German-language director’s cut), but this version seems to work fine. Light years away from any conventional artist’s biopic, hardcore Ruizians should enjoy the film’s lush, opaque, meandering, at times confusing dream logic. It’s significant that the strongest character in the entire film is one that is clearly the product of the fevered imagination of the dying Klimt. Consumer warning, though: John Malkovich is at his most affected here.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
26 Nov 2006 10:38 AM | Submit Comment
What Dumont has learnt from Bresson is an ability to give expression to the materiality of the world, and the opening scenes of Flanders are tremendous filmmaking, images of almost perfectly-balanced composition that are steeped in the physicality of the world. Initially, reservations set in about the use Dumont makes of its non-professional cast, put in these roles of brutish, inarticulate peasant-types. The brutishness of life here in verdant Europe is mirror-imaged in the war scenes in North Africa (standing in for Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever you’d like); to the extent that the victim of a gang rape singles out for castration/torture/execution the one soldier that refused to assault her. A cruel, brutish, violent world, empty of meaning indeed, it seems. But all is redeemed in the amazing performance from Adelaide Leroux as Barbe (and in what Dumont expresses through her), the moral, emotional, and philosophical centre of the film.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
23 Nov 2006 9:47 PM | Submit Comment
From “Heaven” through “Earth” to “Hell”, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this portrayal of coming-through-drug-addiction, even if it’s all rather predictable. Still, great committed performances from Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger as the druggie lovers, although Geoffrey Rush’s role and performance here are both an unnecessary distraction. Very much pitched at a general audience, this has less appeal for me than, say, the low-budget Somersault from a couple of years ago — also, incidentally, starring Abbie Cornish.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
23 Nov 2006 9:32 PM | Submit Comment
The nervy camerawork, desaturated colours, and overall realist tone work well for this relatively gritty tale of teenager Michael moving into a rough neighbourhood of Berlin, suffering vicious bullying, and being taken under the week of a local Turkish drug peddlar. A convincing range of minor roles is effective in broadening the film’s focus, and it’s good that in spite of the increasing importance of the crime milieu as the film progresses, Tough Enough never indulges in a romanticism that a similar American film inevitably would.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
23 Nov 2006 9:25 PM | Submit Comment
A glass of champagne amidst a collection of shaken martinis, Casino Royale is distinct among its predecessors for its brutality and visceral action sequences. But my favorite Bonds aren’t as brutal and visceral as they are witty and often absurd, outlandish executions of villain plots. Here, as Daniel Craig pillar jumps between cranes hundreds of feet in the air, you feel how he exerts his body, his resulting wounds don’t look superficial; they look earned. It’s a wonderful action film because it does away with many of the dialogical – and familiar – Bond staples, but a somewhat sacrilegious film in the Bond canon for precisely the same reasons—exhilarating but unfamiliar.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
23 Nov 2006 12:54 PM | Submit Comment
Half Nelson is equivalent to an English course at a liberal arts college (at least, it recalls my experiences directly). The whole enterprise is a careful balancing of dialectics between race, sex, age, and ethics, with no succinct resolution, which is to say it’s entirely thought provoking even if not entirely satisfying.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
23 Nov 2006 12:34 PM | Submit Comment
A testament to the power of hollow aestheticism, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain is either profoundly brilliant or arrogantly complex, depending on how you view the director’s inexorable mingling of art and multiple story. Themes of love and death provide the backdrop to three separate yet somewhat interconnected tales of one man’s desperate search for longevity, all for the misguided sake of protecting the object of his affection; accompanied by irritatingly recuring motifs, the stories have an obvious purpose. What that purpose is, and why they’re arranged as such, is the larger focus.
In terms of acting, the performances are disappointingly varied. Hugh Jackman alternates between fortified reservation, anger, and weeping sadness, all of which become tiresome. Rachel Weisz is the soothing presence, a confident yet doomed Queen Isabel and consoling Izzi, and suffers through yet another obligatory bathtub scene. Ellen Burstyn’s Lillian is so underdeveloped the actress is forced into channeling Sara Goldfarb. Acting veteran Stephen McHattie provides the only redeeming moment as a self-flagellating grand inquisitor, and his scenes are infused with such a perverse beauty I felt robbed once they ended.
For those looking for some consolation, some reassurance that Aronofsky hasn’t wholly abandoned the style made famous by Pi and Requiem for a Dream, you need look no further than the soundtrack. The Kronos Quartet returns with their astounding strings, marking one of the few instances where original music outdoes the film; until The Fountain’s last half hour, I was viewing the film as a series of interrelated music videos rather than genuine cinema.
by Adam Balz | Source: Warner Brothers 35MM Theatrical Print
23 Nov 2006 2:10 AM | Submit Comment
Full review forthcoming next year.
by Adam Balz | Source: Matsumoto Productions DVD
21 Nov 2006 6:21 PM | Submit Comment
Full review forthcoming next year.
by Adam Balz | Source: White Pine/CBC DVD
21 Nov 2006 6:18 PM | Submit Comment
Better late than never, as they always say…
Though I don’t consider myself a die-hard Marty Scorsese fan, something I’ve always admired about the director is the dispensability of his seemingly vital characters. (Think Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, killed off with ample movie left.) In The Departed, that notion is amplified threefold, making for a enthralling 152 minutes…time that mournfully flies by, even with a title card tucked neatly, albeit unexpectedly beyond the opening scene.
DiCaprio and Damon, two actors I’ve never been wholly fond of, are excellent—I credit some of this to their Boston accents—while Nicholson’s Costello is sleaze incarnate. Wahlberg is pleasingly foul-mouthed, and Baldwin is much more effective and enjoyable now that he’s resigned himself to supporting roles. But for my money, Martin Sheen dominates, probably because he’s now freed from the ever-souring NBC White House. (A Sorkin fan I am not, and I’d almost forgotten the elder Sheen could do vulnerable.)
But the main question is, of course, whether or not this is Scorsese’s Oscar-winner. At first I thought no, this is too contemporary—computers and cell phones occupying far too much screen time. Luckily I came to my senses and realized that Scorsese was manipulating our current society into a modern crime drama. Computers are present-day informers, wells of unregulated and unguarded information ready for harvesting; and in the first phone contact between Damon and DiCaprio, the ring tone becomes a foreboding and suspenseful tune, a mark of identity. Plus, with Scorsese, you’re guaranteed an awesome soundtrack, and the director delivers with the Rolling Stones and a live recording of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” Still, with Scorsese facing down past “fellow nominees”—David Lynch (1981), Stephen Frears (1991), Pedro Almodovar (2003), and Clint Eastwood (2005)—February should be mighty interesting.
Rumsey ’s Thoughts Beth ’s Thoughts Jit’s Thoughts Leo’s Thoughts Jenny’s Thoughts Ian’s Thoughts
by Adam Balz | Source: Warner Brothers 35MM Print
21 Nov 2006 3:05 PM | Comments (11)
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Sony Pictures Classics 35mm print
21 Nov 2006 10:02 AM | Submit Comment
Well, this was fun. The film recreates the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee. People compare this to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and I suppose it’s justified, though Im Sang-soo seems more interested in dramatizing the psychology of contemporary corruption than strictly lampooning it. I wasn’t sure how to take the mix. Certainly, Sang-soo has guts. As KCIA Director Kim, Baek Yun-shik Song is impressive and fits well into the scheme, but as cheif agent Ju, Han Suk-kyu is often simply out of control, which is great to watch, but takes away from Sang-soo’s overall vision. In fact, in the supplemental interview Sang-soo complained about Suk-kyu’s wildness. Suk-kyu’s no Mifune (by a long shot) but I think the right project (and director) would do him (and his career) a world of good.
Many scenes are quite funny and others simply don’t fly – due, probably, to my lack of knowledge of the political climate of 1970s South Korea, though ideally this should hardly matter. The narrative doesn’t have the dramatic build-up that the blurbs suggest. There are lapses in between the more dramatic action scenes that have no particular psychological or dramatic import. Especially puzzling are scenes where characters are shot in close-up seemingly for no other reason than to feature their looks or attitudes while mumbling inanities. Some smart editing might have made this wild ride even more fun.
by Marlin Tyree | Source: Kino Video DVD
20 Nov 2006 3:06 PM | Comments (3)
In his 1988 documentary on post-New Wave filmmakers (Eustache, Akerman, Doillon, Jacquot, Techine, Carax, Werner Schroeter) Les ministeres de l’art Garrel singles out Doillon’s 1979 La femme qui pleure for particular praise. So it’s interesting that Liberte, la nuit, coming between the two, has a central section of precisely that: a crying woman. Mouche, separated from political activist Jean (he’s involved in a clandestine Algerian group during the Algerian struggle for independence), is shown weeping as she sews in an otherwise empty theatre; then again breaking down as she sits in the car with Jean. But in this later scene Garrel privileges Mouche (a magnificent Emanuelle Riva), immediately cutting to another shot in the car, this time not weeping, with an overlaid piano score cutting out Jean’s voice.
Mouche is also the focus of a central scene in the middle of the film, when she’s assassinated by the OAS for supplying guns to the Algerians. The film stock suddenly changes, and the otherwise grey-toned black-and-white shifts into a over-grainy impressionism.
But Liberte, la nuit is a mixed success. The subsequent romance bewteen Jean and a much younger pied noir seems pretty unconvincing to me, and the sequence of their idyll by the sea, keyed to a piano score, is in some shots terribly banal. Fortunately it’s balanced by some magnificent filmmaking, when the camera holds on Christine Boisson’s face at length, as she sits there, simply being.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
20 Nov 2006 1:53 PM | Submit Comment
The fine texture of Garrel’s personal, introspective, melancholic, poetic cinema lies not only in his obsessive circling round the (for him) eternal question of nature of love and the couple, with his own personal history (past relationships, past heroin addiction) thrown into the mix, but in the look and feel of the cinematic image itself.
There’s a great scene in Emergency Kisses where the director’s wife visits the actress her husband has chosen to star in his new film, in order to convince her to turn that role down, as it’s her role, based on her life. Their conversation is in a single take (common to conversations throughout the film) and the camera moves with the speakers, the black-and-white softening and whiting-out as they stand by the window, then regaining its clearer contrasts as they resume their seats at the table. The to-and-fro of conversation, camera movement and image texture are all as one.
The autobiographical quality to Emergency Kisses is a fascinating one, with the film’s director being played by Garrel himself, his wife Jeanne played by his wife of the time (Brigitte Sy), his son by his son (Louis Garrel – Regular Lovers’ star making an appearance as a toddler), his father by his father (Maurice Garrel). But ambiguous too, as each is still performing a role written (co-written with novelist Marc Cholodenko) for this film. The story itself is focused on the dissolution of the couple, with each committing what is seen by the other as an act of betrayal. For the wife, it’s the husband’s choice of another actress to play herself. For the husband, it’s the deliberate act of adultery (staged for the eyes of both husband and son). And it’s the son that brings the couple together again, but with the whole nature of this couple at the end of the film left at a point of uncertain irresolution.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
19 Nov 2006 10:02 PM | Submit Comment
The interest here is in how director Laurent Achard resolutely (with only one exception) restricts the narrative viewpoint to that of 10-year-old Martin, the film’s verbally inexpressive loner protagonist. So, in What Maisie Knew mode, we bear witness with Martin to the events taking place on the rundown family farm, events that are in the main beyond his understanding: his alcoholic, disturbed mother who locks herself away in her room; his vindictive grandmother; his weak father, who appears to be sleeping with his mother-in-law (Achard lets out this kind of narrative information in subtle, incremental stages); his gay would-be writer brother on the path to psychological meltdown.
But the strength of this restricted point-of-view also ends up being something of a weakness. We end up being too much in advance of Martin’s knowledge of the world around him (it’s different with literature – with Maisie James controls the feed of language to us so that we experience the events with Maisie but simultaneously understand more than she does). The result is that there is a certain plodding predictability to the later part of the film and its violent climax.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
18 Nov 2006 11:49 AM | Submit Comment
In a long, static medium-long shot an old couple (kept at such a distance that we barely make out their faces) set up a hammock between two trees in the centre of the frame and half-bicker half-chat: about their absent son, a barking dog, and the imminent rain; with occasional inserts of the louring rainclouds above breaking up this sequence into a series of still-long, static shots.
Director Paz Encina maintains this rigorous, retrained and distanced aesthetic throughout Paraguayan Hammock’s 78 minutes. Conversations that fill in the story – the son’s separate farewell to each parent on being conscripted into the army, a soldier bringing the news of their son’s death – are played as a soundtrack against the separate, static shots of simple actions (the father working in a field, the mother washing clothes or tending a fire).
There’s a satisfaction to the consistency at play here, how each usually lengthy shot follows the other at a steady pace, how in the long final shot the light darkens as night falls and the old couple take down their hammock, and then as the screen dissolves to black we hear the patter of the long-discussed, long-delayed rain. But I’d also have to say that, to be honest, I’m not sure that the film’s modest rewards quite justify the considerable demands it places on an audience.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
18 Nov 2006 11:27 AM | Submit Comment
A relentlessly exquisite film, intricately detailed in both sound and image, subtly marrying live-action, stop-motion, and even digital animation. Nobody makes films like the Quay Brothers — decadent, finicky, and set in aspic — not even their great cinematic papa, Svankmajer, who is more preoccupied with the world’s messy meatiness. The Quays prefer the studied, the arcane, and the mechanical, and their fairy tales, hyper-referential though they are, are unlike anything else in cinema today.
My full review at Reverse Shot.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Zeitgeist Films DVD Screener
17 Nov 2006 12:13 PM | Submit Comment
Michael Colgan (artistic director of the Gate Theater, Dublin) assembled 19 different directors to film all of Samuel Beckett’s 19 plays. A formidable task which pays off handsomely with some and not so well with others. Among my faves are ‘Rough For Theater I’ and ‘Waiting For Godot’,
by Marlin Tyree | Source: Ambrose Video DVD
15 Nov 2006 5:43 PM | Comments (1)
Late in this film Maggie — a wealthy and renowned psychologist and author — discovers the extent of how she’s been duped by a gang of conmen, and the revelation is doubly potent for the viewer because it’s David Mamet showing you how you’ve been conned. But this film — Mamet’s first as a director — doesn’t hinge upon such revelations but rather relishes the plot mechanics that lead to them. I am reminded of George Sluizer’s masterful The Vanishing, in which the villain frankly admits his guilt midway through the film—it is a peerlessly suspenseful film, but emphasizes the what or how rather than the who. The same applies to House of Games, but this says nothing of the wonderful dialogue, which is so fine-tuned that even individual syllables are rife with intrigue.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM DVD
15 Nov 2006 11:41 AM | Submit Comment
While Sofia Coppola has been criticized for her impressionistic approach to her famous subject, I would argue that this is a surprisingly effective way of peeling away the layers of gossip, intrigue, and historical analysis that have swirled around Marie Antoinette for decades. Coppola takes pains to show the world of Versailles through her protagonist’s eyes (Antoinette’s entrance into the palace is framed specifically from her point of view), showing an unusual preoccupation with the woman buried underneath the wigs and corsets. As a result, she has been criticized for her apolitical rendering of the years leading up to the French Revolution, but in my mind, that’s another picture entirely; Coppola, as in her previous films, is concerned here with privileged women stifled by their surroundings and circumstance. Of course, Antoinette’s manner of coping with this is radically different than that of the Lisbon girls or of Lost in Translation’s Charlotte, but the outcome is no less tragic.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Columbia Pictures 35mm print
15 Nov 2006 10:30 AM | Comments (1)
Although this mildly entertaining action-comedy offering from Texas legend Frank Q. Dobbs promises “the zaniest sting operation on four wheels,” in truth, Hotwire is a series of middling sting operations interspersed with the tale of a recidivistic car thief, the woman who loves him, and the power-hungry twins out to destroy his life. But yes, we have the great George Kennedy in a challenging dual role; playing both the disgruntled town sheriff and the man’s shady car salesman twin brother. Sadly, however, each of Kennedy’s characters is quite reprehensible, and it is left to Strother Martin as an acerbic, wise-cracking (and metaphorically befuddled) hotwire man, and John Terry as the luckless new kid in town determined to rise above his auto pilfering ways, to save this film from oblivion. Impressively, the pairing of this duo kicks up the pace of the picture considerably, and results in some near-zany moments, including the old pretend-to-be-a-priest-while-your-partner-steals-the-car gag, and the ill-fated theft attempt of a car chained to a tree. Factor in a humorously awkward love affair, an underground prostitute auction, and the late-night quest to rip-off the boss’s coveted Rolls Royce, and the double wasting of George Kennedy is almost forgotten.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Paragon Video Productions VHS
14 Nov 2006 11:31 PM | Submit Comment
I’ve never been completely won over by anything I’ve seen of Moretti’s, and I feel the same about The Caiman. I do like the concept here – a film on Belusconi about the problems of making a film on Berlusconi, with three different actors portraying him – but the time spent on the producer’s life seemed a rather uninteresting distraction. Still, the final Berlusconi mini-film, with Moretti himself playing Berlusconi, is a suitably and very effective image of the dark and ominous threat Berlusconi represented (represents?) to Italian democracy.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
14 Nov 2006 10:11 PM | Submit Comment
Isabelle Huppert is the driving force here, in her portrayal of magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman, unrelenting and intransigent in her pursuit of the perpetrators of corporate corruption. Character-based as the best (almost all) of Chabrol always is, the crime thriller elements (even running to tampering with the brakes of her car) are really irrelevant. Chabrol’s sly wit is a constant presence – the film’s a real pleasure – although the collapse into the cynicism of Nada in the last couple of minutes is a little disconcerting after what had come before.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
14 Nov 2006 10:03 PM | Submit Comment
At the end of Dry Season director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun stages a purging of the history of violence and a renunciation of the act of revenge. His main character, the teenager Atim, acts out before his blind grandfather the execution of Nassara, the murderer of his own father. This symbolic acting-out is Haroun’s cinematic equivalent to the Peace and Reconciliation Commission that we hear radio reports on at the beginning of the film and which the characters (the grandfather and Nassara alike) specifically reject.
Hanoun’s superb film stylistically is very much in line with other examples of African francophone cinema (for example, Waiting for Happiness by Abderrahmane Sissako, one of Dry Season’s producers) but it’s particularly focused in its main theme, central narrative drive, and concentration on two main, contrasting characters. The elderly Nassara is made to be a more sympathetic character even, emotionally needy with a vulnerability symbolised by his crippling back pain, whereas it’s always hard to detect Atim’s real thoughts and feelings beneath his hard-set expression. But his pain and confusion is clear enough, and the shifting relationship between the two men is marvellously conveyed through the physical work they do together in Nassara’s bakery.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
14 Nov 2006 9:52 PM | Submit Comment
I’ll beat Leo to the punch and say the print is quite lovely Teddy, especially the latter half.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Janus Films 35MM Theatrical Print
14 Nov 2006 3:27 PM | Comments (5)
by Jenny Jediny | Source: The Criterion Collection DVD
14 Nov 2006 3:24 PM | Comments (1)
I have this strong desire to hug Werner, and then tell him to calm the fuck down. And yet as much of a madman as he is, he’s quite inspiring.
Rumsey’s Review
by Jenny Jediny | Source: The Criterion Collection DVD
14 Nov 2006 3:22 PM | Comments (2)
Apparently, there are zero African American crossword puzzle enthusiasts.
by Teddy Blanks | Source: IFC DVD
14 Nov 2006 1:32 PM | Submit Comment
In case you were wondering, this is exactly what you would expect an Errol Morris documentary about Stephen Hawking to be like.
by Teddy Blanks | Source: Paramount VHS
13 Nov 2006 7:21 PM | Submit Comment
For all I’ve come to appreciate about the horror genre over the “30 Days” feature, I still don’t understand what is appealing about these nu-horror movies that can’t seem to think of any monsters or situations to scare us. These movies are solely gore.
There is what must have been a ten minute brain surgery scene in this movie, where the skull gets four holes with a power-drill. I could probably see something this disgusting on the Discovery Channel, but without all the gratuitous cracking and squishing noises.
Remember when movies used to be edited without a slicing noise timed up to each and every cut?
by Teddy Blanks | Source: 35 mm Print
13 Nov 2006 7:20 PM | Submit Comment
Significant only for the final half hour, in which our heroines join together to defeat a horny general, a horny Ticket Agent, and his horny band of horny miscrients through trechery, beautiful deep focus photography, and ass-kicking choreography. If this isn’t the embodiment of a chick flick, I don’t know what is.
by Adam Balz | Source: Image Entertainment DVD
13 Nov 2006 1:26 PM | Submit Comment
With only a few mildly humorous scenes to help itself along, this second installment of Nielsen’s Golf trilogy isn’t worth much, though it’s redeemed somewhat by the fact that Nielsen is teaching us how to undermine our opponents rather than actually improve our game. (Note to self: buy rabid mongoose.)
by Adam Balz | Source: Polygram VHS
13 Nov 2006 1:22 PM | Submit Comment
A strange, fascinating children’s movie in the mold of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Hillenburg’s film is obviously torn between its inherently adolescent audience and the adults (myself included) who find the television show wildly hilarious. Add to that a peculiar psychadelic scene, some bizarre dialogue (“You don’t need a license to drive a sandwich”), and a great cameo from an overly tan David Hasselhoff, and this film holds true to what’s made it such a great (if not wonderfully infantile) franchise.
by Adam Balz | Source: Nickelodeon
13 Nov 2006 1:16 PM | Submit Comment
Most of Bennett’s theatrical works have an overly discursive quality, which would make them dry as a bone if his wit were not similarly desiccated. Hytner’s film adaptation labors to avoid seeming too studied and stagebound with an array of amateurish, unmotivated camera tricks, embarassingly clichéed montages, and pop hits from the ‘80’s. But even if Hytner’s talents as a film director are wanting, his cast’s energy is not, and it’s really the boys themselves that keep the film from seeming too much like a life-lesson from the Oracle of Leeds.
Plum roles abound in the film, and everyone seems to take to them aggressively. Predictable short-shrift is given to the quota-filling black and Muslim characters, but then a lot of the depth of the individual characters has as much to do with the actors filling the roles as Bennett’s writing of them. Three or four of the younger actors deliver standout performances, whether or not their characters are particularly interesting, and, not surprisingly, Richard Griffiths expertly fleshes out a character that is jolly, intelligent, blundering, and pathetic in a way that is far more interesting than Robin Williams in that other, ridiculous movie about learning. Griffiths makes Bennett’s erudite soliloquies on poetry, history, and the liberation of the liberal arts not only credible, but deeply moving.
Credible and moving, in spite of the fact that Bennett’s film has extremely complicated, rather preposterous, and mildly distasteful things to say about the platonic ideal of men teaching boys. Bennett (via Griffiths’ Mr. Hector) wishes to argue for a sensitivity and respect for the individual, the unusual, the marginalized, especially in the face of applications processes, curricula, programmatic learning, and all the other fascistic processes of reduction in modern education. But Bennett’s counterargument gambles wildly with Mr. Hector’s ball-fondling approach to teaching, a high-wire act that is at once too limited and too subtle. In spite of Hector’s hatred for the reductive, the film seems to contend that every male teacher has an erotic desire for his students. Perhaps this point is simply warped by the concurrent theme that history repeats itself, but in any case, the film’s larger thesis gets buried in Bennett’s apologia for man-boy love in the classroom. It’s admirably daring, but it simply doesn’t make sense. And as a result, Bennett comes off too much like Hector, the sad, old queen, his only support a cast of eager young boys, gamely willing to humor his odd ideas.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Fox Searchlight 35mm Print
13 Nov 2006 12:58 PM | Submit Comment
A coincidence that the best Star Wars film by leaps and bounds has – measuring by the credits – the least amount of involvement by George Lucas?
I think not.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Cable TV
13 Nov 2006 11:59 AM | Comments (1)
Add another notch for Aaron Eckhart’s latest charismatic asshole. But as endearing as his Nick Naylor is here, J.K. Simmons (as Naylor’s boss) is the greater entertainment, stealing entire scenes with single words comprised of single syllables. This in conjunction with his role as J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man is ample evidence that he’s one of the greatest character actors alive.
Beth’s thoughts | Jit’s thoughts
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
13 Nov 2006 11:53 AM | Submit Comment
I’ve been out of touch with all things Kubrick for some time, so please excuse my potentially obvious thoughts on this:
Kubrick’s entire catalogue is comprised of sterile environments with sterile characters, and almost every gesture or action in them feels meticulously orchestrated. This isn’t, in description, entirely befitting to a film so ostensibly draped in eroticism and sexual intrigue because the enterprise is therefore deprived of any eroticism or sexual intrigue. It’s indescribably enrapturing, but chiefly in regard to the craft and aesthetics on display. Dr. Harford’s descent into an upper-class orgiastic underworld is more arbitrary than it is motivated because we never feel his connection to his wife (or rather, how her admissions spur his furious jealousy), nor are we sufficiently convinced of his capacity for sexual exploration or prowess (a signifier, perhaps, for how appropriate Tom Cruise is in this role). He’s a man familiar with the human body, but little comprehension of the logic and motives within it.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
09 Nov 2006 11:24 AM | Comments (2)
Wonderful.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Sony Pictures Classics 35MM Print
09 Nov 2006 10:08 AM | Comments (1)
Full Review
A madman with a god complex leads his crew into foreign territory in search of wealth and power that doesn’t exist. How timely.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: New Yorker Films 35MM Print
09 Nov 2006 10:01 AM | Submit Comment
This slipped my mind, I saw it a few weeks ago in the Janus Retrospective at the NYFF. Gorgeous print, and a remarkable silent film that ranks with masterpieces such as Sunrise.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Janus 35MM Print
09 Nov 2006 9:42 AM | Submit Comment
By all accounts, Carol Reed was none too keen on this early success of his, a very striking slice of British social realism. He certainly should have been more proud of it, as it works remarkably well: there’s the authenticity of shot-on-location scenes around the mine and of mining families (I assume a fair number of the extras are playing themselves), the romantic subplot is rather nicely very far from romantic (here, Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are a long way from the romantic couple of The Lady Vanishes), and the climactic mining disaster, equally surprisingly, ends — quite rightly — bleakly. The film’s final shots of heavenly clouds form a paean to — the nationalisation of the coal industry. Now, that really makes it a film from another age and another world.
by Ian Johnston | Source: Partner Entertainment DVD
08 Nov 2006 12:17 PM | Submit Comment
Joe Dante’s 60-minute contribution to Showtime’s “Masters of Horror” series makes for great Election-night viewing.
by Adam Balz | Source: “Masters of Horror” DVD
07 Nov 2006 9:51 PM | Submit Comment
Eastwood’s autumnal phase seems to be giving us a series of serious, sombre movies which don’t have much to do with what else is happening in American cinema currently and are leaping decades back to the classic Hollywood cinema of the past. With Flags Of Our Fathers the connection is of course with Ford. (And surely the scene where an officer is displaced from his seat on an outgoing plane is a conscious evocation of a similar scene in They Were Expendable?) The obvious Ford connection some writers are drawing is with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and its shared theme of the necessary validation of myth over truth, but I think Fort Apache offers a more appropriate parallel. But Eastwood’s film travels in the opposite direction to Ford’s. Fort Apache first makes clear the moral and criminal irresponsibility of Col Thursday and then in the last few minutes of the film proposes the necessity of the myth that the army/the state builds up around him;an ending which, incidentally, I’ve always found rather nauseating. Flags Of Our Fathers centres on the morale-boosting/fundraising role of the Iwo Jima photo myth (whose portrayal is a lot more nuanced and complex than most reviews I’ve read so far have made out — there’s more going on here than a simplistic critique of the hypocrisy involved), then ends the film on an elegaic scene of this group of soldiers taking a break swimming in the sea, ordinary young men, buddies rather than mythologised heroes; after which Eastwood runs his end credits with still photos from the time, and a final black-and-white shot of the empty Iwo Jima beach of today.
The battle scenes (drained of colour) obviously suffer from their resemblance to the Saving Private Ryan model, but Eastwood’s film spends as much time back in the States on the subsequent bond-raising drive undertaken by the three surviving flag-raisers, with a complex flashback structure that keeps shifting between Iwo Jima, the States, and a frame story set in the eighties as the son of the last survivor investigates his father’s story. Things are not always so clear — just like the impressive battle scenes, where I couldn’t always work out (all those young, mostly unknown actors)who exactly was being killed at a given moment. In fact, the eighties frame story could easily have been expended with, particularly as it carries an often over-emphatic spell-out-the-message voiceover. But I have real admiration for Eastwood’s old-fashioned restraint, such as when he resolutely refuses to show us what exactly the Japanese did to the captured Iggy.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
07 Nov 2006 12:07 PM | Submit Comment
Mr. Death is a central Errol Morris film. For one, it announces his preoccupation with death — one that’s evident in every nonfiction film Morris has made — in its very title. It is told in the scattershot editing and varied film stocks that propel both Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and The Fog of War, but it also recalls The Thin Blue Line with its abstracted, cropped slow-motion reenactments. The score is Caleb Sampson’s second for Morris (he also scored some of the earlier First Person episodes). It’s not the best of Morris’ later kaleidoscope documentaries, but perhaps a stylistic and tactical exemplar.
Fred Leuchter was originally among the four men whose unusual occupations Morris weaves between in the masterful Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, but Leuchter’s story — he engineers the manufacture of electric chairs and lethal injection units — has an enormous controversy that disables abbreviation. In 1988, he was enlisted by the defense in the trial of Ernst Zündel, who published literature that denied the existence of the Holocaust. Specifically, Leuchter was commissioned to travel to Auschwitz and investigate the locations of several gas chambers—this visit to Europe, Leuchter’s first, doubled as his honeymoon. Leuchter’s visit was extensively documented, and footage from much of it appears in Morris’ film. There is an especially harrowing sequence in which Leuchter is chiseling samples from the floor and walls of a dilapidated, damp room, and a voice-over informs us that in a geographical map of human suffering, this very spot would be its nucleus.
Although he has maintained otherwise on his website, Morris doesn’t seem to be accusing Leuchter (of profiting off of controversy, or fueling said controversy in an effort to increase his own renown), although he includes the responses of many who do. The aftermath of Leuchter’s investigation — compiled and published in The Leuchter Report — found him without a wife and without a career. Mr. Death thus becomes a sympathetic portrait of a man, however chastised, justly or not, who has lost everything.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Universal Pictures DVD
06 Nov 2006 12:50 PM | Submit Comment
Following both Jaws and Star Wars, the original Superman is demonstrative of a transition in American cinema, from auteurist-driven masterworks of the early ’70s to the blockbuster era. By this measure, it’s somewhat of a depressing artifact, but it has aged exceptionally well—nearly thirty years after its theatrical release (and nearly thirty years’ worth of lesser blockbusters and lesser comic book adaptations), Superman almost seems to be more of an auteruist-driven masterwork than a blockbuster. If only Richard Donner’s career would support my thesis. And man, you can’t beat those title credits.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Cable TV
06 Nov 2006 11:31 AM | Comments (1)
A masterpiece.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Fox DVD
06 Nov 2006 11:19 AM | Comments (1)
This film is now commonly associated with Craven’s subsequent Scream as both are self-aware executions of the same slasher formula that he worked to popularize. But New Nightmare is the stronger exercise in post-modernism. And with pages of the screenplay appearing in close-up on screen, it’s as radical and avant-garde as a Peter Greenaway film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: New Line DVD
06 Nov 2006 11:14 AM | Comments (1)
As a painfully acute demonstration of Red State biases and paranoia, Borat is a caustic, dynamic, and brilliantly subversive creation, but here a lot of the scenarios he incites (namely, a Winnebago ride with some frat boys) seem inauthentic. It is probably inevitable that Borat’s debut in film seems tired and less pointed than his intermittent appearances on Da Ali G Show, but he remains an inspired (and by some measure, necessary) indictment of an uniquely American bigotry.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
06 Nov 2006 11:09 AM | Submit Comment
As someone who rates The King of Comedy especially but also New York, New York and The Age of Innocence very high in the Scorsese canon, I’m probably not as keen as others here on the gangster/streetwise side of his work. Still, after the utter mess of Gangs of New York and the surprising dullness of The Aviator there’s something really thrilling about the familiarity of The Departed’s elements: the voice-over, flashback to childhood, dolly-in from the street outside, Rolling Stones on the soundtrack — this is so pleasurable. This is a good film, maybe not a great one, but decidedly superior to the Hong Kong original. Infernal Affairs has a smart premise and races along on its roller-coaster ride with clockwork efficiency, but there’s nothing more to it than that. (In this respect, I find David Bordwell’s criticism of Scorsese’s filmaking in favour of the two Hong Kong guys simply bizarre.) Scorsese’s film is a different creature entirely, slower, more interested in giving time and space to a character at a given moment. Consequently, the rather mechanical parallels between the undercover cop/crim and between the two father figures are much more diluted in The Departed, but that’s no loss. Great performances (including DiCaprio!), and Nicholson for once is kept mostly under control. But why, oh why that final shot? It’s breathtakingly stupid.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
05 Nov 2006 12:21 PM | Submit Comment
The same dark franticism associated with the first two installments (as reported recently, this isn’t a trilogy) returns, as does the famed Jigsaw and his menacing instruments of torture. Oddly enough, Saw III is the most sympathetic to Tobin Bell’s villain, something audiences seem to respond to. Unlike other cinema goons—Jason, Freddy, Leatherface—Jigsaw is an intelligent, civilized man who engages those around him in friendly banter; in Saw II he even offered himself to the police in exchange for their patience. He’s a confounding presence—he doesn’t kill, and his victims are those deserving of a “reality check,” so we never associate him with the horrible actions that occur before our eyes.
Much like another film released in the past month, the attention of the audience is crucial to understanding Saw III’s finale. And while casual moviegoers may find fault in the film’s overuse of flashbacks and rapid editing, diehard Saw fans are offered enough scenes involving hooks, drills, and rotting pig entrails to satisfy expectations.
by Adam Balz | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
05 Nov 2006 12:45 AM | Submit Comment
Big success.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 20th Century Fox 35mm Print
03 Nov 2006 9:37 PM | Comments (1)
The controversy over Paradise Now at last year’s Oscar ceremony single-handedly overshadowed the other four Foreign Picture nominees, including this one. Attempting to both come clean about Germany’s past and tell the story of that nation’s great heroine, director Marc Rothemund examines the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life. Based on newly discovered transcripts from her interrogation, Sophie Scholl thrives on performance: Julia Jentsch as Sophie and Fabian Hinrichs as her brother Hans; Johanna Gastdorf as Else, a Russian prisoner; and especially Gerald Alexander Held as Mohr, Sophie’s interrogator, who becomes increasingly torn between his loyalty to Hitler and his overwhelming conscience as the film progresses (anyone in need of a great character study need look no further). And while some aspects become a bit irritating—mainly, the coincidental editing and abundance of “good at heart” female Nazis—Sophie Scholl succeeds brilliantly.
by Adam Balz | Source: Zeitgeist DVD
02 Nov 2006 3:15 PM | Submit Comment
I saw this a few years ago in my ongoing quest to cover J. Rosenbaum’s Alternate 100, and now it’s one of my favorite MGM musicals. Yes it’s sweet, and about as soft as sugar, but the dark undertones, specifically due to Margaret O’Brien’s death obsessed, snowman decapitating little girl, gives the film wonderful depth and sincerity.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Warner Brothers Home Video DVD
02 Nov 2006 12:24 PM | Submit Comment
It sounds… like something… trying to force its way in to our world.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
02 Nov 2006 11:38 AM | Submit Comment
In My Skin is largely constituted of close-up, semi-silhouetted footage of a woman (director Marina de Van) either removing the bandages from her calf — applied to deep, stitched-up gnashes, it makes a crackly sound — or carving flesh out of her thigh. It’s not self-mutilation in as much as it is self-absorption; de Van’s Esther isn’t displacing emotional pain, just, it seems, drawing out the ecstasy or obsessions her occupation and romances don’t foster. A deeply, deeply unsettling film. The comparisons to Cronenberg’s flesh-fetish are apt, but I’m inclined to say that de Van has earned a reputation all her own in this enactment of horror-via-obsession.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Wellspring DVD
02 Nov 2006 11:35 AM | Submit Comment
Lucky McKee’s May is among the best horror films from the past decade, a cringe-inducing meld of Carrie and Frankenstein, and as successful as both in engendering sympathy for its protagonist. After screening at a handful of film festivals to moderate acclaim, it found a limited theatrical release over a year after its completion in the middle of the summer.
McKee’s follow-up, The Woods, is an extension of every one of May’s distribution hardships, and also an extension of his ingenuity and reputation as a horror director. (The Woods, however, would find its debut on video.) This one closely echoes Suspiria, with an all-girls school in the 1960s, and the rumors of witchery that keep its students careful to maintain their professors’ demands for etiquette. The atmosphere isn’t one of dread or fear; as in May, it’s tangibly, wonderfully gothic, sustaining the travesty in the lack of attention McKee’s films have had.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sony Pictures DVD
02 Nov 2006 11:31 AM | Submit Comment
A sure-fire way to know a movie is a piece of shit: the director comes onscreen before it to tell us we probably won’t like it. Also, Gilliam says (in his disclaimer) that his film was supposed to be seen through the eyes of a child. Apparently, children’s eyes are a lot like extreme wide-angle lenses.
Chiranjit’s review, which is a lot better than the movie.
by Teddy Blanks | Source: 35mm Print
01 Nov 2006 8:18 PM | Submit Comment
Though it’s as strangely beautiful, quiet, confrontational, and weird as any of Herzog’s movies, Yonder doesn’t really seem finished. Basically, the film is composed with found footage of US astronauts doing everyday things in zero gravity, and found footage from an under-ice expedition in Antarctica, scored with intensely forboding strings. Oh, and then there’s an alien who describes the downfall of his planet, his voyage to Earth, and subsequent Earthen voyages to Andromeda. He stares directly at us for long periods of time, scenes from a dilapidated, abandoned town behind him.
None of it is transcendent, but the images are calm, relaxing. Or maybe that’s just me: I saw the movie last night at the IFC Theater on 6th Ave, which, unbeknown to me, was the street where New York City’s giant Halloween parade was happening. I fought through an indescribable mob to get to the theater, at one point envisioning myself in one of those rock concert scenarios where everyone is trying to get through the same exit because the pyrotechnics have gone out of control, and a dozen or so people get trampled to death. The sleeply, drawn-out images of floating and swimming were a welcome relief.
by Teddy Blanks | Source: 35mm Print
01 Nov 2006 8:04 PM | Comments (1)
I think I’m the least enthusiastic here on Marty’s latest effort, which felt a bit too light for my taste (and that’s fine. I’m greedy and still expect more from Mr. Scorsese, which I don’t believe will happen at this point). What I did enjoy were the performances; this is the first time I’ve seen DiCaprio in a portrayal that did not make me feel as though he were playing dress-up (or had grown facial hair for the first time), and I appreciated that, along with Wahlberg’s filthy mouth.
Also, on an unrelated note, a surprise appearance by David Byrne in the audience.
Rumsey’s thoughts | Beth’s thoughts | Jit’s thoughts | Leo’s thoughts
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Warner Brothers 35MM Print
01 Nov 2006 3:48 PM | Submit Comment
Surprisingly effective (although I agree with Adam on the use of the stag). Albeit the tabloid topic, I didn’t find the tone of the film as sordid as I thought I might, and left wondering how exactly Diana made such an immense impact on much of England with her life and – I believe, more so – death. Helen Mirren as HRH Elizabeth II handles the Princess’s overpowering shadow with grace and remarkable talent.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: Miramax 35MM Print
01 Nov 2006 3:21 PM | Comments (2)