Friday, 9th May 2008
I’m a recent convert to Blu-ray, so this is very pleasing news from Criterion:
We’ve got some exciting news for this fall: our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.
Here’s what’s in the pipeline:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear
Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time.
Hopefully, this will mean that all future Criterion releases will be issued in both formats. The choices of Gimme Shelter and Monterey Pop seem a little peculiar, in that both were shot in 16mm; but Blu-ray’s superior audio quality will no doubt make these titles attractive to audiophiles. I’m most excited about the new Walkabout … although a handful of the others might find their way into my collection too. (Fortunately, The Wages of Fear would be my only double dip from this first batch of releases.)
Posted by Andrew at 4:53 pm.
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Sunday, 20th April 2008
It’s been a little quiet around the Moviedrome for the past few weeks, so here’s funny piece of fluff to resuscitate our blogging efforts…
Over at Boing Boing, they had a link to a blog where someone has rewritten passages of Pulp Fiction in the style of William Shakespeare. Let humour’s passage floweth from the words on thy screen to the split sides of thy torso.
ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.
J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.
from ACT I SCENE 4
J: Your pardon; did I break thy concentration?
Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.
Allow me then to offer a response.
Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.
B: What?
J: What country dost thou hail from?
B: What?
J: Thou sayest thou dost hail from distant What?
I know but naught of thy fair country What.
What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
B: Aye!
J: Then hearken to my words and answer them!
Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!
B: What?
JULES presses his knife to BRETT’s throat
J: Speak ‘What’ again! Thou cur, cry ‘What’ again!
I dare thee utter ‘What’ again but once!
I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
If thou hast any in thy head but ‘What’,
Of Marsellus Wallace!
B: He is dark.
J: Aye, and what more?
B: His head is shaven bald.
J: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?
B: What?
JULES strikes and BRETT cries out
J: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?
B: Nay!
J: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?
B: I did not!
J: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!
Thou sought to rape him like a chattel whore!
And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed
With aught but Lady Wallace, whom he wed.
Posted by Andrew at 5:10 pm.
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Monday, 25th February 2008
The Good News:
Best Song going to Once.
No wins for Transformers.
The Bad News:
Best Original Screenplay going to Juno.
The Ugly News:
No wins for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Well, of the 20 categories we did predictions for, I only got 12 correct! (I actually got 14 correct by the time the ceremony started — as I changed my mind about Best Make-Up and Best Sound after talking to Sam — but I can’t really take credit for those extra two here.) I’ve definitely done better in the past; and most of my errors were in the first half of the show, so I was performing really poorly in my predictions until big ones kicked in.
The only big surprise on the night was Tilda Swinton’s win as Best Supporting Actress. She looked as surprised as everyone else. I thought her win might be signaling an Academy swing towards Michael Clayton, but it was not to be.
The funniest moment of the night was the picture of Roderick Jaynes they put on screen for the Best Editing award!
Posted by Andrew at 7:00 pm.
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Sunday, 24th February 2008
Here are my predictions and personal choices. I wonder if Joel and Ethan will walk away with four Oscars each? There’s certainly a strong chance of it…
Best Foreign Language Film
Seen: none
Prediction: Katyn
Best Animated Feature Film
Seen: Ratatouille
Prediction: Ratatouille
Best Visual Effects
Seen: all
Choice: none!
Prediction: Transformers
Best Make-up
Seen: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Prediction: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Best Costume Design
Seen: Sweeney Todd
Prediction: Atonement
Best Original Song
Seen: all except August Rush
Choice: “Falling Slowly” from Once
Prediction: “Falling Slowly” from Once
Best Original Score
Seen: 3:10 to Yuma, Ratatouille, Michael Clayton
Choice: Michael Clayton
Prediction: Atonement
Best Film Editing
Seen: all
Choice: The Diving Bell (or No Country, to catch a glimpse of Roderick Jaynes!)
Prediction: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Editing
Seen: all
Choice: No Country For Old Men
Prediction: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Mixing
Seen: all
Choice: No Country For Old Men
Prediction: No Country For Old Men
Best Art Direction
Seen: all except Atonement
Choice: There Will Be Blood
Prediction: There Will Be Blood
Best Cinematography
Seen: all except Atonement
Choice: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Prediction: There Will Be Blood
Best Adapted Screenplay
Seen: all except Atonement
Choice: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Prediction: No Country For Old Men
Best Original Screenplay
Seen: all except Lars and the Real Girl
Choice: Michael Clayton
Prediction: Michael Clayton (an upset!)
Best Supporting Actress
Seen: Ruby Dee, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton
Choice: Cate Blanchett
Prediction: Cate Blanchett
Best Supporting Actor
Seen: all
Choice: Javier Bardem
Prediction: Javier Bardem
Best Actress
Seen: Julie Christie, Ellen Page, Laura Linney
Choice: Laura Linney
Prediction: Marion Cotillard
Best Actor
Seen: all except Tommy Lee Jones
Choice: Viggo Mortensen
Prediction: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Director
Seen: all
Choice: Julian Schnabel
Prediction: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Best Picture
Seen: all except Atonement
Choice: No Country For Old Men
Prediction: No Country For Old Men
Posted by Andrew at 2:25 pm.
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Saturday, 23rd February 2008
With a little over twenty-four hours to go, I thought I’d make some predictions for the movie world’s biggest prize, and, in categories where I’ve seen more than one nominee, my personal choice (though, if I were a voting member of the Academy, I’d try to vote only in the categories where I’d seen all of the nominees…).
I’ve left out the short film and doc categories as I really have no idea!
Best Foreign Language Film
Seen: The Counterfeiters
Prediction: The Counterfeiters
Best Animated Feature Film
Seen: none
Prediction: Ratatouille
Best Visual Effects
Seen: none
Prediction: Transformers
Best Make-up
Seen: La Vie en Rose
Prediction: La Vie en Rose
Best Costume Design
Seen: all except Across the Universe
Choice: Atonement
Prediction: Atonement
Best Original Song
Seen: the three from Enchanted and the ‘Falling Slowly’ clip from Once
Choice: ‘Falling Slowly’
Prediction: ‘Falling Slowly’
Best Original Score
Seen: 3:10 to Yuma, Atonement, Michael Clayton
Choice: 3:10 to Yuma
Prediction: Atonement
Best Film Editing
Seen: Diving-Bell, No Country, There Will Be Blood
Choice: Diving-Bell
Prediction: No Country
Best Sound Editing
Seen: No Country, There Will Be Blood
Choice: No Country
Prediction: Transformers
Best Sound Mixing
Seen: 3:10 to Yuma, No Country
Choice: No Country
Prediction: Transformers
Best Art Direction
Seen: all except The Golden Compass
Choice: There Will Be Blood
Prediction: There Will Be Blood
Best Cinematography
Seen: all five
Choice: Diving-Bell
Prediction: The Assassination of Jesse James…
Best Adapted Screenplay
Seen: all except Away From Her
Choice: Diving-Bell
Prediction: No Country
Best Original Screenplay
Seen: Juno, Michael Clayton, The Savages
Choice: The Savages
Prediction: Juno
Best Supporting Actress
Seen: all except Amy Ryan
Choice: Cate Blanchett
Prediction: Amy Ryan
Best Supporting Actor
Seen: Casey Affleck, Javier Bardem, Tom Wilkinson
Choice: Casey Affleck
Prediction: Javier Bardem
Best Actress
Seen: all except Julie Christie
Choice: Marion Cotillard
Prediction: Marion Cotillard
Best Actor
Seen: all five
Choice: Viggo Mortensen
Prediction: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Director
Seen: all five
Choice: Julian Schnabel
Prediction: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Best Picture
Seen: all five
Choice: No Country
Prediction: No Country
Posted by Edward at 11:56 pm.
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Monday, 18th February 2008
Lots of interesting movies came out in 2007. There are a handful of notable releases I haven’t yet seen - such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gone Baby Gone, Persepolis and Ratatouille - but without further ado (and there has already been much ado) here is my top 10:
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
As a movie, it’s like its title: overlong, trying to hard to be meeannninnngfulll, but more interesting as you go through it. The final twenty minutes are superb, and manage, pretty much, to redeem the so-so stuff which has come before. Kudos: Casey Affleck - he reveals the man behind the ‘coward’.
9. Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg follows up A History of Violence with another relatively ‘mainstream’ movie, this time a tale of Russian gangsters in a gloomy modern-day London. The movie is elegant and fascinating, though let down by a routine plot and a terrible performance from Vincent Cassel. Kudos: Viggo Mortensen, whose tantilising characterisation of the enigmatic Nikolai defines the term ’still waters run deep’.
8. 2 Days in Paris
Slight and painless but sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Julie Delpy’s brisk and intimate romance has a sweet all-in-the-family feel (her own parents play her character’s parents) and you can never have too much of Paris. Kudos: the family dinner scene.
7. There Will Be Blood
Undeniably ambitious, but straining at the leash (i.e. it can never relax) and determined to be ‘different’ for the sake of it, Paul Thomas Anderson’s turn-of-the-century pioneering drama focuses on an oil man who will stop at nothing to get rich. Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance has been much-praised, and it is riveting, but it’s a Performance with a capital P and, as such, comes across as an extended actor’s exercise. Still, the film is stunningly produced, and as a portrait of capitalism running riot, it is certainly food for thought. Kudos: the depiction of a child being rendered deaf - amazingly powerful, the best such example I’ve seen since Come and See. And, okay, yes, the music (by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood) is something special.
6. No Country For Old Men
More sincere than the Coens’ usual efforts, and with several excellent moments and performances (notably Kelly Macdonald), No Country For Old Men is poised and surprising, even if it doesn’t quite earn its ribbons. Kudos: the tense central motel sequence - this must be getting close to how it feels to be chased by someone who wants to kill you.
5. Lust, Caution
Ang Lee’s overlong but engrossing drama, in which a drama student (newcomer Tang Wei) is recruited to seduce a suspected collaborator (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in WW2. A rich, nuanced, tragic drama, played to perfection by its fabulous leads. Kudos: The sex scenes - they actually mean something.
4. La Môme
This would be a somewhat tame and traditional biopic (of Edith Piaf) if it weren’t for two things: writer-director Olivier Dahan’s cross-cutting between different periods of Piaf’s life, which really helps illuminate aspects of her character and story, and Marion Cotillard’s towering central performance - you go, girl! Kudos: that final rendition of you-know-what - I’ve still got a tear in my eye!
3. Paranoid Park
Gus Van Sant’s opaque drama is part skateboarder chic, part sympathetic character study, as a teen from the right side of the tracks has a hand in the accidental death of a security guard and doesn’t know what to do or who to turn to. With the look and feel of a feather glinting in the gauzy sunlight, this is a mood piece which fits its writer-director like a glove. Kudos: its running time - this 85-minute movie knows exactly when to leave the party.
2. I’m Not There.
It’s Bob Dylan who’s not there - but then maybe he is, as embodied by not one but six different actors, each representing a different side of his public or private persona. Todd Haynes arranges all of this so as to illuminate the ethereal qualities not only of the Bobster, but of celebrity, legend, and all those things which we see all around us but don’t quite understand. Kudos: the choice of songs - the film gets it right every time.
1. Le Scaphandre et le papillon
The one film this year which really took me by surprise (in a good way, that is - see Sunshine for an example of the opposite), this is a movie which really does seem to show us a new way of looking at the world. The bare bones of the story are standard life-affirming fare - paralysed bon vivant learns how to set his imagination free - but, in the hands of writer Ronald Harwood (adapting former Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir), cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and director Julian Schnabel, not to mention an excellent cast, the movie transcends its subject matter and proves to be uplifting and disturbing in its depiction of life’s precariousness. Kudos: so many to choose from, but I have to mention the opening credits - the best I’ve seen in years. Oh, and the father-son scenes between Max Von Sydow and Mathieu Amalric - heartbreaking in their truthfulness.
Thoughts on the rest:
Just missed the top 10: Die Falscher, The Walker
More fun than it should have been: The Hoax
Less fun than they should have been: 3:10 to Yuma, Atonement, Enchanted, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Music and Lyrics, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Puzzling: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Hallam Foe, Juno, Knocked Up, The Lookout, Michael Clayton
Ho-hum: American Gangster, I Am Legend, In the Valley of Elah
Pretty bloody awful: Die Hard 4.0 (a.k.a. Live Free or Die Hard), Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Ne Le Dis à Personne, Sunshine
Posted by Edward at 11:39 pm.
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Monday, 11th February 2008
I just heard that Roy Scheider has passed away at the age of 75. What a terrific actor he was. Most obituaries have justly highlighted his iconic work in Jaws (1975). Sandwiched between the boozed-up swagger of Robert Shaw and the coked-up feverishness of Richard Dreyfuss, his understated performance as Chief Brody really did give the film its warmth and humanity. I particularly love the scene in which Shaw and Dreyfuss are bonding over their wounds, and Scheider shyly sneaks a peak at his own pitifully small scar. Spielberg certainly made a big deal out of the fact that he was snubbed by Academy Awards for his direction, but what about Scheider? His work was every bit as good as that year’s eventual winner: Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
But let’s not forget the rest of Scheider’s work too. Aside from Jaws, he was in some of the best movies of the 1970s — The French Connection (1971), Klute (1971), The Seven-Ups (1973), Marathon Man (1976), Sorcerer (1977), Last Embrace (1979), All That Jazz (1979) — and was essential in all of them. He may have had the less flamboyant role in The French Connection, but his Buddy Russo is definitely more real than Gene Hackman’s larger-than-life Popeye Doyle; and if you compare French Connection sequels, I think Scheider’s The Seven-Ups remains much more interesting and vital than the official follow-up with Hackman. I’ve also always been a big fan of his work in Last Embrace, a mostly forgotten, Hitchcockian thriller from Jonathan Demme that has sadly remained absent from the DVD format.
Rest in peace, Roy.
Posted by Andrew at 9:17 pm.
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Sunday, 10th February 2008
I’ve finally got around to writing up my top five of 2007. The more I futz with the order of the top five, the more I realize that I like pretty much all of these films equally. They are all really different, too, so it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. As such, the order presented here just reflects my current whims and fancies…
5
I usually don’t warm to British/Irish films about musically-inclined working class folk — films like Brassed Off, The Commitments, The Full Monty, Billy Elliott, Little Voice — so I didn’t expect to find much joy in Once. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even have seen it at all if it wasn’t for a little pressure from Lisa. Since I’ve given it a place on this list, you can probably guess that I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a film of lo-fi simplicity in the Before Sunrise tradition: an unnamed Irish busker (Glen Hansard) and an unnamed Czech girl (Markéta Irglová) meet on the streets of Dublin; she loves his songs and becomes the catalyst for him getting into the recording studio; and, as they make music together, a loving friendship develops between the two. Much has been made of the film’s low-budget aesthetic, and I think it is a case where such a humble approach really helps the film — especially during the musical numbers, where the filmmakers have the good sense to let them play out unabridged and unembellished, so that we can focus on the growing intimacy between the two leads. Neither Hansard nor Irglová are professional actors, but they both give brilliant, raw performances. Unlike contrived musician pics like Walk the Line and Ray, this is truly inspiring stuff, and I’ll be rooting for it come Oscar day.
4
I still haven’t been able to fully make my mind up about this film. It’s certainly a departure for Paul Thomas Anderson — it’s not set in the Valley! — but I do still see a lot of similarities with his earlier films: the focus on dysfunctional families and towering father figures; the aggressive approach to sound design; the fascination with scope and scale; the fascination with California. As Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis certainly gives a commanding performance, but I did often think that his John Huston voice and mannerisms were as much a work of imitation as Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There. The film itself, in fact, plays like the bastard child of Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Wise Blood. I’m not sure how well the film functions as an allegory (or history lesson) for contemporary society’s addiction to oil; what gives the film its edge is its willingness to go to the darker places, capturing the strange, Gothic quality that can still be felt in parts of California to this day. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final scene, where the black humor taps into a human malevolence that is missing in so many historical studies. I’m finished.
3
Since their high point in the nineties with Fargo (1996) and The Big Lebowski (1998), the Coen brothers’ films had been getting increasing tired and uninspired. After The Ladykillers (2004) — the first of the Coens’ films that I didn’t bother seeing on the big screen — I had basically written them off. So, I am very happy that No Country For Old Men marks a certifiable return to form. It’s almost certainly the most tightly crafted film of the year. The mise-en-scène and editing are so taut and suspenseful that most viewers probably won’t even notice that there’s not even a music score to help them along. The biggest stylistic influence I felt in the film was that of Robert Bresson: the ascetic, detailed approach to procedure in the narrative very much matched the hypnotically spare filmmaking of Pickpocket and A Man Escaped. The film doesn’t work its way towards transcendence in the way that Bresson’s films did — the Coens, after all, are not Catholics — but there is something of the same flavor in that final scene with Tommy Lee Jones: perhaps an anti-transcendence as Sheriff Bell drifts uncomfortably off into an unresolved retirement?
2
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a singular film. I can’t think of another movie that has climbed inside of a person’s head quite like this one; nor can I think of a film that has used sustained passages of first person camerawork so well. It’s based on a memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of Elle magazine in France, who suffered a stroke that left everything but one eye paralyzed. Using a system of blinks, he was able to narrate the book that the film is based on, and he passed away just ten days after its publication. Julian Schnabel’s approach to the story avoids all of the pitfalls of cliché and sentimentality that might have been mined from the material if it had been directed by, say, Penny Marshall, instead creating a beautiful, fascinating and deeply moving representation of what it means to hang onto consciousness. Following Basquiat and Before Night Falls, this could perhaps be seen as the third film by Schnabel in a trilogy of portraits of tragic, trapped artists. All three films are terrific and I can’t wait to see what he does next — perhaps something that doesn’t sneak Tom Waits and Lou Reed onto the soundtrack for once?! Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography here is quite something, and deserves to bag him yet another Oscar.
1
Another portrait of an artist, but one which takes an antithetical approach to that of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: rather than climbing into the artist’s head to dwell inside his consciousness, I’m Not There splits the artist over six different actors/personae to represent the fragmented elusiveness of essence. It’s an electrifying portrait of the shape-shifting Bob Dylan, but it’s a lot more than just this. It’s a biopic that deconstructs the existential and semiotic meanings of the biography genre: at a press conference, one of the reporters remarks, “I think we all know the definition of ‘people’”; Jude/Dylan/Cate Blanchett replies, “Do we?” It’s a film about the need for art to remain vital and current; and a film about the gulf between the orderliness of critical judgment and the chaos of artistic creativity, which is most dynamically conveyed through the “Ballad of the Thin Man” sequence. It’s also a film that reminded me of a remark David Byrne once made about the evolution of his lyric writing: he realized that you can string together random sentences and listeners would still find an emotional engagement with them in the context of a song. I’m Not There exhibits a similar understanding about how visuals in a movie work when you’ve got the music of Dylan as a through line, conjuring up the same kind of dreamlike flights of the imagination as Jean-Dominique Bauby had from his hospital bed. I’ll refrain from picking a favorite Dylan; but Heath Ledger’s segments will now no doubt be the most tragic and poignant.
Roundup
There are, of course, many movies that I didn’t see last year — Persepolis, Gone Baby Gone, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days stand out as three potentially good ones — but here’s a quick roundup of the remaining films I did manage to catch, for better or worse:
The Best of the Rest:
Superbad; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Charlie Wilson’s War; Eastern Promises; Rescue Dawn; Planet Terror; Sunshine; Away From Her; Breach; The Lookout; The Hoax; Death Sentence; The Darjeeling Limited; Hot Fuzz; 2 Days in Paris; Paris, je t’aime; Ratatouille; Sicko; Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead; Mr. Brooks; You Kill Me.
Overrated:
Juno; Into the Wild, Knocked Up; Sweeney Todd; The Bourne Ultimatum; 3:10 to Yuma; American Gangster; Enchanted; The Orphanage; 28 Weeks Later; A Mighty Heart; The King of Kong; The Simpsons Movie; Live Free or Die Hard.
Blah:
30 Days of Night; Music and Lyrics; The Brave One; The Golden Compass; Shooter; Next; Disturbia; Fracture; The Tripper; Vacancy; 1408; Ocean’s 13; Talk to Me; Interview; No Reservations; King of California; Southland Tales; Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Just Awful:
Transformers; Beowulf; Evan Almighty; Spider Man 3; Hairspray; Hostel 2; Pirates of the Caribbean 3; Shoot Em Up.
Posted by Andrew at 6:35 pm.
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Monday, 28th January 2008
First off, I must concur with comments that my fellow Moviedromers have made elsewhere on the blog recently: 2007 was a pretty strong year for cinema, especially for American cinema. I wouldn’t say that any one movie has rocked my world — I don’t think I would award four stars to anything I saw — but the overall caliber was much higher than any other year in the past decade. It’s also an unusual year in that I find myself blowing in the same direction as the critical winds: I’m usually the resident grouch when it comes to critically acclaimed films, but this year I’ve felt that the various awards circuits have been mostly on the money. When I look at the movies I liked most from 2007, I see a couple of trends. One is that most of the films I’ve picked are about futility in one way or another; I can’t think what might be going on in the world right now to make this such a dominant theme. Another is that the shadow of 1970s Hollywood looms large over many of these releases; it feels like American cinema this year has been consciously trying to resurrect the traits of that golden era. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Part I of my top ten list; Part II will follow soon, once I’ve finished deliberating over the order of the top five.
10
Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon lose their minds in a sleazy motel room in the year’s most claustrophobic and unrelentingly bleak film. Judd is always a liability as an actress, and teeters on the brink of being one here; Shannon, however, delivers a tour de force performance as a man diving headlong into an abyss of paranoia and insanity. It feels a little bit too much like an actor’s workshop towards the end, but Bug is a definite return to form for director William Friedkin. It recaptures some of the sinister malignancy that lies at the core of films like The Exorcist and Cruising; and it’s far more unsettling, penetrating, and terrifying than popular schlock like 1408 and Vacancy (the year’s other hotel horror flicks). Unfortunately, Bug was rather misleadingly advertised as a gross-out monster movie in the US — in an effort to capture the teen horror market — which probably prevented it from finding the audience that it deserved. It’s too much of a downer for regular visits, but it’s stuck in my head as much as any film this year. Maybe the aphids are to blame?!?!
9
In The Savages, Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman play siblings who are forced into an uncomfortable situation where they have to deal with their neglectful father’s descent into dementia. This was Tamara Jenkins’ first film in nine years — following the excellent The Slums of Beverly Hills — and it is a perfectly pitched, perfectly acted combination of drama and comedy. Linney eschews many of her more annoying mannerisms and deserves the nod she got from Oscar; Hoffman provides a master class in controlled, naturalistic acting; and let’s not forget the terrific work from Phillip Bosco as the father, in an utterly realistic and unsentimental portrait of senility. I particularly liked how the lead characters’ interest in theater was subtly woven into the fabric of the film. Linney is a struggling playwright interested in emotional memories and magical realism; Hoffman is a professor of Bertolt Brecht and the theater of social unrest. They both retreat into these different modes of theatricality as a way of coping with their father, and their evolutions as characters involve them each learning how to better bridge the gaps between theater and reality. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another nine years for Jenkins’ next film.
8
I usually find that David Fincher’s films don’t have the courage of their convictions: The Game suffers from one of the biggest cop out endings in recent memory; Panic Room spends far too much time letting the camera zip through the handles of coffee cups to generate the levels of claustrophobia that the premise demands; and Fight Club is an anti-capitalist manifesto that has been lavishly produced on a $60 million budget. Zodiac is no different in this regard. By focusing on an unsolved murder case that has sputtered on for forty years, the film presents a fascinating subversion of detective movie conventions, as there’s never going to be a pay off in terms of finding out who the killer is. The movie becomes an intricate study of obsessive male behavior; and the narrative really wants to collapse in on itself, frustrating our desires for the easy dramatic pleasures that this kind of movie usually provides. Sadly, Fincher lets his audience off the hook, and gives in to those easy pleasures by artificially injecting some stock suspense sequences into the narrative through the use of awkwardly integrated red herrings. That said, this still remains a strong, unconventional piece of cinema that benefits from an evocative atmosphere, fine performances, and a stylistic restraint from Fincher and his tech crew. And Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” has never been put to better use.
7
I love the sense of quiet despair that runs throughout Michael Clayton. It’s the same kind of understated despair that ran through the paranoid thrillers of the seventies: an understanding that it’s the smaller moments that really count. The final shot of George Clooney in the cab, in particular, is one of the most impressive shots of the year, and it deserves to sit alongside The Graduate in the pantheon of unresolved resolutions. I only have one problem with the Michael Clayton, but it’s a big one: Tom Wilkinson. He has a pivotal role in the film, but I think he was miscast. It is a role that required a delicate balancing act, so that we are genuinely unsure whether he is has truly seen the light about corporate corruption or is just in the midst of a manic episode. I also felt it needed to be someone who could dramatically overpower Clooney in their scenes together, which would amplify the sense of Clayton getting in over his head. Wilkinson didn’t do either very well: he’s just a pathetic, jabbering schlub of a man with a distractingly poor American accent. I think someone like Michael Douglas would have been much more interesting in the role; our memories of Gordon Gekko would have served the film well.
6
When I saw Death Proof as part of the Grindhouse experience, I didn’t much care for it. Its tone and ambitions were so much at odds with the rest of Grindhouse that it felt out of place; and its slow pace brought the rollicking roller coaster to a screeching halt. I felt like it confirmed my belief that Tarantino had lost his golden touch. I changed my mind about 170 degrees, however, after seeing the extended cut on DVD. There’s still a lot of stuff I don’t like: Tarantino’s dialogue isn’t as fresh as it used to be, and the man himself should not be allowed anywhere near the front side of a camera; the movie still sags badly in the middle when the second set of girls are introduced; and Tarantino really needs to stop ripping off music cues from other movies. But I feel like I now get what the film is about, and I find lots to admire. It’s a fetish film in every sense of the word — from the beat-up film print aesthetics and old school car crashes to the endless close-ups of women’s feet — but it’s not all just pop culture hipsterism; there’s a real sense of loss at play here. In trying to resurrect the drive-in thrills, Tarantino knows that it’s an “objet petit a” that can never be truly grasped in the contemporary film culture; and Kurt Russell’s bemulleted Stuntman Mike is a walking anachronism acting out this impotent anger at the young, text-messaging kids of today. Russell is terrific in the role, and should have taken Tom Wilkinson’s spot in the Best Supporting Actor category. If there was an Oscar for Best Stuntwork, this would be the only nominee.
Posted by Andrew at 2:48 am.
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Saturday, 26th January 2008
I saw this film last weekend and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. I’m not sure quite what I made of it. It seems to me that it is toiling away as a somewhat classical film which sees a sad, despairing futility in ‘the state of things’. A man steals some money, and is hunted by a vicious killer, while a kindly, ruminative sheriff tries to halt disaster. Deaths and near-deaths ensue; things aren’t resolved; the sheriff feels the impossibility of nobility, or safety; the movie ends. I guess we are meant to feel sombre after that, or sad that the world is as it is. But if you want to illustrate that the world (or at least the US) is a harsh, unforgiving place, it seems as if it might be more effective to have as your central character a relative innocent, caught up in a terrible situation not of his making. Instead, we have Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who steals a couple of million dollars and thinks he can get away with it. The fact that the other two main characters are a sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), and the aforementioned killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), gave me the feeling that the film’s world is a closed world, with the notion of justice or justification sought and metered out within its four walls. People get caught in the crossfire, yes, but still, I can’t quite see that anything profound is being illustrated by that. People get caught in crossfire all the time; we know that. What is there for which we should feel pity, sadness, terror? I feel that this problem is a mixture both of the film’s story matter (which, I guess, is inherited in part from Cormac McCarthy’s novel) and also the Coens’ directing style, which keeps real fresh air trapped outside the confines of the frame. In other words, the film feels, to me, like something of an exercise in nihilism, rather than something which actually has a fully-formed (or even groping) sense of what the world might really be like.
It’s a movie which I found hard to align myself with. Quite a few times I felt like I had got all I needed from a scene or a sequence before its end. I watched it in a detached way, interested to see how the mise en scène unfolded but not often emotionally, or even intellectually stimulated. There were bits I enjoyed: some of the shootouts in the central motel sequence were nail-biting, and the scene in which the dog chases Brolin down the river was gripping in the extreme. And I did worry over Kelly Macdonald’s beleagured wife; her resignation in her final scene was perhaps the closest the film came to a tangible worldview. But I found that many parts of the movie seemed to outstay their welcome. I felt only mild tension, for example, in the celebrated gas station ‘coin toss’ scene between Anton and the older guy.
Anton, the killer, to whom so much screen time is devoted, is a rather implausibly conceived character - very abstract, almost inhuman, and lacking humour (as another character notes). I watched The Terminator a few days before it and Arnold Schwarzenegger is so much more expressive as an inexpressive hitman on a mission. Plus I don’t get Anton’s haircut; it feels modish. I do get a sense that we might be looking at a very subtle portrayal of OCD (the rules which seem to wear Anton out, as in the gas station scene, and the compulsiveness of his pursuit). I was also intrigued by the fact that arguably the first proper mistake he makes, in his terms - crashing the car near the end of the movie - occurs, it seems, because he is looking in his rearview mirror at two teenage boys on bikes. I’m not sure if this is perhaps a sign of his sexuality but it didn’t seem insignificant. (And, given that the film is set in 1980, it could follow, maybe even more so than if the film were set in 2007, that this sexuality might have been quite fanatically repressed.) The distraction of the boys could also/instead represent, perhaps, a wistful looking-back to a time when Anton himself was young and relatively carefree; it could be a symbolic as well as a literal rearview mirror that he is looking into.
How either/both of these ideas would link with his being a killer - and what implications that may have for the movie’s ideology - is mind-boggling. But I fear it’s also illustrative of the film’s problem. No Country For Old Men is, perhaps, a filmic case of the emperor’s new clothes - suggestive enough that each viewer might be able to spin a theory from it, but not committed enough to proffer real theories of its own. I guess what I’m saying is that it felt a little bit callous and a little bit pretentious. I could easily be wrong about this (after all, part of me believes my Anton ideas - and maybe other people have had them too?), but after a week of mulling it over, this is where I’ve got to.
Posted by Edward at 12:48 am.
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Tuesday, 22nd January 2008
Although Oscar nomination day has been, as usual, one of the most enjoyable days in my calendar, I was shocked to hear of the death of Heath Ledger, who was discovered this afternoon. Anyone who has died at 28 has died too soon. I respected his internal, inarticulate gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain, the words choked in his throat, while his stretches alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg in I’m Not There. were quite beguiling, and gave the film some high-quality human drama to embellish the mythologising. His performance as the Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight looks to be fun, too, and the trailers have been sellling the film on his colourful, demonic grin. Along with the 25-year-old Brad Renfro’s death a few days ago, this gets the year off to a bad start in the ‘in memoriam’ stakes. Young men, RIP.
Posted by Edward at 11:52 pm.
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Tuesday, 22nd January 2008
I have a lifetime of memories of Academy Award nominations where my favorite films were almost always relegated to the best screenplay category. I am so happy that this year my top three films were actually given the respect they deserve, with their respective filmmakers nominated for best picture, best director, AND best screenplay. In fact, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood received 8 nominations each (including best cinematography and editing), and Michael Clayton had 7. There are solid nominations in the acting categories as well, with appropriate recognition for Daniel Day-Lewis, George Clooney, Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem, Casey Affleck, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, and Tilda Swinton.
This has been my favorite year of movie releases since I was born. I am not saying that the single best movie of my lifetime was released this year, but I have never seen so many good movies come out in one year. And it is nice that this is also the year that my favorites actually received appropriate recognition. Now of course, there are still some odd choices by the Academy. I don’t understand why they have such a boner for Juno and the Ruby Dee nomination for American Gangster is kind of perplexing (to name a few). But I am definitely excited this year to see who ends up winning, whether by award show or press conference.
Posted by Sam at 7:49 pm.
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Wednesday, 16th January 2008
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has just announced the nine films that it has selected as finalists in the foreign language film category:
- The Counterfeiters (Austria)
- The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil)
- Days of Darkness (Canada)
- Beaufort (Israel)
- The Unknown (Italy)
- Mongol (Kazakhstan)
- Katyn (Poland)
- 12 (Russia)
- The Trap (Serbia)
Conspicuously absent from this shortlist are the two most highly acclaimed foreign language films of the year: Persepolis (France) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania). Both of these films were the official entries of their respective countries, which begs the question: what the hell is the Academy up to?!?! I’d hate to think that it has something to do with political censorship — one is about an Iranian woman, the other is about abortion — but I honestly can’t think of any other reason why both of these films have been snubbed. Then again, this is the same organization that neglected to include Grizzly Man in their shortlist of 15 movies for Best Documentary a few years ago, so who knows what kind of thoughts are clanking around inside their heads…
Posted by Andrew at 2:46 pm.
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Monday, 14th January 2008
Thanks to the WGA strike, the NBC telecast was a lean hour this year. So lean, in fact, that they trimmed a number of major awards (Screenplay, Foreign Film, Score, Song) from their coverage. The hosts were also incredibly annoying and dimwitted — with one of them registering disbelief that Daniel Day-Lewis might win — so I found myself feeling nostalgic for the usual, seven-and-a-half hour long snorefest.
As for the winners, no real surprises except perhaps for Best Motion Picture (Drama) going to Atonement. I figured There Will Be Blood was out of the running because its director wasn’t nominated; and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which won for Best Director, was out of the running (due to it being classified a foreign language film); which left the Coens’ No Country For Old Men as the remaining critical favorite. I think this might be a year when the Globes and the Academy Awards split ways for the top prize … although, after a string of tough, urban films (Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed), perhaps Oscar will be in the mood again for a flowery bit of British heritage filmmaking.
I don’t really care all that much about the TV awards, but I was happy to see Steve Merchant and Co. pick up another Globe for Extras. Perkins taught him well…
Posted by Andrew at 4:39 am.
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