Month: August 2006

Little Miss Sunshine / Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

There are many things that depress me, and a good number of them feature prominently in Little Miss Sunshine.

Suicide attempts, people involved with self-actualization programs, bankruptcy, beauty pageants, watching helplessly as major embarassments roll slowly and unavoidably towards you…

Car troubles, depression, desperation, forced family activities, not talking, crushed teenage dreams, and 31 flavors of failure. I’m really not sure why anyone would call this a comedy, though I laughed enough times. And I can’t really fault any particular part of this film; it’s quite good in all respects from writing and acting down to the colors and composition of shots. I guess I had just expected it to be funnier, and when I read somewhere that it was a little overwhelming in its cynicism, I didn’t really expect that it would actually bother me. Continue reading Little Miss Sunshine / Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

the devil wears prada

i’ve been wanting to write about this for a bit, because i liked it a lot, but i wasn’t sure what to say. this is a film i educatedly suspect none of you has seen, but it’s the summer film i’ve easily liked best so far. this is not saying much, but i actually think this is quite good. the story is a neat rags-to-reaches fable, with plain girl who becomes beautiful, evil step-mother (meryl streep in superb form), prince charming, fake prince charming, evil step-sister who turns out to be all right after all, and evil twins. Continue reading the devil wears prada

Clubland: Le Samourai

I’ll say more about my thoughts on the film later, but I thought I’d just get things rolling with a couple of topics/questions.

1. I find Melville’s film to be devastatingly emotional, beneath the laconic dialogue and cool surfaces (or should I say, “because of?”). Do genre films–or let’s say films within genres that work as a kind of apotheosis of the genre–pack more of a punch emotionally because they are playing on a set of expectations? In other words, is the constraint of genre really a kind of freedom?

2. I particularly like the way the film quietly explodes the idea of a stoic masculinity–actions are not expressions of a philosophy where gesture supplants internal life, but messages from a vast unknown territory. Of course, I am a bit taken aback when I read that Melville describes his protagonist Costello as a “psychopath.” Do you agree? If so, the film might be part of the discussion with Straw Dogs and White.
Continue reading Clubland: Le Samourai