i would like to start a thread for movies we liked but may not be worth writing whole reviews about. i will start with Welcome, a Film Movement french movie about an iraqi boy who wants to get to england but is stuck in calais. it’s a slight, watchable, and rather sentimental movie, but it highlights pitilessly something i didn’t know, namely that denizens of calais (and presumably other french towns) are forbidden by law from befriending illegal immigrants. it is literally illegal, and severely punished, to give them rides, buy them food, or host them in your house. and it is legal, on the other hand, to bar them from shopping in supermarkets. someone at some point mentions history books. the similarity with nazism are appalling. no wonder the whole islamic world is seething with fury. they are eating brutality and humiliation for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all over the world.
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John, I can’t for the life of me recognize that Woody Allen clip. Chili sounds good. Toro sounds better!
That’s not a Woody Allen clip. It’s footage of a guy being forced to watch Interiors.
I’m probably one of handful that has seen Interiors more than once (maybe four times since its release; maybe more). Geraldine Page is phenomenal. The cinematography is beautifully chilly. Sure, its a Bergman knock-off . . . but I dig it.
Why don’t you marry it, you love it so much?
You loooooooooooooove it.
fire in babylon. a documentary about one of the greatest sports teams ever: clive lloyd’s west indies. the trailer for the film is thrilling, but the film itself is a little better than pedestrian. thankfully, the subject matter is so good, and most of the cricket shown so pulse-quickening that it rises above the film-maker’s (and probably the budget’s) limitations. this needed to be an hour longer, and it needed to incorporate a more sophisticated take on the political/cultural context of the caribbean, as well as more voices of non-west indian cricketers–but if you (and by you, i mean chris) followed cricket in the late 70s and 80s you will be taken back to those moments each summer/fall when you knew that there was no hope for your team when viv swaggered out to the pitch or when those fast bowlers commenced their run-ups. at least the indian team never imported a south african captain who made the error of promising to make the black team grovel.
source code is a source of minor pleasures. interesting for the first 20 minutes, inoffensive after that. on the whole, it is neither fish nor fowl: it doesn’t try to be a whiz-bang thriller, nor does it seem interested in exploring the meta/quantum physical implications of the unexplained bit of technology at the heart of the plot. but it has the grace of being only 93 minutes long. duncan jones is the director for hire here.
in the watched/tolerated category: the eagle, starring channing tatum (who is, by the way, the answer to the question, what would happen if you made josh hartnett even more of a douche?). this movie is a mess. at 93 minutes it could have been decent, but it is closer to 120 minutes. it seems to gesture vaguely in the direction of interesting politics, but there’s nothing worth talking about there. the roman empire was an empire, and they did some bad things, but some of the people they did bad things to were even worse, and at any rate one of the not so bad people they did bad things to forgives this one roman and becomes his bff. and there’s a lot of running while being chased by brutal savages, but, alas, no being chased by a jaguar.
Chronicle. This is a clever mash-up of a number of genre staples (superhero origin stories, found footage flicks, Sundance indies about sensitive teens living in a cruel world, sci-fi thrillers, etc.). The script feels fresh and inventive, both funny and scary, taking unexpected, truly surprising turns and investing in its characters with an unusual display of psychological depth. I don’t want to overpraise its charms and thrills – it’s not perfect – but it really is entertaining and surprisingly moving. Director Josh Trank gets some really nice performances out of his teen leads. Dane DeHaan, who was excellent as the angry, adopted teen on HBO’s “In Treatment” a couple of years ago, makes strong, emotionally resonant choices, and Michael B. Jordan, who was memorable in the final two seasons of “Friday Night Lights” is also very good.