FilmVomit

I think I’d have to be Japanese to actually get it.
It’s amusing, but strange, and so outside of my vernacular that all I can do is shake my head and laugh. It’s distressing how much I just don’t get it.
The format is clever, mostly… mockumentary is always cute. But the fight scenes are so chopped in that it’s hard to quite get into the flow of the thing. Something seems missing, and I think it’s entirely on my side.

I have nothing to say, really.
It’s good enough. Nothing that will stick with me.
Clever and pretty only goes so far.

I was not expecting much from this film, I will admit that. I have a fondness for Dave Eggers but not a love, and the material seemed like a stretch for Sam Mendes- too upbeat hipster lovestory, to be perfectly honest. My low expectations, as usual, led me to greater enjoyment. The direction is, mostly, spot on. The film is warm and funny and honest. It doesn’t feel like film that will stick with you, like most of Mendes’ other works do. But it doesn’t really have to.
Part of the films effectiveness comes from the fact that Mendes, who works very closely with his cinematographers, seems to have left his comfort zone. His first to films were shot by the inimitable Conrad Hall, the second two by Roger Deakins. This film was shot by the impossibly hip Ellen Kuras. Conrad Hall was the fire behind such films as Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood. He made a safe choice going to Deakins, who imitates Hall quite well. Kuras, however, worked on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind, Rewind, among other icons of the current film generation. And her sensibilities seem to have brought the joy out in Mr. Mendes. The shots are bare, in many cases, stripped of sentiment. They may lack the sheer aesthetic weight of something like American Beauty, but they make up for it in an almost effervescent honesty. I will sincerely look forward to seeing how their relationship progresses.
There isn’t so much depth here as one might like to see. Or perhaps I should look closer. But at the very least there is joy, and there is beauty. And that is enough.

I walked from the theater helpless and angry and blindly terrified of the world, of the unknowable future and the all too known past. There are so many mistakes made and so many yet to make. So many houses burning that we will refuse to leave until it is far too late.
And then I began to smile, and then I began to laugh. And I cursed Kaufman out of joy and I remembered where I am.

I don’t think I can write critically about this film unless I see it again. It’s possible that I can’t at all. But I have not seen anything that has left me feeling more filled with life in a very long time.

It’s not even worth making fun of it.
It’s just really bad. It tries, really hard, to be something that it just won’t succeed at.
And it steals, several times, from the score to Once Upon a Time in the West. Unacceptable.

Appaloosa

All the color is drained from the world as all the promise is drained from the future in a place of persistent and inexplicable war.
It isn’t despair, it isn’t anything palpable. It simply is. Bleak and continual.

Aleksandra

Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper make out. I’ll repeat that, just in case you didn’t read it right the first time. Sir Ben Kingsley and Dennis Crazyeyes Hopper have a passionate, full tongue, seconds-long kiss that fills the entire screen. Dennis Hopper also brings Ben Kingsley breakfast in bed and feeds him eggs as though he were a child, making the choo-choo noise and everything. Oh, god, such absolute glee.
Anyhow. I’ve got that out of my system.
The film is superbly acted and almost incredibly good. I say almost because the ending is somewhat flaccid and lacks the zeal of the rest of the film, and a bad ending is near as disappointing as a bad beginning, and far more likely to stick with you. Peter Sarsgaard, as usual, is unexpectedly delightful; and sometime in the last year or so Penelope Cruz learned herself some acting skills. Hopper and Kingsley are, of course, brilliant.
Coixet shows incredible deftness, slipping into the male voice with an ease that most female directors lack- not to say that they are incapable of doing so, because to be a female director means to be capable of taking on a masculine persona, at least at this point in cinema. There is nothing tentative about it, and there is nothing in her approach that attempts to simplify the emotional life of men, which is quite frequently the failing point of many female directors- a tendency to reduce what they do not directly experience into something easily compartmentalized. The same thing that male directors frequently do with their female characters.
ANYHOW, after that unintentional sidetrack, all I really can say is the film is worth seeing. It is not perfect, but its imperfection is endearing and does not detract from the experience.

Elegy

They make such pretty worlds, and then they freeze. They do not know what to do. So in these beautiful places they tell the same ugly stories- same winners, same losers. The stories never change. And the places tarnish, and are corrupted in the end, by the needs of the pocket and the public.

City of Ember

I am sure there are technical issues here that I ought to discuss… the pacing was not quite right and I take issue with the inconsistent representation of blindness as either dark or light, though the cinematography is stunning. But that is all secondary. The deeper issue, here- even beyond the hastily thrown-together social discussion and the relationship building and the primal fear of sightlessness- is the idea of pathological compassion.
What is it that leads one to care for others, when there is no benefit to the self- when, in fact, there is only detriment? Is it love, or arrogance, or genuine empathy? Does it stem from a belief in or a disdain of those around you? Do you care, to the point of doing yourself serious harm, because you believe that they deserve it? Or is it because you believe you do not? Because you believe that they would not manage without you? Because you believe yourself to be superior? Why? Why bother?

Blindness