Notorious

"Notorious"
Alfred Hitchcock, 1946

There are two running narratives in "Notorious": one concerns the affair between a spy (Ingrid Bergman) and the handsome government agent (Cary Grant) who has recruited her; the other focuses on the spy's mission, which involves infiltrating a German businessman's operations in Rio de Janeiro by seducing him. "Notorious" is an effective work of romance and intrigue whose success hinges primarily on Alfred Hitchcock's seemingly effortless ability to craft an entertaining story with engaging, complex characters. Yet "Notorious" doesn't feel as memorable as Hitchcock's other films. Perhaps this is due to the streamlined nature of the tale itself - we enter the story at a logical place, and we leave it as soon as it's been taken to its logical conclusion.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 8/31/08, on DVD - IMDb

Albums, August 2008

Albums, August 2008

I haven't seen many movies during the last two weeks because of such activities as moving into a new place and beginning my sophomore year in college. Fortunately, my co-op's house manager has a fantastic CD collection, and I have ripped many of his albums, which I'll list here.

Album Highlight
The Who - Live At Leeds

This album is fantastic. All of the band members are at the top of their game, and the excellent recording gives each of the instruments equal presence. There is a wonderful liveliness that makes the album sound both epic and intimate; it is probably my favorite live album.

Song Highlight
The Stranglers - "Golden Brown"

While I was driving with some friends, we heard this song on the radio. One passenger summed up my thoughts in that moment, "This song is fucking incredible." This is a very basic song - about drug abuse, of course - that primarily relies on a harpsichord and some synthesizers, and whose beauty stems from its very simplicity.

1) The Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill
This album is O.K. The six songs I have listened to are fun, but they all sound the same - it's a surprisingly boring album.

2) Beck - Odelay
This is the first time I have listened to Beck, and I like the album quite a bit. It's definitely a promising indication of how I'll enjoy the rest of his work.

3) The Band - The Band
I really like The Band.

4) Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
This is probably the least impressive Radiohead album. It merely sounds like a collection of sounds, some of which are interesting, some of which don't really work. There is a disappointing lack of focus here, a quality that I began to notice with their previous album, Amnesiac.

5) Pink Floyd - Meddle
I've listened to half of it, and I think it's good. The wonderfully creepy song "One Of These Days" and the 24-minute, heavily atmospheric song "Echoes" are the highlights.

6) Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)
I've only listened to "Free Bird," which is a fantastic rock song.

7) Gorillaz - Demon Days
I really like this album. It sounds scary, beautiful, and "cool," and all of the songs flow together well. Thank you, Danger Mouse.

8) Deep Purple - Machine Head
I've listened to "Highway Star," "Pictures Of Home," "Smoke On The Water," and "Space Truckin'." All of those are fantastic songs. I look forward to listening to the rest of the album.

9) The Clash - London Calling
I still need to listen to the entire album, but the songs "London Calling" and "Train In Vain" are excellent.

10) Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Color me unimpressed with Coldplay. The band members aren't great musicians and the lyrics are incessantly whiny. Their songs are trite, but they can be admittedly catchy. "Clocks" and "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" are the highlights.

11) The Verve - Urban Hymns
This album starts off on a climatic note, with the ever-ubiquitous anthem "Bittersweet Symphony." It's a good, rousing song, but the rest of the album has a more dour tone, like that of a person recovering from a wild and overlong party. It is an interesting, alternative take on such rise-and-fall albums as Pink Floyd's The Wall. Urban Hymns seems to begin with the band at its best, and then focuses on the dreary aftermath; it is a portrait of a band picking up the pieces and starting over. This means that there are no truly memorable songs after "Bittersweet Symphony" - the album strives to create a tragic atmosphere, and that's exactly what it accomplishes.

12) U2 - War
I still need to give this a listen, though I have already heard "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years' Day" on their album The Best of 1980-1990. The cover art, which features a stark, black-and-white photograph of a glaring boy, is striking.

13) Steely Dan - Aja
I still need to give this a listen, but I have heard the song "Peg" before.

14) Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
I am still not impressed with Coldplay. To give them credit, they try to reach out into more adventurous territory - the production sounds richer and more engaging than that of A Rush Of Blood To The Head. Nonetheless, the new, "risky" Coldplay still sounds incredibly generic to me. The band members simply are not great musicians. The album's highlight: "Viva La Vida."

15) The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
This is a very good album. The lyrics are great, the production sounds great, plus the band is from Portland, which is pretty cool.

16) Jethro Tull - Aqualung
I still need to give this a listen, but I really like Jethro Tull.

17) Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Despite its flaws, the film "Control" got me interested in the British band Joy Division. Ian Curtis, as the band's lyricist and singer, gives each of the songs a somber tone; they are primarily concerned with lost love. And yet they are all memorable and contain a surprising amount of energy. This album's highlight is the song "Disorder," which kicks off with a great bass line and guitar riff that some songs today try to mimic.

Yellow Submarine

“Yellow Submarine”
George Dunning, 1968

I strongly dislike using the phrase “you need to be high in order to watch this movie,” which I commonly hear for such visually “trippy” and thematically hefty films as “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It is an unfortunate outlook that over-simplifies and dismisses whatever qualities a film may possess. That said, I will stray from my previous opinion and say that “Yellow Submarine,” a bizarre animated film that features The Beatles, would best be viewed while on some kind(s) of drug.

The premise is disposable – it concerns the hostile takeover of Pepperland, a kingdom of happy music listeners, by the “Blue Meanies,” an assortment of fuzzy, grotesque party poopers. Pepperland sends a captain in a yellow submarine for help, and The Beatles, of course, come to the rescue. “Yellow Submarine” serves as a venue for playing Beatles songs and displaying very “trippy” animation– the plot and the characters are not the focus here. But the Beatles-centric film “A Hard Day's Night” (1964) doesn't have a real plot, either. It is shot like a documentary, and it has a largely spontaneous feel that makes the chemistry amongst the band members feel all the more tangible.

“Yellow Submarine” is an experiment, and as such, it fails more often than it succeeds. There are instances of quick-witted interaction amongst the band members here, but these are mostly obscured by the silly premise and the overwhelming animation. To be fair, the backgrounds are exceptionally crafted, but the character design is atrocious, and the quality of the animation varies from scene-to-scene.

So, the collection of songs may be better, and the visuals are more daring, but the overall experience feels less than memorable. Perhaps, on a second viewing, taking a few hallucinogens would do the trick.

First Viewed: 8/25/08, on DVD - IMDb

Water Lilies

"Water Lilies"
Celine Sciamma, 2007

Marie (Pauline Acquart), who is a lanky, 15-year-old girl, is the focus of the French filmmaker Celine Sciamma's director debut, "Water Lilies." Our protagonist is at an awkward stage in her life: she only seems to have one friend, Anne (Louise Blachere), who is unusually large and childlike, and she is at an emotional and physical crossroads. Her feet are disproportionately large and she still drinks from juice packs, which she violently stomps upon draining them - in short, she is a child who impatiently lingers on the verge of adulthood.

Marie's venture into adolescence begins when she, while observing a synchronized swimming contest for unspecified reasons, develops a crush for the team's captain, Floriane (Adele Haenel). Floriane is pretty, and she seems to be more mature than Maria or Anne, which makes her the target of a number of men, all of whom she rejects. Maria, her eyes down-turned and her voice soft, befriends the swimmer, who slowly warms to her. "Water Lilies" has a decent premise, and it avoids many of the aggravating pitfalls of growing up films by discarding needless auxiliary characters and gossip-manufacturing cliques. But in doing so, we lose a sense of the social networking that defines our characters' place in their world.

"Water Lilies" itself feels as underdeveloped as its characters. Celine Sciamma doesn't have a good grasp of character interactions, which always feel strangely labored, nor of how to use pacing to create an effective character arc. There are interesting ideas that are hidden here, but these are never allowed to blossom; in part because Sciamma has an unfortunate tendency of focusing her camera on Marie's longing visage, rather than on what is going on in her surroundings. And Marie, we find, isn't all that fascinating a character: she mostly observes everything in silence, and when she does speak, she says surprisingly cruel things. "Water Lilies" does not seem intent on exploring the "why's" - why Marie is so angry, or why Floriane is so unwilling to confront her sexuality. Instead, the film merely stands by and observes the characters, leaving its frustrated viewers in limbo.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 8/18/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Woody Allen, 2008

In Woody Allen's latest film, we follow two friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), who are Americans living in Barcelona. Vicky is a reserved person who is about to marry a boring businessman; Cristina is her opposite, a perky, blonde-haired art major who currently has no job and no love interest. But this changes when a rich man named Juan Antonio, who is played by the excellent Javier Bardem, befriends them in a restaurant; and he asks them to join him for a weekend excursion. It is there that Vicky opens up and, despite her misgivings, falls in love with Juan.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is an unusually quiet film, and it requires us to pay close attention to its characters' every move. These are people who have been raised to hide disgruntlement, yet there are subtle signs of "weakness," a deep-seated dissatisfaction that breaks through the surface in almost unnoticeable gestures - an eye role, or a shrug - and in the occasional burst of emotional fury. Allen's technique is perfectly suited for the subject at hand. He gives equal attention to action that takes place in the background and foreground: Cristina, in one beautifully constructed sequence, eyes Juan at an art gallery while behind her, Vicky's parents blabber on about his scandalous exploits. We have our reservations about the guy, but Cristina obviously has other thoughts on her mind.

Where Allen is most successful, though, is in his depiction of the characters' sense of confinement. An overarching, cheerful-sounding narrator often pops in throughout their adventure, a risky technique that nonetheless succeeds in simultaneously summarizing and trivializing their efforts to find true love. Vicky and Cristina both feel trapped in their current situations, and Allen tends to place them between lines, or in the middle of the frame. This visual motif, however, is thrown out the window during a brief, torrid sex sequence between Cristina and Juan. Allen places his camera up-close on the two kissing passionately, and we only see a disorienting mish-mash of faces. These are people who transcend the film's rigid visual style, and their everyday, rational inhibitions. But this pleasurable escape proves to be all too brief.

Juan's unstable ex-wife Maria Elena (a terrifying Penelope Cruz), who, as an obsessive and often violent woman, is the source of his notoriety, decides to stay with him and Cristina; inevitably, the tension grows exponentially. And despite efforts to maintain his fidelity, Juan simply can't reject Maria - chemistry trumps relationship protocol. In justifying Maria's move back in, Juan tells Cristina, "Love is for each other." But the camera simply lingers on Cristina's pouting face; Allen seems to be saying that love is a purely selfish beast, that it is something that we use for our own well-being. It has the potential to be both wonderful and emotionally ruinous, and it is all but impossible to nail perfectly. But like most things, that doesn't stop people from trying.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 8/16/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Helvetica

"Helvetica"
Gary Hustwit, 2007

"Helvetica" is a decent documentary about the relatively new, now-ubiquitous font that is called, well, Helvetica. Through interviews with various graphic designers and many, many shots of signs that feature Helvetica, it provides an interesting perspective on fonts, which is an area that I wasn't all that familiar with. Fonts, we learn, are just like any other fashion or artistic movement: there are trends towards a certain style, and then a reaction. This is all pretty interesting, and yet the film feels like it should be more interesting. There is the nagging feeling that we are given only a fleeting glance into this surprisingly vast subject. For instance, we know why people really like Helvetica - and why others, just as equally, hate it - but why, exactly, was the font so revolutionary? The filmmakers avoid delving into the larger realm of font-hood; there is no exploration, for instance, of the craftsmanship that goes into making a font, and the things that makes certain fonts more aesthetically-pleasing than others. "Helvetica" has a more limited scope - for better or for worse, it simply wants to focus on Helvetica.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 8/15/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

Pineapple Express

"Pineapple Express"
David Gordon Green, 2008

"Pineapple Express" is a continuation of the "Apatow Company"'s fixation on losers who unwittingly place themselves in implausible situations. This time, the loser is a harmless stoner named Dale, who is played by Seth Rogan. Whenever he isn't with his high school-aged girlfriend, or pursuing people who are avoiding their subpoenas, he spends his time with his best friend, a mellow drug dealer named Saul (an excellent, unrecognizable James Franco). Saul is the exclusive distributor of a new, high-quality form of pot called Pineapple Express; and when Dale randomly witnesses a drug cartel-related murder, he accidentally drops his Express-laden stub, allowing the drug lord to track him down.

The film is consistently amusing, occasionally hilarious, and the laid-back characters are fun to watch - Rogan, in particular, has excellent comedic timing, which makes his character all the more memorable. During Dale and Saul's adventure, we witness two tender hit men, a gang of generic, bellicose Asians, and many violent deaths. But this is the area where "Pineapple Express" falters. "Hot Fuzz," another action-comedy film, managed to combine both its dry humor and its action sequences perfectly; I can't imagine enjoying that film nearly as much without its ultra-violent and hysterical finale. The comedy in "Pineapple Express" is quite good, but nothing special. Likewise, the action sequences are decent, but nothing special. The violence is merely there for violence's sake, and it ultimately feels extraneous. So, neither the comedy nor the action sequences are exceptional, but if the filmmakers had made a serious effort to meld the two, who knows what the final product may have looked like.

Rating: 7

First Viewed: 8/14/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Truly Madly Deeply

"Truly Madly Deeply"
Anthony Minghella, 1990

A story about someone's grief following the death of a loved one is probably difficult to tell: it could veer into sappy and melodramatic territory, or it could remain incessantly dour. "Truly Madly Deeply," I think, comes close to balancing both aspects of such a story perfectly. It occasionally feels like a chick flick, but more often, there is a tragic tinge throughout the narrative. Most of all, it is a touching tale that is intelligently laid out. At the film's onset, the director Anthony Minghella earnestly strives to place us in the mourner's shoes, to make us feel her sorrow and her desperation. Nina, whose husband, Jamie, has suddenly died, always seems to be on the brink of collapse. Her new flat is infested with rats, and she has to put up with her obnoxious sister, and with men who want to date her. She tries to hide her anxieties behind a flimsy veneer, but she can't help herself; she breaks down and cries. The actress Juliet Stevenson, who looks both young and haggard, gives a remarkable, heartbreaking performance; we can see, in her unconsciously nervous mannerisms and in her taut facial expressions, how quickly Jamie's death has aged her.

And then, while Nina is at her most distressed, Jamie's ghost manifests itself. Alan Rickman delivers a wonderful, rich performance: he can be fun and witty, but there is also an ambiguous air about him, because we are unsure whether the ghost is beneficial or detrimental to Nina's health. She stays within her flat for days at a time to remain with Jamie, but she also gets sick of his presence and goes out on a date. It is a fun dilemma that brings up a number questions concerning death. Is the mourner simply delusional if the now-dead person seems to manifest itself physically? When is it appropriate to mourn, and then to move on with one's life? What I like most about "Truly Madly Deeply" is that it manages to both elevate, to great emotional heights, and humorously reduce Jamie. After all, most of us seem to gloss over people's faults once they have died.

First Viewed: 8/12/08, on a subpar DVD - IMDb

A Hard Day's Night

"A Hard Day's Night"
Richard Lester, 1964

This film is a very entertaining comedy, a pseudo-documentary that follows a day in the life of The Beatles. The band members portray themselves as dry-humored troublemakers who are constantly being chased by hordes of screaming fans. There are many entertaining scenes, many funny dialogue exchanges ("Are you a Mod or a Rocker," a reporter asks Ringo, who replies, "No, I'm a mocker."), and catchy songs, which all seem to be concerned with falling in love with women. Ironically, all of the band members, in the film at least, are recluses who are so egocentric that they are only comfortable amongst each other. But they, and the director Richard Lester, seem to have a lot of fun engaging in their many fictional shenanigans, and their joy is simply infectious.

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 8/11/08, on DVD - IMDb

Unbreakable

"Unbreakable"
M. Night Shyamalan, 2000

This film has a superb collection of actors and filmmakers. There is Bruce Willis, who plays a security guard who is the only survivor in a train derailment, and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays his opposite as an eccentric comic book collector whose bones are so fragile that they shatter at the slightest impact. It is nicely shot by the cinematographer Eduardo Serra, James Newton Howard provides the score, Dylan Tichenor of "Brokeback Mountain" and "There Will be Blood" is the editor, and Richard King, who did brilliant work on "Master and Commander," is the sound editor.

The reason that I am methodically going through this checklist of filmmakers is to ascertain where in the hell "Unbreakable" went wrong. All signs point to its director, M. Night Shyamalan, and to the lack of an essential element - a decent script. His story has some potential: it is an every-man take on superheroes, a slow-paced examination of a man who is unwilling to, but slowly beginning to accept, his unusual powers. But many things go wrong. Most of the dialogue is cringe-worthy, the acting has a strange and artificial quality to it, there are many moments of unintentional hilarity; and the ending is lame, or rather, it is feebly played out, reduced to a couple of pre-credit sentences describing what happened in the likely climatic moment.

What makes "Unbreakable" such a frustrating film is that it has excellent moments and excellent technical work by the filmmakers I mentioned above - of particular note is Willis' on-board experience minutes before the train disaster, and a very suspenseful and nicely constructed sequence where Willis uses his power to try to save hostages from a psychopath. But ultimately, it is too little too late; "Unbreakable" is a prelude to Shyamalan's later and reportedly even more disappointing efforts.

Rating: 3

First Viewed: 8/10/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

Step Brothers

"Step Brothers"
Adam McKay, 2008

Watching the new comedy "Step Brothers" is as fun as watching two six-year-old special-needs kids run amok. Because, well, that is exactly what we see, though these two kids have the bodies of forty-year-olds, who are played by Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly. The boring and predictable premise is as follows: the step-brothers' exceedingly rich parents meet at a conference and marry, forcing them - they still live at home - to move in to the same house. Havoc ensues when they realize that they share many passions, and when their parents finally force them to step into the real world and find a job. "Step Brothers" is a movie that compels us to ask whether all people should be allowed to be parents, or perhaps whether members of the upper echelon of society should be allowed to inbreed, because that's the only thing that could have produced our two idiot protagonists.

We watch Will Ferrel rub his testicles, or very convincing fake ones, on a drum set. We witness a mob of foul-mouthed students beat up the step-brothers and force them to eat white dog shit. There is an arch-rival, Ferrel's brother who is, of course, a complete douche. There is a falling out between all members of the family and then an inevitable reconciling. But none of this is funny. I chuckled twice, but "Step Brothers" is a boring movie with terrible comedic timing, terrible writing, and many stupid characters who we wish we could simply euthanize. The movie is, as my cousin told me upon walking out of the theater, "fucking stupid!"

Rating: 1

First Viewed: 8/9/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

A Scanner Darkly

"A Scanner Darkly"
Richard Linklater, 2006

There are swarms of insects crawling out of Charlie's (Rory Cochrane) hair. The bug-eyed man tries to wash them away, but they won't disappear. The bugs aren't real, though. Charlie, we soon learn, is just another victim of the extremely addictive drug, Substance D, which slowly eats away at the brain. Much of the population is addicted to it and, like Charlie's insects, their paranoia and hallucinations intrude on all parts of their lives, and even into the film's very visuals. "A Scanner Darkly," which is based on a science-fiction novel that is written by Philip K. Dick, uses a technique called rotoscoping, which gives all of the characters and their environments a bizarre, shifting quality. It is not used as a gimmick, though the filmmakers may have benefited by refraining from animating everything, particularly during a flashback sequence. Rather, the rotoscoping successfully relays the detachment people feel from each other and from their unpleasant realities. We see a highly vocal man, who criticizes society for letting itself become addicted to Substance D, get dragged into a police van, but the onlookers act unperturbed. We wonder, does society not care about its own problems, or are people merely unsure about how to deal with their issues?

In an effort to curb the widespread addiction, the government uses such big-brother tactics as listening in on cell phone conversations and placing secret cameras within homes. Even the drug investigators themselves work in an environment where they are detached from one another - they wear full-body suits that project constantly shifting images of many people in an effort, presumably, to protect their identities. It is in this workplace that we meet our protagonist, an investigator named Bob, who is played by the always, though this time appropriately, saturnine Keanu Reeves. He lives in a house with other drug addicts, including his love interest Donna (Winona Ryder), and a talkative drug dealer named James, who is played by an amusing Robert Downey, Jr.

"A Scanner Darkly" has a number of interesting characters, and it brings up a number of fascinating questions. But I have the irksome feeling that we are merely being presented with a slice of these characters' lives. The scenes don't always flow together well, and the film tends to drag whenever Downey, Jr. is not on-screen to entertain us. And there is the aforementioned flashback, which depicts Bob's former life with his family; it raises the possibility that he was not happy, which is why he turned to Substance D. But then, this theme, this character's unhappiness with suburban life, isn't developed; it awkwardly stands as is. "A Scanner Darkly" is a good film, but it had the potential to be great. It is a film that remains as frustratingly incomplete as its unfulfilled characters.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 8/6/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

The Fountain

"The Fountain"
Darren Aronofsky, 2006

"The Fountain" is an ambitious undertaking, a science-fiction romance that attempts to transcend the constraints of typical, more terrestrial relationships. Hugh Jackman plays Tom, a character who exists on three planes of existence; as a conquistador who tries to find the Tree of Life, as a temperamental surgeon who operates on monkeys, and as a bald hermit inhabiting a bubble that floats through space. Tom spends every moment of his existence trying to find eternal happiness with his wife, Izzi, who is played by Rachel Weisz. She, too, exists on multiple planes of being; as the queen of Spain, as a wife who is dying from a mysterious illness, and as a huge tree that floats through space with Tom.

"The Fountain"'s technical aspects are nearly impeccable: Aronofsky's sound is appropriately spare; and the cinematographer Matthew Libatique gives the film a unique appearance, lighting Tom so that he appears to be a solitary figure amidst a blanket of darkness, a desperate man who is intent only on being united with his wife. But in all its visual and aural slickness, and in Aronofsky's ambitious attempt to make his film a transcending work of art, there is an essential element that is missing - the romance. This is an incredibly cold movie, and there is simply no chemistry between our two protagonists. We witness some acts of love, but we don't feel the romance, an essential part of trying to empathize with Tom and his journey. And then there is the nature of the film's theme: it seems to be something about how all aspects of life are unified. Aronofsky presents this as something that is incredibly profound, throwing in many random, cryptic quotes for good measure, but I fail to see what makes it so unique. In the end, this is just a film with some very pretty visuals, and a confounding and disappointingly aloof story.

Rating: 5.5

First Viewed: 8/6/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

Hoodwinked!

"Hoodwinked!"
Cory and Todd Edwards, 2005

"Hoodwinked!" is a very low-budget film with very cheap-looking animation; and often, its many attempts at humor fall flat. Nevertheless, it is a surprisingly amusing take on the prototypical "who-dunnit" scenario. Here, a burglar is stealing all of the independent business' secret recipes, driving the forest critters out of business. It is in this situation that our four protagonists unwittingly converge: Little Red Riding Hood (voiced by Anne Hathaway), her kick-ass Grandma (Glenn Close) who runs a cookie-baking company, the Wolf (Patrick Warborton) who is an investigative journalist, and the Woodsman (James Belushi) who is a failing amateur actor. The plot is predictable, and it is obvious who the villain is from the start, but there are those surprisingly fun moments where the film transcends its limited scope. ("I should have been a movie critic!," says the beleagured Wolf at one point.) The film aims to be amusing, and that's exactly what it accomplishes.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 8/6/08, on DVD - IMDb

Man On Wire

"Man On Wire"
James Marsh, 2008

"Man On Wire" opens with the all-too-familiar shot of construction crews milling about Ground Zero's demolished landscape. But then, we realize that this is only stock footage of workers laying down the foundations for the World Trade Center, a moment that also inaugurates the life-long passion of a young French adventurer named Philippe Petit. From there, the buildings' construction and Philippe's skill at tightroping develop until finally, in 1974, Philippe accomplishes his life-long goal of tightroping between the twin towers.

This is a wonderful documentary that centers on this very eccentric and engaging individual, who doesn't have a "why" as to why he tightropes. The best reason he can come up with is that it's illegal (which means that it's a lot of fun) and that it doesn't really hurt anybody - unless, of course, he falls off the wire. The director James Marsh sprinkles the interesting narrative with several very amusing, tongue-in-cheek reenactments, a number of revealing and often hilarious interviews, and a collection of excellent footage.

It is rare for a film to capture the magic of its subject's endeavors, but "Man On Wire" manages to accomplish just that. Yet there is a bittersweet undercurrent that gives this documentary an unusually haunting quality. "Man On Wire" poses the question: What is there to do when you've accomplished all of your life-long goals? After Philippe walks between the towers, he and his friends naturally go their separate ways, and Philippe doesn't appear to have accomplished much since.There is also the nature of the twin towers, whose fate Marsh wisely leaves out of his film. Still undergoing construction at the time of Philippe's feat, the complex feels like a character in its own right, and we can't help but wonder if, when the towers were destroyed, a part of Philippe, and his idealism, died along with it.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 8/5/09, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

All About Eve

"All About Eve"

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950

"All About Eve" has a boring aesthetic. The characters are always indoors, and we tend to view their interactions from a distance; it as though we are watching a play. But looks can be deceiving, because underneath this film's plain appearance is a fascinating story about a collection of fascinating characters who are involved in the theater business. There is the prolific playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), his outgoing wife Karen (Celeste Holm), Lloyd's excellent actress Margo (Bette Davis), and her boyfriend, the director Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill). And then there is our unofficial narrator, the wonderfully sardonic critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) who everybody simultaneously despises and respects.

One day, Karen introduces a reticent woman, named Eve (Anne Baxter), who has watched all of Margo's performances in Lloyd and Bill's most recent play, to the group. Eve is basically a stalker, but her enthusiasm and modest nature win them over. Soon enough, Eve becomes Margo's assistant, but she's also a very good actress who sells herself as someonewho can replace the aging Margo. The first half of the film is viewed from the perspective of Margo, who is so distraught about the limitations of her age that she almost breaks down. This narrative is beautifully and patiently constructed so that we are not sure who to blame. Margo is very selfish about her own career, and she treats Eve cruelly, but we know that there has to be a more nefarious side under Eve's incessantly modest veneer.

All the while, we have the privilege of listening to some of the finest banter ever written. ("There comes a time that a piano realizes that it has not written a concerto," Lloyd says to Margo, who fires back, "And you, I take it, are the Paderewski who plays his concerto on me, the piano?") We witness many terrific performances, and we even see a young Marilyn Monroe playing the brainless opposite to Sanders's cynical critic. But it is during the final fifteen minutes that the film really comes together. Eve wins an award for giving a great performance, but when the audience applauds, Mankiewicz refuses to cut away to a shot of people clapping and keeps his camera on her. In using this very subtle technique, we come to realize that in winning everything, Eve has lost everything - all of the potential friends that she alienated in her rise to the top. "All About Eve" is really a rise-and-fall tale, and in the final shot, in which a younger version of Eve twirls in front of many mirrors that make it seem like she is surrounded by images of herself, it is apparent that the quest for success ends in nothing but misery for the person who works at it alone.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 8/3/08, on a DVD with a lovely transfer - IMDb

The Jason Statham Sagas

The Jason Statham Sagas

"Crank" (2006) and "The Bank Job" (2007)

(A brief note... I only watched the first twenty-five minutes of “Crank.” These are my initial thoughts, which I think would apply to the rest of its eighty-seven minute runtime.)

What are we supposed to make of a film that fully embraces its own idiocy? “Crank” starts on an unusual note, with a view of a lovely apartment flat's interior from the distorted perspective of Jason Statham, who plays a hit-man. Apparently, he has angered a Chinese mobster by murdering one of his colleagues, and said mobster has injected him with poison in his sleep. The over-theatrical mobster shows all of this on a DVD, and after watching the short video, Statham proceeds to very violently, and hilariously, pummel his poor flat-screen T.V. out of frustration. The film's premise is silly, but it is potentially entertaining: Statham is going to die, but he can keep living for a short period of time if he keeps his adrenaline levels high. How does he go about doing this? By snorting cocaine off of a floor, by driving through an indoor shopping mall while he is being pursued by cops, and by drinking lots of Red Bull.

“Crank”'s sole purpose should be to provide a lot of mindless fun, and it certainly does in the moments I cited above. But most of the time, it is a visually nauseating experience that is stupid, insultingly crude in its stereotypes, and misogynistic. The dialogue consists of nothing but variants of the words “fuck” and “cunt” - this is certainly no “Deadwood,” a T.V. show whose dialogue managed to be both incredibly profane and beautiful. We are battered with in-your-face photography and editing that resembles an M.T.V. video, and a horrendous, pounding metal score. All blacks in the film have guns and are part of a “brotherhood,” and all of the women are sluts who are slaves to their men.

So, why did I decide to stop watching “Crank?” There is a scene where Statham, being chased by the cops, hijacks a taxi by calling the understandably uncooperative driver an “Al-Qaeda member.” A bunch of old people proceed to grab a hold of the poor guy and beat him up. I was watching “Crank” with my parents, and all of us instantaneously reached for the remote at that moment. I don't know. Maybe we are hopelessly out of the loop with regards to what makes a film funny - obviously, the taxi driver deserved to be labeled a terrorist merely for refusing to help out our neanderthal of a hero. Or maybe the film is simply terrible. I'm leaning towards the latter.

~~~

“The Bank Job” has an intriguing premise that it is based off of a true story. A member of the British Royal Family is on vacation, and while she is engaged in some torrid sex with several island natives, she is photographed by a criminal who aims to blackmail the Royal Family in order to escape prosecution. It's a strange sequence to open a film, and it's awkwardly staged, with the princess having slow-motion sex within an open-air hut. We may as well be watching a pornography video, but it's a start, I suppose.

From there, we watch as government operatives recruit a small team of incompetent robbers, led by Statham, to break into a bank, one of whose deposit boxes holds the indecent pictures of the princess. This part of the film is boring and clumsily-constructed, and it contains some disturbing similarities to “Crank.” Many of the women, at least initially, are portrayed as incompetent, or they are literally prostitutes. And again, the only blacks in the film are part of a “brotherhood,” which is led by an evil man named “Michael X,” who warns his enemies that every black person on the street will be out to kill them if they cross his path.

This film isn't much fun until we witness the actual preparations and the robbery itself, because those sequences are tightly-constructed and surprisingly suspenseful. But complications arise from the robbery, and many groups – government operatives, politicians, Michael X, and a porn king – fight for the photographs. “The Bank Job” stumbles in trying to depict how all of these narratives intersect, but everything eventually works out. One character asks Statham, “How did that happen?” to which our stoic protagonist replies, “Fucked if I know.” This brief exchange sums up the underlying belief of these two Statham films - things just happen, and whether or not we are ready to accept these contrivances is our issue, not the films'.

"Crank" First Viewed 8/2/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb
"The Bank Job" First Viewed 8/2/08, on DVD - IMDb

The Band's Visit

"The Band's Visit"

Eran Kolirin, 2007

This film is unusually slow. Most of the shots remain stationary, and whenever we view streets, which the director Eran Kolirin shows us to an almost obsessive extent, there are no visible signs of life. This is all appropriate given that his film is about listless people who are trapped in a long-forgotten area of Israel. Here's the premise: an Egyptian police band, which is humorously given the long-winded title "The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra," lands in Israel, and instead of taking a bus to the large Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tiqvah, where they are to give a performance the next day, they accidentally take a bus in the opposite direction, to the isolated desert town of Beit Hatikvah.

It is there that both groups, the bored, suspicious residents and the fatigued, equally wary band members, collide. "The Band's Visit," which extracts most of its humor from the awkward nature of these characters' interactions, feels like a strange hybrid between a Wes Anderson film and last year's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." Kolirin uses wide-angle lenses on his characters who stand uncomfortably within the frame, and he gives his film a patient, methodical pace. Unfortunately, "The Band's Visit" tends to verge on the saccharine, and despite some fun moments where the residents and the band members transcend their unease with one another, the film can't shake off the mustiness that stems from its stagnant setting and its sluggish pacing. The next day, the band members catch their bus, arrive in Petah Tiqvah, and perform their concert. Life moves on, but their experience doesn't feel all that significant.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 8/1/08, on DVD
IMDb