The scope of Inglorious Basterds makes it too intimidating to try to review in one go. Besides, I want to see it again and have some time to process it. It is magnificent, and one of the most controlled pieces of film-making I can recall watching. But at this point, just a few reactions. The opening scene, Chapter 1, is just breath taking. Evoking Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West, a dairy farmer chops wood in rural France. A German colonel stops by and asks to be invited inside to talk. What follows is riveting. Every gesture, every word of dialogue, the framing of every shot works to build tension. Then, near the end of the film, in the projection room, there is a shot so heart-achingly beautiful that you desperately want to press rewind and watch it over and over. Continue reading Inglorious Basterds
Month: August 2009
District 9
An alien mothership appears stranded over Johannesburg. The starving aliens can not leave, so they are located in a sprawling shanty town beneath the mothership. Twenty years on, crime and squalor are rife in the shanty town, and there is rising tension between humans and aliens. A large corporation, simply called “Multi National United” is hired by the UN to shift the aliens to a new camp, further from humanity. The corporation, of course, has weapons and genetic engineering projects that would benefit from the exploitation of the aliens, who come to be called “prawns” by the humans. Continue reading District 9
Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird
There are moments where you watch a sequence in a film and it’s utterly clear the joy behind the camera: the sense of invention (so this is what the camera can do here!), the delight in gaming the audience (playing familiar cards and then shuffling the deck, then cheating), the willingness to push past any sense of limits into a pure sugar rush of genre filmmaking. I smile every time I think of the Thunderdome, of Cary Grant faceplanting in the dust as the plane roars right overhead, of Jackie Chan grabbing any item in the vicinity for balletic battle, of Indiana Jones holding his hat as he first ran from varied and sundry and crazy dangers with the idol in his hand, of Chow Yun-Fat with toothpick dangling and a calm expression on his face gently wiping the blood spatter from an infant’s brow. It isn’t just that these are action sequences, done well; they’re invigorating exaltations of composition and sequence and outsized wondrous plotting.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird has at least 3 such whizbang setpieces, and it’s a dizzy blast of a film. Continue reading Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird
Going to have to face it
Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from Chris Hedges on the way we become addicted to war, an addiction intensely–almost lovingly–scrutinized in both her tightly-wound action film and Armando Iannucci’s tightly-wound satire In the Loop. Both films work pretty well on their own merits, as exemplars of their respective genres, but I was struck by the way each seemed to strive toward something more, toward an indictment of that addiction. Their methods, however tonally distinct, I think lead to the same impasse: both films are caught–and catch us–inside the addiction. Continue reading Going to have to face it
John Hughes
Not a bad tribute here.
MOON
Zowie Bowie is all grown up and making movies now, under the name “Duncan Jones” (“Duncan, what the hell kind of name is that?? And, you are NOT going out looking like that. Get upstairs and put on your makeup and skintight leotard! We’re a skintight leotard family! Thank you, Kevin Meaney)
Moon is compelling and effective; however, its ambitions to being a major mind-trip space film don’t really measure up to other films you might be reminded of, such as 2001 , Solaris and even Silent Running (where the bee-dee bee-dee robot destroys all the greenhouses in space–though I might be wrong. I haven’t seen it in twenty five years and I get it confused with the Buck Rogers TV show). Sam Rockwell is very good, [vague SPOILERS AHEAD] especially in the long sections where he must interact with himself–a more wound-up and angry version of himself. The voice of Kevin Spacey, coming from “Gerty,” the robotic assistant is perhaps a bit unsettling–Gerty is a twist on HAL, in that he is a rather reasonable machine who really wants to help (or does he?). The premise for the film is rather perfunctory, suggesting an evil corporation, who, unlike the major university, never heard of just exploiting folks at low wages. In fact, there are many loose ends here, but I think you will enjoy the story, if you don’t overthink it, as well as the attempts to duplicate the feel and pace of 1960s/70s science fiction. In fact, I wish it had gone for more extended eerie trips through moonscapes–though that may have endangered too much its “limited run” at my local multiplex. Next up, Space Ossuary where Mick Jagger and David Bowie must join forces with Sally Field to counter osteoporosis.
Resolved
Greg Whiteley’s 2007 documentary on debate as she is practiced in the high schools today is entertaining and smart, and maybe that’s all you need to know. Following the exploits of two schools/teams, one from well-off suburban Texas and the other from an underfunded public h.s. in Long Beach, the film engages all our narrative expectations about the role of the underdog–even refers to such expectations early on–and then goes in other directions. These two teams never meet, and that failure to meet is illustrative of both a central thesis (about the systemic relations of class and privilege to this activity) and the film’s own sly wit. We get a film about underdogs winning and one about underdogs losing. And in both cases the film is clearly valuing these showcased participants while also clearly more interested in the subculture and its relation to the broader culture.
Two Lovers
This is a simple story and simple movie. We have all seen this setup before, and the opportunities for missteps and a sentimental mess are rife. But somehow, Two Lovers works. It is a love triangle with Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) caught between the solid, careful and loving daughter of his father’s business partner, Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), and the wild, glamorous, and more than slightly nuts, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow). Written and directed by James Gray, the movie follows Leonard’s ambivalence towards two women that represent different futures: marry Sandra and please his parents, go to work in the dry cleaning business, be sure of someone who really loves him; or escape Brooklyn and his past with Michelle, who could explode at any minute, and whose love for him is never more than glancing.
All the performances are impressive, especially Vinessa Shaw and Leonard’s parents (played by Moni Moshonov and a wonderful Isabella Rossellini). They are small, careful performances, eschewing any violent displays of emotion. The emotion is worn on the faces of the protagonists, not in their speech. There are a few small missteps (the opening scene with an attempted suicide), but they are more than outweighed by moments of delight. At the very end of the movie Leonard suddenly switches his affections, and while one would expect it to feel artificial and forced, but it seems perfectly natural.
So the cheesy existential angst of Watchmen‘s heroes didn’t do it for you?
Big Man Japan, Hatsuhiro Matsumo’s stone-faced documentary about the lonely, tedious life of one of Japan’s last monster-fighters, is among the most cussedly determined comedic visions I’ve seen in some while. It’s not always terribly funny, it’s pacing is more long-range Tati than zippy & slapsticky, and the locus of its concerns (avoiding the larger cultural context except as implied by conversations with hero Masaru Daisato) remains frustratingly parochial. Yet–whether as antidote to Hollywood or just deadpan pop-culture remix–it is a dizzy, idiosyncratic vision.
Daisato seems to be at the tail-end of way too many bong hits, slowly and dazedly talking to his interviewers about his expanding umbrella, his daughter. He doesn’t really give answers about, and the film doesn’t really investigate, what his isolation might mean, or how to interpret his alienation. And yet he’s mostly the only talking head, his interviews stitched together around his encounters with a series of lovely huge grotesques. The movie avoids the typical mockumentary conventions, where the film’s thesis comes through its deployment of “experts” (or just a range of voices) to underline the satirical vision. I’m not even sure this is satire. It’s more like a perfect alternate/cover version of a familiar set of cultural tropes. I particularly liked the protagonist’s constant brushing of his long hair off his face, and his impotent screaming at the equally-bellicose and -deadpan Stinking Monster.