Not Coming to a Theater Near You
There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.
There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.
If I were able to compare their imaginations side-by-side, I always wonder if I would find any observable difference between Tim Burton and a 14 year-old Goth girl. Before I start ducking the inevitable barrage of scorn and vegetable produce that is bound to be thrown in my direction for making that comment, I should state that I was actually impressed with the gorgeous macabre imagery that Burton creates in his latest film. Unfortunately, I was less impressed with the songs, which is a difficult thing to recover from for a musical.
Also, I usually don’t get caught up in plot details, but after the hefty body-count that the film requires, it seems odd that they didn’t provide us with the outcome of the plot involving the two young lovers. It’s a loose end that I thought should have been addressed if we are going to watch all these people butchered in order to have the couple attain their apparent freedom.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: 35mm Print
31 Dec 2007 1:48 PM | Comments (4)
If you asked me a month ago what my favorite David Fincher film was, I probably would have said Alien 3 (which, given the state of that franchise, doesn’t look so bad these days, I promise you). So, in this respect, Zodiac — that near-ubiquitous year-end fave — comes as a big and very welcome surprise. It still doesn’t rank very highly in my own estimation of the year’s best films (for example, I simply do not understand the point of all that CGI San Fran), but it’s wonderfully paced, brilliantly acted, and, at almost three hours, completely engrossing.
I suppose that last quality will largely depend upon whether or not you get the whole pointless obsessiveness thing — an appreciation which, according to a very limited polling of my friends, largely depends upon your gender. But no matter: Zodiac is still a cracking film, made even more unnerving by its very pointlessness.
Beth’s Thoughts | Rumsey’s Thoughts | Chiranjit’s Thoughts | Adam’s Thoughts | Tom’s Thoughts
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Warner Brothers DVD
31 Dec 2007 1:44 PM | Submit Comment
The most fun you’ll ever have while watching Hollywood royalty provide politicians with simple justifications for funding a war. Nichols and Sorkin are supposedly crafting a nuanced satire and subtly implicating these folk in our current global conflicts (it’s not that subtle, just exceptionally concise so that we don’t have to deal with the unpleasant ramifications for that long), but I found it fairly thin, especially since Nichols spends so much time fawning over all his actors and making his protagonist such a lovable rascal (just as long as he’s our lovable rascal, right?). Maybe I’m not bright enough to recognize the obvious, but Nichols’ efforts seem painfully earnest.
I know writers are supposed to write “what they know,” but is anyone else troubled a little by how Sorkin glosses over the subplot involving cocaine and treats the subject of drug use as a harmlessly hilarious action that is just distracting us from more pressing issues? In the grand scheme of things, Sorkin might be right, but I’m still bothered by how quickly he discards this topic.
On a positive note, it’s nice to see that Julia Roberts is no longer even trying to disguise the fact that she is just playing herself in every role.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Universal Pictures 35mm Print
31 Dec 2007 1:36 PM | Submit Comment
The Savages is a perfectly enjoyable, low-key film, if rather a disappointing follow-up, after nine years, to Jenkins’ previous film, Slums of Beverly Hills. There are plenty of moments that are witty and affecting, but given this film’s Sundance pedigree, it’s both surprising and unsurprising how familiar everything feels and how often it falls short of its promises. For one, it’s not quite funny enough: Hoffman’s tennis injury is played for a quick and easy laugh and then immediately dispensed with, as if the filmmakers just needed a throwaway joke to spice up the trailer. But then, it’s not savage enough either, and it plays upon the heartstrings only intermittently and without much effect.
Perhaps this is a blessing, as it is nice to see a movie about family dysfunction that doesn’t wallow miserably in self-hatred and recrimination. And in any case, films like this rise and fall on their central performances, and this is what ultimately makes The Savages watchable. Linney is racked with self-doubt and self-medication, but she’s never shrill or cartoonish, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, for once, is totally endearing, even rather sweet, while still wonderfully, recognizably P.S.H. But best of all is Philip Bosco, who very quietly, almost invisibly steals the film as the aging, troublesome Lenny. He’s awkward, distant, irritable, and tough to read — it’s an utterly real portrait of dementia that totally eschews the usual sort of cuddliness most actors try to wring from elderly characters.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Fox Searchlight Pictures screener
31 Dec 2007 1:25 PM | Submit Comment
Not one of Fuller’s finest hours — although the atom bomb over the credits at the start promises much — with a leaden script that hits banal rock bottom with the woman-aboard-a-submarine-business. Still, all the unsubtitled foreign languages are a nice touch, the film does pick up once the action gets going, and Fuller aficionados will appreciate the brutality of Widmark slicing off the professor’s finger in order to get the hatch closed.
by Ian Johnston | Source: Fox DVD
30 Dec 2007 11:33 AM | Submit Comment
I do admire the way André Téchiné has tried to chart a middle path through French art cinema, intelligent and conscious of formal concerns but still trying to connect with a larger audience with the emotional content of his films. True, this doesn’t always work (and his last film Changing Times seemed a particularly weak effort, with everything running on automatic, so to speak) but with The Witnesses he’s made one of his best films. It’s also the first time a gay theme — although present in earlier films — has been made the centre of the story. Set in the eighties just before the onset of AIDS, the first, very effective part works with fast-paced economy to sketch the central relationships. Things get more sombre and the light literally darker in the second part when Manu starts succumbing to AIDS and the other relationships start to fray in their own way, but Téchiné never overplays it, elliptical where another filmmaker would try to draw out the sentiment. He concludes the film with a nice conceit, a return to the summery setting of the first part but a setting from which Manu is now absent. It’s the other characters who remain as the “witnesses” of the title, witnesses to the mark Manu has made on the world and on their lives.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
30 Dec 2007 11:31 AM | Submit Comment
There’s a lot to admire about Keane, starting with Damien Lewis’ intense, committed performance as the schizophrenic main character. It’s a performance that we can never escape from, as everything is filtred through Keane’s consciousness (we can never even be sure that he did actually lose his daughter), he’s present in every scene, and the Dardennes-style camera sticks to him (and drags us along with it) like flypaper through every minute of the film. But I think Lodge Kerrigan made a big mistake in letting the second half of the film be taken over by the suspense/tension – the fear, even – of what Keane might do to the mother and especially to the little girl. It overbalances the film, and what started out very interesting with its low-key, introspective, and naturalist tone is given a far more conventional turn which, more seriously, distracts your attention from the film’s central concern.
by Ian Johnston | Source: Soda DVD
30 Dec 2007 11:26 AM | Submit Comment
I can’t really believe for a moment that Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg are brothers but once you get past this, you’re quickly pulled into Gray’s weighty and thoughtful crime drama. Less time is spent on the predictable features (Bobby’s rebelliousness, the undercover operation) than on its major theme of how we’re drawn back inevitably into our family, to the ties of love and loyalty, all played off to a style (evoking the best of the seventies) of an anti-gloss drab realism. .
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
30 Dec 2007 11:23 AM | Submit Comment
I imagined that my lack of familiarity with Pullman’s original novel would inoculate me from the sort of reaction my Pullman-philic friends had. But, sadly, no: This is a miserable failure of a film in nearly every respect I can think of, one that raises serious questions about the judgment of everyone involved, including Pullman.
Clearly much of the blame for an abomination such as this falls on the heads of greedy film studio executives. Hungry to cash in on their Tolkien bonanza (as well as all that Harry Potter business), New Line must have been racing to get this film written, shot, and into theaters — an eagerness and lack of consideration evident even in the editing of the film, which lurches forward from one-minute scene to one-minute scene without the slightest amount of tension built or backstory explained.
Of course, the cast doesn’t help much. I don’t generally expect much from Daniel Craig, who only turns up here to look stern, set things in motion, and punch out a few Eskimos. But it’s now a wonder to me that I once considered Nicole Kidman a great actress — her performance here as an evil, calculating bitch is marred, not helped, by the dollar signs one can often discern floating around in her eyes. Only Sam Elliott seems to be having any fun here, and he delivers his performance via a perfunctory series of winks, sub-mustache sidelong grins, and more feigned folksiness than the last five U.S. presidents combined.
Worst of all, the special effects aren’t even that special. And if you can’t get even that right with a movie like this, why would you bother? The polar bears in that Coke commercial from ten years ago were more endearing and realistic than the highly plastic ice-bears in The Golden Compass, Ian McKellen or no Ian McKellen.
But sadder still perhaps is that this movie doesn’t make me at all interested in Pullman’s books, which by all accounts are excellent. Imagining the fabulous payday that Pullman enjoyed when New Line came knocking is off-putting enough, but there are plenty of red flags in this film adaptation to have me seriously question the heights of Mr. Pullman’s purported genius. For me at least, all of this quasi-biblical, “Chosen One” nonsense that is the basis for virtually every fantasy novel ever is getting extremely tiresome (but perhaps I just don’t have that much in common with Christ-figures, however papally verboten they might be). And why is it that all of these books, from Tolkien onwards, seem to rely on the crudest and most thinly veiled of racial stereotypes to create characters? Uh, “Gyptians”? Russian meanies personified as feral wolves? I’d be curious to see what types of animals would follow around the black characters, but of course there don’t seem to be any.
But if you do take it upon yourself to sit through this utterly crap film, you might as well treat yourself to the Kate Bush song that runs over the end credits. It’s by no means the worst aspect of the film, but it’s perhaps the funniest.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: New Line DVD screener
29 Dec 2007 3:48 PM | Comments (2)
While “nightmarish” is a word you often see used in the context of Tim Burton’s films, Sweeney Todd is the first Burton film I’ve seen that’s literally given me nightmares. And what beautiful nightmares they were! Stephen Sondheim’s musical tells the story of a barbarous barber and a cannibalistic pie baker with a wry sneer and an implied comment on classism and conceptions of justice. The horror is largely intellectual. In Burton’s hands, though, we lose a lot of that satirical feel in favor of an entirely visceral experience that skips the brain and goes straight to the gut. The sly sense of humor is largely gone, the innocents’ roles are diminished, and everything is streamlined to provide the maximum horror for your dollar. As in the play, a lot of the unease comes from how sympathetic these characters are. Songs like “Pretty Women” and the almost painfully sweet “Not While I’m Around” (sung by Mrs. Lovett and the little shop boy just before she tries to kill him) manage to make sociopathy downright romantic. Unlike the awful Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd’s source material becomes something amazing through the lens of Burton’s signature style— truly the scariest movie I’ve seen all year. I left the theatre humming, and hours later woke up screaming.
by Megan Weireter | Source:
26 Dec 2007 1:55 PM | Submit Comment
Michael Clayton revolves around a company “fixer” coming to terms with the amoral choices he has made to survive within the corporate world, mostly involving actions taken to ensure his employers maintain their power. Gilroy’s film earnestly condemns the endless exploitation that businesses partake in to ensure their profits and also contains an unexpectedly fervent performance from Clooney who convincingly swings from disillusioned to impassionate over the course of the narrative.
Unfortunately, masked behind a needless flashback strategy, Michael Clayton is a fairly mundane corporate thriller, content to repeat the routine conflicts we witness in every Hollywood movie purporting to explore the inherent dishonesty found in commercial enterprise. I would honestly be amazed if anyone other than the most supremely naïve and uninformed audience member would be shocked by the type of corruption that Clooney’s Clayton seeks to expose within the film’s central scenario, considering such sleazy tactics appear to be standard nowadays.
Clearly Michael Clayton’s internal mission statement consists of attracting Oscar attention, as corroborated by the showy scenes in which we witness Tom Wilkinson frantically disrobing during a deposition in order to signal his mental disintegration or the purposely unglamorous moments where we watch Tilda Swinton get sweaty in a washroom stall as she deals with an anxiety attack brought about by her unscrupulous policies. While the filmmakers spend plenty of time revealing stale character motivations and setting up straightforward symbolism, the film’s handling of “weighty” issues feels rather counterfeit, as if calculated to appeal to a specific demographic of AMPAS members. Thus, we are treated to a pivotal scene involving supposedly mesmerizing horses that feels entirely unearned (was that Clooney and exec-producer Soderbergh getting their Tarkovsky on again?), as well as several hollow allusions to Hindu deities that serve as declarations of the film’s higher artistic aspirations, but miss their mark considerably since they don’t really comprehend the substance behind their references. Thankfully, Gilroy has the decency to admit his intentions with the extended close-up of his star that concludes his film, as if finally disclosing that the entire project has been manufactured to allow Clooney an opportunity to attain a second statue.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Warner Brothers 35mm Print
20 Dec 2007 1:24 PM | Comments (3)
Joy! To! The! World!
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:23 AM | Submit Comment
This film really wants to have it’s cake and eat it, decrying the crass commercialization of Christmas while having Jacob Marley explode through a locked door in a shower of sparks. It’s consistently dumbed down, too, insisting on calling it’s source material ‘Scrooge’, and ending with the Ghost of Christmas Future (what ‘Yet To Come’ was too hard to understand?). It’s only intermittently funny, and the Ghost of Christmas Present is annoying beyond belief. But it’s fun to see David Johanssen being surprisingly effective as Christmas Past, and Bill Murray, complete with amazing 80’s slimeball haircut, is good value as ever.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:22 AM | Comments (1)
Another fine Charles de Lauzirika DVD documentary, this one epic in scope, as such a storied production demands. Little is left out, from the blanket dismissal of original writer Hampton Fancher to the film’s box office death and eventual rebirth. There is a sneaking feeling that things have been slightly softened- there’s little about Sean Young’s craziness, or the frequent bustups between Harrison and Ridley. But it’s still a fascinating document, made more so by the inclusion of some incredible outtakes, cut scenes and on set footage.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:21 AM | Submit Comment
I didn’t even know they had Scientologists back in 1950, but this has to be one of the Cruiser’s favourite movies, a plea for tolerance, love and understanding and a big poke in the eye for the psychiatric community. Because Elwood P. Dowd doesn’t need treatment, he just needs friendship. He’s not crazy, he’s just childlike. And luckily, he’s a wealthy, avuncular type with absolutely no violent tendencies. It’s this sort of fuzzy thinking that leads to anarchy in our streets.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:18 AM | Submit Comment
How do you improve on perfection? Well, you don’t, at least not too much. A little dialogue tweak here, an added special effect there, some recolouration and audio balancing and you’re done. Because Blade Runner truly is, in many ways, a perfect film. Most obviously in it’s production design and art direction which, even on a big screen, still looks completely seamless. The level of detail on display is staggering, sets and costumes utterly alien but still oddly familiar. The characters are no more or less than they need to be, portrayed by actors generously willing to subsume themselves within Ridley Scott’s grand vision. Vangelis’ music seems to actually improve over time, despite it’s distinctively 80’s synth sound. The plot is derivative but wonderfully direct, and the script says everything it needs to say in as few words as possible (though Rutger Hauer does get a few too many lines during the chase scene- ‘You’d better get it up, or I’m gonna have to kill ya!’ is probably the film’s daftest moment).
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm Print
20 Dec 2007 9:16 AM | Submit Comment
A fairly straightforward but intriguing documentary about one of the 60’s music scene’s most unpredictable figures, a man who walked away from fame and fortune with The Faces to plough his own unique, financially disastrous musical furrow. It’s mostly the usual stock footage and talking heads (Townshend, McLagan, Clappers), but at least the story is unfamiliar- Lane’s path was a strange and troubled one, with enough twists to keep it fascinating. It did, however, make me eager to move to a remote farm in Shropshire and record an album in a field.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:15 AM | Submit Comment
One of those films it’s very hard to find fault with, from the twisty, statehopping plot to the obvious but effective characterization, from the crackling dialogue to the intense psychological interplay between Clint and Malkovich, one of the best hero-villain pairings in recent history. It’s all hammy as hell and hardly high art, but as a slick, functional crime thriller there’s few to rival it.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: ITV2
20 Dec 2007 9:14 AM | Submit Comment
Sometimes events conspire to place a viewer in the perfect physical surroundings for watching a particular film, like the time I watched The Fog alone on a misty night in the country, or my trip to see The Prestige accompanied by a pair of identical twins. This was another: Peeping Tom projected onto the wall of a friend’s musty attic room, late at night, in the heart of London.
Reading contemporary reaction to the film’s release (it famously destroyed the career of arguably Britain’s greatest ever filmmaker), it’s easy to feel that the critical community went overboard. But watching Peeping Tom, it sort of makes sense. This is a wildly transgressive film, sexually deviant and brutally, shockingly violent. It paints the British public as seedy, repressed voyeurs, from the licentious businessman furtively buying porn to the blind mother urging her daughter to explore the possibilities offered by the mysterious boy upstairs: ‘We both have the key to the door. Mine needs oiling. Yours needs exercise’ (images of locks and keys recur throughout the film, an unsubtle but effective bit of psychosexual imagery).
And the problem, of course, is that it’s all so beautiful, luxuriating in the rich colours Powell had made his signature, rich reds and deep, impenetrable blacks. A horror film which provokes sympathy with the monster is nothing new, but here it’s taken to extremes. Mark is no nudge-nudge Freudian cipher like Norman Bates, and he’s certainly not a Michael Myers boogeyman. He’s a real boy, frightened and alone, utterly corrupted by his insane psychologist father, driven to carry out unforgivable acts. But it is the specific nature of these acts which distinguishes Peeping Tom from other serial killer movies, because through them the film is revealed as a work of extraordinary self hatred, a director explicitly depicting his own chosen medium as perverse and even dangerous, for viewer and artist alike. By simply watching the film we become the deviants Powell sees through the lens, an unbreakable cycle of corruption and titillation which, almost half a century later, shows no signs of slowing.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:12 AM | Submit Comment
The day I sat down to watch Control, the Guardian’s film critics named it Best Film of 2007. I’d read a fair amount about the film- British newspapers tend to bang on at length about any homegrown film which has a chance of achieving international acclaim- and my expectations had been raised by Cannes successes and talk of Oscar nominations. And perhaps this was the problem- I expected something more than the usual rags to not-quite-riches rock biopic, I expected insight, grim revelation, the laying bare of a broken soul.
But the fact is, Control is unremittingly, depressingly quite good. The performances are solid, the writing strong and occasionally witty, the photography gorgeous, the music memorable. But the characters are thin, and the story bleak and predictable (and it is possible to tell a familiar true story without being predictable, just watch I’m Not There). The entire film is incredibly dry, lacking any spark of invention. It’s also in complete thrall to the myth of the tortured artist, resulting in a hagiography in which even the obvious criticisms of Curtis as a husband and a father are just inevitable side effects of his boundless creativity. The 20-or-so minute Joy Division segment of 24 Hour Party People says far more about these characters than Control can manage in 100, and after a while it simply becomes hard to care.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm Print
20 Dec 2007 9:11 AM | Submit Comment
I don’t think I quite get Christian Bale. Sure, he’s dependable, and committed, and chiseled. But he just doesn’t seem desperately interesting. Whether donning the black mask and fighting crime or starving himself to death, whether hacking women to bits or fleeing a VietCong internment camp, he always seems a little detached, occasionally flashing into life before relapsing into a strange, robotic state. Perhaps it’s just that he’s too private, we know fairly little about him. Or perhaps he just lacks personality. Either way, I find it very hard to get excited about watching him onscreen, and he’s yet to play a character I can really relate to, though Dieter Dengler comes close.
But that said, Rescue Dawn is still one of the year’s most straightforwardly enjoyable pictures, a no-frills account of imprisonment, escape and redemption set against a beautifully photographed jungle landscape. Continuing many of Herzog’s best loved themes- obsession and willfulness, men alone against nature- the film tells an extraordinary true story in stark, unembellished but always riveting style.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:09 AM | Comments (1)
A deeply crass and misguided attempt to squeeze a few cheap thrills out of the War on Terror. It’s hard to say what director Peter Berg thinks he’s doing, but one gets the impression he believes this to be a fair minded, even handed look at the US’s conflicted relationship with Saudi Arabia. But the film sets out it’s stall in the opening few minutes- Americans play baseball, love their kids and have a good time, while the Arabs are either officious and ineffective or irredeemably evil, forcing their own children to witness acts of brutal terrorism. Things barely improve- we’re forced to endure lines like ‘The first round in this war is over, and Al Qaeda know they lost’, a sentiment which presupposes that A) there’s a unified force called ‘Al Qaeda’, B) that ‘they’ are fighting a war with ‘us’, and C) that they lost, which given the current world situation seems a ludicrous assertion- if the Americans are lucky, they might just squeeze a tie. The film almost redeems itself in the last 30 seconds with an obvious but insightful little coda, but it’s not enough to wipe out the memory of all that’s gone before.
And political naïveté aside, this just isn’t a very good film. The plot thumps along predictably, the good guys are insufferably good while the bad ones are better off dead. One doesn’t exactly expect great things from Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, but surely Chris Cooper knows better than this- standing up to his waist in muddy water barking good ol’ boyisms at a group of workshy nutscratching Saudis feels like a major step down.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:06 AM | Submit Comment
I actually found this a little disappointing on second viewing. The jokes are still great, but the characters feel a little thin, at least in comparison to Knocked Up. And the humour starts to feel slightly one note after a while, there are only so many dick jokes a guy can handle. As it were. Still one of the more enjoyable films of the year, but unlikely to age as well as, say, Dazed And Confused, which might not be as funny, but is infinitely more poignant.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:05 AM | Submit Comment
A real one-off, combining the bleakness of noir with the homely dilemmas of the nascent women’s picture to create something completely unique. Most of what’s great about the film comes straight from James M. Cain’s fabulous source novel: the rags-to-riches plot, the sharp dialogue and the devilish critique of the American dream. But it’s in the characters that both book and movie really come alive- Joan Crawford works wonders in the central role, and she’s surrounded by a raft of talented bit players (though the squeaky voiced Mammy does feel awkward). But it’s Cain’s villain, the insanely self absorbed Veda, who really makes an impression, one of the most cold blooded and frightening child characters in cinema, desperate to climb the social ranks and crushing anyone who gets in her way, even her own mother, whom she takes a brutal delight in tearing to shreds.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:04 AM | Comments (1)
I won’t say it but it rhymes with shmashmortion.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 9:02 AM | Submit Comment
Possibly the most dialectically confused film ever made- Ray Winstone’s hero is solid East End, while Crispin Glover’s awesomely pitiable Grendel appears to be speaking Old English. In between you’ve got Anthony Hopkins’ Yank- inflected Welsh, Angelina Jolie’s Polish-Australian-American-General Witch, Robin Wright Penn’s I’m-American-but-trying-not-to-be, and good old John Malkovich, whose accent barely registers because his mouth is too full up with scenery. But it looks sort of pretty, and moves at a lick, so there’s not a great deal to complain about, besides the general weirdness of the whole motion capture thing. Either the technology improves, or this is going to get old pretty fast.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm Print
20 Dec 2007 9:01 AM | Comments (1)
The wonderfully named Irving Rapper never did much else of great note in a four decade Hollywood career, but watching Now, Voyager it seems like enough. The plot is overcooked and deeply silly, the music florid and the acting overwrought. But it still works, thanks to a sympathetic script and some nice directorial flourishes. Best of all, though, are Bette Davis’ awesome ‘ugly chick’ eyebrows in the early scenes.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
20 Dec 2007 8:58 AM | Submit Comment
Of all the New Wave directors still with us, Chabrol is the most prolific and, it seems, the least celebrated (compare the critical attention given to Resnais’ and Rohmer’s less than thrilling latest efforts), probably because of the narrow genre limits he works within, the bourgeoisie-set crime drama. A Girl Cut In Two is a dark delight, a story (a young and innocent TV weather girl swings between her much older, corrupting novelist lover and a near-psychotic rich wastrel) where all the characters in some way behave in ways they shouldn’t but where Chabrol in the end holds back on moral judgment. (Even the rich-bitch mother-in-law — an otherwise fine object of Chabrolian animus, à la Betty — has her validating moment.) It’s all tied together at the end when Chabrol abandons his standard realism for a marvellous poetic-symbolic illustration of the title.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
19 Dec 2007 10:26 PM | Submit Comment
I was concerned about the political dimension to Alexandra, given some of the dubious positions in some of Sokurov’s other work — the whitewashing of Hitler and Hirohito in Moloch and The Sun, the (for me) uncomfortable nationalism inherent in The Russian Ark and the celebration of the military man in Father and Son, but I needn’t have worried. This is as faultless a film as I’ve seen in a long time — certainly my best film of 2007. Sokurov’s concept is brilliantly simple — in just seeing Galina Vishnevskaya’s aged body in the midst of these young soldiers and military hardware the meaning of the film is absolutely apparent. Then, the artistry at work here is breathtaking — the dusty patina layered over the whole film, the finely-worked soundtrack forever slipping back and forth between human voices and snatches of orchestral music, and single moments — for example, the close ups on the young Chechen’s face during his walk with Alexandra back to the camp — that are ineffable in their beauty.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
19 Dec 2007 10:17 PM | Submit Comment
“The sleeper must awaken.”
Like Kyle MacLachlan’s hair therein, Dune is astonishingly crafted and just too big not to be silly. What must be whole chapters of Herbert’s text are condensed into a few jumbled minutes of screentime, especially in the film’s last act, and the bewildering amount of narrative pruning could not have been made more apparent if each cut were accompanied by the sound of an axe falling.
And this is a pity, as there is much to Lynch’s film that shows a great deal of promise. Every frame reveals new wonders of production design, even when the ersatz-Star Wars action sequences (and lousy mattework) bring the film’s already uneven pace to an unceremonious halt. But given the film’s troubled (and utterly fascinating) production history, it’s a wonder that Lynch has made a film that is intelligible at all (however slightly), let alone one that so perversely trades on many of the same themes, images, and oddities that he has pursued throughout his career. There’s more than one weird connection between Paul’s dreams here and Henry’s in Eraserhead, and Lynch’s trademark pure-evildoing and starry-eyed prophecy are both firmly in line with similar moments in Blue Velvet, inter alia.
And if that’s still not enough to make you want to see the movie, there’s this.
Tom’s thoughts on the Extended Cut
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
19 Dec 2007 5:37 PM | Submit Comment
A pretty standard documentary about a very non-standard and unendingly creative man. But only after the arrival of Philip Glass and Susan Sontag and, eventually, Tom Waits and William Burroughs does Katharina Otto’s little picture pick up. By then, though, it has almost ended.
But the greater difficulty with this filmÑand, it seems, with almost all theatre-based documentariesÑis the utter lack of universe. If you like a documentary about Hitchcock or Renoir or Spielberg, you can drive to a local video store or log-on to Netflix and find their entire oeuvre; even most libraries today carry the entire works of great filmmakers, though sometimes scattered across counties. With films about stage directors such as Wilson, though, there is no great vein of cinematic output to look for; rarely if ever today, outside PBS and the works of Brian Large, are Broadway performances readily distributed as DVDs. Katharina Otto presents us with stunning excerpts from Wilson’s long-exaulted Einstein on the Beach and A Letter from Queen Victoria, among others, and all of which must exist solely for us as excerpts. Sometimes distributing them commercially seems impossible and will almost always end up as sacrilegeÑthe staged version of Deafman Glance is around seven hours long; the version produced “for television” lasts 26 minutesÑbut could be done. I’d love some day to see a fully realized version of Wilson’s Olympian epic The CIVIL WarS released in much the same way Facets released Syberberg’s 450-minute Our Hitler this year. But, like always, I’m not expecting much.
by Adam Balz | Source: New Yorker DVD
17 Dec 2007 8:22 PM | Submit Comment
Joan Crawford, at age 63, is the owner of a travelling English circus, the suspect in a line of grisly murders, and spends much of the film in a revealing one-piece ringmaster getup—really the only reason to see Berserk! save how director Jim O’Connolly infuses each grisly murder with a heightened level of camp.
by Adam Balz | Source: VHS
17 Dec 2007 8:21 PM | Submit Comment
A grossly ineffective adaptation of the famed book, Eric Schlosser and Richard Linklater have defended their decision to go fictional by praising the unrestrained possibilities of narrative over documentary. And while it’s obvious this choice was motivated more by lawsuit paranoia than simple productionÑall the big-name buy-and-go restaurants are seen in passing as a sort of glowing roadside panoramaÑwe have to take this film as is: A melodrama book-ended by thoughts on greasy convenience foods. It’s perfectly fine if Linklater wants to structure Fast Food Nation around family life, as long as that domestic peek enhances the overall argument, which it doesn’t. Yes, we understand fast-food workers get paid little for working around mass-produced garbage, and that those working in slaughterhouses are in constant dangerÑanyone who’s read the book knows this. A film provides us with something a book cannot: visual evidence, which we get very little of (besides those denouement shots of cows). Which is why the preference for fiction doesn’t necessarily work here; in order to keep us interested, Schlosser and Linklater had to create an interesting story, one that couldn’t just be about meat. And so they inundate us with Ethan Hawke and Kris Kristofferson doing their best to enhance the worst, all while the targets of their scorn are left largely unscathed.
by Adam Balz | Source: DVD
17 Dec 2007 8:19 PM | Submit Comment
This is exactly what I would expect a film by Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron, and Penny Marshall to look like. Except, much to my surprise, I actually like it. An oh-so genuine surprise considering how, years ago, this film was bashed into oblivion. David Ansen, in the headline of his Newsweek review, stated how this film wasn’t actually bad (much to his own surprise, it seemed), then supported that statement with an entire article about how bad it was; he was a critic divided against himself, as so many others were. Not that I can’t see how the Ephrons’ film could be so divisive; the rating alone on IMDb is a solid five-point-zero out of tenÑa dead draw between love and hate. So let’s count now the immediate negatives: It’s an adaptation of a beloved TV show, it’s an adaptation of a TV show about that TV show, it’s by two people named Ephron, and it has Will Ferrel. Normally, I can see why the critics would begin digging this film’s grave before opening weekend. But the storyline allows both Ephron sisters to make underhanded jabs at the Hollywood system, depicted herein as sexist and based entirely on arrogance and misplaced pride (which, I have no doubt, it is).
And yet, the more I remember, the more I find myself searching for a single defendable aspect outside Jason Schwartzmann’s devious Tom Cruise impersonation. The writing is bland and stagnant, the characters are wholly underdeveloped, and the cinematography frequently backs away from moments of unexpected awe; a scene between Nicole Kidman and Michael Caine early on had such great promise for beautyÑthe two of them walking before a wall of colorful towels, all arranged in tall columnsÑthat I felt betrayed once it ended without being properly utilized. And I don’t see why anyone would make Uncle Arthur the only fictional character—even Aunt Clara and the Kravitzs are allowed to be real, even if only for one scene; he seems like the perfect sarcastic foil for Nicole Kidman’s bumbling free spirit. Instead, the filmmakers have Kidman’s Isabel befriend Kristin Chenoweth and Heather Burns, maybe to enhance the feel of an in-city gender war, all of which leaves Arthur to Will Ferrel’s imagination. Of course I’ve never seen an episode of the television show, so I’m probably not the best person to decide what character goes where, and I’ll probably never understand why I liked this so much. Maybe it’s the kitsch factor, or maybe it just made a dire afternoon a little fun.
by Adam Balz | Source: DVD
17 Dec 2007 8:15 PM | Submit Comment
The story of how one simple Swiss typeface transformed our world into something indelibly boring. I suppose, in the great debate over this expressionless revolution, I fall on the side of David Carson and Paula Scher, who find it overused and dehumanizing. (It leading us to war, though, is a bit much, even for a typeface.) Then again, I’m not even an amateur specialist in this field, so my opinion means nil.1 Still, it’s a great documentary that shines a light on how every aspect of the world around us—from words and colors to styles and locations—influences how we act, and one that makes me incredibly jealous of DOP Luke Geissbuhler, who travelled around the world with a camera and filmed the alphabet.
1 Nevertheless, I can’t help but feeling Michael Bierut, filmed herein extolling the virtues of bland 1980s advertisements over kitschy, color-ridden magazine ads from Truman-Eisenhower era, has a very dull sense of creativity.
by Adam Balz | Source: Red Envelope Entertainment DVD
17 Dec 2007 8:09 PM | Submit Comment
Alec Guinness plays eight separate roles, ranging from a long-winded old priest to a tough-as-nails suffragist, and manages to completely disappear beside Joan Greenwood’s lone performance. Her Sibella is a small, angel-voiced girl—the love interest of our hero—who we initially take to be selfish and somewhat dim-witted. Come the end of the film, we know her as a conniving and wickedly smart temptress who does what she can to have her man (and, not so coincidentally, his vast fortunes). Say what you will about Mr. Guinness and his credit-clogging family album, because I’m not listening, she’s just so damn amazing.
by Adam Balz | Source: Criterion
17 Dec 2007 8:05 PM | Submit Comment
Attractive twenty-somethings wandering the streets of Paris in the spirit of the New Wave is hard to resist, particularly when they burst into song with a feel for the musical that Americans nowadays seem to have lost. In spite of the sexual triangle and the occasional play with book titles, Godard and specifically A Woman is a Woman is not really the influence here — nor do we get the abrasive intelligence of The Mother and the Whore, in spite of the clear references; rather, we’re dealing here with the more classical virtues of Demy’s musicals. The first part of Love Songs works really well with its sudden, even surprising shift to drama, but it does rather run out of steam. It all gets less interesting with Ludivine Sagnier out of the way.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
16 Dec 2007 10:45 AM | Submit Comment
It’s been a long time since I’ve read any Lawrence, so I’m unsure how faithful Pascale Ferran has been to the earlier draft (John Thomas and Lady Jane) of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that she’s used. In any case, the film she’s made is a remarkably successful one where she’s managed to feminise the gamekeeper character (here called Parkin rather than the Mellors of the final version). There’s a softness and a vulnerability to him which makes him an equal to Constance as she is to him, and this gives the right balance to a film that above all is concerned with exploring Constance’s experiences, her sexual needs and the way she finds fulfillment of them, all subsumed within a lyrical depiction of the natural world around her. True, the film doesn’t break any new ground, but what it does achieve is very satisfying.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
16 Dec 2007 10:39 AM | Submit Comment
Being a captive audience on a decidedly old-fashioned Continental plane that lacked individual television monitors is still really no excuse for sitting through this Catherine Zeta-Jones/Aaron Eckhart (?!) rom-com in its entirety, but I ‘fess up to it nonetheless. And I am not ashamed, nor disappointed — actually I was quite looking forward to seeing this when I saw it advertised over the summer.
For god’s sake, why?, you may quite understandably ask.
And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s my fascination with Catherine Zeta-Jones, a woman who, once so saucy in the Banderas Zorro movie, became instantly sexless the second she married Michael Douglas. Since that moment, or perhaps long before, Zeta-Jones has made one disastrous role-choice after another, but apparently nets about $3 million for each year she remains married to Douglas, with a nice bonus if ever (or is it “whenever”) he cheats on her. Such a fascinating career/private-life confirms that she is first and foremost a moviestar, so any acting she might occasionally do is totally beside the point. And that this moviestardom relies heavily on the notion, however accurate or inaccurate, that she is a cold, calculating, mercenary bitch means that she is ideally suited to the role of an emotionally detached, careerist chef in New York who cannot relinquish her sense of self-possession to her poor, motherless niece (little orphan Abigail Breslin), let alone to any man (except Aaron Eckhart, naturally). This is also the reason that her role in Intolerable Cruelty is far and away her best work.
Or maybe it’s the mixture of vanity and curiosity that stems from my mother’s assertion (post-Possession, no less) that I look like Aaron Eckhart. It will only dishearten my poor mother to know that Eckhart here looks a good deal sleazier than he did even in In the Company of Men.
Anyway, it’s an utterly paint-by-numbers film, which is to say that all of its parts work perfectly to create the desired effect: a low-level emotional satisfaction that ensues from seeing a frigid woman coaxed into the role of mother-wife where she belongs. Of course I cried — who wouldn’t?
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: In-flight movie
11 Dec 2007 1:04 PM | Submit Comment
The third of a surfeit of 2007 films concerning juvenile pregnancy, Juno approaches this theme with less deliberation than either Knocked Up or 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Pregnancy is here more of a coincidence than it is a impetuous plot device, an accessory that relay’s the idiosyncratic strife of a teenage girl, as is the soundtrack, references to both Dario Argento and Herschell Gordon Lewis, and sardonic comprehension of virtually everyone in her realm of existence. Without any of this, Juno is a pretty boring, even if more believable character.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
09 Dec 2007 2:56 PM | Submit Comment
The bath house sequence notwithstanding – which is a formidable tour-de-force – this doesn’t really cohere with Cronenberg’s other work—it’s a thriller with a shape-shifting notion of one’s self, I guess, but the shape-shifting is here unreasonably spontaneous. When Tom Stahl (Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence) is stabbed in the foot, the wound is considerably visceral, and it produces a limp that accompanies him in his trek to Philidelphia, a reminder of his prior life as a professional criminal. Mortensen’s Nikolai has his body strewn in tattoos that declare his eligibility in the Russian mafia, but these are deceptive, they’re more like bumper stickers than they are denotations of history, strife, and harm. Auteurist posturing aside, I say without derision that Mortensen and Vincent Cassel’s performances make for some wonderful, accent-laden banter.
Jit’s review / Tom’s remarks / Leo’s remarks / Adam’s remarks
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
09 Dec 2007 2:51 PM | Submit Comment
The additions to Tarantino’s standalone version of Death Proof aren’t really complimentary. One sizable addition, even, is in black & white, I suppose, to elucidate the presence of new material. It remains a thoroughly enjoyable enterprise, even if the joyous conclusion elicited merely a smile and not the excited “Man did you see those girls beat the shit out of Kurt Russell!” it did in the theater.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: On Demand
09 Dec 2007 2:47 PM | Submit Comment
Like a Joy Division album cover, Control is both immaculate and ominous. It is beautiful in its luridness—Ian Curtis’ nondescript living room, even, has a sort of ethereality about it. My only complaint is that Martin Hannett’s genius/antics should have been more prominent, but his is another story.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
09 Dec 2007 2:45 PM | Submit Comment
“Scientists are saying the future will be much more futuristic than originally predicted,” says Krysta Now, nee Krysta Kapowski, and her remark off-handedly describes Southland Tales’ peculiar anarchy. It occurs in 2008, three years after the first of several nukes christened the third World War. Yet in this miniscule cultural timeframe, the world has become remarkably askew: a collective entitled US-IDENT governs all civilian interactivity, from internet connections to bathroom stalls at airports; a porn star is apparently the most popular export in music, television, and soft drinks; and an entrepreneurial baron develops a means of harnessing the ocean for an alternate form of fuel, entitled “liquid karma.” There are other aspects to this vision of the future, even if they’re incidental: a policeman and his spiritual clone, an amnesiac savoir coincidentally the son of a California Senator, and a group of rollerblading terrorists. These aspects in and of themselves may not be particularly futuristic by Krista Now’s measure, and they don’t cohere in to a plot by even the most liberal standard. Rather, it all amounts to a dense, sporadically propulsive compulsion to tie one character to another by even the most lenient means.
Southland Tales is burdened by description, I think, because it wants to posit itself as a clever, if not prescient doomsday scenario. Instead, it sounds unavoidably like a circus of bizarre, sometimes sensational attractions, one that invites ridicule, awe, disdain, and laughter at regular intervals. It is, to its strength, a spectacle that should be seen and not described. As much as there is to behold here – and the cohesively ridiculous casting promises much to behold – Southland Tales is so concerned with spectacle, often excitedly, that its principle themes become incidental to an impetuous thrust to include more of the bizarre. It opens with the third World War, but the war herein supplies no concern for either resolution or harm. It’s merely the “bang” the world ends with, as stated by the narrator in his misquoting of T.S. Eliot.
This is a disappointment, because the film is established effectively with a prologue that announces the war, which is subsequently captured in an excited, propagandistic media – Southland Tales uses an onscreen interface that recalls both Children Men and, more clearly, Starship Troopers. Its dystopian future, however, is more aligned with that of Idiocracy than either of the other films—this interface is branded by Panasonic, Bud Light, and Hustler (the masthead for the latter even appears on a tank). This is a potent thought, that even in times of anarchy the media is intrusive, even manipulative.
In establishing himself as a filmmaker with identifiable aesthetics, Richard Kelly has failed retain two of Donnie Darko’s more assured traits. The score is ethereal and backgrounded, as opposed to Michael Andrew’s cherubic and urgent compositions for Kelly’s debut. It pauses intermittently to make room for a song, one from The Pixies, Elbow, or The Killers. These are all fine, I suppose (a number from the latter scores a rather extraordinary dance sequence), but it all lacks the mood of Echo and the Bunnymen or Joy Division or, for that matter, any band featured in Donnie Darko’s soundtrack.
Southland Tales is more parody than it is allegory. Dwayne Johnson’s nervous finger-twitching, seen repeatedly throughout the film, sort of epitomizes the film’s concern: he’s never really nervous, just playing nervous. The film’s concerns are just as superficial, and, by some measure, just as humorous.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Samuel Goldwyn Films 35mm print
09 Dec 2007 2:44 PM | Submit Comment
A perfectly adorable romantic musical, even if I felt that it would have been improved ecstatically had John Belushi entered about any scene in a toga, smashed the guy’s fragile guitar against a wall, and apologized insincerely.
Jenny’s thoughts / Adam’s thoughts
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
09 Dec 2007 2:43 PM | Submit Comment
For years I’ve grappled with David Lynch’s gorgeous and deeply troubling Blue Velvet on home video, and for years I’ve harbored the suspicion that the film would be better appreciated on the big screen. I didn’t know how right I was until I got a chance to attend a repertory screening last night. It’s not just how Blue Velvet’s lush widescreen visuals and bold colors fill the eye. There’s also the rich, multilayered sound of the film: Angelo Badalamenti’s distinctive score; repeated bits of dialogue; a range of (generally creepy) sound effects; and, of course, innocuous pop songs given unexpected menace. In a darkened theater, safe from the many dangers of video viewing – interruptions, distractions, fullscreen transfers, and the pause button – Blue Velvet truly engulfs its viewers. Even the audience’s audible reactions are part of it, rising and falling with the rhythm of the film. Tense silence and nervous titters accompany Blue Velvet’s most distressing and notorious moments; relieved laughter greets its frequent bursts of surreal humor.
Blue Velvet is suited to being an uneasy shared experience; it’s a story about voyeurism that implicates its viewers as much as its peeping protagonist. In the midst of the infamous, violent scene that announces the arrival of Dennis Hopper’s vile Frank Booth, Lynch cuts back to Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey Beaumont pressed up against the slits in the closet door, watching as intently as we are. “You’re like me,” Frank tells Jeffrey in a chilling instance later on, one made all the more potent because in addressing Jeffrey, he’s sort of addressing us too.
If the theater only amplifies Blue Velvet’s most discomfiting qualities, it also makes the film’s ostensibly optimistic conclusion (square, middle class innocence and harmony restored to such a degree that one senses Lynch’s tongue drifting toward his cheek) that much more jarring. No amount of good cheer can get us to really shake off the horrors of what we’ve already seen. Perhaps that’s why the film’s final words come from the tortured lounge singer Dorothy Vallens, played so effectively and uncompromisingly by Isabella Rossellini. An echo of her singing the title song – the bit about seeing blue velvet through her tears – leaves a bittersweet taste. It feels like an indication that all has not been forgotten, the depravity of our very strange world not swept quite so easily back under the carpet.
Full review by Rumsey Taylor/Leo Goldsmith’s Thoughts
by Victoria Large | Source: 35MM Print
04 Dec 2007 9:58 PM | Submit Comment
The Mist is director Frank Darabont’s first feature film since his 2001 effort The Majestic, and it’s nothing if not a change of pace. While The Majestic strains for feel-good uplift with the kind of earnestness that compels critics to spit the term “Capraesque” like a cruel epithet, The Mist is a resolutely feel-bad picture, as dour a film as anyone is likely to find at the local multiplex this holiday season. Darabont once again adapts Stephen King, having previously earned Oscar plaudits for The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. But don’t look for The Mist to be rounding out any sort of inspirational trilogy with those two films: it doesn’t share their rather determined faith in humanity, nor does it aspire to project the requisite high-mindedness of an Academy-baiting autumn release.
The Mist is Stephen King proper, full of monsters from another world and oozing entrails. Poster artwork for John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing can be glimpsed in the studio of our hero, David Drayton, early on, and it feels like a mission statement for the whole film. This is a creature feature that’s refreshingly proud to be just that.
As a horror flick, it ain’t bad. Thomas Jane is fine as Drayton, though better when he avoids action man posturing and lets the character’s vulnerability shine through, and Toby Jones is even better as Ollie, the diminutive grocery clerk who happens to be a crack shot. KNB Effects Group, the reliable firm behind a million convincing monsters and wounds (my favorite being the hole through Quentin Tarantino’s hand in From Dusk Till Dawn), do strong work as usual, and the standard jump-in-your-seat moments are there. Darabont also allows for a few moments of quieter, effective creepiness, particularly when a group of characters fade entirely out of view while trying to find their way through the titular mist. It’s true that some of the CGI monsters are too slick to be believed, but that isn’t a new complaint.
The real sticking point comes with Marcia Gay Harden’s shrill, one-note character Mrs. Carmody, a religious fanatic who gets more than one fire-and-brimstone speech too many. More distressing than the amount of screen time given to the irritating and caricatured Mrs. Carmody are the pains that the film takes to never really disprove her ravings. Marked by a surprising conservative streak, The Mist reserves the worst punishments for the unbelievers.
by Victoria Large | Source: 35MM Print
02 Dec 2007 12:27 PM | Submit Comment
