Aleksandra
28 October, 2008
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.
Elegy
24 October, 2008
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.
City of Ember
14 October, 2008
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.
Blindness
6 October, 2008
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?
Tell No One
27 September, 2008
Eighty percent good is not bad, I suppose. There are fabulous bits to this film, but it challenges naught, except the unholy devotion of the Hollywood system to flashy effects. Fun, though, and nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
Man On Wire
27 September, 2008
It is fortunate that Phillipe Petit is a fascinating subject, because the film itself is deadly dull and at times horribly offensive. They managed to make one of the most fascinating and beautiful acts of defiantly public art almost boring, mundane. But, oh, Phillipe Petit, balanced on that wire. If they had simply had him recount his tale, from beginning to end, and played that as a soundtrack over the archival stills and footage, with cuts to footage of the participants as they are now, the film would have been incredibly moving. It is unfortunate that Petit is not macho enough for Herzog, because to see Herzog attack this subject would be utter joy.
Burn After Reading
27 September, 2008
The Coens hate everything. And have managed to condense that hatred into an hour and a half long film that seems, on the very surface, to be quite peppy and upbeat. If you’re an idiot. Which, then, would make you one of the things that the Coens hate. If you are a misanthropic recluse, like myself, you will laugh until your guts hurt. If you are not, you probably won’t get it or will get it and won’t like it.
By Coen standards, or really by any standards, the film itself is a piece of shit. Filmed indifferently, edited sloppily, acted in broad caricature. But this is deliberate, of course, because the Coens can get away with near anything, and because they are pointedly mocking films for which the standards here would be the apex.
Ultimately this kind of fluff is always a bit soul-wrecking, because to be affirmed in ones own hatred of everything seems an empty gesture.
Vicky Christina Barcelona
6 September, 2008
I hate Woody Allen, or at least recent Woody Allen. I went in to this film expecting to leave pissed off and completely disappointed that Javier Bardem had made yet another shit film.
And yet… Allen seems to have regained his stride. The film missteps once, with a signature Woody Allen terrible editing choice, but beyond that it is really exceptionally good.
Most striking is Penelope Cruz, who stalks the screen like an irrationally angry cat, and finally exercises the talent I knew she had to be capable of. Javier Bardem sharing a screen with her is quite something to behold, two people who are committed to their roles and utterly fluent in their expression of frustrated love.
All of the acting is superb, even from Miss Johansson, and everyone deftly handles the typically wordy Allen script. The familiar complex interrelationships are more gracefully awkward than they have been in an Allen film in quite some time, and the narration seems less grating and more friendly than I am accustomed to.
I suppose I will never love Woody Allen, but I do thoroughly enjoy this piece.
Encounters at the End of the World
28 August, 2008
What madness is it that drives the man to conquer the beast or summit the mount? And what of insatiable curiosity, the pursuit of knowledge? Is it the same urge? To know everything, to catalogue it and keep it close in bound paper vaults, is this the same as conquest and enslavement? Is all of this rooted in some form of greed? I do not know. And what of beauty? What of awe? Does submission in the face of beauty overcome the greed? To pursue ones dreams to the logical end… to the actual end… to the place from whence one can only begin…
It is spectacular, I think, that Mr. Herzog finally found his un-looked-upon images, and he was not in control of the camera. Even he was not permitted to look upon his subject. Only a special few are admitted to that cathedral, and even he is not among them.
Hancock
10 August, 2008
Hancock is essentially two movies- one fairly decent one, one completely awful one- stuck together with thumbtacks, or perhaps a staple gun. The pacing is slapdash, and the story itself is all kinds of weird. There are some very pretty shots, and then there are things that seem as though they have been processed to the point of no longer retaining any ‘real’. The thing I really don’t get, though, is the number of reviews I read that said Will Smith had really put himself into this role, that he wasn’t just smiling and joking his way through. He wasn’t smiling big and dumb for the camera, but he was certainly having a good laugh over the whole ordeal. Anyhow. It’s barely passable, but it does have some hysterically funny moments. And Jason Bateman is loveable as always- I would like to see Bateman play a serial killer or something. Not really worth seeing, but if you’re bored, why not?
