Max's Review

Max's Review...

2009-02-01T22:29:00.000-08:00

... has moved to WordPress.

I've been using Blogger (Google) to post movie reviews for nearly a year. I've decided to try out WordPress.com, because its layout is generally more intuitive, backups are much easier to handle, and it provides some other benefits that Google simply doesn't have. Thank you for visiting my blog, and I'll see you at the new site!

The URL:
http://maxsreview.wordpress.com/

Best,
Max

Short Cuts #1

2009-01-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty distracted over the last month, what with winter break and my first week of school. This is my first attempt to play catch up, with several brief reviews of some films that I've seen this week.

“Sans Soleil” (1982) is a challenging, though highly rewarding, film: it's a mish-mash of ideas about modern culture, set predominantly in Tokyo, and conceived around a narrated series of letters, by the director Chris Marker. The film is hard to fit into one category, because it's an essay and a documentary that also ventures into the avant-garde. Its images are fascinating: they range from the beautiful (a dog lying on a beach) to the graphic (a giraffe getting shot three times: in the haunch, in the neck, and finally in the head), to the ostensibly banal activities of residents in Tokyo. Tied to Marker's brilliant narrative, the images become something even more powerful: they represent a mere approximation of Marker's memories. But this self-organization of what goes on in one's life is something that we also engage in, because reality, as “Sans Soleil” helps us to realize, is just a collection of sketches in our minds. Marker says that there is a “degree of truth in banality.” And while we struggle to understand our place in our own world, Marker is kind enough to offer us an exceptional view into his own. (First viewed on 1/22/09, in 35mm projection at the PFA.)

“Nanook of the North” (1922) is an early documentary, by Robert Flaherty, about the life of an Eskimo... with a really long name that Flaherty simplified to "Nanook." I've seen it twice, and both times I've fallen asleep for long stretches because it's so boring; and because it treats its subjects as, literally, "happy-go-lucky" and "simple" people. (Second viewing on 1/20/09, on a DVD in class.)

“The Broadway Melody” (1929) was MGM's first musical; critics at the time considered it one of the best early sound films, considering the technical limitations that filmmakers endured during the transition from silent cinema to sound. (The difficulties in making a sound film were mocked twenty-something years later in MGM's “Singin' in the Rain”). It won the Oscar for Best Picture, but, really, this film is terrible. The story is unambitious and stupid - it centers on two annoying women who try to get into show business. The dialogue is very stilted, there's essentially no camerawork, and the action is shot from far away because cameras had to be kept in cumbersome soundproof boxes. Plus, there's a very nasty depiction of an extremely stereotypical gay man, who serves as the theater's tailor. It made me feel so angry – I now have some idea how black people - or typically stereotyped members of any race, religion, and/or sex, for that matter - must feel when they see how they've been depicted in early films. (First viewed on 1/20/09, on a DVD in class.)

Doubt

2009-01-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

"Doubt"
John Patrick Shanley, 2008

“Doubt” is the film adaptation of a play about a priest who is accused by a Catholic school's principal of sexually abusing a student. In the film, the priest is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the severe principal by Meryl Streep, and a nun, given the unfortunate and dull role of a pawn between the two contesting powers, by Amy Adams. The problems with “Doubt” arise from its translation from a play to the screen – or, rather, the lack of much of a translation. The film is set up as a series of arguments between two to three characters within a single setting; this technique works well on-stage, but not in a film. The interactions are interesting initially, at least, but not after an hour of hearing the same issues ad nauseam: Streep's nun repeatedly states that she suspects the priest is “doing something” with the boy, but this action is never explicitly stated; the act is instead relegated to excessive implication.

At its best, “Doubt” presents us with an interesting conflict between two mindsets: one that wants to be more receptive of changes in secular society, as represented by the priest, and one that fiercely defends the status quo, as represented by the principal. Streep plays her character to the extreme, so much so that she nearly transcends the movie – her principal comes across as more of a spectacled specter than a real person. Much, or perhaps most, of her hatred for the priest stems from his “unorthodox” practices, which include being protective of the school's only black student, who is, as it turns out, also the student he is accused of abusing. Most important, then, is the way that the film presents the priest's culpability. From what I have heard, the play leaves the priest's culpability to our imagination – in other words, it leaves us doubtful of his actual culpability. The filmmakers, however, are less keen on the power of ambiguity. There is a telling shot of Hoffman's priest bashfully glancing upwards at a cross, which obviously paints him as guilty – Hoffman does his best, but he's never given a chance.

5.5/10

First Viewed: 12/17/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2008-12-26T01:11:00.000-08:00

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
David Fincher, 2008

Why are filmmakers so obsessed with exposing our vulnerability and temporality? This year, we have seen at least two serious attempts at exploring these hefty concerns. The first is Charlie Kaufman's “Synecdoche, New York,” which centers on a brilliant artist who tries to overcome artistic and personal impediments. The second is David Fincher's latest film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” The latter is about a man named Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who is born in New Orleans, at the culmination of World War One, in 1918, as an old man who ages backwards.

It's a wonderful, intricately made film, though it's so precisely constructed that its characters are left somewhat emotionally sterile. But I think that this is Fincher's point - that people are subject to circumstances that lie beyond their control. Much of Benjamin's journey consists of simply running into interesting people, many of whom are full of regret, and seeing what cards they have been dealt – and how they deal with their circumstances. He befriends a bored, middle-aged woman named Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who attempted to swim across the English Channel, only to find that the current was so strong that she had to give up on her dream within two miles of France's shore. In one beautifully engineered sequence, Fincher illustrates how Benjamin's love interest, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who was a dancer, could have continued her successful career had the taxi that ended up hitting her driven by five minutes earlier, or had the driver stopped for coffee; and so on. Thus we get the fascinating, if somewhat sobering, notion that people are defined largely by their experiences, rather than necessarily being fascinating in themselves.

Like “Zodiac” (2007), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” feels a bit too long. But Fincher has a keen sense of visuals and of pacing that helps to keep his nearly three hour movie interesting. The film has a curious self-reflexive quality: there is a visual motif involving a clock running backwards, while Benjamin's life moves ahead, and a running gag involving an old man that tells a story about how he was struck repeatedly by lightning (we see grainy, degraded clips that depict these events). Paolo Cherchi Usai, in his book The Death of Cinema, describes film itself as a temporal thing, and as much a subject to time as the characters it chronicles. But if one's life and the medium on which it is recorded – be it film, or the diary on which Benjamin's story is chronicled – is subject to deterioration, and, ultimately, destruction, the most that we can hope to expect is that that the experience itself is memorable. Fortunately for us, it certainly is in Benjamin's case.

Given the sheer amount of detail and characters that Fincher chronicles in Benjamin's unusual journey, it is surprising how poorly he approaches a couple of essential elements in his film. The framing narrative, which takes place in a hospital, with Daisy on her deathbed and her daughter reading Benjamin's journal, feels awkward; and whenever Fincher cuts to it, it takes us out of Benjamin's narrative. And then there's his approach to the prospect of Benjamin, now an old man – in a young man's body – having a child with Daisy. Benjamin feels that he wouldn't be a good father because he would basically be a kid while his child grew up; but he fails to mention how he's matured and developed during his sixty-or-so years of life – he ends up leaving Daisy anyway. It feels like a bit of a cop-out. But as we find out by the end of the film, Benjamin, like the other fascinating people that he befriends, holds similar long-lasting regrets about this very decision, which, admittedly, lies largely outside of his control.

8/10

First Viewed: 12/25/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Interview with the Vampire

2008-12-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

"Interview with the Vampire"
Neil Jordan, 1994

“Interview with the Vampire,” which is based on a novel by Anne Rice, has a very simple and predictable narrative, which is kind of strange considering its bizarre subject matter. Brad Pitt plays a vampire who gives an account of his centuries-long life to a reporter (Christian Slater). Pitt used to be a plantation owner from New Orleans, but after the deaths of his wife and daughter, he spent his days gambling away his money, because he didn't care about life anymore. This is where a Parisian vampire, played by an unintentionally hilarious and over-the-top Tom Cruise, enters – and it is only when Pitt becomes a vampire that he finally appreciates the life of a normal person.

A character's new-found appreciation for life is a potentially interesting theme, but since we don't really know much about Pitt's past and how his life really became different once he turned into a vampire, this essential part of the movie doesn't resonate with us. We instead turn to other aspects of the film, most of which turn out to be inadequate. The set design, the makeup, and many of the visuals are excellent. Everything else, including the acting, the story, and the silly ending, in particular – not so much.

5/10

First Viewed: 12/24/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

The Get-Together

2008-12-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Get-Together

We pass through dim stretches of freeway, on average four lanes across, before reaching our destination. Except that it takes several passes down a cul-de-sac before we actually find the right house. They all look the same, and it doesn't help that it's dark – and that my dad, who's driving, punched in the wrong address on Google Maps. But he decides to park in front of the one home with its lights on and with people going in and with a large, inviting sign that says “Happy Hanukah!” As it turns out, he guesses correctly.

I find get-togethers to be awkward affairs, particularly when they involve older people who I don't know. There's a crush of them by the food in the kitchen. They know my parents and my brother and sister, but not me. But I look like my dad, and I'm as tall and lanky as my younger brother, both of whom this crowd is familiar with, so I'm not without company. I engage in some conversations, which go pretty well until I mention that I'm a Film Studies major. This usually elicits two responses: one, the person pretends that this is a good thing – “how interesting” – and moves on, unless, on the rare occasion, they talk about their favorite film and explain why it worked for them; or two, the person asks me what I'm going to do with such a major. In other words, how am I not going to starve after I finish college? I give them the three half-baked options I'm currently considering – applying to law school, getting involved with films (in cinematography or post-production), or teaching. The person flashes a grin and says something, like, Well, I didn't know what I was going to do when I was in college either. And then, with nothing left to say, both people have to move on. But for some reason, neither person can look the other in the eye and say, “I have nothing left to say to you.” What ends up happening is the other person and I smile at each other for a while, or one of us says that we have to grab food, or we just drift our separate ways.

I start piling food from the buffet onto my plate, until my mom comes over to warn me that it's not being served yet, though it's already, technically, being served by me. Well, that makes me sound like a jerk. But I usually am when I'm hungry. People begin lining up at the buffet, and I get in line. A tall man cuts in front of me, and I tell him that I was in line before him. He deflects my direct statement with a very dry one – “You'll remember me as the prick who cut in front of you” – that only somewhat obscures what he really thinks I am, and cuts behind me.

I actually knew a few of the people there before tonight's get-together. There's Hannah, who was in our synagogue's then-makeshift teen choir with me. She's in the middle of wrapping up college applications, which she finds exhausting, and she hopes to get into Carnegie Mellon. She still goes to religious school, in large part because she loves our cantor, who I never got all that close to for some reason; maybe it's because I sensed that she didn't really like me, even though I enjoyed singing in the choir. I can't really say. There's Samara, a blond-haired girl who was also in the choir with me, and who's also finishing up her applications. There's Penny, the daughter of a member on our synagogue's board of directors, who keeps her hair cut short and has an unusually sweet smile. She's tired of the shallow, arrogant and sheltered people at her private school, and she wants to get out of California. She's a member of her school's GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance). We have a very stimulating conversation.

I lean against the wall, eating chocolate cake with a fork in one hand and cradling my empty plastic cup between an armpit as I listen to some members of the choir sing “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” a highly amusing song by Tom Lehrer. Finally, we leave the house and walk to our car. It's hard to see. There are only two streetlamps to light the way.

The Double Life of Veronique

2008-12-19T01:23:00.000-08:00

"The Double Life of Veronique"

Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991

Watching “The Double Life of Veronique” is like trying to solve a puzzle, but without such nuisances as burgeoning frustration or headaches. No, this is one of those films that is stunning because of its quietness, its challenging yet simple narrative, and its patient pacing. The film centers on two women, who may be identical twins, named Veronique, both of whom are played by an outstanding Irene Jacob: one of them is a promising singer in Poland and the other is a teacher in France. Neither of them know that the other exists. But when one of them suddenly dies, we switch to the narrative of the other Veronique, who is in the middle of having sex with her boyfriend.

The director Krzysztof Kieslowski likes to play with this idea of opposites, and how two extremes really aren't so far apart. We witness, for instance, this link between pain and sex, and death and life, when we first see the other Veronique, who inexplicably feels saddened post-coitus, because she feels that she's lost someone she knows. And for the rest of the film, Veronique attempts to figure out who or what she has lost. Kieslowski and his cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (“Black Hawk Down”) craft an impeccable visual world, complete with a red and green color palette and numerous reflections, that reveal Veronique's confusion, while making the notion of the double all the more apparent.

Veronique's journey is really one of self-discovery, about a woman trying to figure out who she is, even though she inhabits a world that seems to lie much beyond her control. But there is also a somewhat self-reflexive quality to the film; it feels like it is as much about Veronique's story as it is about us being able to look in on her life. It is no accident that a love interest of hers is a puppeteer, Alexandre Fabbri (Philippe Volter), who himself involves her in a playful scheme of his. In one memorable sequence, Veronique, clad only in her underwear, walks up to a window, touches the glass with her hand, and closes her eyes. It is then that we realize that she is yearning for something inexplicable, something, perhaps, that lies beyond her limited, filmic world. But we, the viewers, are merely on the other side of the looking glass. Rarely have I felt so close to and so far away from a character. Rarely has this boundary between reality and artifice been so vaguely and so clearly delineated.

10/10

First Viewed: 12/19/08, on a lovely Criterion DVD - IMDb

Duly Noted: Live Free or Die Hard and Les Choristes

2008-12-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Duly Noted
"Live Free or Die Hard" and "Les Choristes"

“Live Free or Die Hard,” being the latest film in the franchise that gave us the classic action film “Die Hard” (I have not seen the other two sequels) is the type of of movie that you try your best to enjoy. It features Bruce Willis as the bad-ass super-cop, John McClane. It's supposed to offer great action sequences, some fantastic one-liners, and great villains; in short, it has the potential to serve as perfect entertainment. The problems I have with “Live Free or Die Hard” are similar to those I have after listening to Coldplay. Their songs are catchy and easy to listen to, but I find them so inane and boring that, after listening to one of their songs, I ask myself why I chose to do so in the first place. I felt the exact same way after watching “Live Free and Die Hard.”

The movie, which is directed by Len Wiseman, the man behind “Underworld” and “Underworld: Evolution,” the other two films in his limited canon, has the following premise: a computer genius and villain with the utterly uncreative bad-guy name Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is angry when leaders in the U.S. ignore his calls to revamp the security of the computer networks upon which the country relies. In retaliation, he decides to bring the country to its knees by controlling everything through computers, hiring a sizable team of thugs to carry out his dirty work, and teaming up with his lover, a martial-arts specialist named Mai. Oh, and McClane gets involved when the Feds send him to rescue a ditzy computer hacker named Matt Farrell from Gabriel's thugs.

It's an utterly ridiculous plot, and I don't mind that in the least. What bother me most is that an evil plan involving a villain that gains control of everything is, by its nature, dull. One could argue that the premise of “Die Hard” was similar, but the difference is that Alan Rickman's villain disillusioned himself with his perfect master plan. He was so arrogant that he couldn't recognize its flaws; then, McClane made an entrance, and the rest is history. In “Live Free or Die Hard,” Gabriel has instantaneous access top secret documents and facilities, he can see everything on CCTV, and he can even order a jet to attack targets; he has such an omnipotent presence that it ignores the far more interesting and crazed humanity behind such a plot. It isn't a plan that lies within the realm of great villainy – it's an example of Hollywood at its most schizophrenic and incoherent.

Wiseman does not help matters. His direction, particularly of his actors, feels inadequate, and he appears to feel that he can make up for the film's various inadequacies by throwing a host of action movie cliches at us – the problem is that such requisite action movie fodder doesn't work very well either. The action sequences feel cobbled together, and the fight scenes between McClane and some henchman play out like poorly conceived boss fights in a video game. It's also troubling when the inevitable deus ex machina, involving Gabriel kidnapping McClane's daughter, fails to trigger any kind of feeling from its viewers. Like the rest of the movie, it's just plain boring.

"Les Choristes" follows the familiar mode of other inspirational films in which a brilliant teacher gives his students the opportunity and the hope that society has not. The setting is post-war France, where a middle-aged teacher named Clement Mathieu (an excellent Gerard Jugnot) starts work at a dreary institution for troubled children. Mathieu, who is a composer in his free time, goes against the school's stringent and incompetent headmaster and forms a chorus, making just about everyone feel happy.

It's difficult not to like "Les Choristes." Aside from an astoundingly stupid framing narrative, it's a pretty well made movie with decent performances – we even get to enjoy some lovely singing. But it's the kind of film that doesn't take any chances, that relishes in its own predictability, and doesn't leave much of an impression once you've finished the journey.

"Live Free or Die Hard" First Viewed: 12/11/08 on DVD - IMDb
"Les Choristes" First Viewed: 12/5/08, on DVD - IMDb

My New Yorker Obsession

2008-12-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

I've had a subscription to The New Yorker for nearly half a year, and I've basically been obsessed with it, haha. Their articles are extremely well-reported and provide an excellent template for aspiring writers. I usually try to read The Economist every few weeks, and I started reading other high-quality liberal publications like Harper's Magazine and The New Republic. Thus my transformation into a liberal elitist is almost complete, though I intend to come full circle and try reading conservative publications like The Nation next semester. In any case, I just wanted to make a list of my favorite articles that came out in this year's issues of The New Yorker. I've read great articles in other magazines, including National Geographic, but these were particularly exemplary.

"The Chameleon: The Many Lives of Frederic Bourdin"
by David Grann

This article chronicles the life of a notorious French impersonator, and what happens when he decides to impersonate a missing teenager from Texas. Rarely have I found an article so riveting. It was like reading a great piece of fiction - except that it was all real.

"Up and Then Down"
by Nick Paumgarten

This fantastic article delves into the elevator industry, and disproves some myths (the "close door" button hasn't been a functioning button since the early 1990s, and if you're trapped, there's literally no way to escape) while centering on the predicament of a worker who was trapped in his office's elevator during one harrowing weekend.

"Let It Rain"
by Hendrik Hertzberg

Hertzberg, a rather brilliant political observer, who was a former speechwriter for the Carter administration, provides this wonderfully incisive and witty essay about McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a political ploy that successfully, albeit briefly, took the wind out of Obama's sails in his post-DNC days.

Making It: How Chicago Shaped Barack Obama"
by Ryan Lizza

This nearly 15,000-word article, by Ryan Lizza, who is a graduate of UC Berkeley, is an impressive feat. The number of people he tracks down for his report is dizzying - I almost wish that Lizza had included a list of names so that I could keep track of them all, and their relationships to Obama.

"The Choice"
I read countless editorial endorsements in the weeks leading up to the election, but it was The New Yorker's lengthy and comprehensive one that really stood out to me. The editors have a way of making insights that may have been touched upon by other news sources sound incredibly compelling. For example, in describing Sarah Palin, "We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy."

"On a Limb"
by Dana Goodyear

This lovely piece concerns UC Berkeley's very own notorious treesitter, Fresh, who resided in front of Wheeler Hall during the spring semester. It's a funny, outsiders' look into the dilemma, and besides, it's about Cal, so that's really cool.

Favorite Reviews: "Troubled Sons" and "Soul Survivor"

These reviews, of "W.," by David Denby, and "Quantum of Solace," by Anthony Lane, are basically perfect film reviews. All aspiring critics, myself included, probably view these two reviews as the epitome of current film critique. It's hard to explain why, precisely, they work so well. It helps that both critics are incredibly erudite, and that they provide fresh takes on the films, and on what did or did not work for them. The key, I think, is that they criticize without sounding whiny, and it doesn't sound like they take it personally when a film sucks (this is something I'm trying to overcome in my reviews).

Well, Fuck You, Too: Frenzy and 25th Hour

2008-12-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

Well, Fuck You, Too

"Frenzy" and "25th Hour"

I find it fascinating, given the nearly twenty films that I've seen this semester in my class on Alfred Hitchcock, how little the director's interests changed during his fifty years of filmmaking. By 1972, he was still interested in the concept of the double persona within one individual, with characters drinking brandy, with staircases, with his guilt over his love for food, with his focus on falsely accused individuals, and with murdering someone through strangulation. But with “Frenzy” (1972), the first film that he made without having to worry about censors (it is his only R-rated film), all of these obsession are taken to a more extreme level.

The story is a Hitchcock staple: a troubled guy is falsely accused of murdering a woman, and he must work against authority figures in order to prove his innocence. But without the need to work against censors, which often forces a filmmaker to resort to more creative means, Hitchcock was free to depict his rather disturbing fascination with strangulation in a more graphic manner. The potential downside to this new-found freedom is that a filmmaker can go too far, and push the envelope when modesty may work best. What's remarkable about “Frenzy” is that Hitchcock, with the exception of a grating sequence involving a detective's wife bringing out disturbing-looking plates of food for dinner, knows when and when not to employ these new, more explicit filmmaking tools for the greatest effect.

“Frenzy” is not one of the director's best works: his characters aren't all that memorable, and he has explored this kind of story before – the film has a rather tired feel. (Admittedly, I may feel this way because the film was shot in the 1970s, when people and clothes were really ugly, and with an intentionally desaturated look, but I digress.) What Hitchcock offers us is a decent film with a few brilliant flourishes. Such moments as the notoriously brutal and unflinching murder sequence, where a “nice” guy gives in to his more violent impulses, and rapes and strangles a nice marriage counselor with his necktie, serve as a reminder that Hitch, even in his old age and his poor health, was a one-of-a kind filmmaker. I can't think of any other director who could assault his viewers with a horrible rape sequence, and have them love him all the more because of it.

“25th Hour” (2002), which stars Edward Norton as a former drug dealer, named Monty, who is about to go to prison, is only the third Spike Lee movie that I've seen – I now regret having seen so little of his work. It's a long and challenging film, but it's efficiently edited, well shot by the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, and so unusually compelling that it generally avoids its own potential pitfalls. “25th Hour” was filmed in New York during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Lee parallels the destruction, and reconstruction, of Ground Zero with the downfall and reconstruction of Norton's troubled character.

Lee is a bold filmmaker. He risks de-railing his narrative with a ten-minute rant, in which Monty, venting his director's frustrations - “Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life!” - gives an exasperated “fuck you” to just about every aspect of and person in New York. It's an unusual and self-reflexive sequence, but I think it's all the more stunning for those very reasons. I could imagine some viewers hating the sequence, particularly because it feels so arbitrary. But it really isn't - “25th Hour” is as much a testament to how Lee loves and hates his city as it is for Monty.

“Frenzy” First Viewed: 12/10/08, on DVD - IMDb
“25th Hour” First Viewed: 12/9/08, on DVD - IMDb

Note: I forgot that "25th Hour" is actually based off of a novel. Monty's rant is taken verbatim from the book. Nonetheless, I feel that Spike Lee could relate to the issues that the rant addresses, which is why it feels so powerful and personal, in my opinion.

The Birds

2008-12-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

"The Birds"

Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

Note: I'm taking a course on Hitchcock, and every Wednesday we have a screening of one of his films. Then we write our thoughts in a "journal," which we turn in the next day. This is one such journal. There are spoilers.

I first saw The Birds (1963) over ten years ago, on a VHS tape and a small screen. Even at that age I was blown away by the sheer spectacle of it all. But what I remembered most clearly from that initial viewing was the haunting image of the dead farmer, his eyes gouged out and his body riddled with bite marks. It struck an even more powerful chord with me this time around. I think that it is such a powerful scene because it deals with the notion that normal things that we take for granted can turn against us; at first, the birds are harmless, but for absolutely “no reason,” they suddenly turn into flesh-eating monsters.

The way that Hitchcock constructs the scene is brilliant. It begins with a long take of the mother slowly walking down the hallway, followed by brief point-of-view shots of the room – in total disarray and covered with streaks of blood – finally culminating in a trio of shots that jumps closer and closer into the corpse's mutilated face. In that brief moment, the mother's shock and terror becomes our own. It bears some similarity to the tracking shot on Charlie's hand in Shadow of a Doubt, when both Uncle Charlie and we realize the importance of the ring on her finger.

To be honest, I think that the setup of The Birds is weak; the connection between Mitch and Lydia is sketchy at best. But the film is really about tension, and in that regard it is a masterpiece. First, there is the actual tension that develops within the utterly bizarre love, um, quadrilateral between Mitch, Lydia, the mother, and Annie. We don't really understand what happened in these characters' pasts, but given the amount of animosity between the characters – most of which is unspoken; it is instead depicted through a number of glares, and the way that Hitchcock positions his characters within the frame – would we really want to find out?

Second, the actual bird attacks are masterfully conceived and executed. Every time a character was attacked, be it a child or a random stranger, I was shocked. I'm not really sure why those attacks were so powerful – I'm surprised that some viewers in the class laughed at many of these moments – but I can posit a guess. In the sequences within the house, we get the sense that our protagonists, led by Mitch, who is an ostensibly strong figure, are completely powerless. I think that Robin Wood sums it up perfectly when he describes the sequence as such: “The home-as-refuge becomes home-as-cage.” The Birds is so unsettling because of this very inversion of everyday life. Our protagonists are powerless, their home turns into a prison, and their fates are left up in the air.

Rating: 9

Second Viewing: 12/3/08, on DVD - IMDb

Were the World Mine

2008-11-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

"Were the World Mine"
Tom Gustafson, 2008

The hero of “Were the World Mine,” a new film that is based off of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” is a gay teenager named Timothy (Tanner Cohen), who attends a private, all-boys high school. Timothy has already come out to his mother, who, as a single parent struggling to find work, views his sexuality as yet another burden that she must carry. In P.E., he's often teased, and occasionally beat, by other students, with the encouragement of their pugnacious and homophobic coach (Christian Stolte). Timothy escapes from his travails by fantasizing about the hot guys in his class singing to him, shirtless, and in near-perfect synchronization, as if performing in a play.

Coincidentally, Timothy has a class with an affable English teacher named Ms. Tebbit (Wendy Robie) who encourages him to audition for the school's rendition of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Timothy, as it turns out, is a natural actor with a lovely voice. He's an untapped talent, and is given the leading role as the fairy (har har), but he has another unusual gift – he can make the love potion in Shakespeare's play work in real life. He gives nearly everyone in the town a whiff of the potion, which makes the person – or victim? - fall madly in love with the first person they lay eyes on.

Timothy, by way of his drug, receives the affections of the really cute captain of the rugby team, while the rest of the town's “moral” centered-ness disintegrates. It's surprising that given the setup, the profusion of hot guys, and the above-average visuals, “Were the World Mine” is so dull. Every gay person can relate to Timothy's crush on the high school jock, and how such people turn out to be incredibly hetero-normative. It's a fantasy that I thought I'd like to see play out on screen, but the film is really dealing with obsessions, not with love as it so claims.

A straight friend accidentally receives a dose of the love potion, and promptly grows enamored of Timothy; he's willing to fight to the death with the rugby team's captain for Timothy's favor. “Were the World Mine” feels deceiving because it puts such unreasonable obsessions on the same level as Timothy's real life crushes. This is not so much a film about a gay teen's fantasy, though this is what the film is really trying to be about, as it is a semi-cautionary tale about how unhealthy it is to obsess about other people. I would be content with an exploration of either aspect, but given the rather sloppy way in which the film is conceived, neither part plays out to a satisfactory extent.

At the end, after Timothy has “had his fun,” he casts a spell on everyone in town, returning them to their normal, pre-obsessive states. But everyone has, to some degree, had their eyes opened about love, acceptance – or something. It's not entirely clear what the lesson is, but it isn't all that important anyway. What matters most is the revelation that the rugby captain has really been in love with Timothy all along, and that it took the spell, the lifting of social misgivings about homosexuality, for him to finally accept that. So, our hero becomes a part of the gay fantasy incarnate. But it remains nothing more than a fantasy. Like waking from a dream, the contrivance of it all makes us feel not joy at Timothy's victory, but disappointment at its very flimsiness.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 11/25/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Beautiful Thing

2008-11-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

"Beautiful Thing"
Hettie Macdonald, 1996

"Beautiful Thing" is the film adaptation of an English play about two teenage boys who fall in love with each another. It's a cute story, but it does nothing for me. It is the type of movie that doesn't strive to surprise or enlighten us. It makes us feel good that things work out, which is exactly what what we expected from the start. Most of the scenarios suffer from an intangible, musty feel, as though the filmmakers demand that we feel for these characters, even though they are obviously nothing more than flat and largely unconvincing actors spouting out requisite lines about angst and love. On the upside, the relationship takes place in a very average setting - low income housing - between two very average-looking and socially awkward guys. I suppose there is something comforting and uplifting to be found in that, for us normal, and still single, viewers at least.

Rating: 3.5

First Viewed: 11/22/08, on DVD - IMDb

Snow Angels

2008-11-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

“Snow Angels”

David Gordon Green, 2007

In our introduction to the unnamed town in which David Gordon Green's film “Snow Angels” is set, we witness an off-key high school band practicing on the football field. It is the middle of winter, and we can see the students' breaths as they maneuver through the freezing air. There is a certain resignation in their labored movements and in their inability to please their increasingly frustrated band leader, who is considerably older than his students. Here, Green establishes an interesting rift between a frustrated younger generation and an older one that is even more resigned to its small-town fate; it feels like members of both generations have been sapped of creative and emotional energy by the literal freeze that envelops their town.

Green, working with the cinematographer Tim Orr, carefully constructs the film's atmosphere by washing his characters in bright white light and keeping them confined within the frame, either in close up or long shot; the town somehow feels empty and claustrophobic at once. Within such a high-pressure setting, Green is intent on exploring the notion of the family ideal, and specifically with how that ideal is always sought after – if not expected – and never reached, with disastrous consequences.

At the center of Green's film is the very sad narrative concerning Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Glenn Marchand (Sam Rockwell). Theirs is a marriage that has gone to the dogs, due to Glenn's drinking problem. During the day, Annie works at a crappy Chinese restaurant, takes care of their daughter and, at night, has sex with a co-worker's husband at a cheap motel. Glenn, who now lives with his apathetic parents, is in recovery. He has turned to God, and he's trying his best to find a job and to win back Annie's trust. But that proves to be an idealistic goal, because Annie, with good reason, refuses to let him take care of their daughter. Glenn, in his deep sorrow, his desperation, and his disillusionment with a society that is supposed to provide people a second chance, once again turns to drinking, and his behavior turns increasingly erratic. His story is a tragedy, and Rockwell's performance is a devastating portrait of all the things that can go wrong in a marriage converging upon an individual.

Green provides a counter-narrative of sorts in the relationship between a high school band member named Arthur (Michael Angarano), whose parents, while highly successful career-wise, also have a rocky marriage, and a girl who has just moved into town named Lila (Olivia Thirlby). It's a refreshing story, and both actors nail the sweet, almost bashful nature of their burgeoning attraction for one another. Within “Snow Angels,” though, it feels like an alternative reality, the ideal relationship that, in Green's mind, exists without the prospect of all-too-early marriage between two immature individuals. It is not surprising, then, that the Glenn-Annie narrative doesn't always mix well with the Arthur-Lila narrative. As Glenn heads into even more despair, resorting to desperate measures that feel weak, and scripted, precisely because of their very theatricality, Arthur and Lila have sex for the first time. It's a baffling juxtaposition, but with these two competing narratives, we have the sense that there is a reinvigoration, a thawing, with each successive generation, but that the ones who are left behind resort to self-destructive behavior. Perhaps that is their only recourse, and, perhaps, this is best for the town in general, so that those looking ahead for a better future can continue their endeavor unabated.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 11/17/08, on DVD - IMDb

Quantum of Solace

2008-11-15T00:23:00.001-08:00

“Quantum of Solace”
Marc Forster, 2008

James Bond, in his numerous iterations, has emerged as something more than a character: he is an icon. What this icon represents has changed from film to film, but it generally relies upon several things – the agent's charm, his gadgets, his unprecedented capacity to seduce women, and his ability to enter and leave a film relatively unscathed, in time for the inevitable sequel. On a few occasions, the creators of Bond films have tried to step out of the constraints imposed by such a timeless icon by killing off a character that he truly cares for, with the hopes that the audience will perceive Bond more as a character than an icon, a human rather than a joke (Roger Moore in “Live and Let Die”) or a ruthless machine (Timothy Dalton in “License to Kill”). “On Her Majesty's Secret Service” and, more recently, “Casino Royale,” are such films, and because of their focus on the emotional aspects of the character, they serve as excellent, distinctive chapters in the franchise.

“Quantum of Solace” begins where its predecessor, “Casino Royale,” left off. James Bond, who is played by Daniel Craig, is seeking revenge for the death of his girlfriend, Vesper, who was played by Eva Green. In the process, Bond discovers that there is an international criminal organization called QUANTUM that is largely responsible for much of the world's instability and, perhaps, for Vesper's death.

Craig plays Bond as a resolute and, on rare occasion, sexy psychopath. It is a convincing performance, but the problems with “Quantum of Solace” arise not from Daniel Craig, but from the way in which the film was conceived. The director Mark Forster wants to address the many potentially fascinating aspects concerning Bond, but, while juggling the surfeit of activity, he crafts a disappointing film that is average in nearly every way. First and foremost, Forster wants to make his film a spectacle, but his action sequences are uninspired and poorly executed, entailing an assault of quick edits reminiscent of “The Bourne Ultimatum” (the technique isn't nearly as effective in this case) and poorly implemented C.G.I.

And then there is the nature of Bond himself. Forster attempts, in a rather perfunctory manner, to tackle the contradictions that are at the center of this man. As “Casino Royale” illustrated, Bond was trained as a killer, but he is ultimately a human, fallible to such things as falling in love. In “Quantum of Solace,” Bond is a ruthless killing machine who defies M's (Judi Dench) orders and, while deftly absorbing numerous kicks and punches, kills numerous suspects. Perhaps Bond is reacting, violently, to his own weakness, suppressing his emotions because, when he allowed them to shine through, he was hurt in an unprecedented way, much more so than the physical assaults he regularly endures. But this is my own observation about the matter, taken almost entirely from my viewing of “Casino Royale.”

Forster's film isn't nuanced enough to deal with these implications seriously. One of the film's biggest failings is its insistence on spoon-feeding this concept through its almost sadistic fascination with violence. Violence can be used to powerful effect in films, but in "Quantum of Solace," it is used as an assault on its viewers. We constantly witness Bond beating up various enemies: some are thrown off of roofs, others are stabbed with glass shards, and a number are knocked out cold in an elevator. What we witness - or at least try to, thanks to the shoddy way Forster has shot and edited his film - is an invincible machine doing what he does best. Anthony Lane, in his excellent review, mentions that there is also a masochistic thread running throughout the film; Bond wants to murder people so that he can hide his own troubles, and render himself, to some degree, numbed. But there is no rhyme or rhythm to the violence committed by our machine of a protagonist, and after only a few minutes, we simply don't care what he does or what happens to him.

Everything in the film, the action sequences, the exploration of our complex protagonist and the silly, threadbare plot, feels obligatory, but uninspired. The film is approached with an attitude that, much like its protagonist, borders on the indifferent; the result is neither exciting nor compelling. Once again, the complex humanity, the character, behind Bonds' cold exterior has given way to broad strokes, this time veering towards the portrait of Bond as a machine. Admittedly, Craig's rocklike visage emphasizes the exterior rather than the interior, but, as we've seen with “Casino Royale,” the character can and has been successfully tapped into. This time around, James Bond, the icon, has persevered.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 11/14/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Caché

2008-11-08T18:50:00.001-08:00

“Caché”
Michael Haneke, 2005

In “Caché,” a TV host named Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife, Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche), receive a bizarre tape, which depicts their house being photographed from an unknown location. The anonymous creator of said tape has wrapped it within a drawing of a child vomiting blood. It's extremely unsettling, but when the couple go to the police for help, they are told that they are on their own – unless they are actually attacked, of course. From there, we watch Georges and Anne as they try to go about their lives in a normal manner, even while outside forces are striving to disrupt such routines.

The title, “Caché,” translates to “hidden,” which is a theme that trickles down through the entire film. The director Michael Haneke constructs his film around a series of interactions between his characters, all of which are played out in their entirety. It is an engaging method that both belies and accentuates this central motif, because while watching these characters, we get the sense that there is much more to them than meets the eye, and that merely witnessing their interactions doesn't quite do them justice. Georges, for instance, is trying to hide the fact that the anonymous person who sent the tapes is probably the son of a servant during his childhood, who is angry at him for unstated reasons. Yet he lies to Anne about what he really knows. Why does he do this? Georges tells her that he doesn't want to hurt her; he is really saying that he doesn't want to resurrect memories that will hurt him.

“Caché” is fascinating because of its very ambiguity, because of this tension that arises when we are, at least ostensibly, made witnesses to everything that occurs, yet are forced to extrapolate what exactly is going on. But such an approach has the unfortunate effect of making it difficult to consistently connect, on an emotional level, with the characters. This is particularly apparent in the narrative concerning Georges and the anonymous person. That narrative culminates in an utterly random explosion of violence that elicited – at least from this viewer – a chuckle, rather than a gasp of horror. Perhaps this is what Haneke was trying to go for: we can't really react well to such a situation, because the connection between Georges and other characters always will be, for us, the uninitiated viewer, poorly developed. What Haneke ultimately appears to be telling us is that we can't truly know anyone, much less a couple of protagonists in a two-hour film.

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 11/7/08, on DVD - IMDb

An Update

2008-11-08T18:25:00.000-08:00

Hello! I haven't written many film reviews recently because I've been occupied with school, following the election, and watching films for my Hitchcock class. In general, I write a lot of reviews when I'm on break - this summer, I was usually writing at least five reviews a week! By the end of this weekend, however, I hope to post a review of the film “Caché” as well as my thoughts on the passage of Proposition 8.

I have changed the look and layout of my blog because I was getting kind of tired of all the blue. But I'm open to any feedback regarding the changes.

Last night, I took part in a huge march in San Francisco, in protest of the passage of Proposition 8. There were at least several thousand protesters, and we marched from Market Street all the way to the Castro District. The march was an awesome, peaceful show of solidarity; the culmination at Dolores Park was a bit disappointing, though - it was, like, a transsexual speaker with a DJ playing music, encouraging people to dance. That was rather lame.

Here are some pictures that I took, just to show how huge it was.

A Long-Winded Rejection of Anti-Gay Arguments

2008-10-31T02:34:00.000-07:00

A Long-Winded Rejection of Anti-Gay Arguments

Last week, I ran into a former dorm-mate of mine, who is a rather eccentric social conservative. Fixed to the rear of his backpack was the requisite McCain-Palin sticker, and below that a large “Yes on 8” sticker. The latter refers to Proposition 8, which is a California initiative that “Eliminates [the] right of same-sex couples to marry.” This man, who I'll call Paul, is the first person I've actually run into who supports Prop 8, and being gay myself, I decided to ask why he was voting “yes” on the measure.

Paul explained that homosexuality was a sin according to the Bible, that it was natural for a man and a woman to be in a family, that throughout history societies that featured “open” homosexuality subsequently collapsed, that it would allow other forms of sexual deviance to be widely accepted, and that being gay was a choice. The more I listened to Paul's arguments, the more I realized that we viewed Prop 8 in completely different ways. For him, this is an issue about maintaining societal normality and morality; for me, it is a pivotal civil rights issue.

When I asked him how he could substantiate his arguments, Paul invariably fell back on several justifications, including the Bible, a nebulous reference to “history,” and an even more nebulous reference to some “studies.” Let's be clear: these are not valid ways to support an argument. There's really no rational way to support or refute these reasons, since the guy views this as a moral issue, but I'll try. As I see it, the Christian testament's central message is that we should love one another. Jesus – who I, being Jewish, view as an important leader and, perhaps, a prophet, but not the Messiah – never mentioned anything negative about homosexuality, and he embraced lower-status people to the shock and consternation of his followers. When I offered this rebuttal to Paul, he had no response, other than the fact that homosexuality was declared a sin in the Hebrew testament.

Now, when it comes to the issue of what defines a “traditional” marriage, things get a bit tricky. Paul is correct when he says that most families throughout history have involved a man and a woman; but he provides no reasons as to why this has occurred. I can speculate that it has to do with the capacity for the heterosexual couple to reproduce, and that societies and the Church have then shaped cultures so that reproduction is seen as the ultimate goal of marriage. (If nothing else, such child-bearing couples helped to increase the number of members of a religious sect. Again, this is all speculation.) Paul did not recognize, however, that there have been gay people all throughout history, and while gay couples may not have been married, they did, in fact, exist. And his argument that civil unions provide gay couples with the same rights as married couples is, in effect, a resurrection of the “separate but equal” argument of Plessy v. Ferguson. Civil unions are ineffective as a long-term solution because they fail to address the underlying issue: a group of people is being treated separately based off of one set of criteria, which is inherently unequal.

The main thrust of Paul's argument regarding traditional marriage concerns how children without the proper balance of a man and a woman grow up in a deprived environment that results in them, essentially, being fucked up. Paul mistook my silence as a recognition that his argument is correct. To the contrary, who says that a child in such an environment ends up being deprived? Studies do. What studies? Well, studies. And history, of course. Again, Paul presented his views in an ostensibly rational manner, but ultimately without any way to fully substantiate them. Here is my counter-argument. Look at heterosexual couples and see how many fucked up people result from such families. And as for the notion that gay couples raise children who are more likely to be gay, I offer this question: to whom was I born? A straight couple. In fact, all gay people come from heterosexual relationships. The only practical advantage to a heterosexual couple over a homosexual one is that the former can reproduce, which is certainly important for the survival of our species. Some supporters of Prop 8 argue that gays can't reproduce, so they shouldn't be allowed to marry. But if that is the case, then heterosexual couples that can't or don't want to have children shouldn't be allowed to marry, either.

~ ~

It all comes down to how we view marriage. Is it a union that recognizes two people who love one another, or is it also a way in which we can help our population grow? I can't really answer that question, because it's up to each of us to decide our own priorities. So, let me now turn to the most touchy argument that Paul brought up: that opening up marriage will lead to the legal and social acceptance of “other” forms of sexual deviance, such as incest. Here's my position on the matter. I don't necessarily have an issue with an incestuous couple being married, because I believe that the State should not interfere in people's lives and narrowly define an institution like marriage. However, I suspect that most people involved in incest have big psychological issues, and I question whether such a couple's commitment to one another would be consensual or a true expression of love. Gay couples, on the other hand, consist of two people who are in love with one another, and who truly want to be together. The argument that “other” forms of sexual deviance are even on the same playing field as gay relationships is absurd.

And finally, there is the issue of whether others view being gay as a matter of choice. When I asked Paul whether he thought my being gay was a choice, he replied, “Yes, I do.” I have never understood this argument. One, because there have always been gay people, even in times of persecution. Two, because I can't "help it" that I'm attracted to guys. Paul would never be able to appreciate this, but as a teenager, I struggled for over five years trying to be attracted to girls. Three – and this is what I told Paul – why would I want to be gay when there are homophobes in the world, and when society generally paints homosexual relationships as inferior to heterosexual ones? His reply: “That is indeed the question.”

~ ~

For such an unusually succinct measure, Prop 8 carries a great deal of importance for a lot of people. The Family Research Council President Tony Perkins stated that Prop 8 is “more important than the presidential election.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has contributed an astounding $20 million to the Protect Marriage campaign. Meanwhile, opponents of the measure have been fighting back. Apple and Google contributed over $150,000 to the No on 8 campaign. In the meantime, my friend, Hillary, organized an art show – to which I donated some of my photographs – that raised $1,300 in a single night. For the last month, my friend, Jon, has been fervently phone-banking undecided voters, many of whom live in my home town, San Diego.

For some, Prop 8 is a measure that will eliminate an imminent threat to the “sanctity” of marriage. Indeed, gay marriage is a shift from traditional notions of heterosexual relationships. Personally, I would have preferred if gays were legally and socially accepted in a more gradual manner, first with the passage of hate-crime legislation, and then with the passage of laws that prevent employment discrimination based off of real or perceived sexual orientation. Regardless, gay marriage is here, and despite the polarizing effect of the California Supreme Court's ruling, it has finally brought a long-hidden issue into the public sphere.

As I've already pointed out, homosexuality has been with us from the beginning. For too long, people have ignored the detrimental effects of forcing gay people to recognize that a heterosexual relationship is the ideal and exclusive way to love another person. And though the process has been painfully slow, people are beginning to accept homosexuality as a normal, non-threatening occurrence. Voting “no” on Prop 8 would prevent the passage of a discriminatory measure, protect my rights, and the rights of millions of others, as well as facilitate the acceptance of gays, who, as normal people, deserve to have the rights that many other Californians take for granted.

~Max~
October 31, 2008

Alphaville

2008-10-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

“Alphaville”
Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

One of my acquaintances described the work of the French New Wave director, Jean-Luc Godard, as such: “His [Godard's] movies are at once serious and intellectual, as well as trashy and playful. . . . Imagine The Naked Gun directed and written by a philosopher, and you have an idea of how he's like.” This is a perfect description of “Alphaville,” which is the first Godard film that I have seen. Ostensibly, it is a mixture of science-fiction and film noir, and we follow a haggard private eye as he journeys through the futuristic town of Alphaville, which is run by a menacing super-computer.

There are many potentially fascinating themes at play here. What, for instance, is the role of women in this society? All of them are gorgeous, but they behave like robots who are enslaved to men. There is one major narrative that centers on the private eye and his love for one of these women, and his attempts to save her from the clutches of the super-computer, which seeks to turn all people into mindless drones.

Admittedly, the plot doesn't make much sense. The lengthy monologues by the super-computer, too, don't make sense. “Alphaville” is really the product of a director who simply loves to make films. Godard has a wonderful, off-kilter sense of humor, and he loves to arbitrarily experiment with his camerawork, sound, and acting. This results in a surprisingly approachable and fun film that belies its narrative's pessimistic vision of a de-humanizing future. In short, “Alphaville” is rather awesome.

First Viewed: 10/17/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round Three

2008-10-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round Three
Hofstra University, New York, 15 October 2008

Upon reaching the end of this third, and final, debate between the Democratic candidate Barack Obama and the Republican candidate John McCain, the decision, for those voters who are still undecided, has become all the more clear. One candidate calmly explained the nuances of his positions, held a comfortable and respectful posture, and, ultimately, maintained a presidential manner. The other stooped to a new low in his efforts to continue telling lies, in his condescending and even hostile manner towards his opponent, and in his tired and out-of-touch rhetoric. The former, of course, was Barack Obama, and the latter was John McCain.

This was an especially disappointing evening for McCain, who actually started off on a relatively strong note compared to his previous debate performances. Where McCain really began to lose ground was in his reiteration of the cynical attacks that have come to define his campaign in recent days: tying Obama to ACORN, making a dubious connection between Obama and Avery, and how he was personally offended by John Lewis' criticisms of his campaign tactics. These tactics have not been working for McCain, and he did not appear comfortable delivering such trivial criticisms.

McCain, unfortunately, made many more mistakes. He invoked a middle-class voter that Obama had met on the campaign trail, whom he referred to as “Joe the Plumber”; this is a childish moniker that ultimately demeans voters - to whom was he trying to appeal? - and it should never have been brought up in the first place, let alone repeated over a dozen times. He continued to repeat out-of-date rhetoric, including the danger of high taxes and the nebulous threat of big government imposing itself on people's everyday lives. Note that he never mentioned the middle class, who would never benefit from his proposed tax cuts.

McCain also argued – or, more likely, bull-shitted – that his running mate, Sarah Palin, was a role model for both women and reformers. More irksome was his emphasis on “curing” autism – since when did this become an enormous national issue? – which he says Palin's child suffered from, when, in fact, the child has Down's Syndrome. To top it off, McCain came across as an angry, condescending old man who is bitterly jealous of Obama. Such quotes as “But maybe you [Obama] ought to travel down there [Colombia] and visit them and maybe you could understand it a lot better” don't help with dispelling this unfortunate image of this once respectable candidate.

Obama, in the meantime, maintained a supremely calm presence. For the most part, he threw effective counter-points, and he disarmed blatant lies with a smile. One line, regarding the McCain campaign's negative tactics, was particularly effective: “The fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.” And Obama kept connecting McCain to the Bush administration, which is exactly what he needed to do to help convince undecided voters.

I do think that both candidates have weak education plans, because neither of them are comprehensive or innovative. But when it comes to vision, manners, the ability to work with opposition members, maintaining a commanding presence, and running an administration, I think that the choice is obvious – Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States on November 4th.

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round Two

2008-10-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round Two

Nashville, Tennessee, 7 October 2008

Tonight's debate was really the last opportunity for John McCain to chip away at Obama's lead, and he didn't take it. To be honest, I was bored. I have already heard both candidates' opinions and talking points many times, neither candidate strayed from their widely known positions, and neither candidate made any promises or efforts to answer questions specifically. Also, Tom Brokaw proved to be a shitty host, because he kept getting upset at the candidates' repeated efforts to extend their arguments past their allotted one minute response slot.

With regards to the issues that each man talked about, I think that McCain did a better job than he did at the last debate; but both candidates gave shaky performances. What was different about this debate was the incredible physical difference between the two men: Obama looked and sounded very healthy, but he kept his distance from people, so as to possibly appear aloof. McCain, on the other hand, looked remarkably unhealthy - he appeared to have difficulty standing and sounded out of breath - and moved in very close to audience members who asked questions, going so far as to shake hands with a questioner, who obviously loved this candidate-to-voter contact. This debate probably won't change perceptions that people already have about either candidate, with one important exception: McCain's visibly deteriorating health, which would impact his capacity - and Sarah Palin's - to become President.

Synecdoche, New York

2008-10-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

"Synecdoche, New York"
Charlie Kaufman, 2008

The screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has always delved, to an unusually poignant extent, into how troubled individuals attempt to deal with their losses. His primary technique involves externalizing his characters' interior troubles so that they pervade all aspects of the film, from the dialogue to the visuals – in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” for instance, the lovesick protagonist's world literally collapses around him. Kaufman's directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York,” is a continuation of his fascination with fucked up people, and it goes to an even further extent than his other films to externalize its protagonist's troubles.

Our protagonist, who is named Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is a playwright who is running out of fresh ideas, and whose life is beginning to collapse: every announcement on the radio has a melancholy tinge, Caden first looks at the obituaries upon receiving a newspaper, and the bathroom sink randomly explodes in his face while he is in the midst of shaving. Meanwhile, his wife (Catherine Keener), a miniature portrait artist, does not love him anymore – she cites that there is “no life” in his latest play – and leaves him, taking his daughter with her. What follows, then, is – once again – a bizarre journey through our protagonist's internal state as he reconciles with his troubles.

“Synecdoche, New York” is a challenging film, because, more-so than in Kaufman's previous work, it lingers predominantly within Caden's deteriorating mental and emotional state, which manifests itself onscreen. (Caden suffers from a series of bizarre bodily ailments, including bloody pee, strange bumps on his arms and legs, and random seizures.) One day, when the playwright receives a large grant to make a new play, he decides to build his set within an enormous warehouse. He slowly builds up a miniature version of New York; and the set becomes a storage area-of-sorts, a place that allows him to compartmentalize the various aspects of his life. In essence, it becomes the staging ground for our protagonist's struggles, a la “8 ½.”

The primary focus, in “Synecdoche, New York,” is on how a man deals with the prospect of deterioration and, ultimately, death. (“We're hurtling towards death's door,” Caden intones to his actors.) Kaufman, once again, exhibits his unique understanding of what makes humans tick, brilliantly alternating between the nuanced – a quiet dialogue exchange simmering with tension – and the conspicuous – a lover's house is, hilariously, always on fire – and always with an original, off-kilter sense of humor. What the film is lacking, though, is focus. The second half of “Synecdoche, New York” completely abandons narrative coherency for a muddy and episodic journey through Caden's perception of his world. This abandonment of narrative for complete immersion into the protagonist's world has occurred in Kaufman films before, but they always led to a carefully constructed endpoint. This technique does not really work in this film, though, because the pacing shifts arbitrarily, from the relatively fast-paced sequences of the film's first half to the torpor of the second half.

At the end of a soliloquy, an actor, playing a priest who presides over a funeral, says, “Well, fuck everybody! Amen!” This brief sequence is telling: it's a succinct summary of Caden's frustrations with his life, but it also indicates a lack of confidence on the director's part regarding how he should effectively organize and wrap up all of his ideas. As it stands, many parts of “Synecdoche, New York” are brilliant, but, in the next film that Kaufman directs, he is going to need a better grasp on his larger narrative, on how to more effectively control his pacing, and on how to better focus his numerous ideas.

Rating: 7

With regards to the Q & A...

After the movie ended, I looked to my right and, sitting five feet away, was none other than Charlie Kaufman, staring right at me. It was very disconcerting; perhaps it had something to do with me looking like a reviewer, since I was taking notes during the film.

Kaufman is a very short, scrawny guy with a prominent Jew-fro. He is not a comfortable public speaker, and he was surprisingly churlish, going so far as to say that his studio basically forced him to be here. He was reasonably courteous, but he strongly disliked the requisite, artsy, bullshit questions that people at the event asked. I asked how involved he was in the visual process of his films, and how it was different with this film since he directed it - his laconic reply was that he made notes about what he wanted the film to look like in his script and communicated that to his DP and set designers.

One interesting thing about the film is that he purposefully cast all the actresses to look very much alike, which certainly added to my confusion during the film's second half.

This is a film that I'd like to see again. I don't think that it's Kaufman's best work - it's far too aloof and convoluted to achieve the emotional connection that I had with "Malkovich" or "Eternal Sunshine" - but there are definitely some brilliant aspects at play.

First Viewed: 10/6/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Miracle at St. Anna

2008-10-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

“Miracle at St. Anna”

Spike Lee, 2008

Note: Sorry, this review is pretty terrible. I didn't put all that much effort into it because, one, it isn't all that great a movie, and two, I haven't seen enough Spike Lee movies to properly comment on this film in the context of his other work.

“Miracle at St. Anna” is narratively uneven and overlong. Its characters are painted in broad strokes, and the dialogue they utter lacks nuance. In Spike Lee's vision, all blacks are treated as enemies within America, even in the face of real threats from without during World War Two. He stages a completely random sequence in which our four protagonists hold a diner at gunpoint so that they can be served their milkshakes like the white patrons; this is no doubt Spike Lee's fantasy concerning how oppressed blacks really should have dealt with racism in the 1940s. The film has a rather inane message about war: it kills thousands of innocent people, regardless of race, age or gender. But amidst all of these weaknesses lies a wonderful narrative – the incredibly touching father-son relationship between a sick Italian boy and one of the soldiers.

Ultimately, “Miracle at St. Anna” is a confounding experience. It's often stupid, unintentionally hilarious, and occasionally compelling. It seems like Spike Lee has a lot to say, but what, precisely, he's trying to tell us remains a mystery.

Rating: 4

First Viewed: 10/5/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Ivan the Terrible

2008-10-05T02:47:00.000-07:00

"Ivan the Terrible"
Sergei Eisenstein, 1944 and 1958

“Ivan the Terrible,” the two-part historical epic by the brilliant Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, tends to play out more as a stage production than as an actual film. The actors move in slow, exaggerated motions, the sets are overly sumptuous, and the characters are more inclined to give grand soliloquies than to actively struggle against one another. And in almost every scene, absurdly large church relics and innumerable lords' absurdly grotesque faces fill the frame.

But it is this clash of bizarre elements that gives “Ivan the Terrible” a unique atmosphere that allows us to fully appreciate how difficult it is for Ivan, the newly ordained Tsar, to consolidate power away from the Church and the Boyars (regional lords). Curiously, the trajectory of “Ivan the Terrible” follows that of its filmmaker: it is obvious that Eisenstein was a filmmaker of the silent era. We can sense his unease with the production, from his feeble use of sound to his tendency to oversimplify the power play. Similarly, Ivan's rule has a shaky start – when we first see him at his coronation ceremony, he is young and has an air of naivete, and his bold policies leave him friendless.

Ivan, by the film's second part, successfully transforms himself into a ruthless politician, complete with an aged face and an impressive beard. Eisenstein, too, seems more comfortable with the latter production, and he explores Ivan's struggles to wrest power away from rebellious underlings in a more focused manner. “Ivan the Terrible” is ultimately concerned about two things: how a leader attains power and still maintains his personal integrity, and how a director steps out of his comfort zone and attempts to craft a compelling film in the sound era.

Rating: 7

First Viewed: 10/4/08, on DVD - IMDb

The 2008 Vice-Presidential Debate

2008-10-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Vice-Presidential Debate
St. Louis, Missouri, 2 October 2008

There were no major gaffes, and no major advances, but there was no contest: Joe Biden soundly beat Sarah Palin during the Vice-Presidential Debate on Thursday night.

There were, of course, incredibly low expectations for Alaska's governor, and to be fair, she didn't utterly fail, but that does not excuse her for her terrible performance, which ultimately reflects poorly on McCain's capacity to make sound decisions.

Joe Biden did an excellent job: he did not ramble, he made a concerted effort to attack McCain and connect him to the failed policies of the Bush Administration, and he made a compelling case for Barack Obama – in short, he did exactly what he needed to do. He only stumbled on a question regarding gay marriage. He told the moderator Gwen Ifill that he fully supported gay rights, but then, after Palin said that she only supported the “traditional” definition of marriage, he conceded that he and Obama also didn't believe in gay marriage. It was a wish-washy moment that arose from Obama's admittedly feeble compromise regarding gay marriage – he doesn't support it, but believes that it is up to the states to decide – and it conceded too much to Palin's position on the matter.

As for Palin, her performance not only proved how unqualified she is to become a vice-president, but also confirmed that she is an idiot. She almost never answered questions directly – at one point, she actually switched subjects entirely from when it's appropriate to use nuclear weapons to using the surge strategy in Afghanistan. And she always reverted to talking points that had obviously been drilled into her by advisers the week before. I'll list a few moments that were incredible in their utter stupidity:

1) After Biden's nuanced view on the Iraq war, she paused for five seconds and shakily exclaimed, “Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure!”
2) She repeatedly said that Obama wants to raise taxes; this has already been discredited.
3) She repeatedly stated that the War on Terror is in Iraq; Al Qaeda wasn't even there before the U.S. got involved. Biden rightly said that the crux of the terrorist organization is located between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
4) Her constant attempts to display her “folksy” appeal to viewers at home was sickening: she assumed that Americans are so stupid and close-minded as to want to vote for someone who is just as “average” as they are; she was obviously avoiding answering the questions; and I hate that she exploited her special-needs child for her “down-to-earth” cause.
5) Quote: “Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate.” Wow. Also, she feels that McCain having fought in a (losing) war and that he knows what “evil” is make him qualified to “win” in Iraq.
6) Biden gave a touching speech about how troubled the middle class is. Palin, in a horrid, faux-shocked manner said, “Say it ain't so, Joe! There you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future!” What?
7) In her closing statement, she said that she wanted to have more opportunities to talk to us viewers without “the filter of the mainstream media.” Oh, please. She – and the McCain campaign - are the ones who have been avidly avoiding the media.

So Palin, by not failing drastically, did what she needed to do. But this debate only confirmed her idiocy, her dangerously simplistic worldview, and John McCain's utter contempt for Americans. One particular moment irks me: she stated that we need more government regulation for the economy, and then, in her rant against Obama's “mandatory” health care plan, she said, “... unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds.” This is a terribly pessimistic view that does not inspire any confidence in her ability to run the federal government and to lead Americans.

As the New Yorker has said, McCain's pick of Palin for vice-president was a cynical decision, done only for his political benefit, rather than as a means for effective leadership. Obama and Biden, on the other hand, have presented themselves as politicians who would not maintain the status quo, who would not treat Americans with such contempt as the Republican ticket has. Instead, they would challenge Americans to rise above the squalor of the last eight years, because we do have the potential to achieve great things.

The same night as the debate, the McCain campaign announced that it would withdraw from Michigan, a surprising turn that increases Obama's chances for the Presidency. And, if Palin's performance is any indication, this trend will most likely continue through the next four weeks.

The Lady Vanishes

2008-10-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

"The Lady Vanishes"
Alfred Hitchcock, 1938

"The Lady Vanishes" opens with a playful tracking shot through a town, which is obviously a model, that finally leads us into a hotel, where we meet all of our characters. There are two men who are anxiously waiting for a train to get back to England, where they are to see a high-stakes croquet game. There is a rowdy musician named Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) and the inevitable soon-to-be love interest, Iris (Margaret Lockwood). And finally, there is a pair of unhappy lovers who are on vacation, one of whom is a stodgy judge.

This is not one of Hitchcock's better films; its situations are humorous, it has a fairly weak premise - something concerning an international conspiracy that must be stopped - and it has a surprisingly paltry quality. What "The Lady Vanishes" does offer, however, are nearly all of the themes that Hitchcock was so fascinated with, such as his fear of authority figures, and how people's identities always seem to shift from situation to situation. Most of all, Hitchcock uses the weak plot - also known as a "McGuff" - as an excuse to explore how love can be found in the strangest and most intense situations.

The two croquet-loving men, for example, are most likely gay, and when they find out that they have to share a small room with a maid, they are absolutely petrified. The main narrative, though, focuses on the relationship that develops between Iris and Gilbert, when she discovers that a kind, old lady who boarded the train has mysteriously disappeared. No one on the train believes Iris; a brain doctor claims that the old lady is a figment of Iris' imagination. Hitchcock presents this theory as a possibility, because Iris was accidentally hit on the head before she boarded the train. But all throughout her frustrating efforts to convince others about the missing person, Gilbert is by her side supporting her.

It turns out that most people don't remember the old lady because they choose not to: the two men are afraid that they'll miss their connection, the horrible judge doesn't want to get mixed up in other people's affairs, and the brain doctor has more nefarious plans at play. With "The Lady Vanishes," Hitchcock presents a slice of humanity that is all too familiar - people are so selfish that they don't give a damn about others. Alternately, we witness those who try to help Iris, or those who gradually grow convinced about her predicament. What emerges, then, is a relatively light-weight film that reveals Hitchcock's unique and nuanced understanding of the way people work. It is this level of richness that makes this film, in spite of its paltry plot and its surprisingly pedestrian ending, all the more memorable.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 10/1/08, on DVD - IMDb

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round One

2008-09-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Presidential Debates, Round One
Oxford, Mississippi, 26 September 2008

Tonight, I watched the first Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. I'm glad that I took an hour and a half out of my night to watch the exchange, though, by the end of it, I felt unusually worn out. It's not because of Obama, who did an admirable job enumerating his points in a logical manner, and who made a concerted effort to look at the camera, directly at us viewers at home. I think that some of it stemmed from the moderator, Jim Lehrer, who didn't inject much life into the proceedings, and whose questions were rather colorless.

Most of it stemmed from McCain who, instead of answering questions intelligently, relied on blatant lies – all of which Obama immediately refuted – and reverted to his now-hackneyed rhetoric. He invoked Obama's lack of experience, repeatedly stating that “Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand. . . .” McCain occasionally rose above such muck and spoke rather well; but he almost always came across as rambling, and he didn't look incredibly comfortable at the podium. Obama, on the other hand, looked, acted, and sounded like a President.

I admit that McCain, who is a politician that I used to respect before he made Sarah Palin his Vice Presidential nominee, held his own; for some desperate Republicans, this may be enough for them to say that he beat Obama in this round. Neither candidate made any major gaffes, nor did Obama clearly beat McCain – his responses were too nuanced for that to be clear to the average voter. But the Republican candidate's constant attacks on Obama – who acted more relaxed and explained issues much more rationally – felt superfluous and needlessly harsh, and they reveal a cynical, and desperate, side of McCain. Sadly, his baseless attacks put Obama on the defensive, and his churlish performance will probably win over some unfortunate, stupid voters. I can only hope that Americans are better, and smarter, than that come November 4th.

Tim Burton Double Feature! Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow

2008-09-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

Tim Burton Double Feature!

"Sweeney Todd" and "Sleepy Hollow"

On Thursday night, my friend and I made an excursion into San Francisco to watch consecutive screenings of "Sweeney Todd" (2007) and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) at the Castro Theatre. I am taking a course on Hitchcock, and in that class we are learning how each film that is made by an auteur, or director, presents common themes and obsessions that are prevalent in all of his work. Auteur theory also delves into how the artist's biography intersects with his films, but I'm too lazy to look into Tim Burton's biography. Instead, I'll try to review both films within the framework that they each share common themes, styles, and obsessions.

Let's start off with the obvious: both films star Johnny Depp, feature gloomy atmospheres, and have a great deal of blood. Good. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about "Sweeney Todd."

This film, which is an adaptation of the macabre Broadway musical that is written by Stephen Sondheim - which I have not seen - opens with an animated sequence. Streams of blood drip through crevices and drive a series of gears until, upon pervading every aspect of the scenery, the film finally begins. But instead of witnessing the all-too-vivid red of animated blood, we see a world that has been entirely drained of color. And then there is Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), a demented barber, whose shockingly pallid visage peers out at Burton's vision of a dilapidated London. Only one thing is on his mind – revenge. The object of his malice: an evil judge (Alan Rickman) who has stolen his wife and child. So, Todd returns to his barbershop, which has been maintained for years by the even-more-eccentric pie shop owner, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), to plot his revenge.

Burton, in all of his films, tries to strike a perfect balance in depicting bizarre, gruesome events and the darkly comical nature that arises from them. In “Sweeney Todd,” his atmosphere is appropriately dreary, and the songs are all outstanding – of particular note is a hilarious sequence in which Todd and Mrs. Lovett sing about cooking priests into pies. But that's mostly due to Sondheim's writing. With regards to the performances, we get a disappointingly stoic Johnny Depp, who, despite sporting some very wild makeup and hair, fails to spark much intensity in the film. He serves as nothing more than a ballast, a relatively calm center amidst the other actors and the bloody environs. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays a rather crazy Italian barber, understand how simultaneously disturbing and silly the entire affair is, and they ham up their performances to memorable effect. Even better is Alan Rickman's chilling performance, as a purely corrupt, though erudite, man who uses his powerful position to ruin the lives of others – he is a sadist, like Todd, but he lurks, instead, within the bureaucracy.

There is a sequence, early on, in which the film enters a computer-generated whirlwind tour of the streets of London. It is an example of what I'll call the “Tim Burton effect,” a unique, ostentatious and over-the-top approach that he arbitrarily switches on whenever he feels like doing so. I hate the sequence because it takes me out of the film, and it makes me aware of who is turning the switches. My friend, probably for the reasons I cited above, loves it. But it is difficult to excuse Burton for some of his other ill-advised excesses. He obviously loves blood; whenever Todd slices the throat of one of his victims, blood spurts everywhere, even on the camera – and thus on us, the audience – "Kill Bill" style. But Burton manages to overdo it; he shows, to an excessive and sadistic extent, how heads split apart when Todd drops his victims' bodies down a conveniently placed chute. And then there is the completely unnecessary, and terribly-rendered, computer-generated shot of a character burning to death in an oven.

I suppose this is Burton's point: that we are all just as culpable as Todd for witnessing, and even enjoying, these murders. To a certain extent, I am sure this is true. But I won't be able to join in on the “fun” until the director manages to reign in his excesses and sadism. This will probably never happen, though; after all, it is this “Tim Burton Effect” that makes his films so very unique.

I have seen “Sleepy Hollow” three times. The first time I saw it when I was ten years old. It scared the crap out of me. I watched it a second time last year, over winter break, on DVD, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I was curious as to how it would hold up on a third viewing, especially on the heels of “Sweeney Todd.” The answer, surprisingly, is “not very well at all.”

I think that Burton made this film because he simply wanted to craft amazing sets and a very cool atmosphere, especially when the story ostensibly involves the headless horseman of Sleepy hollow. Indeed, the art direction is amazing, the atmosphere is amazing, and the brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki impeccably shoots the entire affair with gorgeous – and equally creepy – diffuse light. The film is an even bigger disappointment considering how tantalizingly good the first half hour of the film is. Ichabad Crane (Johnny Depp) is a nerdy murder investigator who has been sent by annoyed magistrates in New York City to investigate a series of beheadings in the town of Sleepy Hollow.

I love one little moment, in particular. Crane enters one of the town's huge manors – which Burton introduces with a wonderfully bleak establishing shot – where he unwittingly enters a kissing game with a group of men, who are circling around the story's love interest, who is played by Christina Ricci. She is blindfolded and accidentally latches onto Crane, who she then kisses. The kiss is shot with a telephoto lens; after the couple breaks apart, we see, behind them, a man looking at Crane with extreme hatred and jealousy. The sequence is, in the scheme of things, entirely unnecessary. But I love the way that Burton and Lubezki establish this burgeoning love – and the distrust that is rampant within the community – in a thoroughly visual manner.

Here, we see Burton, again, trying to strike a perfect balance between horror and black comedy. For a time, he actually succeeds, because he appears to recognize how silly the story is, and how over-the-top some of the visuals are supposed to be. It is unfortunate that Burton has to deal with a terribly boring plot – it has something to do with witches and inter-family rivalries – and a good deal of terrible writing. The narrative structure, after the first half hour, turns out to be a complete mess; it devolves into moments of randomly placed horror mixed in with needlessly lengthy monologues by Crane. A climatic fight on a run-away stagecoach is uninspired and edited in such a way as to be entirely incomprehensible. Even Danny Elfman's score sounds tired by the end of the film; it is a series of repetitive notes that keeps pounding us over and over until we cow in submission.

Amongst the brilliant and the terrible moments, we still witness the occasional “Tim Burton Effect.” Laughable computer-generated eyes pop out of a witch's skull, for example. But even these moments grow dull – we can only see a beheading so many times before they all look the same. And all of them result in the same bizarre occurrence; the victim's head lands on the ground, upright, with his eyes looking right at us. It's a practical joke on the audience, and a statement about how we get a perverse pleasure by witnessing all of these deaths. It's a joke that grows old very quickly. But to be fair, Tim Burton certainly knows how to craft a fascinating, dour atmosphere, and for that, I think that we should all be thankful.

I gave Sweeney Todd a second viewing on 9/18/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb
I gave Sleepy Hollow a third viewing on 9/18/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDB

Burn After Reading

2008-09-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

"Burn After Reading"
Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008

"Burn After Reading," the latest film by the Coen Brothers, opens with a tongue-in-cheek, Google-maps-like zoom-in on CIA headquarters, in Washington, D.C. Thus the filmmakers, from the get-go, present their film as a cartoon; and its zany plot and characters follow suit. Osbourne Cox, who is played by John Malkovich, is a foul-mouthed, low-level CIA operative who has just been fired by his incompetent superiors; they cite, to hilarious effect, the fact that he drinks alcohol as the primary reason for his being sacked. Cox decides to publish a memoir in retaliation, but things inevitably spiral out of control. His wife, Linda (Frances McDormand), is an aloof pediatrician who is having an affair with an endearingly uncouth agent named Harry (a hilarious George Clooney). She is also getting a divorce from Cox, so she burns all of his information – and, unwittingly, his memoir – onto a CD. The CD, though, gets left behind at a gym, which is found by two moronic employees, Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt), who foolishly decide to blackmail Cox.

The plot ventures into even wilder territory, and from there, we assume that the purpose of the film, especially coming on the heels of their most recent, and difficult, film, “No Country For Old Men,” is to simply provide pure entertainment. We witness the Coens' trademark visual style, with its unusual, playful perspectives and low angle shots. (The film is beautifully photographed by the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, instead of their longtime collaborator – and equally capable – Roger Deakins.)

But this apparent lack of substance is deceiving: underneath Lubezki's luminous cinematography and the characters' amusing idiosyncrasies lies a dark undercurrent. The humor, which elicits nervous chuckles from its viewers, stems more from the awkward nature of the situations than on the guffaw-inducing – and better-written – characters in “The Big Lebowski.” The characters recklessly sleep with each another, betray one other, and kill each other in shockingly violent ways.

All of this makes for a black comedy that resonates with its audience, but it doesn't result in a focused film. “Burn After Reading” feels like a mish-mash of moods, arbitrarily swinging from the hilarious to the shockingly frigid. There is a pessimistic outlook at play here, a disillusionment with incompetent authority figures, and with stupid people who are more successful than they deserve.

The primary focus, then, is not on the humorous nature of the characters, but on how people's failure to maintain healthy relationships with each other results in very dangerous circumstances. This is familiar territory for the Coens, but it feels like they are simultaneously embracing the nihilistic principles of their characters in “No Country For Old Men,” and trying to escape from those very dark themes. The message is conflicted and difficult to enumerate, but the filmmakers, with “Burn After Reading,” seem to be saying that when things, inevitably, take a turn for the worst, all we can do is laugh at the ridiculous nature of it all. With such a disillusioned outlook, “Burn After Reading” is an entertaining and, ultimately, disheartening experience.

First Viewed: 9/13/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Rant: Proposition 8 Inqiuisitors!

2008-09-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Rant: Proposition 8 Inquisitors!

Today, on Sproul Plaza, there was a group of gay activists encouraging people to vote no on Prop. 8, which is an initiative that bans gay marriage in California. Then, these crazy people appeared and stood alongside the No On 8 members.

They looked like the guys in the picture above, except that the members I witnessed wore red capes, which, ironically, screams gay - the hypocritical bastards. Yes, they belonged to...

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property

Apparently, this Pennsylvania-based organization is on a 30-day whirlwind tour through California, handing out pamphlets that explain the evils of homosexuality to passerbyes. Yes, they seem like a pretty cool group of people. They also have a website that's trapped in the late 1990s: http://www.tfp.org/

During their excursion, they are maintaining a blog, which occasionally provides comedic gems such as this:

"But don’t expect civility from same-sex advocates. One woman approached a TFP volunteer and bluntly stated: “You should be killed for your opinion on marriage. I’m not joking you should all be shot.” A few other passing cars attempted to inflict harm. A moving car launched a full coke can at Mr. Thomas Schneider and another car containing a group of screaming girls threw a cup of ice coffee at him as well. Fortunately, both flying objects missed our dedicated volunteers. Saint Joseph, our caravan patron, is indeed protecting us."

This account is actually pretty hilarious. But it illustrates how far some people are willing to go to deprive an entire group of people of basic rights based off of one set of criteria. It is analogous, I think, to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, where blacks fought against widespread social and employment discrimination, which was based entirely on skin color. Gays in the U.S. don't have those basic rights that most Americans take for granted: we can be fired based off of real or perceived sexual orientation, and we can't even call a wedding with someone we love a "marriage" because it's different from traditional notions of heterosexual love.

What that excerpt also shows, though, is how religion can be used as an instrument of evil. These inquisitors need only invoke St. Joseph in order to justify their discriminatory actions. Here is another excerpt from their website: "As the homosexual revolution’s anti-Christian intolerance makes itself felt through increasingly persecutory measures, a terrible problem of conscience arises in any who resist: Should we follow our consciences? Should we give in?"

Oh, please. Here, they put the blame on pro-gay supporters for being intolerant of their beliefs. Now, I am going to take a perfunctory, and probably ill-advised, look at religion. At its core, it is an institution that asks us to believe in something that can't be explained by rational argument. It can be used as a positive force in people's lives - forming supportive communities, for example - or as a negative force that hurts others. Most anti-gay groups refer to one source - the Bible. I hope that many, if not most, observant people in America view the Bible as a guideline for leading a better life. It's a collection of documents that shouldn't be taken literally; the ultimate message, particularly in the Christian testament, is that people should love one another.

As an illustration of this group's ridiculous message, imagine someone telling you, a passerby, that people who are black shouldn't marry because the Bible says it's wrong. There's no rational reason to explain this outlook; such a marriage is simply immoral and a threat to our culture. Would you be tolerant of these people, who were actively working to prevent others from retaining their rights? I think not.

The U.S. has come a long way since the 1970s, and it's great to see more Americans, especially within the last few years, accepting gays. Even though the TFP represents a very radical side of conservative America, the organization serves as an important reminder: we have a long way to go before we can achieve equality; and we'll have to fight for our rights every step of the way.

~Max~

Snatch

2008-09-06T22:32:00.001-07:00

"Snatch"

Guy Ritchie, 2000

Guy Ritchie's film "Snatch" has a plot that is essentially identical to that of his earlier film "Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" - in both films, we witness many cool, foul-mouthed criminals fight for a prize. The prize, of course, isn't the primary focus; it merely serves as an excuse for us to witness these characters as they, in turn, mock and murder one other. Jason Statham, who is an operative for a ruthless crime lord, hires Brad Pitt - er, a wild-haired gypsy - to fight in rigged boxing matches. Meanwhile, a Jewish crime lord in New York is expecting the shipment of a huge diamond from his henchman, Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro). But an ex-KGB Russian mobster in London intercepts Four Fingers with the help of a trio of hapless robbers.

There are a lot of characters to juggle, so it comes as no surprise that "Snatch" sometimes verges on the incomprehensible. To make up for all the gunplay and quips, Ritchie unwisely includes a "serious" moment, in which mobsters burn Pitt's mother's trailer to the ground - then this dramatic turn is strangely and abrpubtly dropped. But whatever. "Snatch" is here solely for its audience's - and its filmmakers' - amusement. It is a "cool," high-energy, and ultimately self-indulgent film that, for better or for worse, constantly strives to entertain.

First Viewed: 9/6/08, on DVD - IMDb

September Films

2008-09-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

September Films

This is the time of year when many good films start to roll out. I'd like to draw attention to a few new releases that I'm particularly interested in. I will rank my choices chronologically, not by personal preference.

September 12th

"Burn After Reading"
This is the new Coen Brothers movie, and based off of the trailers, it looks like one of their dark comedies. The premise concerns a CIA agent who accidentally leaves his top-secret memoir, which is on a CD, in a gym. The moronic gym manager and his wife find the CD and blackmail the operative; and naturally, havoc ensues. I'm really interested in this for three reasons: one, it's made by the Coen Brothers; two, it has a great cast, including John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Frances McDormand; three, Emmanuel Lubezki is the cinematographer, rather than the Coens' normal collaborator - and equally excellent - Roger Deakins. He shot the film with a new line of very high-resolution digital cameras, so I'm curious to see how he uses that technology and how well he collaborates with the Coens.

"Towelhead"
This is a film that's directed by Alan Ball, the writer for "American Beauty" and "Six Feet Under," and it focuses on suburban disgruntlement from the perspective of an Arab-American girl. Aaron Eckhart ("The Dark Knight") plays an older, bigoted soldier who, from what I can gather in the trailer, has an obsession with the girl. "Towelhead" will probably be good, if a touch heavy-handed in its exploration of such tensions.

September 19

"Appaloosa"
This is an Ed Harris-directed western starring Jeremy Irons and Viggo Mortensen. Color me interested.

September 26

"Miracle at St. Anna"
This is a potentially fascinating film about four black soldiers stationed in Italy during World War II. It's directed by Spike Lee, too, so I have high expectations.

"Choke"
I have very mixed feelings regarding "Choke," the Chuck Palahniuk novel, which is about a sexaholic who pays for his mother's medical bills by choking in restaurants, and receiving sympathy checks from fellow eaters. Sam Rockwell plays the protagonist, which should be interesting since Rockwell has played a wide variety of roles, from the hilarious character "the guy" in "Galaxy Quest" to one of the solemn Ford Brothers in "The Assassination of Jesse James." The film could be good, or it could be bad; I think it will be just O.K.

Hitchcock Journal Entry #1: Easy Virtue

2008-09-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock Journal Entry #1
“Easy Virtue” (1928)

Prelude: I'm taking a course on Hitchcock, and every Wednesday we have a screening of one of his films. Then we write our thoughts in a "journal," which we turn in the next day. These definitely won't be very well-written essays, but I thought that I'd share them anyway.

There are some minor spoilers, and a major one concerning "Psycho," below.

“Easy Virtue” (1928) is a very flawed, early Hitchcock film that encompasses a number of aspects that I have noticed in his later work. There is his brief, trademark cameo. There are a number of point-of-view, or subjective, shots, particularly in the memorable opening sequence, in which a bored magistrate needs to put on his monocle to clearly see his courtroom. Which leads me to the topic of Hitchcock's portrayal of authority figures. They scared Hitchcock, so he dealt with his fear by either ridiculing them – as seen in the grotesque close-up of the near-sighted magistrate – or by crafting incredibly terrifying figures, like the police officer in “Psycho.”

In this film, there is a suspicious, jealous mother figure who has an unusually large presence – she is much taller than our protagonist, Larita, and nearly as tall as her new husband; and she, through bullying and innumerable cold stares, manages to convince her son that Larita isn't the right woman for him. This very controlling maternal figure, who is very similar to Hitchcock's real-life wife, is a character that appears in “Notorious” and “Psycho.” (SPOILER: On a parenthetical note, I just realized that in “Psycho,” the mother turns out to be a skeleton, which is perhaps Hitchcock's grim outlook on what lies beneath this controlling figure – a rotten soul. But that's just my guess.)

Anyways, there are two other interesting aspect here that I also noticed in “Notorious.” One: Hitchcock's focus on important objects. In “Easy Virtue,” a champagne bottle is presented as evidence in the court, and then used to provide a smooth match cut to the scene of the crime. Larita's abusive husband is an alcoholic; so the bottle serves as both a narrative tool and a defining, harmful feature in Larita's life. Two: We see how Hitchcock tended to “torture” his women protagonists. According to Spotto, “the idea of rehearsing and transforming a woman so that she takes another social identity is central to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.” (283) In “Easy Virtue,” Larita tries to run away from her notorious past by marrying an unsuspecting young man – she tries to transform herself into a new individual. But ultimately, she can't escape from her past.

As for the the film itself, the overall quality leaves much to be desired. The acting can be terrible; it reaches surprising levels of unintentional hilarity during the sequence where the painter murders Larita's husband. The second half of the film is very dull. The dwindling love between Larita and her new husband feels undeveloped and predictable. Even though there are some interesting aspects at play here, and some similar techniques and themes that are better tackled in his later work, this is far from Hitchcock's best film.

Notorious

2008-08-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-30T12:55:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

“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

2008-08-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-15T01:48:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-08T12:43:00.001-07:00

"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

2008-08-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

"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!

2008-08-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

"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

Paprika

2008-07-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

"Paprika"
Satoshi Kon, 2007

In "Paprika," an engrossing science fiction tale that uses a combination of computer-generated effects and hand-drawn animation, a team of researchers, led by a steely woman named Atsuko, creates a device that allows them to enter people's dreams. The potential for effective therapy notwithstanding, these researchers don't have any idea about the dangers of this new technology, which become all too apparent when they, while hooked up to the device, become trapped within their own dreams.

Atsuko, who works under the guise of "Paprika," a charismatic, red-haired superhero, while she is in the dreamworld, is confident that she can save the team, and her product. But naturally, complications arise. "Paprika," with its vivid colors and often disturbing visuals, works beautifully as an exploration of whether it is healthier to let our lives be ruled by reality or by our more fantastical dreams. One of the characters, Detective Kogawa, abandoned his true passion, making movies - a common motif, and an interesting one given the film's focus on reality vs. illusion - and he uses the dream machine for constructive purposes, to figure out how he can incorporate his lifelong aspirations into his everyday life. One of the researcher's assistants, Himuro, on the other hand, uses the device for more destructive purposes. Having a banal career, he wants to remain within the illusion created by the confines of his own dreams, at the expense of his physical well-being.

As Himuro and other researchers become trapped within their own dreams, the dreamworld begins to have a will of its own, and many people's dreams meld into one consolidated nightmare that extends into the real world. This dream has a veneer of happiness, as the trapped researchers march with a rambunctious, confetti-strewn parade of toys; but underneath is a sinister side, the darkness of people's sub-conscious, I suppose, which is purely surreal and brilliantly realized. Atsuko, unwilling to delve into her own culpability, suspects that there is someone behind this, and indeed, in the film's climax, we discover that the researchers' chairman, a cadaverous man trapped in a wheelchair, is the villain. "Paprika" does suffer from making a villain responsible for the mess, and it doesn't help that his reasons for taking over the dreamworld are disappointingly conventional. Dreams, we discover during this experience, are much more compelling and much more terrifying when there's no rhyme or reason to them.

First Viewed: 7/31/08, on Blu-ray Disc
IMDB Page

Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama

2008-07-31T11:11:00.001-07:00

"Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama"
The New Yorker, July 21, 2008

By Ryan Lizza

Well, I finally finished reading this 16-page, 17,000-word article on Barack Obama's political career in Chicago from the early 1990s through 2004. It's strange, because in sticking with this article over the past two weeks, it feels like I have been performing a civic duty; I felt a need to better understand the candidate, even though I was often on the verge of giving up on reading about him altogether.

It's not that the article is boring or poorly-written. This is a showcase of exemplary writing, and The New Yorker's never-before-seen - at least by me - photographs of Obama provide wonderful snippets of his career. There are simply so many insights provided by so many people that it grows overwhelming. It would have been nice if Lizza had, in the manner of Russian novels, provided a list of all the people he interviewed and their relation to Obama, because I forgot who they were almost immediately after he initially wrote about them.

Despite the enormous breadth and length of "Making It," I still find it to be a fascinating and logically-constructed article on who Obama really is. We read about a politician, not a Messiah-figure, who is so adept at maintaining networks, organizing campaigns, and using the current institutions in his favor that his bid for the presidency seems inevitable. I like how Lizza gives equal care to those who used to be close to Obama and now criticize him; he has shifted his friendships over the years, leaving a number of people feeling disillusioned. But this is all inevitable in the life of a politician, and it is fascinating to read about how Obama quickly learned from his many mistakes to transform himself into a better politician - he switched from the stiff speaking style of an "arrogant academic" to that of a more laid-back, charismatic leader, for instance.

"Making It" is a long and challenging read, but it is certainly a worthy time investment.

Rating: 9

A Link to the Article, on The New Yorker's Website

Peeping Tom

2008-07-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

"Peeping Tom"

Michael Powell, 1960

"Peeping Tom" is a film about, well, a voyeur, who is named Mark (Karlheinz Bohm). Mark is a handsome introvert, and an outsider who cannot comfortably interact with anyone. So, when he isn't working in the movie studio as a focus puller, he simply walks around and observes, shooting footage of everything he witnesses with a small 16 mm camera. But Mark is no ordinary voyeur. He has an unfortunate habit of murdering women, with the pointed end of his camera's tripod leg, no less, and attains a perverse pleasure from viewing their terrified faces before they die.

When Mark befriends a fellow tenant named Helen, however, he begins to open up and, at her behest, show her some of his films. Whether or not the well-meaning, if slightly naive, Helen is ready to accept his dark secrets is an entirely different matter. This film bares some comparison to Hitchcock's thriller, "Psycho," which was released only two months later. Shot with Eastman color stock, "Peeping Tom" features unusually rich visuals, and Michael Powell's use of lighting, with its deep shadows and beautiful array of colors, is impeccable. "Psycho," which was shot on black-and-white stock, has visuals that are equally striking, but its monochromatic visuals create a bleak atmosphere that hints at the way the film's psychopath, Norman Bates, views his world; everything is either dead-or-alive, black-or-white, with no room for discrepancy.

Both films center around very creepy individuals, but "Psycho" is more successful as a work of suspense; Bates, because of Anthony Perkins's performance and Hitchcock's bleak atmosphere, is a terrifying and volatile presence. Mark simply isn't as compelling or frightening a figure, in comparison. And then there are the weak aspects of "Peeping Tom," some questionable acting by the extras, a few awkwardly staged dialogue exchanges, and a tedious narrative concerning the police's investigation of the murders. I still find "Peeping Tom" to be a good companion piece to "Psycho," but then again, I, like Helen, have always been a sucker for pretty photography.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 7/30/08, on DVD
IMDB Page

L.A. Story

2008-07-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

"L.A. Story"
Mick Jackson, 1991

Harris Telemacher, who is played by Steve Martin, is a local news station's weatherman, a titular position since L.A. is always sunny and seventy-two degrees - with the occasional threat of freezing fifty-eight degree weather, of course. "L.A. Story" starts off as a promising, funny critique of L.A.'s purely superficial culture. One particularly memorable sequence, "The Spring Equinox," depicts Telemacher, driving with his material-oriented girlfriend, defending himself from other vicious drivers on a freeway by pulling out a pistol and engaging in intense gunfights.

Even for a film that fully embraces its obvious critique of L.A., throwing jokes at every possible turn, it's surprising how quickly "L.A. Story" loses steam. After the first fifteen minutes, Steve Martin, who is the writer, seem to run out of ideas and his film suddenly becomes a predictable love story, where Telemacher falls in love with an awkward British woman who is anything but superficial. There are moments of touching comedic brilliance, especially those in which a lonely freeway sign sends cryptic messages to Telemacher, but in straying from its more inspired beginnings, "L.A. Story" ends up being an experience that isn't all that memorable.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 7/3/08, on DVD
IMDB Page

Tell No One

2008-07-27T20:00:00.001-07:00

"Tell No One"
Guillaume Canet, 2006

This film is a puzzle. Its plot, centering around a doctor who tries to figure out why his wife was murdered eight years prior, is intricately laid out. The film's pacing is both patient and efficient, and the director, Guillaume Canet, refrains from giving us any easy answers. His camera focuses on the little moments in order to slowly excavate his characters - there is a very brief shot of a waitress' bottom, followed by a reaction shot of one of our protagonist's friends staring at it, for example.

Unlike most puzzles, though, this unusually compelling thriller is a lot of fun to piece together. The actor, Francois Cluzet, working with all the tools that Canet gives him, delivers a wonderful performance of an ordinary man who is thrust into appalling situations. His character, Dr. Beck, tries to put the murder of his wife behind him, but something keeps holding him back. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, he visits his parents-in-law, which is always an awkward event. But the eighth anniversary is different; two bodies, presumably of the people who murdered his wife, are discovered nearby. The police reopen the case, and Dr. Beck, once again, becomes their prime suspect.

All of Dr. Beck's frustrations build until finally, when the police decide to arrest him, he simply runs away on foot. In most films, such chase sequences are clumsily-constructed, and they ultimately fail because they are, in the end, excuses for loud, action setpieces. This sequence is certainly an action-oriented setpiece, but it is anything but clumsy in its execution. Canet's edits are clean, and his use of sound is spare and devastating; all the while, his camera doggedly tracks our protagonist's every step. Never before have I empathized with a character, trying to flee both from his pursuers and from the ghosts of his own past, so much in the midst of a chase.

Unfortunately, the film takes the relatively easy way out during its ending. One of the characters reveals almost everything to Dr. Beck; it is all some sort of conspiracy involving political figures we hardly meet during our adventure. For a film that meticulously constructed everything up to this moment, layering clue upon clue perfectly, it is disappointing that Canet felt a need to jam everything together awkwardly, right at the crucial moment of our character's ultimate discovery. Nonetheless, "Tell No One" is an enthralling, beautifully-crafted film in which we ourselves become participants and, alongside our characters, attempt to piece together the mystery.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 7/27/08, in 35 mm projection
IMDB Page

Chris & Don. A Love Story

2008-07-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

"Chris & Don. A Love Story"
Tina Mascara and Guido Santi, 2008

I admire people who have the courage to go against the grain and engage in what they love, even if all of society is working against them. Thus, my interest in this new documentary, which follows the decades-long romance between a 19-year-old future portrait artist and a 49-year-old writer, Don Bachardy and Chris Isherwood, respectively, that began in the 1950s. This is a touching story about two men who remained dedicated to each other in spite of their huge age gap and other relationship issues that cropped up.

The filmmakers mix in fascinating archive footage, shot by Don and Chris themselves, simple animation involving a cat and a horse, which serves as a representation of their relationship, and several hazy and pointless re-enactments. Don himself, who is seventy-four years old, sports very stylish glasses and still paints portraits, serves as the unofficial narrator. Despite growing up in L.A., he speaks in an unusually eloquent manner, and with a hint of a British accent, both of which he attained from the British-born Chris.

Don isn't afraid to delve into the darker aspects of his relationship, especially with regards as to whether it was in his best interest to engage in such a dedicated relationship when he was so young. After all, he had little time to develop himself as an a unique individual, which frustrated him and even led to some extra-relationship affairs. Chris died nearly twenty-five years ago, and even though the film features some diary entries, which are read by Michael York, it would have been interesting to hear more of his perspective on the relationship, and how his life-long interest in very young-looking men affected the way he was perceived by others; as Don points out, both of them share an eerie semblance that makes them look like father and son.

But this isn't a documentary about how others perceived the couple, even though the film may have been more compelling had it delved into the social difficulties experienced by a gay couple that was out during the 1950s. Rather, this film focuses almost exclusively on their experiences with one another, placing special emphasis on how close they became during the last six months Chris's life, while he was slowly dying from prostate cancer. Don decided to make portraits of Chris on a daily basis, which document Chris's bodily deterioration in an unflinching manner. "I saw it as payback," Don laughs, "seeing as Chris was the one who got me into drawing in the first place." And we realize that Don, despite his difficulties, was incredibly fortunate, more so than most straight couples, to have had such a beautiful and committed relationship.

First Viewed: 7/26/08, in 35 mm projection
IMDB Page

The Dark Knight

2008-07-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

"The Dark Knight"
Christopher Nolan, 2008

While watching the ten-or-so previews before the latest installment of the Batman franchise, I was struck by their similarity to one another. They each shared a dark tone, a widespread defeatism concerning our ability to control our lives. "The Dark Knight," Christopher Nolan's second take on the superhero, shares this dark tone, too, though I doubt that any of those upcoming films will be able to match this film's profusion of fascinating themes and compelling characters.

In the new film, the combination of Batman, who is played by a decent Christian Bale, and a new, charismatic District Attorney named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), have sent Gotham City's criminal organizations reeling. A group of mob leaders decide to turn to a psychopath, called the Joker (Heath Ledger), to take care of these threats to their business. But in their desperation, they unwittingly unleash a monster that is set on destroying the entire city. The Joker is a fascinating figure, a person who is so detached from society and so rotten at the core that the only way he can interact with others is by murdering them. For his part, Heath Ledger, who rips into the Jokers' twisted, amoral qualities with relish, delivers one of his finest performances.

Earlier today, I watched the Disney movie, "Lilo and Stitch," and I recall a scene where Stitch, the laboratory-manufactured alien that is programmed to destroy everything in its path, levels a model city, and afterward sits in the midst of the mess, realizing that there's nothing left to do when everything has been destroyed. A similar moment occurs in "The Dark Knight," when the Joker walks away from a hospital he has blown up, pauses, and turns around to look at the destruction he has wreaked. We wonder, in that brief moment, if the character has had an epiphany about the futility of his horrific actions. But then, he pulls out his detonator and sets off a series of even bigger explosions that further damage what has already been destroyed. It's a beautifully constructed moment that tells us so much about the character; here is a psychopath without boundaries, who simply kills because he can.

Panic ensues, and despite many efforts by the police and an increasingly-frustrated Batman, the Joker's mayhem - considered by officers as "acts of terrorism," in one of a number of references to Sept. 11 - continues unabated. Nolan maintains a consistently dark tone, a decision that has its benefits and weaknesses. His incessantly bleak atmosphere makes the hopelessness of these characters all the more palpable, but there is little variety in his storytelling, which gives the film a surprisingly monotonous touch - we can only witness so many instances of hostages being threatened and explosions going off before it all grows repetitive.

One area of this film's predecessor, "Batman Begins," that needed improvement was its action scenes. These were terribly edited, visually claustrophobic sequences, whose attempt to depict Batman's element of surprise failed because it was simply impossible to see him. "The Dark Knight" shows improvement in this regard, especially in an exciting car chase that takes place on the streets of Gotham City at nighttime. But the final, major action sequence, which takes place in a skyscraper undergoing construction, reverts back to the incomprehensible technique of the first film - it is nearly impossible to tell who is a hostage, a SWAT team member, or Batman in this messy sequence.

In spite of its weaknesses, this sequence is still an interesting reflection of the film's dark tone, where desperate people, pushed to their emotional limits, no longer know who to trust; after all, we can't really tell who is struggling against who. Amidst all this confusion, Ledger's Joker floats in and out of the film, an impervious threat that can show up at any moment. At one point, Batman asks his servant, Alfred (Michael Caine), who was a soldier, how he defeated a seemingly invincible rogue soldier. Alfred merely answers, "We burned the forest." Our protagonists are forced to make some unsavory decisions to deal with the psychopath, none of which are all that effective. Towards the end of the film, we watch, out of apprehension for our characters' moral well-being and with the ever-diminishing hope that the villain will eventually be killed, and see to what lengths Batman and the authorities go before they, out of desperation, simply give up and raze the entire city.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 7/25/08, in 35 mm projection
IMDB Page

Metropolis

2008-07-24T21:57:00.001-07:00

"Metropolis"
Fritz Lang, 1927

When we first view the fictional city of "Metropolis," we are placed underneath the earth, witnessing hordes of identical workers, lined up in perfect order, waiting for the gates to their workplace to rise before marching off to maintain the machines that run the city; they may as well be entombed in a prison. Then, in contrast, we see the nicest area of Metropolis, perched high above all the street urchins and dirty workers, where the spoiled children of the city's most powerful individuals flock. It is there that we meet Freder, the son of the city's exceedingly capitalist leader, Joh Frederson. Freder is basically a hapless pretty-boy; even though he's our protagonist, he doesn't accomplish all that much. Instead, he inadvertently starts a revolution when he lays eyes on a pretty woman, named Maria, who serves as a prophet-of-sorts for the hopeless workers. Things get even more complicated when a mad scientist, named Rotwang, creates a "Machine-Man" and uses that robot to impersonate Maria and brainwash the unsuspecting hordes of workers.

"Metropolis" is an ambitious film that addresses several common themes throughout history: the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the dehumanizing effects of modernization, and the role of religion in shaping people's worldview. All of these are fascinating, but one element of "Metropolis" that I find particularly interesting is how machinery, in this "ideal" world, become virtually indistinguishable from humans. Maria preaches a message of hope, encouraging the workers to wait for a Messiah, called the "mediator," who will serve as a bridge between the poor and the powerful. Though her robot version preaches a very different message consisting of pure hatred, which incites rebellion, the workers think the machine is the same charismatic leader and follow its example, instead. Both versions of Maria are two sides of the same coin, as they illustrate how an institution that unites people to a common cause, such as religion, can be used to help improve the world or to destroy it.

It is unfortunate that over a quarter of the film has been lost, because there are many missing parts that would have helped to develop the characters, especially Frederson's goon the "Thin Man." There are a number of moments where the characters' physical position and even their relationship to one another make no sense: Freder is above-ground one moment and below-ground in the workers' section the next; Frederson issues a command that allows workers to destroy the machinery, but is genuinely shocked when he discovers that the entire city has shut down. Even if some of these missing sections are discovered, they would not be able to cure the movie of its sappy ending, in which members of all of Metropolis' social classes join hands in a show of unity. In its current state, "Metropolis" is a visually mesmerizing experience with some compelling themes, but it lacks the complexity and the narrative coherence of Lang's later film, "M."

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 7/24/08, on DVD
IMDB Page

The Edge of Heaven

2008-07-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

"The Edge of Heaven"

Fatih Akin, 2008

There is an old man, who grew up in Turkey but now resides in Germany, who falls in love with a hooker, who also, chance would have it, comes from Turkey. They fall in love and live together until, one day, when the old man is in a drunken stupor, he suddenly slaps her, and in doing so kills her instantly. This event sets the rest of the film's plot in motion, but it is also the first of many astoundingly contrived and unintentionally hilarious moments throughout "The Edge of Heaven," a new German film that follows in the tradition of ensemble pieces, where many characters' lives, in Turkey and in Germany, intersect with one another.

The director Fatih Akin tries to depict how people's identities, when emigrating from their old, inflexible country - Turkey - to more lenient ones - Germany - which aren't always so friendly to newcomers, get mixed up. He does so with little success. Akin gives his film an impersonal touch, keeping his camera at a distance when the narrative really demands our emotional involvement. He also has an unfortunate habit of implying and telling, rather than showing, that traumatic events have occurred - a son falling out with his father, for example - and chooses to focus on the aftermath, when it's not entirely clear what it's the aftermath of in the first place.

Alas, Akin's film becomes even more absurd - the now-dead hooker has a large and caring family, apparently, whose members convince the old man's son, a professor, to go to Turkey and try to find the hooker's daughter there. He never runs into her, though, because she's a revolutionary who has fled to Germany, and it is there that she meets a pretty blond woman, who is a university student; and they suddenly become lovers, leading to many more ridiculous plot developments. It probably isn't a good sign when the characters, on multiple occassions, swipe their books off tables in frustration, and I care more about the damaged property than the characters' well-being. Who knew that angst could become so repetitive and trivial?

This is a shame, because there's no reason why these characters, when set apart from the ridiculous plot, shouldn't be fascinating figures. There are certainly promising moments throughout the film, particularly in an overhead shot of a mother, whose daughter has died in an incident, pacing her hotel room and slowly getting drunk. But it feels like Akin is afraid to delve closer, to show what's really troubling these very unfortunate people. All we witness is consistently clumsy technique that leaves us feeling just as unfulfilled as these characters.

Rating: 4

First Viewed: 7/23/08, in 35 mm projection
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2008-07-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

Michael Gondry, 2004

Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of the wonderfully bizarre film "Being John Malkovich," once again tackles the topic of estranged relationships, this time focusing on that of Joel, who is played to perfection by Jim Carrey, and Clementine, who is played by an excellent Kate Winslet. "Eternal Sunshine" has a strange premise; Clementine, an impulsive woman who shelves books at a bookstore, decides one day to erase all her memories with Joel so that if the two run into each other, she won't remember him at all. Joel, unforunately, is left confounded by this sudden change, and he decides to go to the doctor, played by the always-outstanding Tom Wilkinson, who performed the procedure on Clementine, and have the same technique applied to himself. But in the middle of the procedure, the technicians, who are just as unhappy as Joel currently is, get high, leaving Joel to linger "aberrantly" with his memories.

Kaufman uses this fun, science-fiction premise to explore all the nuances of Joel and Clementine's relationship, and for the rest of the film, we follow Joel who, stuck in his brain while the operation continues, tries to find ways to save his memories of Clementine, even while she is in the midst of being deleted. What results is a humorous and touching film about love that is much more engaging than sentimental trash like "The Notebook." I love the film's structure, which, with its disjointed editing, eccentric set design and camera-work, is depicted in the way that we recall our memories; that is, it is presented in a mostly subjective manner, from the point-of-view of Joel, with certain memories being given more significance than others.

Ultimately, this film is about people who regret the mistakes they have made, and who attempt to reconcile themselves with others. Is the film realistic? Not at all, at least on a superficial level. But I think that Kaufman and Gondry have perfectly conveyed the texture of the emotional ups-and-downs that are involved with most people's relationships.

Rating: 10

First Viewed: 7/22/08, on DVD
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The Brothers Grimm

2008-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

"The Brothers Grimm"
Terry Gilliam, 2005

I have only seen one other film, "Brazil," from Terry Gilliam, the former member of Monty Python turned director. Even though that film has numerous weaknesses, much of its success hinges on Gilliam's ability to craft bizarre, visually brilliant scenarios that manage to hold significance to the film's larger narrative. It is to my extreme disappointment, then, to have come across one of his most recent films, "The Brothers Grimm."

Here, we follow the legendary duo of storytellers, played by Matt Dillon and Heath Ledger, who are virtually unrecognizable as, respectively, the strong, pretty-boy and the ungainly, professor-type. In this film, they are portrayed as businessmen, who use their purported knowledge of fairytales and witchcraft to save - and exploit - villagers who have irrational fears of such make-believe things. But the French, occupying central Europe under Napoleon, suddenly catch up to them, and two ridiculously theatrical officers, General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) and an agent named Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), force them to visit a depressing German town and solve a mystery in which a dozen young girls have disappeared in the surrounding forest. This plot development doesn't make any sense considering the officers know the Grimm Brothers' profession is a hoax, but that's the least of the film's problems.

Gilliam's art design is, as always, the film's strong point - I particularly like a shot in which a Little-Red-Riding-Hood-like girl walks through a creepy forest, even if it borrows heavily from Tim Burton's film "Sleepy Hollow." But this film is simply a mess. Narratives butt in and just as suddenly drop out. Accents and character motivations transform on a whim. Laughably-rendered CGI creatures intrude on Gilliam's meticulous set-work. A lurching pace gives the film a half-finished, bloated feel that stretches its already-overlong two-hour runtime.

And finally, the overarching story is boring, something about an evil, five-hundred-year-old queen stealing the town's girls to maintain her youth. The queen's lair, which is perched in a room on the top of a tower, strikes a perfect combination of creepiness and entertainment; however, by the time we finally witness this wonderful visual, near the end, it is far too late. We could care less about these characters' exploits, which are rendered meaningless by the film's lack of cohesion. "The Brothers Grimm" is wasted potential, and I sincerely hope that Gilliam's next project offers a more focused and better-crafted experience.

Rating: 3

First Viewed: 7/21/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

2008-07-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

“Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance”
Godfrey Reggio, 1983

There is no narrative, nor are there any characters to hold our interest. This wonderful experimental film, presented by Francis Ford Coppola, instead relies on its photography, by Ron Fricke, and its score, by Philip Glass, to create a mesmerizing atmosphere. The first twenty minutes are merely comprised of beautiful shots of nature that are taken from around the world; all the while Glass's score hums in the background, providing a backbone that complements the stately rhythm of the film's editing. I was thinking, up to this point, that "Koyaanisqatsi" would continue to be like an unusually well-produced program that one would find on the Discovery Channel. But then, the humans arrive.

What I find most fascinating about Godfrey's film is that it doesn't treat its human subjects any differently from the ones found in nature. For both subjects, Reggio's film tends to go to the extremes, using both slow-motion and time-lapse shots, and it is organized into blocs of common themes: landscape shots, buildings undergoing demolition, extreme long shots of cars, speeded up, flying through freeway lanes like atoms, people milling about train stations. And only a film like this would feature a three-minute long, slow-motion, extreme telephoto shot of a 747 taxiing on a runway.

So, what is the point? This is a film that, through its beautiful images and its experimental soundtrack, washes over us and creates an unique atmosphere. Its purpose, I think, is to provide a different perspective on our existence, one that simultaneously trivializes and makes us aware of our imperceptible daily activities. I initially thought this film's purpose was to blame humans for ruining nature, as is evident in our first view of humans, which is a low angle shot of a giant mining vehicle that features an ominous score. But ultimately, this is a film that reminds us to take a step back, to appreciate our place in the world, in light of how many other humans and aspects of nature exist in a larger context. Are we really all that special? Is all our work in vain, in light of how huge our planet really is? Even if the answers to these questions are never fully answered, this film is, at the very least, an incredibly beautiful and haunting experience.

Rating: Mesmerizing

First Viewed: 7/20/08, on DVD
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Sunshine

2008-07-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

"Sunshine"
Danny Boyle, 2007

The Sun is something of a paradox. It is essential for life as we know it, but it gives us skin cancer. It provides more than enough heat and energy, but without an atmosphere we're toast. Yes, this is a very random observation, but this strange paradox lies at the heart of "Sunshine," a science-fiction film by the director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting"). Decades into the future, the Sun has run out of energy, and Earth's leaders have sent out a spaceship, called the Icarus II, with a device that can, in theory, reignite the Sun. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the small team of astronauts responsible for maintaining the ship is in for a rough ride. The ship is called the Icarus II for a reason; seven years prior, the first ship with a similar device and a very similar name - Icarus I - had gone missing. Besides, this is a science-fiction film, and where's the fun if not for many things going wrong?

And indeed, they do. The astronauts discover the Icarus I, and by deciding to rendezvous with it, they change their course; a slight miscalculation by one remarkably incompetent astronaut throws the ship's huge heat shield's alignment off, and chaos ensues. "Sunshine" has some very pretty visuals, particularly one in which crew members view the Sun from the safety of a heavily-polarized observation room. The astronauts can hardly take their eyes off the mesmerizing sight, and we can only imagine how, during their lifetimes on Earth, they have hardly been able to see the ever-diminishing Sun, something that we take for granted. But these are paper-thin characters, so when the astronauts are invariably killed off, we hardly give a damn. Only our protagonist, a physician who is the only person who can operate the device, leaves much of an impact; this is mostly due to Cillian Murphy's piercing, unsettling blue eyes, and to his above-average performance.

Up to this point, "Sunshine" is silly, but reasonably entertaining fare, but when the Icarus II docks with its predecessor, things go downhill. The surviving crew members encounter the "Sun Man," for lack of a better description, the captain of the first Icarus who had an epiphany and abandoned the mission. This epiphany is sketchy, something about realizing that humans are dust and that we should just accept our fate. I don't have a problem with the concept, despite the fact that it's hardly fleshed out; the Sun Man is essentially the Sun-incarnate, a dangerous entity that seems intent on foiling the astronauts' mission, despite their efforts to, ironically, save the Sun.

What I do have a problem with is the technique involved with the last third of the film. The Sun Man has an interesting appearance, with bubbling, glowing skin that resembles the surface of the Sun, but we can hardly see him because of Boyle's strange camerawork and editing. He employs lots of extreme closeups, blurred shots that resemble what it would probably look like if we looked at the Sun for too long, and very quick cuts, which, rather than giving the Sun Man an aura of danger and mystery, produce a loud and busy mess with poorly-realized action sequences. "Sunshine" ends up being a disappointment, which is unfortunate given the film's potentially interesting idea of the Sun as both a source of life and of destruction.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 7/28/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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Control

2008-07-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

"Control"

Anton Corbijn, 2007

This film is a portrait of the short life of Ian Curtis, the singer of the British band, Joy Division. Films in this genre generally follow the traditional rise-and-fall trajectory of a talented, yet deeply flawed musician. "Control," which is directed by Anton Corbijn, takes a slightly different perspective. Ian is not one of those musicians who gets corrupted by fame and wealth; he is, and remains until the end, a quiet guy who enjoys reading literature and writing lyrics. Rather, his major weakness, as depicted by the actor Sam Riley, is his sheer youthfulness and his lack of maturity in an environment that requires complete attentiveness. Unfortunately, he suffers from epilepsy, which requires him to take medication that affect his emotions and focus. (On a parenthetical note, a sequence in which Curtis is prescribed several kinds of medication at once, after suffering from his very first seizure, is completely inaccurate; he would only be given one kind of medication at first.)

Corbijn's black-and-white cinematography is beautifully-implemented, which is no surprise given his music video roots, but the relationships are poorly handled. We have no idea how the band members interact with one another, and we never learn why music appeals so much to Curtis - he spontaneously seems to join the band and they spontaneously seem to land record deals. "Control," instead of centering on the role of music in this musician's life, focuses most intently on Curtis's troubled relationship with his wife, Debbie (Samantha Morton). The couple married at a very young age, and Curtis, almost immediately, is ready to move on to other women. On one of his tours, he runs into a pretty Belgian journalist, Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara), and they begin to have an affair, which Debbie eventually discovers.

One aspect that I like about "Control" is its accurate suggestion that musicians' songs are greatly influenced by their private lives; the relatively few songs we see Curtis play are subordinate to the narrative involving this relationship triangle. How Curtis's issues affect his music, however, could have been made even more apparent had the film's relationship aspect been far more interesting. It is not very nuanced, nor is it all that original in its execution; and the characters' exchanges, though heated and well-acted, are, surprisingly, poorly written.

Here is the end of an inexcusably silly exchange between Annik and Curtis, that speaks for itself:
"I'm a little scared."
"Scared of what?"
"Scared of falling in love with you."

"Control" attempts to be a different kind of rise-and-fall film, one in which the musician's private life is the primary focus, rather than his music. It's an interesting idea, but whether this approach works in practice is an entirely different matter.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 7/17/08, on DVD
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Letters From Iwo Jima

2008-07-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

"Letters From Iwo Jima"
Clint Eastwood, 2006

Clint Eastwood's film, "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006), followed a group of U.S. Marines during and after the horrific fight for the isolated island, Iwo Jima, in the Pacific Theater during World War II. "Letters From Iwo Jima," that film's companion piece, views the conflict from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers on the island. Undersupplied and understaffed, the troops do their best to prepare for the impending invasion by U.S. Marines under the island's new, resourceful Army commander, General Kuribayashi, who is played by the excellent actor Ken Watanabe.

Eastwood, in both of his films, does an excellent job at conveying the frightening and unforgiving nature of war - it's nearly impossible to distinguish between U.S. and Japanese soldiers in the midst of many brutal skirmishes, and soldiers on both sides are capable of acts of unspeakable cruelty and compassion. Both films, unfortunately, get waylaid by intrusive melodramatic passages and flashbacks, which I suspect are courtesy of Paul Haggis's - who wrote "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," both of which are films I dislike - typically sentimental script. While these sequences help to develop the characters, they cut in at all the wrong times - during the middle of battle - which interrupts the film's impeccably-crafted oppressive atmosphere.

Eastwood himself was never one for subtlety; take his cowboy in his excellent Western, "Unforgiven," who repeatedly tells, rather than shows us, the effects the death of his wife had on his outlook on life. The same thing applies here, though to an admittedly lesser extent as the conflict is often depicted graphically. Then again, such straight-forwardness is necessary in a film such as this, where the futile nature of this single battle, which took tens of thousands of lives, needs to be applied, equally, to both participants in the conflict.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 7/15/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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Stalker

2008-07-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

"Stalker"

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979

This film is a science-fiction tale about the "Zone," the site of a meteorite impact in Russia that is, according to legend, a source of mysterious and other-worldly powers. The area has been cordoned off by the police for decades; however, there is a small, illicit business where a guide, nick-named a "Stalker," attempts to lead dejected people to a room within the Zone where their innermost wishes come true.

We follow one Stalker, a tired-looking man who has emerging patches of gray hair, and one of his ventures into the Zone with two men who are simply referred to as the Writer and the Professor. We learn that this Stalker lived within the Zone when the meteorite struck, leaving his newborn daughter a mutant without any legs. Since then, his entire life has centered around the Zone, which has become his obsession and his home, unlike the shack, located within a depressing, unnamed industrial city, that his family now resides in.

This film is a challenging experience, a hefty journey in which we enter a world where sounds and images are, at once, alien and familiar. The initial shots, in which the Stalker dutifully prepares to go into the Zone early in the morning, have a striking sepia-toned and high contrast aesthetic. His every-day existence is a depressing one, where all signs of life appear to have been drained from the image. Sounds are given a peculiar treatment, as if the noises have been detached from the objects and the people that produce them - footsteps echo with eerie, electric-like modulations, for example. There is one sequence that I find particularly captivating. The three men, having run past the police outposts, ride into the Zone on a railroad track. For five minutes, Tarkovsky's camera focuses only on these characters' visages, looking ahead into the unknown; all the while, we hear only a beautiful, bizarre synthesizer whose rhythm simulates that of the mechanized handcart they ride on.

Suddenly, the camera switches to a first-person perspective, and we witness the Zone for the first time. The lighting changes entirely, the world is now presented in color, and we hear only organic noises; the synthesizer fades away like a phantom. The sequence is similar to that of "The Wizard of Oz," where Dorothy steps out of her house into the unfamiliar, from her monochromatic world to a vividly colored one. When comparing the two directly, "Stalker's" sequence remains the more powerful and haunting - the Zone's desolate beauty and its underlying hint at danger are what make the film's atmosphere so complex and engaging. These characters seek something better, and they are so desperate that they are willing to venture into the Zone - which, despite appearing much more lively than the sepia-toned environment of their everyday existence, has the capacity to kill people - in order to find that ultimate sense of solace.

We discover that the Zone is a treacherous place that is filled with many traps, though not in the physically-harmful tradition of most science-fiction films; they are, instead, intellectual challenges, in which the group of men become trapped in their own anguish. Tarkovsky presents this in an interesting manner, often leaving many minutes without any dialogue while our protagonists, shot in extreme long shot or in extreme closeup, struggle through the wilderness. Then, the characters, for minutes on end, engage in a number of fascinating soliloquies - the Zone's traps, we eventually realize - in which they debate about the values of their lives.

Deeper down, this is an allegorical tale about belief, about people who are disillusioned with what the world has given them, and their efforts to discover what makes their lives worth living. The film poses many questions, especially in the last half-hour, that are nearly impossible to answer. Is the Zone a force of good or of evil? Of both? Though the Stalker reveres the Zone, is his zeal for the Zone's potential for goodness transferable to others? That is, can people's beliefs and values retain the same meaning from individual-to-individual? Do people have choices in what they can believe in, or is that in itself an illusion? Whatever the answers, this is one hell of a film. It's aesthetically spell-binding, aurally inventive, beautifully written and acted, and an intellectual puzzle that I'm not even close to figuring out.

Rating: 10

First Viewed: 7/13/08, on a crappy Kino DVD
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

2008-07-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"

Cristian Mungiu, 2007

This movie takes its time, slowly building from the first moment we see the visibly agitated college student, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), nervously straightening up her dorm room, until we discover, nearly half an hour later, that she is about to assist a friend with her abortion, a crime under the Communist regime in 1980s Romania.

This is a beautifully constructed film, and its depiction of ordinary people forced into extraordinarily difficult situations, occurring within one day, makes it all the more fascinating to watch. Its scenes are assembled in an unusual manner, like vignettes from a play. Mungiu's camera, static and positioned from a distance, and often shot in long, five-minute takes, seems to give the proceedings an impartial eye - but only at first glance. This approach really allows us, in the tradition of early Realist films, to take in all of the mannerisms of these outstanding actors unabated, with hardly any editing to interrupt the film's leisurely flow.

Initially, it is not really obvious how tense the film's atmosphere truly is. But as Otilia deals with disgruntled people everywhere she goes - her boyfriend, rude hotel employees, a greedy abortion "specialist" - her frustration becomes all the more palpable. This festering apprehension leaks into the film's very atmosphere; we come to realize that we are watching a portrait of flawed people trying their hardest to survive in a system that has turned as stagnant as the film's static cinematography. And as a snapshot of a few people's dilemmas, this is a film without a climax - life, for them and for us, simply goes on.

Rating: 10

First Viewed: 7/10/08, on DVD
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Drugstore Cowboy

2008-07-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

"Drugstore Cowboy"
Gus van Sant, 1989

I have harbored love-hate feelings for all of the Gus van Sant films I've seen thus far: I thought "My Own Private Idaho" was a film of middling quality, enjoyed "Good Will Hunting," liked "Elephant," and hated his most recent offering, "Paranoid Park." In his later films, van Sant focuses almost exclusively, to a frustrating extent, on the visual and audio aspects, at the expense of delivering convincing acting, a well-developed story, and characters we can empathize with - in short, he is capable of producing good films as well as terribly pretentious trite. With this in mind, I was curious as to how I would react to one of his earlier films, "Drugstore Cowboy."

Van Sant's film follows a drug addict named Bob (Matt Dillon) who, with the help of his wife, Dianne (Kelly Lynch), and his partners, Rick (James LeGrose) and Nadine (Heather Graham), raids drug stores in search of expensive pharmaceuticals. These robberies not only serve as a source of income for the group, but also as a more "legal" and convenient way to quell their nasty drug addictions. What I like about van Sant's film, especially compared to his later ones, is how it centers intently on Bob's dilemma, without devolving into purely nonsensical artsiness. There are a number of visual overlays, but these are used shrewdly, and only at times of great emotional intensity - a friend dies and we see images of hats, Bob's most-feared omen, raining down over his face.

All of van Sant's films, in one way or another, focus on characters who try to survive at the fringe of society; "Drugstore Cowboy" is no different. Bob's character arc is especially fascinating to witness, however, thanks to van Sant's well-written script - his best, in my opinion - and his desire to present his character's turmoil in a more straightforward fashion. Van Sant's strengths have always been in his cinematography - he is also a professional photographer - and in his use of sound. His lighting and perfect compositions almost always feel appropriate for the given situation, and his meticulous sound design tends to place an emphasis on the small aspects we unconsciously focus on in our everyday lives - the hollow thunk of a gun being set on a table during a casual drug deal, for example.

Even though this is one of the best van Sant films I have seen, it still carries a number of his trademark weaknesses, such as some awkward, wooden acting and an ending that arrives too quickly. Nonetheless, "Drugstore Cowboy" was a pleasant surprise, an exhibition of Gus van Sant's talents at his most down-to-earthness.

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 7/8/08, on DVD
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Natural Born Killers

2008-07-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

"Natural Born Killers"
Oliver Stone, 1994

Quentin Tarantino's story about a pair of psychotic lovers, Mickey Knox (an excellent Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis), going on a murderous rampage is fine, I suppose. His plot doesn't really offer us anything original or insightful, aside from providing the brief adrenaline rush that one attains from witnessing a murder on-screen. The problem with "Natural Born Killers" is that its director, Oliver Stone, shifts his focus away from the killers, and onto society's culpability in making them the monsters they are.

Stone's film features an odd mish-mash of visuals: smooth, normal-looking 35 mm shots, ultra-grainy black-and-white shots, animation, quick edits to horror-film visuals and to television shows, and lots of blown-out highlights. This is probably the only film where I find the cinematography by Robert Richardson, who shot "JFK," "Kill Bill," and "Platoon," distracting. His camera tends to revert to dutch angles, which looks cool the first dozen times we see this, but quickly grows gimicky.

Stone's other visuals fare just as poorly - at first, I thought that he was using such a schizophrenic assortment of visuals to relay the Knoxs' disturbed mental state. But since the film is presented in this manner the entire time, with no regard as to who the subject is, I'm going to venture a guess: Stone made this decision, not only because it looked "cool," but also because he wanted to suggest that society is responsible for cultivating these killers. The film only explores this issue in broad, clumsy strokes. Robert Downey, Jr., playing a reporter - to perfection, as always - who investigates mass murderers for a TV show, is supposed to be some kind of embodiment of the media being a disseminator of hatred and violence - how the media fulfills this role, exactly, is never satisfactorily explored.

The only time that Stone properly balances the combination of entertainment, horror, and preaching about media's evils occurs during an incredibly disturbing sequence where Mickey and Mallory's brutal murder of her abusive parents - one of whom is played, surprisingly, by Rodney Dangerfield - is depicted, visually and aurally, like a cheap sitcom airing on TV. This sequence, unlike the rest of the film, perfectly conveys the insanity of these two characters, who kill simply because they can and couldn't care less about the repercussions of their actions - in their minds, their lives are as meaningful as those of actors on a TV show. But at this point, I think I'm just bored with Tarantino-style ultra-violence, which combined with Stone's needless and poorly-executed preachiness, makes this film an insufferable experience.

Rating: 4

First Viewed: 7/7/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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Superbad

2008-07-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

"Superbad"
Greg Mottola, 2007

At its roots, "Superbad" is a low-brow comedy about a group of high school friends trying to lose their virginity with their crushes at a party before they leave for college. The film gets off to a shaky start, with the chubby, foul-mouthed loser named Seth (Jonah Hill) spouting off nauseating remarks about how he'd like to have sex with girls until, finally, even his - extremely unlikely - best friend, Evan (Michael Cera), tells him to shut up.

If the writers, Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, had decided to take the easy route, they would have maintained this boring level of crudity. Last year's horrendous film, "Good Luck Chuck," is an indication as to how boring and insulting a poorly-executed low-brow production can become. The primary reason I recall that film, though, is because of the similarity between Dane Cook's vulgar buddy and Seth. Fortunately for us, Rogan and Goldberg decide to take the relative high-road after the initial ten minutes.

Rather than drag us through the various mis-adventures of a bunch of jerks, "Superbad" takes us on a refreshingly simple journey with a group of socially inept people who are merely trying to be "cool." Sure, the film is filled with all kinds of contrived situations; however, the film's purpose is to relay its characters' extreme awkwardness, so this generally ends up working in its favor. The sequence in which Seth, Evan, and their nerdy friend, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), attempt to buy alcohol for the party is particularly successful, and also quite funny, at making us identify with their inescapable awkwardness. For a low-brow film, "Superbad" ends up being far better than most films in its genre would indicate.

Rating: 7

First Viewed: 7/6/08, on Blu-ray disc
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When Did You Last See Your Father?

2008-07-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

"When Did You Last See Your Father?"

Anand Tucker, 2007

This film is an adaptation of the author Blake Morrison's account of his relationship with his father. Blake, played by Colin Firth, exudes a feeling of despair whenever he enters the screen; his father, Arthur, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, which compels him to reflect on their relationship over the years. From there, the film splits into three interlocking narratives: one, in 1989, covers Blake and his mother, Kim (Juliet Stevensen), taking care of Arthur on his death bed, the second briefly covers Blake's experiences as a young child, and the third covers a 17-year-old Blake's relationship with Arthur.

It is this third narrative, surprisingly, that turns out to be the most fascinating. Blake, who is played by the young actor Matthew Beard, is both a typical and atypical teen, a scrawny, horny guy who is easily embarrassed by his dad, and whose passion is literature. But the film's star is Arthur, a charismatic and good-spirited man, who is played by the outstanding British actor Jim Broadbent. These two men are fascinating characters in their own right, but when they are together, their interactions become as volatile as dynamite. Blake truly respects his dad, and Arthur, who simply loves to have fun, is proud of his son - this is especially evident in a touching sequence where the father teaches his son how to drive on an empty beach.

And yet, there is a palpable tension between the two - Arthur often cruelly teases Blake, calling him "fathead" or playing tricks on him. And Blake begins to suspect that his father is having an affair with a family friend, which makes his views of his father all the more conflicted. This is the moment when Blake begins to realize that his role models aren't perfect; his struggle to deal with this change defines the rocky relationship between the two until it is too late, and Arthur is dead. For their parts, the two actors have perfect chemistry: Beard nails his awkward, distrustful teen perfectly while Broadbent makes portraying a jovial man, with his own flaws, over several decades seem effortless.

I'm not usually a fan of such melodramatic tales, yet Tucker's film manages to avoid the pitfalls of this genre - for the most part, at least. There is an unremarkable score, complete with swelling strings, that butts in at all the wrong moments, and the ending lingers on the sadness following Arthur's death longer than need be. However, the film's depiction of these two fascinating characters gives it an unusual power that nearly overcomes such shortcomings.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 7/5/08, in 35 mm projection
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Brazil

2008-07-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

"Brazil"

Terry Gilliam, 1985

"Brazil" borrows much from George Orwell's novel, 1984, about a society living under the reign of a "big-brother" state. Like the novel, we follow a hapless bureaucrat, named Sam (Jonathan Pryce), and his journey through a bureaucratically-driven society that is dominated by the repressive state. The government's strong-arm tactics are carried out by the Ministry of Information, an ironic title given that the agency is used to crush differing opinions and force absolute loyalty to the state.

While Gilliam probes the repercussions of a state that has excessive powers, his film's primary focus is on facades, both literal and figurative. Nearly all of these characters, save for our protagonist, are facile beings - Sam's mother (Katherine Helmond), who uses her prominent position to move Sam up the bureaucratic ladder, against his wishes, and who has her face grotesquely stretched out to maintain a youthful appearance, is the epitome of this rampant superficiality. And in a breathtaking crane shot, we discover that large billboards put in place along a roadside obstruct views of the countryside because there is no more countryside - the land, ravaged by a government bent on expansion, is as barren as the moon.

What is most fascinating about the films is not what is said, but rather what is unspoken. Despite saying "positive" things, many of these characters exude a grotesque quality - much of this is due to Gillian's brilliant visuals. Faces are often lit from underneath to produce a menacing quality, and the use of wide-angle lenses and low-angle shots create an appropriately dystopian atmosphere that is similar to that of "A Clockwork Orange." Because of the beautifully implemented lighting, sound, and model-work, this decrepit city has a tactile, almost living quality to it - when a maintenance cover is lifted in an apartment, we hear an ominous breathing sound emanating from hundreds of ducts and wires like a creature from another world.

Strangely, I don't find the central plot all that interesting, or consistently presented; it essentially centers around Sam's efforts to fix a glitch in the system, despite the government doing everything, not necessarily on purpose, to sabotage him. Gilliam seems more interested in creating a purely visual experience with his film, rather than a completely coherent one with well-developed characters. Much of the film's running time consists of Sam's tangential adventures, which primarily center on his search for an androgynous woman, who may or may not be a terrorist, he has a crush on. We also witness Sam's dreams, in which he transforms himself into a winged warrior, which connects all parts of the film, and exteriorizes his desire to escape his confining world, a desire that ultimately comes back to haunt him in the end.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 7/4/08, on DVD
IMDB Page

Shortbus

2008-07-04T09:37:00.001-07:00

"Shortbus"
John Cameron Mitchell, 2006

This film starts off with a bang. In a literally orgasmic sequence, we witness many people, throughout New York, having all kinds of explicitly depicted sex. It is here that we meet the sex therapist, Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), in the middle of having sex with her husband, who cannot achieve an orgasm, a depressed gay man named James (Paul Dawson) taping himself while he engages in auto-fellatio, and Severin (Lindsay Beamish), an antisocial woman who is using S&M on a client.

It's certainly a different way to open a film, and afterward, each of these characters, in a predictable manner, run into each other at Shortbus, a nightclub for people who wish to explore the boundaries of their own sexuality. The film's greatest accomplishment is its ability to make the sex look appealing and repulsive at the same time; we can understand why people would love and hate this kind of lifestyle. This depiction of sex, however, is at the expense of making the sex feel natural and meaningful; the film's over-the-top visual style and staging of the sex sequences quickly grow repetitive.

There is a strange, disjointed feel to the entire narrative, perhaps due to the fact that the characters and story were developed with the cast, that lessens the film's overall impact. This disjointedness is especially apparent in the narrative concerning James. We know that he is depressed and that he feels he cannot connect with his boyfriend, Jamie. "I see [Jamie's love]... all around me... but it stops at my skin. I can't let it inside," he says at one point. Yet the film never really delves into the character's internal turmoil; when James tries to commit suicide, his plight feels like an arbitrary plot development forced into place by the filmmakers. The film attempts to focus on the fact that each person is different, and that certain things turn them on and turn them off. But, armed with only a cursory insight into these characters, this is a film whose parts - pun intended - are greater than its whole.

Fun Fact: My friend's uncle, Tim Perell, was the producer of "Shortbus."

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 7/3/08, on DVD
IMDB Page

The Sand Pebbles

2008-07-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

"The Sand Pebbles"
Robert Wise, 1966

The first five minutes of "The Sand Pebbles," which feature a grand orchestral arrangement over a black screen, immediately establish this film as an epic. The film, which portrays a transient engineer, Holman's (Steve McQueen), experiences on a U.S. gunboat in China, exhibits both the possibilities and the limitations of epic films.

For an epic, its characters are surprisingly nuanced and fascinating figures. Holman, who we learn has been transferred seven times over the last nine years, is openly racist towards the Chinese workers on the ship; and yet he must learn to cooperate with them in order to run the ship. It's an interesting character arc, and his relationship with a Chinese mechanic that he mentors is touching.

We also have the captain of the gunboat, a man who is more interested in his pride and, as an unofficial representative of the U.S., demanding that his ship appear strong, rather than on the well-being of his men or the Chinese. By film's end, the formerly-pristine ship has a decrepit, rusted appearance - a symbol of an imperial power's "good" intentions gone rotten.

But being an epic, this film has its share of flaws. There is a love story, between a Chinese woman and one of the engineers, played by Richard Attenborough, that is incessantly trite. When both of them die, one from an illness, the other at the hands of Chinese soldiers, the implications for Holman are so contrived - the Chinese blame him for killing the couple, and the sailors nearly rebel and send Holman to them - and then so quickly dismissed, that it's simply laughable. The film's three-hour running time also feels unnecessary; a shorter film would have helped to make some of the more interesting themes and characters all the more powerful. As it is, the film is merely a good epic.

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 7/3/08, on Blu-ray disc
IMDB Page

Wall-E

2008-06-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

"Wall-E"
Andrew Stanton, 2008

Pixar's films consistently go far beyond the conventions of most high-budget animation projects, effortlessly meshing memorable characters with impeccable animation, without the need for incessant pop-culture references. Their latest effort, "Wall-E," is a continuation of the studio's ability to craft excellent films, though this time, much of the focus is on more contemporaneous issues.

The film's first shots depict gorgeous images of the galaxy, a nebulous area that does not really serve as a representation of our greatest aspirations - being the "next frontier" and all - but rather as place for humans to flee from Earth's toxicity, which has rendered the planet uninhabitable for over seven-hundred years. It is there, on the surface of this apocalyptic, now-alien world, that we meet our protagonist, Wall-E, a small robot who communicates only through electronic wails and ingeniously-implemented gesticulations of his binocular-like eyes and stubby arms.

We witness Wall-E's daily life, which includes interacting with his only friend, a cockroach that, naturally, lives within a Twinkie bar; compacting the ubiquitous piles of waste into small cubes and piling them into skyscrapers; and watching old romance films on his iPod at night. These first few minutes alone, which have no dialogue, are fascinating in their depiction of this lonely character who, despite being programmed centuries ago by a corporation to labor away for a futile cause, has the capacity to love and to desire companionship. This character's desperation is particularly touching, and so effectively and simply relayed, in a sequence in which he focuses in on two lovers, in his favorite film, holding hands and singing.

Wall-E's wish for companionship comes true - an effeminate, slick-looking, and short-tempered probe named Eve lands on earth, searching for signs of life. Wall-E's obsession with Eve, who wields a formidable gun that seems to fire miniature nuclear explosions, is as strange, awkward, and funny a love story as any I have ever seen; its only equivalent is Adam Sandler and Emily Watson's unconventional romance in "Punch-Drunk Love."

Suddenly, Eve is taken back by the people who sent her, but not without Wall-E desperately clinging on, both to the ship and to his object of desire. We soon discover that all the humans fled Earth long ago and now live on a gigantic ship, living as horrifically obese duds who are unaware of their imprisonment to armchairs, to their television screen, and to their automated lifestyle that has long been maintained by robots. The rest of the film focuses on more lofty themes, particularly on the evils of the corporation and the necessity of people to be individuals who are accountable for maintaining their own lives and environments.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this last part of the film - it is conspicuously preachy about its admittedly banal message. Yet the film, like its portrayal of the unusual love story, proves to be surprisingly effective at making this theme resonate with its audience; after all, the effects of these humans' idleness are apparent from the moment we first witness Earth's barren landscape. "Wall-E"'s success ultimately lies in its incisive and fresh perspectives on aspects of our lives that we often take for granted - for example, a repair area for robots is really just a mental warden for robots who don't functioning "normally."

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/29/08
IMDB Page

Book Review: The Road

2008-06-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

"The Road"

By Cormac McCarthy

It hasn't been easy for me to delve into Cormac McCarthy's extensive canon. I couldn't get past the odd writing style of "No Country for Old Men" a year ago and, despite the beautiful prose, I didn't find the plot of "All the Pretty Horses" all that compelling. With that said, it's kind of interesting that "The Road," which features a depressing post-apocalyptic plot, is the first Cormac McCarthy novel I've finished reading in its entirety.

This is, at once, the most simple and most ambitious of the McCarthy novels I've read. He focuses exclusively on two characters, a boy and his father, and their journey along "the road" that runs through the former United States years after the apocalypse has occurred. What exactly happened is ambiguous; the novel hints at the possibilities only in several brief flashbacks. All that we know, and all that McCarthy really cares about, is the apocalypse's aftermath and how it affects these two characters.

We know that just about everything is dead - entire forests, all of the fish, and billions of people. All that remains are the ever-ubiquitous clouds of ash, trunks of dead trees, extreme cold, and essentially no food, which begets marauding bands of cannibals who collect stragglers for their own survival.

McCarthy's spare prose is brilliant and elegant; its halting quality perfectly encapsulates the incessantly dour atmosphere and texture of this story. Occasionally, the author pushes the philosophical aspects harder than need be: "Who is it? said the boy. I don't know. Who is anybody?" Aside from those moments, the writing is a joy to read. Here's a prototypical passage that is found near the end of the novel - I love the way it is at once spare and descriptive at the same time.

"The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts. They went on. Treading the dead world under like rats on a wheel. The nights dead still and deader black. So cold. They talked hardly at all. He coughed all the time and the boy watched him spitting blood. Slumping along. Filthy, ragged, hopeless. He'd stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle." (230)

At the heart of the novel is the relationship between the man and his son. The man, coughing up blood and carrying a pistol with only a couple rounds in it, swears to protect his son, who was born right after the apocalypse, at all costs. The boy, as described in the novel, is a metaphor for our innate, and perhaps foolish, hope that, despite our mistakes, we have the capacity to start over again. The father's pledge becomes especially apparent in a conflict with another man, the first they have seen in over a year, who holds the boy at knife-point; the man shoots him dead immediately. The boy is shocked by his father's occasional brutality - not giving part of their limited food supply to a passerby, for example - which complicates their relationship.

In one flashback, we learn that the man's wife committed suicide, mocking the man for wanting to live through such a nonexistent world. The question does arise on more than one occasion: Why do these two survivors continue on? For the most part, they spend their days traveling down a silent road flanked by the trunks of trees; starving for many days before discovering left-over provisions; and heading towards the south, away from the biting cold that resulted, presumably, from nuclear fallout. In the end, the book is incredibly depressing, and yet, oddly uplifting, as we realize that humans have the capacity both to destroy themselves and to be persistent in the face of incredible adversity. McCarthy even has us believe, for a while at least, that the love between the father and his son can successfully weather the hardships of a now-dead world.

Rating: 9.5

The Goonies

2008-06-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

"The Goonies"

Richard Donner, 1985

Steven Spielberg, who produced, wrote, and presented "The Goonies," often hearkens back to the cheesy, old-school adventure films that were prevalent during the 1940s. "The Goonies," a classic film from the 1980s that follows in the footsteps of the "Indiana Jones" series, is a continuation of the director's fascination with this genre.

We have the archetypal group of young friends, who call themselves "the Goonies." There is the unofficial leader of the group, Mikey (a very young Sean Astin, who went on to play Sam in the "Lord of the Rings" series), toting an inhaler for his asthma, who discovers an old map in his family's attic that tells of a long-lost treasure in secret caves underneath their very own town. There is his moody older brother, Brand (a very young Josh Brolin), his requisite love interest, Andy, the suave kid nicknamed "Mouth," the obese and talkative Jewish kid nicknamed "Chunk," and the nerdy, technologically proficient Asian kid nicknamed "Data," played by the same actor who played Short Round in the second "Indiana Jones" installment.

All of these characters, the dialogue they utter, and the environments that they inhabit, are caricatures that hearken back to those old adventure films. I enjoyed a number of the film's aspects, particularly the sets and lighting, which exude a fun, creepy atmosphere, and the appropriately over-theatrical nature of the characters' gestures.

However, this reliance on old-school nostalgia is a double-edged sword; the film is at once fun and irritating at the same time. All of the characters tend to scream over one another, a common occurrence in Spielberg films, which grows tiresome very quickly. There is one sequence, in particular, that feels unnecessarily mean-spirited: Mikey's mom tells Mouth to translate what she says for their new, Spanish-speaking housekeeper, but instead tells her things like "put the coke in the top drawer, weed in the second" or "if you don't do your work, you'll be locked up in the attic!" In response, the actress says lines like "Ay caramba! What a messed-up family." This sequence is representative of the film's ultimate issue; how to have fun with the silly premise without devolving into completely annoying and stupid fare.

Rating: 7

First Viewed: 6/25/08
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Yojimbo

2008-06-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

"Yojimbo"
Akira Kurosawa, 1961

"Yojimbo" follows an itinerant samurai warrior named Sanjuro, played by the reliably enthralling Toshiro Mifune, who comes across a village where two bosses, Seibei and Ushitora, are in the midst of a war that is tearing the community apart. The coffin-maker's business is booming, at least until there are "too many deaths" for anyone to care about burial, and families are torn apart due to people's loyalties to either side. Sanjuro is in desperate need of money and takes advantage of both sides' desperation, switching alliances and all the while laughing at the futility of the entire situation.

Kurosawa, I suspect, was aiming to depict how silly this feud is - we are never told what event triggered the war in the first place and only witness its brutal aftermath. His film provides some interesting touches of black humor, such as Sanjuro, upon first entering the town, witnessing a dog trotting away with a severed hand in its mouth. But most of the time, the humor doesn't really work. It is strange and treats the characters in a belittling manner - after a time it grows wearisome, and stops providing a fresh perspective on the conflict. This problem with the humor is compounded by a questionable music motif that consists of a bizarre, out-of-place mish-mash of 60s rock and Japanese music.

I suppose the entire film is a mish-mash of various genres and subjects, including westerns, comedy, and social commentary on a society gone mad. Kurosawa's attention to his mise en scene is impeccable, as always - the scenes are intelligently staged and all of his shots, which feature great use of deep focus and composition, are imaginative and effective. Whether or not all of these aspects comfortably mesh with one another is an entirely different matter. As for me, I much prefer Kurosawa's other films, but perhaps "Sanjuro," the second installment in this series, will prove to be a more enjoyable watch.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/22/08
IMDB page

Mongol

2008-06-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

“Mongol”
Sergei Bodrov, 2007

The effects of Genghis Kahn, the man who formed the world's largest empire, before or since, can still be felt to this day. At a recent dinner with some of my family's relatives, who emigrated from Russia, all of them, who are not film buffs by any means, expressed interest in the new film on Genghis' life. I'm not entirely sure what that entails, nor am I an expert on this area of history, but I think that the fact that the Russians had a good deal of knowledge of the man, who did conquer all of Russia, is interesting nonetheless.

“Mongol,” a new film by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov, attempts to capture both the epic and personal aspects of Genghis Khan's early life. Most of the film's plot stems from an older Genghis' reflection, from within a prison, on his past experiences, starting with the day he, as the 9-year-old son of a minor khan, or lord, chose a bride. On that same day – the day that “changed my life forever,” says Genghis, who the film refers to as “Temudjin,” which is presumably his original name - they run into a group of enemy clan members. After running through a traditional ritual of exchanging drinks with one another, Temudjin's father falls from his horse, dying from his poisoned drink.

The film concentrates on the power of tradition, and on how these people's implementation of and breaking of these unstated rules could change the distribution of power in the region almost instantaneously. This is certainly an interesting topic, and is by far the film's most fascinating and well-developed. It is unfortunate, and surprising, that many other aspects of “Mongol” are poorly executed.

Bodrov presents his narrative in a fluid manner, yet the sequences feel episodic in nature. The film has to cover a lot of ground, and the entire narrative has a disjointed feel. After the khan's death, a rival within Temudjin's clan takes over and threatens to kill the boy, only to release him when he realizes that he is not big enough to be killed “legitimately.” Much of the film's first hour focuses, to a frustratingly repetitive extent, on how this rival recaptures Temudjin, and then sets him free when the boy still isn't big enough, or when he manages to escape imprisonment. A clan member named Oelen, who is to become one of the most powerful kahns in Mongolia, comes across Temudjin, and they become blood brothers for an unspecified reason. Eventually, Temudjin finds his bride, named Borte, at an encampment and, in a laughably hackneyed sequence, love each other on first sight.

This love story reveals all of the script's major weaknesses. The dialogue is trite and the relationship does not feel genuine – it feels like we are watching actors, not real people, delivering lines from a melodramatic historical reenactment. The battles, an important aspect of Genghis' life, are poorly-staged sequences whose style, through a combination of alternating between slow-motion and fast shutter-speed shots, bares some semblance to last year's “300,” a decision that proves to be just as gimmicky and muddled. And a sequence in which the rival ambushes Temudjin at night is simply amateurish in its choreography and photography.

Worst of all, we never truly come to understand what made Temudjin such a magnetic personality, a charismatic leader who managed to unite all Mongolians into an unstoppable force. Sure, the film shows how he wasn't afraid of lightning in the middle of battle, which inspires his troops, and how he gave his warriors a good deal of loot, but the character's genuine humanity, and our interest in his character, is severely lacking. Hopefully, the reported sequels will address these shortcomings and focus on this aspect of this potentially fascinating man.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 6/21/08
IMDB Page

Rescue Dawn

2008-06-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Rescue Dawn" (2007)

Directed by Werner Herzog

"Rescue Dawn" is a raw portrayal of prisoners-of-war trying to survive in North Vietnam. The film follows the true story of the Navy pilot, Dieter (Christian Bale), whose plane is shot down while he is in the middle of a bombing mission. Herzog takes a different approach from a more "cinematic" Vietnam film like "The Deer Hunter," shooting the events in a documentary-like manner in order to convey the feeling that we are right there with Dieter.

After managing to evade capture for a couple of days, Dieter is finally caught by the Vietcong, tortured in a village with fascinated - and visibly angry - onlookers, and then led to a prisoner-of-war camp, where he meets fellow prisoners Duane (a captivating Steve Zahn) and the frenetic, on-the-verge-of-madness Gene (Jeremy Davies). Dieter provides a wave of innovation for the group of prisoners, many of whom have been in captivity for over two years. He manipulates a stolen nail so that the prisoners can be unshackled at night and comes up with an escape plan, much to the chagrin of Gene, who seems to have accepted his fate as a perpetual prisoner.

We find out that the guards themselves are imprisoned - bombings have ruined the area's food supply, starving the entire population, and making the guards act more cruelly towards the prisoners. At one point, Duane tells Dieter, "Don't you realize? The Jungle is the prison." Dieter realizes this only after he escapes with Duane, having to deal with leeches, starvation, floods, and angry villagers. Bale gives an outstanding performance as the cocky, affable pilot who is also a natural leader. Thanks to the actor, every tiny victory and every disappointment rings all the more resonant, especially in a sequence where Dieter, after setting part of an empty village on fire in order to signal to helicopters, is fired on by his own men.

It is unfortunate that the film ends with an annoyingly saccharine sequence, in which Dieter is welcomed by the entire crew of an aircraft carrier, complete with intrusive, swelling music. After all of the ordeals that Dieter has to endure, it is strange that Herzog ends the film on such a paltry, sentimental note - it is all happiness, when the war, and the rest of Dieter's experience, was anything but.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 6/16/08
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-06-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

"Raiders of the Lost Arc," as well as the rest of the films in the original "Indiana Jones" trilogy, is the perfect "adventure" film. That film presents a fun hero who is both a professor and a Nazi-killing archaeologist, as well as a number of riveting action sequences, with humor thrown in for good measure.

In his latest adventure, Jones (Harrison Ford), now an aged professor living in the 1950s, faces off against a contingency of Soviet agents working within the United States, who are led by Col. Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Along the way, Jones runs into a young, egotistic biker named Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) who tells him that his mother and their friend, Professor Oxley (John Hurt), who was in the middle of searching for a mysterious Crystal Skull in the ruins of Peru, have been kidnapped by the Soviets.

The new "Indiana Jones" differs from its predecessors in a number of ways, but in the end it does not fare as well compared to those films. There is still a fun, over-the-top nature to many of the sequences, particularly one in which Jones and Mutt fight and run from KGB agents while driving a motorcycle through a city. But the new adventure feels different from that of the other films. We no longer follow Jones as he figures out how to accomplish his challenges - rather, our hero - and we, the audience - seems to be dragged from one setpiece to another with hardly a sense of connectedness between them.

Spielberg and Lucas themselves appear to waver in determining which aspects of the film should be over-the-top and which should not. The computer-generated sequences often vary, even within a shot, from looking very good to very bad; Lucas includes some strange and stupid humor involving poorly-rendered, computer-generated prairie dogs and monkeys; and the adventure itself, insipidly written by David Koepp of "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" ilk, turns out to be a disappointing science-fiction tale that lacks the dark tension of the previous installments.

This has always been a fun, occasionally silly series, yet almost all of the actors give surprisingly understated, and, especially in Ford's case, exceedingly dry and boring performances. Only Cate Blanchett, as the over-theatrical, saber-wielding head villain with a bad accent, interprets the material, correctly, as an excuse to merely provide good fun.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/15/08
IMDB Page

2008-06-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Directed by Mark Osborne

"More (1998)," an Academy Award-nominated stop action short, is one of the more brilliant films I've seen recently. The short follows a humanoid creature who works at a factory that produces "Get Happy" products, which seems like a useless product save for its bright yellow smiling face that stands out against the dreary, monochromatic urban world that he inhabits. Amidst his days that consist of journeying to and from work, where all the other inhabitants on the public transportation system look identical, our protagonist discovers a glowing power that is literally contained within him and uses this as inspiration to create a new-and-improved "Get Happy" product.

While this theme of an individual inhabiting a dystopian world that is representative of our own isn't particularly original, the short is still immensely powerful and resonant, which is particularly astounding considering that this takes place within a six-minute running time. Osborne makes particularly powerful use of contrasting colors, from the dystopian dullness of the "real" world to the vibrant colors of our protagonist's imagination, and the excellent synthesizer score further enhances this world's menace. I was surprised to discover that Osborne is the director of "Kung Fu Panda," which initially looked like a typical, crappy Dreamworks production. But if that man can make such brilliant work in a short, I'm certainly interested to see what he can do with a feature-length animated film.

Rating: 9.5

(Note: Click on the picture to be linked to a video of the short.)
Second Viewing: 6/13/08
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Hopscotch

2008-06-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

"Hopscotch" (1980)

Directed by Ronald Neame

This is a cute movie about an old CIA spy (an amusing Walter Matthau) who decides to play a game and publish his memoirs on the run, as retribution against his younger managers who have decided to have him retire behind a filing cabinet. The film is quietly funny, but the plot is, strangely, not all that compelling, nor is the film half as clever as it thinks it is. "Hopscotch" also features a preachy theme that pushes for accountability and truth in the government, which I suppose makes sense given that the film was released only a few years after Watergate.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/12/08
IMDB Page

A Woman Under the Influence

2008-06-13T11:45:00.001-07:00

"A Woman Under the Influence" (1974)
Directed by John Cassavetes

When I told my parents I was watching a Cassavetes film for the first time, they made a sympathetic gesture, saying that all of his films are simply long and depressing. And to some degree, I suppose this film is. But it is also an intense and often-fascinating depiction of members of a middle-class family who are pushed to their emotional limits.

We catch the housewife, Mabel (Gena Rowlands), who is married to a city worker named Nick (Peter Falk), beginning to undergo a mental and emotional breakdown. We are never directly told why she is extremely unhappy; at one point, towards the end, Mabel herself says she doesn't know why this has happened to her. But the film drops a number of hints as to why this deterioration occurs. Men frequently treat Mabel terribly – one of Nick's coworkers hugs and kisses her in front of a large group of people, and a doctor, a family friend who is sent to help “treat” her, winks at her all the while having a salacious grin on his face when he first sees her. It is this sexual inequality, which the characters fail to realize, that most likely leads to her unhappiness.

Cassavetes' camera rarely cuts away from the intense situations and provides an unflinching perspective of her deterioration, which is painful to witness. Both Rowlands and Falk give brilliant performances - Rowlands crafts a character that ranges from being completely sympathetic to terrifyingly psychotic while Falk's husband is a fascinating and imperfect character, a working-class man who desperately tries to regain a sense of control in the household. Mabel tries to be “good,” but her efforts toward being friendly to the few people she has a chance to interact with in her home ends up scaring them all away. Nick, in the meantime, arguably goes just as insane as she does. Upset at the way his family has turned out, he becomes furious and occasionally violent towards Mabel, who he eventually sends to a mental institution.

All of these characters are fascinating; none of them are all-bad or all-good. Their temperament changes from scene-to-scene. And even if it feels like Cassavetes goes too far on occasion to make his scenes as depressing as possible, the film is a powerful, devastating work of art whose impact can be felt days after a single viewing.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/11/08
IMDB Page

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

2008-06-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003)

Directed by Peter Weir

"Master and Commander," which I first watched in the theaters over five years ago, is the movie that really got me interested in film. Perhaps it was the joy of seeing the ocean spread across the huge screen's canvas. Perhaps it was the perfect union of sound and image. Perhaps it was because I had a secret crush on the young Max Pirkis, who plays one of the midshipmen. Whatever it was, this remains, to this day, one of my favorite films and it was wonderful seeing it again this weekend.

From the Books to the Film

I recently finished the 7th book in the Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, on which the film is based. In the books, there is usually a larger mission that takes a backseat to the everyday episodes that occur onboard whatever ship the rising British Post-Captain, “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, commands. Thus, the books can seem, for a while at least, nearly plotless, with descriptions of various episodes whose intensity and level-of-interest to the reader seem to undulate like the ocean Aubrey traverses.

The film follows in much the same manner. Aubrey's mission is to use his ship, the HMS Surprise, to destroy the larger French frigate, the Acheron. Weir does a fantastic job of depicting the creepy and almost ghostly nature of this ship, which often appears spontaneously. This scenario frequently occurs in O'Brian's books, especially in Desolation Island (1978) where the Dutch ship-of-the-line, the Waakzaamheid, appears out of nowhere and chases Aubrey's ship. Unfortunately, the books' episodic quality does not translate as well to the film. A book can be read in parts while a film, which is usually seen in one viewing, needs to have a more fluid quality. "Master and Commander," especially in a sequence that centers almost exclusively on one of the officers being bullied by his shipmates, generally lacks this connectedness between various scenarios. But for the most part, the film succeeds as an overall reflection, rather than direct literary interpretation, of the books on a stylistic and narrative level.

Immersion Through Sound and Image

Weir strives to immerse his viewers into these characters' environs by utilizing, to an unusually meticulous extent, images and sounds. Russel Boyd's cinematography has outstanding lighting that ranges from being very cool (on the deck) to very warm (interior candlelit cabins), beautiful and interesting compositions that provide different perspectives on these sailors' lives, and camera movements that flow with a natural, effortless quality. The cinematography makes it feel like we are watching a theater production, thanks to the stately nature of the photography and Weir's attention to detail with the costume design and sets, yet it also makes us feel like we are there with the characters.

Interesting composition, through the use of a dutch angle:

Warm lighting:

Cool lighting:

But it is Richard King's ("Twister," "Gattaca," "War of the Worlds") meticulous sound design that truly immerses us in the film's atmosphere. This is easily the best-sounding movie I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. The music's fidelity is impeccable and the surround sound is truly immersive – we can hear the creaking of the ship, the crashing of the waves against the hull, and even footsteps running “above” deck at all times. The movie truly shines during the battle scenes, where King, no doubt, had to work with hundreds of channels of sound. These scenes are loud, but they are also intelligently laid out and very detailed; he tends to craft split-second moments of near-silence - as opposed to the typical, now-expected ten seconds of quiet followed by an assault on the senses, which is a common occurrence in "Spiderman 3" - followed by visceral, terrifying-sounding enemy broadsides.

The Battles

I am baffled by those who claim that "Master and Commander" needs more action. Life at sea was boring and crew-members rarely witnessed an action, so it would make sense that the film has only two major engagements. The film immediately throws the viewer into the lives of these sailors, first with a brief tour of the area below deck, then with officers who casually throw around naval jargon, and then with a literal bang when the Acheron ambushes the Surprise in a fogbank. The scene is brilliantly constructed. There is a brief silence on the deck while we see the flashes of canon fire in the fogbank, then hear the ominous rumbling of those guns, followed by the sound and sight of the shrapnel itself ripping through the ship.

The beginning and ending battle sequences are quickly edited and feel claustrophobic; Weir wants us to feel the conditions that these men had to fight in. He doesn't flinch away from the brutality of the engagements, quickly cutting from one area of fighting to another and depicting how wood splinters, jettisoned from the ship itself by high-velocity shrapnel, actually caused the most casualties. Thus, these engagements are two-fold in nature – men can die somewhat indirectly from shrapnel that is fired from half a mile away or in close, very personal, hand-to-hand combat.

"Master and Commander" also succeeds at depicting the aftermath of these engagements and how they scar the ship and its sailors. Immediately after the first engagement, there is a breathtaking shot of the ship, lines and sails all ripped to shreds, appearing from the fogbank and floating helplessly in the water. There are a number of heartbreaking scenes that depict the cost of war on the men – a young midshipman named Lord Blakeney has to have an amputation, which is astoundingly powerful considering all we see is his face contorting in pain and the sound of his whimpering; Blakeney helps to bury his friend after an engagement, and while there is swelling music, King mixes it at a refreshingly quiet, understated level; and finally, the captain reads off the names of those who have died in combat and has to refrain from tearing up in public.

The Doctor and the Captain

The books, and the film itself, center around the relationship between Captain Aubrey, who is played by Russel Crowe, and the physician Stephen Maturin, who is played by Paul Bettany. These two men are on every adventure together and are best friends, even though they disagree from time to time. Aubrey is portrayed as a dignified and extremely talented sailor with a natural talent for leading others. Crowe's performance is good, but I wish that that he had more of the spontaneous levity that Aubrey seems to possess in the books; his Aubrey can feel too scripted on occasion.

Maturin is a skilled physician, which earns him a lot of respect amongst the crew, who usually have to deal with shoddy “medical” care. He is also naturalist – “a fighting naturalist!” as Blakeney calls him – who feels at home exploring land and collecting samples of the strange wildlife he encounters. In the books, Maturin also serves as a spy for England, which is always a blast to read, but the movie sadly drops this aspect of his character. Nonetheless, this character is a fascinating counterpoint to Aubrey, who can barely function on land and feels most at home on the ocean.

Despite their differences, the two characters share one passion – appreciating and playing music. Several times throughout the film, Aubrey and Maturin play music together in the Great Cabin. It is a break from the hard life of sailing (“a damned unfortunate business,” as Aubrey calls it), but it is also a way for them to appreciate the great things that people can create, rather than destroy. Their music is an overarching motif in the film, tying together some of the more disparate parts and giving the film a leisurely flow; it also reflects these characters' unstated hopes that there is perhaps something bigger and better beyond the claustrophobic and terrible confines of a ship.

The Storm

This sequence is an intense amalgamation of many threads in the film. Aubrey's obsession with capturing the Acheron; the midshipman Hollom's failures and the crew's hatred of him flowering; and the crew's elation at having finally gained the upper hand on their rival. Unfortunately, their elatedness deflates when one of the popular members of the crews falls overboard. I credit Weir, Boyd, and King with doing an outstanding job staging the scene in a convincing and terrifying manner. Also, the special effects, which mostly rely on compositing various effects (shots of choppy water in a storm, then models of the ships, then rain and lighting, etc.), have a surprisingly tactile and almost-realistic quality to them.

The Ship's Hierarchy

The film presents a number of interesting characters - the brave midshipmen Lord Blakeney (Max Pirkis) and Calamy (Max Benitz), the loyal first lieutenant Tom Pullings (James D'Arcy), the second lieutenant William Moffit (Edward Woodall), the weak and bullied midshipman Hollom (Lee Ingleby), and the hilarious, mumbling captain's servant, Killick (David Threlfall). All of these men, guided by a system of clear naval tradition and hierarchy that has endured for centuries, rely on the leadership of their captain in order to successfully gel together, which Aubrey, who is nicknamed “Lucky” because of his seeming inability to lose, happily provides. There is one scene in particular (shown below), in which Aubrey provides his men with encouraging words before the film's final battle, that effectively, through a series of simple reaction shots, illustrates the men's respect and devotion to their captain.

One interesting aspect of the film, which may stem from a flaw from the books, is its inability to make this conflict with the french frigate feel like it is of any larger importance than this one-on-one engagement. One line, said by Aubrey, feels a bit out of place: “Though we may be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home... this ship is England.” Weir spends most of the film exploring how these men sacrifice themselves out of necessity, not for their country. He, like O'Brian, seems most intent on exploring human behavior under the most grueling circumstances. Thus, the Surprise, like one of Stephen's petri dishes, really serves as a microcosm of human interaction, rather than as an asset of the British Navy.

Rating: 9

Fifth Viewing: 6/7/08
IMDB Page

A Note About the Blu-ray
The new Blu-ray of the film is okay. It now comes with a lossless (DTS-HD MA) audio track, if your receiver can decode it, but its DTS track can still be played at a lower 1.5 mbps with a normal setup with an optical audio cord, which sounds noticeably better than the 768 kbps DTS track on the DVD. The image looks quite good, very filmlike. There is much more detail in the blacks, the colors – fleshtones in particular – look outstanding, and there is a sense of depth that was lacking on the DVD. But I think that the transfer could be even better. The quality varies from shot-to-shot as a number of shots barely improve the DVD and there are some film artifacts (specks) that crop up on occasion. I think it's a nice upgrade from the DVD, but without much in the way of extras, nor a transfer that is “perfect,” the $30 price tag seems steep.

Being John Malkovich

2008-06-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Being John Malkovich" (1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze

Here is the film's premise: A professional puppeteer discovers a secret door in his office that leads to a portal-of-sorts into John Malkovich's mind. Needless to say, this is a very strange film about a very strange collection of people.

We follow Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a dirt-poor, unemployed man whose dream is to become a famous puppeteer. But no one wants to employ someone for this strange "hobby," especially when the guy is an eccentric, long-haired nerd. His even more eccentric wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), supports the "family," which includes a parakeet and two chimpanzees. Craig eventually finds work as a file sorter on the 7 1/2 floor of an office building, which sounds strange, but the way that the director, Spike Jonze, and the excellent writer, Charlie Kauffman, introduce Craig's new work place is visually brilliant and humorous. Craig meets a coworker, Maxine (Catherine Keener), and falls in love with her, even though she is an opportunistic and painfully blunt jerk - in one instance, Craig takes her out for a drink and when he tells her that he is a professional puppeteer, she immediately asks for the check.

And this is all before Craig unwittingly discovers the mysterious passageway that leads him into John Malkovich's mind. It is at this point that the film takes off, as Kauffman's script and Malkovich's performance - we view him, presumably from the point-of-view of Craig, as a normal guy living his everyday life, who is also, in a self-referential joke, an overrated actor - add brilliant, comedic touches to the film. One scene, in which Malkovich travels through the doorway into his own mind, is particularly hysterical while bringing up a number of interesting questions about our place in the world; it is not everyday that you see numerous clones of John Malkovich dressed in drag.

The rest of the film is a postmodern science fiction story. Craig, Maxine, and Lotte all abuse poor Malkovich, compelling him to fulfill their strangest sexual desires without fear of retribution to themselves. Sexual identities change. Alliances shift. These people are not happy with the way they are and Malkovich serves as their safety valve; he is literally their puppet. But in the end of the day, this serves only as a temporary solution to these characters' deep-rooted sense of being unfulfilled. Whether they are entirely successful in learning how to stop running away from themselves is left for us to decide.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/3/08
IMDB Page

The Squirrel Nut Zippers

2008-06-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

I just found the album, "The Inevitable Squirrel Nut Zippers," in my dad's CD collection and gave it a spin. They were really pretty awesome, a 90s band that fused elements of Jazz with a "pseudo-mariachi-gypsy sound," as my friend described it. The lyrics are often pretty hilarious and the songs are a blast to listen to.

Here are two of their songs on youtube. A word of caution: They're kind of disturbing and awesome at the same time.

Ghost of Stephen Foster
Hell

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2008-06-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007)

Directed by Sidney Lumet

A dysfunctional family. Betrayals. Ugly arguments. All of these unsavory aspects are present and in full force in Sidney Lumet's new film. Two brothers, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke), are both in desperate need of money. Andy is a middle manager at a corporation who has an expensive drug habit while the more pathetic Hank, who has recently endured an ugly divorce, spends a lot of money on spoiling his daughter at a private school and drinking at bars.

Andy proposes to have them both rob their own parents' diamond store in a suburban shopping mall - they would suddenly have half a million dollars while their parents' insurance would take care of the rest. Most of all, no one would suspect that the owners' own sons would commit such a robbery. But, as happens in most films like this, the robbery goes wrong and their mother - played by Rosemary Harris of the "Spiderman" trilogy - is murdered.

The two sons are forced to live with the guilt of killing their own mother, as well as still having to deal with their financial problems and the possibility of their complicity in the robbery being discovered. Lumet primarily uses a realist style, in which his edits are mostly seamless and his shots rarely beautiful - his film is a harsh and unflinching examination of how these people behave when they are pushed to their limits. Hoffman plays his character like a volcano that is on the verge of erupting; his middle-aged businessman displays a veneer of calm that, on occasion, turns scarily violent. It is a marvelous performance that would be hard to compete with, yet Hawke manages to be an effective opposite as the wimpy and less intelligent brother.

Despite the intriguing plot and characters, the film has its flaws. One aspect of the film involves Andy's estranged relationship with his father (a dignified Albert Finney), but this is never developed to a satisfactory extent, which is disappointing since a narrative where the father begins to suspect Andy's involvement in the robbery has to rely on the two characters' distrust of one another in order to be effective.

Lumet's decision to split the film up into disjointed narratives that are not presented in chronological order ultimately takes away from the film's power. He is a realist filmmaker who, I think, attempted to present all of the characters' actions at a certain moment uninterrupted. This does not work, though, because his transitions, which feature loud sounds and flashing images overlapped from the next scene, are distracting and feel out of place with the style of the rest of the film. These transitions and the needless switching between narratives take us out of our involvement with these characters, reminding us that this is all, despite the incredible emotional intensity, just a movie.

Rating: 8

Employment Videos - Part Five: Bloodborne Pathogens

2008-06-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

Employment Videos, Part Five - Bloodborne Pathogens: Fast Facts for School

Synopsis
A very basic and fleeting look at how to prevent the transmission of bloodborne pathogens.

Educational Value - 6/10
The video runs through a few important aspects of how to prevent transmission, showing how to properly take off gloves and telling us to avoid touching people who are bleeding (they should touch themselves, pun intended). But the video only touches briefly on specific symptoms that result from these pathogens. How are we really supposed to tell if we may be infected? I also wanted to know how to properly clean up a pool of blood, which the video, predictably, never covers.

Aesthetics - 2/10
Based on the poster for Kangaroo Jack that I saw in a long shot of Time Square (don't ask), I'm assuming this video was made around 2003. Even then, the camerawork, the sets, the transitions are all pretty terrible. Are they better than the classic 80s videos? Perhaps, but just barely.

Unintentional Laughs - 5/10
This video tries too hard to be funny. It just doesn't have the spontaneous, unintentionally hilarious charm of the 80s videos. First of all, I hate the narrator, whose name, we learn because she and the video mention it multiple times, is apparently Kelly Davis. I just think it's incredibly arrogant of her and the video to assume she's of any importance and deserves our respect. It doesn't help that her first line goes as follows: "Hi, I'm Kelly Davis. You know back when I was in school..." and proceeds to run through a horrendous, wannabe comedic sequence where she flashes back, apparently to the 50s (she looks remarkably young now!), to her vacuous high school life where she didn't care about bloodborne pathogens, just boys and drama. Blah, and yuck. It sounds kind of funny on paper, but it's just painful to sit through.

Oh, and here's Kelly Davis in all her glory.

There's this sequence in the beginning that goes on far too long that tries to illustrate how large a group 5.6 million infected people really is. A semi-direct quote: "That's 56 filled college football stadiums. That's 2/3rds of NYC. That's 3x the population of the state of Iowa... yee-ha [Cue Kelly Davis in a cowboy hat and obligatory sound of a whip]!" Just. Stop it.

Also, I found the representation of the three major viruses (HIV, HCV, HBV) as bullies at school insulting to my intelligence. The actors suck and the concept is sooo contrived. HBV says in a "tough-guy/woman" voice, after being "insulted" by Kelly Davis, "Hey! She called us viral!" It's stupid, just stupid.

Closing Thoughts
I learned a few things, but the video's constant attempt to be funny totally sucked the life out of the proceedings. A disappointment.

Rating: 1/10

Roman de Gare

2008-05-31T22:41:00.000-07:00

"Roman de Gare" (2007)
Directed by Claude Lelouch

It is difficult to place a film like this into a category. Would it be classified as a thriller? A character study? A drama? Probably a combination of the three. This French film follows several different threads that eventually converge around the middle of the film. We initially follow a mysterious man named Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), who may or may not be a serial killer who is on the loose, a teacher gone missing, or even a writer's secretary. In the meantime, Huguette (Audrey Dana), a volatile woman whose profession is hairdressing, is driving up to her parent's house in the countryside with her fiancee. After getting in a heated argument, her fiancee drives off in her car, leaving her behind at a gas station. It is there that Laclos befriends her and, after a night of waiting and her fiancee never returning, she accepts the stranger's offer to drive her to her parent's house.

Of course, this entire situation can be, rightfully, interpreted as terribly contrived, and it gets even worse when Huguette asks Laclos to pose as her fiancee so as not to disappoint her parents. While this may look bad on paper, this first hour of the film manages to work quite well. Pinon and Dana's excellent performances and the filmmakers' effective use of camera movement, lighting, and sound create an undercurrent of tension that gives Laclos's interactions with Huguette and her family an enjoyable and exciting atmosphere of suspense. These are both interesting characters that we want to learn more about: We have no idea what Laclos will - or will not - do and while Huguette is, on the surface, merely a jerk, she is a more complicated character who, at her roots, wants to love others in spite of her inherent selfishness.

After spending an hour with this intriguing setup, the film meanders down another path. We learn about a popular writer named Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) and her relationship to Laclos. There is some intrigue and even a murder case that results from this thread, but this section of the film is not as interesting as the first part. Perhaps this is because the plot turns out to be, in the end, predictable, overly-talkative, and rather mundane fare. But most of all, I think this results from Lelouch's decision to shift his film's vision away from the exclusive and almost claustrophobic focus on Huguette and Laclos's entertaining interactions to extraneous and ultimately trivial diversions.

Rating: 7