Author: gio

noise

this is the 2007 aussie movie that won a ton of aussie awards and that one can watch “instantly” on netflix if one has fast internet access (michael, are you still cut off from the world?). i’ve been away from movies and tv shows for a long time because i developed a strange phobia towards live screens — they weren’t speaking to me or telling me what to do or anything like that, just making me very nervous. but now i’m back, and i can watch pretty much anything except sci-fi, which proves to me that my strange phobia had no relation whatsoever to content, as i always claimed. so i’ll write about this movie out of sheer happiness and relief at my return to the pleasures of cinema. Continue reading noise

romulus, my father

biopics are tricky. they can go on and on, and always teeter on the edge of lacking a narrative focus. life, of course, has no narrative focus whatsoever, which is why we invented stories. this is a story of personal and familial disintegration set in the 40s or 50s on the australian frontier. the protagonists are middle european immigrants. romulus, playes by eric bana, is a loving father and doting husband with a boyish face and an appropriately indomitable work ethic. he’s a generous and forgiving man who always does the right thing and will captivate you. franka potente plays his wayward wife, a woman who cannot stay away from relationship with other men but is welcomed at the farm with open arms whenever she makes her way back. raimond is their only son, a 9 year old with blue eyes and a terribly earnest-sweet face whom the first-time director chose wisely to make the moral and psychological center of the film. the actor is terrific. he portrays the easy joyfulness and the dead seriousness of childhood with heartbreaking facility. Continue reading romulus, my father

movies and books that go well together

i’d like to pair a couple of literary classics with a few movies each and i thought i’d turn to the collective expertise of this blog’s writers. the books are the red badge of courage and in cold blood. having just seen stop-loss, i’m intrigued by the two extremely different representations of desertion of red badge and stop-loss. i wonder whether a representation of desertion such as the one that takes place in RB would even be possible in a contemporary movie. apart from the technical difficulties of simply absenting oneself from the battle, it seems to me that our contemporary conception of the war hero is so infused with nationalism and testosterone that one could not conceive of a war movie hero that undergoes the kind of existential transformation henry fleming does. the taint of the original cowardice would be too strong to allow for redemption — yes? one the other hand, henry fleming’s ultimate valor is an entirely personal achievement, unconnected to an esprit de corps that seems so essential to the contemporary war movie (and to contemporary understanding of war psychology). blah blah blah. maybe you have other war movies in mind that would enhance and complicate the themes of RB.

as for in cold blood, the movie that comes to mind first is badlands, for obvious reasons. but i am just in the first few page of CB, so i don’t have much more to add.

stop-loss

the film starts mtv style, with quick edits of faux self-made clips set to the tune of rap songs. this is followed by a nail-biting urban guerrilla action scene that is in many ways, even though it comes right at the beginning, the psychological heart of this movie (it’s the scene of the trauma). then we are back in texas, where we follow the back-home post-traumatic adventures of three soldiers, played by ryan philippe, joseph gordon-levitt, and channing tatum. Continue reading stop-loss

the center of the world (molly parker)

i met luminous canadian actress molly parker, who plays a main character in deadwood and may be known to some of you through that show, in marion bridge, an equally luminous, if painful, 2003 canadian drama of family, abuse, and endurance. since i found molly parker stunning — she is, yes, beautiful, but she’s also an actress who can convey a whole depth of feelings with just the way she looks — i went looking for other films of hers and saw last night wayne wang’s 2001 leaving-las-vegas-remake(of sorts) the center of the world, based on a story by wang, miranda july, paul auster, and siri hustvedt. Continue reading the center of the world (molly parker)

man push cart

i have no idea, now, how i got onto this film. i wish i knew. ramin bahrani visits some of the same haunted post-traumatic territory touched upon in red road, and it seems to me he may possibly do it with even greater focus. ahmad is a young pakistani man with a push cart and a stack of porn dvds in nyc. very early every morning he takes his push cart from the depot where it’s housed to his allotted spot on the sidewalk, by hand. after work he sells his dvds to people he meets on the street. the pulling of the cart in the liminal area between the large, heavy trafficked, still nocturnal new york avenue and the sidewalk is harrowing and, on occasion, heartbreaking, especially because bahrani puts it squarely at the center of his film and shows it to us over and over and over (it also puts one in mind of those films one has seen about subcontinental streets, full of lawless traffic and the constant threat of being run over: except, wrong time, wrong place). the light is orange-brownish and there are mostly taxis about. ahmad looks like the loneliest man in new york. Continue reading man push cart

the 70s

i just saw california split and the conversation and i have decided that the 70s might be my favorite decade. i ask the members of this group: what are your ten favorite 70s films? and, if you feel inclined, what are the defining features of 70s cinema? (i suppose we can start with america, and maybe sprinkle in some france, but no italy please i don’t do italian cinema only italian soccer).

susanne bier’s after the wedding

a few thoughts about susanne bier’s after the wedding, which, i’m learning, is her greatest success yet on the international scene. it’s hard not to like this film. it’s fantastically acted and so intense throughout that you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next even though it’s not a thriller but a drama ripe with Human Emotions and, also, a few generous helpings of melodrama. i don’t remember having seen mads mikkelsen before except in casino royale (simon keeps telling me we have seen open hearts but i don’t remember it), and now suddenly i want to see everything he’s done, he does such a fabulous job here, using his singular face to convey a character who’s simultaneously pissed off, haunted, depressed, and very decent. but this is not what i want to talk about. Continue reading susanne bier’s after the wedding

free zone

in the book blog we have talked quite a bit about the fact that it is hard for fictions about 9.11 to free themselves from the overwhelming symbolism of that day. one would imagine that films about the middle east must deal with this problem constantly. in a radio interview from the extras, director amos gitai says something like, “we are used to being on the news. when something like the tsunami happens and we are not on the evening news, we feel disappointed.” this film tries, successfully i think, to eek a story out of the symbolism, without deluding itself for a second that the symbolism can be bypassed. Continue reading free zone