Saturday, July 05, 2008
Fantasia 2008, Day Two: La Antena, A Love, Genius Party, [REC]
Yesterday was "adventures in subtitles" day, at least in the afternoon - La Antena made them part of the story. A Love had titling so brutal as to apparently cancel today's encore, and Genius Part made me hate looking away from the imagery. I took a little time beforehand to find myself some wi-fi (which, because it's located in the office next to this apartment, I am still using. I promise I'll stop once the DSL modem arrives), find some of the necessities you would take for granted in a hotel at the pharmacy, and the like. I kind of can't wait until Monday, when I'll finally have time to get out and about into the city. Movie gluttony is nice, but I'd hate to spend all my July time off inside darkened theaters.
Today's going to be an inside day, though - Batman: Gotham Knight (though I'll have the blu-ray waiting for me when I get home), Tales to Keep You Awake (Spanish horror Grindhouse with Alex de la Iglesia contributing a film), Disciples of the 36th Chamber (with Gordon Liu in person!), Le Grand Chef (Korean, not French), Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer (looks like good dumb fun), and Robo Rock (giant robots and rock & roll? Yes, please!).
La Antena (The Ariel)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
La Antena opens with hands superimposed on a typewriter keyboard while a piano plays, and introduces us to its "City Without a Voice"by displaying it as the pages of a pop-up book. That's a fanciful start to a fanciful movie, one that enjoys its storytelling and which always has another nifty image up its sleeve to tease the imagination.
Years ago, we're told, the inhabitants of this city lost the ability to speak, but they soldiered on. Now, though, the city is dominated by Mr. TV, who not only owns the local television station but the main food company (TV Foods!) as well. The most popular program features a mysterious woman known as "The Voice" who still retains the power of speech. Living in this world is a TV repairman (Alejandro Urdapilleta) and his daughter Ana (Sol Moreno). One day, a letter from Mr. TV is delivered to Ana's mother's house that was meant for the Voice (the classic case of 166 Eclipse Street becoming 169 Eclipse Street because of a loose screw) that the eyes for the Voice's blind son are ready if she's ready to do her part. Ana doesn't know what this means, but decides to make friends the the boy anyway. Coincidentally, her father has stumbled across part of it - and it's sinister. He needs the help of his ex-wife (Valeria Bertuccelli) to escape pursuit, especially when Mr. TV and his cohort Dr. Y decide to kill the son, since another person with a voice could ruin their plans.
As befits a story about an entire city without a voice, filmmaker Esteban Sapir films La Antena in the style of a silent movie. The images are black and white, shot on 16mm film; the style alternates between the dream-like and early twentieth century - though an early twentieth century city where everybody speaks Spanish but much of the iconography is Soviet (an apt choice, as the film often feels like one of those Soviet sci-fi silents). Much like in genuine silents, the score incorporates sound effects, and The Voice's costume incorporates a hood that casts such a deep shadow as to seem empty, making her speech seem oddly disconnected in the same way.
Full review at eFilmCritic.
Sarang (A Love)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
I really can't review this one honestly; though it was listed as being 35mm in the program, it appears that the print could not arrive on time and the HD version shown had some of the most brutal English subtitles I have ever witnessed in a theater, including that film Garo and Clinton showed at the Coolidge where the very title was misspelled. A few people left; the rest of us muddled through, occasionally laughing at what the (I presume) electronic translation had wrought. Apparently one character's name translates as "beautiful bead" and another's as "turnip". Or "turnip" is some sort of odd Korean insult. I can't say for sure.
Unfortunately, the bad subtitles didn't add much camp appeal to what seemed like a pretty basic movie. In-ho gets in fights, but falls for beautiful Mi-ju as a kid. They meet up later, grow close, and his rescuing her from a gang leaves him in jail and her in some sort of witness relocation program, but they somehow meet again when he enters the service of a better breed of mobster who just happens to have her for a mistress. Torment ensues.
Gangster romances are a tricky thing; either it's tough to get a really good love story through all the testosterone or it could just take place anywhere but for the random violence. It can be done - one of my favorite examples is another Korean film, A Bittersweet Life, but based on what I was able to piece together from the subtitles, A Love isn't nearly at that film's level.
Genius Party
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Animated Auteur Visions)
"Genius Party" is probably the most hubristic/critic-baiting title I've seen since a Chinese film by the name of "Dazzling" a few years back; it just begs for a "but who crashed?" sort of response. If anybody can use that title and get away with it, though, it's the people at Studio 4°C, who have created some of the most visually stunning animated films to come out of Japan in recent years. This anthology has seven segments, and there's something brilliant in all of them.
First up, we have the opening by Atsuko Fukushima; it's a zippy piece set to music with magical flowers, phoenix birds, and smiling spherical creatures that pop up out of the ground and tap into some sort of cosmic force. It sets the tone for the film with constant motion which combines the look of traditional hand-drawn animation with flying cameras that tend to be a real hassle without computer assistance. The music and effects animation enhance it to get the audience excited for what comes next.
Things actually might peak in the second segment, "Shanghai Dragon" by Shoji Kawamori, especially for those that love the sci-fi action that people usually think of when Japanese animation is brought up. It starts out as a cute story of a (literally) snot-nosed five-year-old by the name of Gonglong who loves to draw and Meihua, the girl who stands up for him. Kawamori is most famous for anime with a bunch of mecha action, and he doesn't disappoint, as an incredible bit of future technology falls from the sky, chased by future cyborgs who want to protect it and AIs who want to destroy it (and humanity). Gonglong, naturally, finds it, and what follows is grand over-the-top action which both spoofs and embraces the clichés of the genre while putting a nifty new spin on it, as traditional anime style combines with a child's drawings.
Full review at eFilmCritic.
[REC]
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Playback in Black)
Sometimes it's good to believe the hype. One of the perils of going to festivals is that I know I'm going to be writing reviews of the movies I see, and I jump the gun trying to analyze the film while it's still going, even though you can't properly do that without having it in its entirety. Throw in that [REC] has been receiving a ton of praise, and it's perhaps not surprising that I spent a good chunk of the movie wondering what the big deal was. So my jumping out of the seat by the end was somewhat contaminated by "aaaah, that's it!".
[REC] opens with Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) introducing herself as the host of a news/reality program called "while you were asleep". For this week's episode, she's going to tag along and document the Barcelona Fire Department. Most of what they do isn't actually fighting fires; it's handling broken water mains, animal rescue, and the like. Tonight's first call has them going to a small apartment building where screams have come from the apartment of an old lady who lives alone with her cats; when they get there, they find a dead girl on the floor. The woman is practically feral, actually biting one of the police officers who joined the firemen. Before they can get him to an ambulance, though, the find there are government people sealing off the building, not giving any information to the panicked residents, and the bitten cop's partner is expected to take control despite not knowing any more than anyone else.
The Blair Witch project wasn't the first "horror verité" film, but it is the one that triggered the ones of varying quality since. [REC] makes the gimmick work better than most; even if Angela initially seems more "on-air personality" than reporter, it makes a certain amount of sense for her and cameraman Pablo (cinematographer Pablo Rosso) to keep shooting once the crazy stuff starts happening, and the enclosed building is tight enough quarters that just dropping the camera and running wouldn't help that much. More so than with many films of this type, the filmmakers make the "found footage" conceit really make sense.
Full review at eFilmCritic, along with one other review.
(0) comments
Today's going to be an inside day, though - Batman: Gotham Knight (though I'll have the blu-ray waiting for me when I get home), Tales to Keep You Awake (Spanish horror Grindhouse with Alex de la Iglesia contributing a film), Disciples of the 36th Chamber (with Gordon Liu in person!), Le Grand Chef (Korean, not French), Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer (looks like good dumb fun), and Robo Rock (giant robots and rock & roll? Yes, please!).
La Antena (The Ariel)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
La Antena opens with hands superimposed on a typewriter keyboard while a piano plays, and introduces us to its "City Without a Voice"by displaying it as the pages of a pop-up book. That's a fanciful start to a fanciful movie, one that enjoys its storytelling and which always has another nifty image up its sleeve to tease the imagination.
Years ago, we're told, the inhabitants of this city lost the ability to speak, but they soldiered on. Now, though, the city is dominated by Mr. TV, who not only owns the local television station but the main food company (TV Foods!) as well. The most popular program features a mysterious woman known as "The Voice" who still retains the power of speech. Living in this world is a TV repairman (Alejandro Urdapilleta) and his daughter Ana (Sol Moreno). One day, a letter from Mr. TV is delivered to Ana's mother's house that was meant for the Voice (the classic case of 166 Eclipse Street becoming 169 Eclipse Street because of a loose screw) that the eyes for the Voice's blind son are ready if she's ready to do her part. Ana doesn't know what this means, but decides to make friends the the boy anyway. Coincidentally, her father has stumbled across part of it - and it's sinister. He needs the help of his ex-wife (Valeria Bertuccelli) to escape pursuit, especially when Mr. TV and his cohort Dr. Y decide to kill the son, since another person with a voice could ruin their plans.
As befits a story about an entire city without a voice, filmmaker Esteban Sapir films La Antena in the style of a silent movie. The images are black and white, shot on 16mm film; the style alternates between the dream-like and early twentieth century - though an early twentieth century city where everybody speaks Spanish but much of the iconography is Soviet (an apt choice, as the film often feels like one of those Soviet sci-fi silents). Much like in genuine silents, the score incorporates sound effects, and The Voice's costume incorporates a hood that casts such a deep shadow as to seem empty, making her speech seem oddly disconnected in the same way.
Full review at eFilmCritic.
Sarang (A Love)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
I really can't review this one honestly; though it was listed as being 35mm in the program, it appears that the print could not arrive on time and the HD version shown had some of the most brutal English subtitles I have ever witnessed in a theater, including that film Garo and Clinton showed at the Coolidge where the very title was misspelled. A few people left; the rest of us muddled through, occasionally laughing at what the (I presume) electronic translation had wrought. Apparently one character's name translates as "beautiful bead" and another's as "turnip". Or "turnip" is some sort of odd Korean insult. I can't say for sure.
Unfortunately, the bad subtitles didn't add much camp appeal to what seemed like a pretty basic movie. In-ho gets in fights, but falls for beautiful Mi-ju as a kid. They meet up later, grow close, and his rescuing her from a gang leaves him in jail and her in some sort of witness relocation program, but they somehow meet again when he enters the service of a better breed of mobster who just happens to have her for a mistress. Torment ensues.
Gangster romances are a tricky thing; either it's tough to get a really good love story through all the testosterone or it could just take place anywhere but for the random violence. It can be done - one of my favorite examples is another Korean film, A Bittersweet Life, but based on what I was able to piece together from the subtitles, A Love isn't nearly at that film's level.
Genius Party
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Animated Auteur Visions)
"Genius Party" is probably the most hubristic/critic-baiting title I've seen since a Chinese film by the name of "Dazzling" a few years back; it just begs for a "but who crashed?" sort of response. If anybody can use that title and get away with it, though, it's the people at Studio 4°C, who have created some of the most visually stunning animated films to come out of Japan in recent years. This anthology has seven segments, and there's something brilliant in all of them.
First up, we have the opening by Atsuko Fukushima; it's a zippy piece set to music with magical flowers, phoenix birds, and smiling spherical creatures that pop up out of the ground and tap into some sort of cosmic force. It sets the tone for the film with constant motion which combines the look of traditional hand-drawn animation with flying cameras that tend to be a real hassle without computer assistance. The music and effects animation enhance it to get the audience excited for what comes next.
Things actually might peak in the second segment, "Shanghai Dragon" by Shoji Kawamori, especially for those that love the sci-fi action that people usually think of when Japanese animation is brought up. It starts out as a cute story of a (literally) snot-nosed five-year-old by the name of Gonglong who loves to draw and Meihua, the girl who stands up for him. Kawamori is most famous for anime with a bunch of mecha action, and he doesn't disappoint, as an incredible bit of future technology falls from the sky, chased by future cyborgs who want to protect it and AIs who want to destroy it (and humanity). Gonglong, naturally, finds it, and what follows is grand over-the-top action which both spoofs and embraces the clichés of the genre while putting a nifty new spin on it, as traditional anime style combines with a child's drawings.
Full review at eFilmCritic.
[REC]
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Playback in Black)
Sometimes it's good to believe the hype. One of the perils of going to festivals is that I know I'm going to be writing reviews of the movies I see, and I jump the gun trying to analyze the film while it's still going, even though you can't properly do that without having it in its entirety. Throw in that [REC] has been receiving a ton of praise, and it's perhaps not surprising that I spent a good chunk of the movie wondering what the big deal was. So my jumping out of the seat by the end was somewhat contaminated by "aaaah, that's it!".
[REC] opens with Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) introducing herself as the host of a news/reality program called "while you were asleep". For this week's episode, she's going to tag along and document the Barcelona Fire Department. Most of what they do isn't actually fighting fires; it's handling broken water mains, animal rescue, and the like. Tonight's first call has them going to a small apartment building where screams have come from the apartment of an old lady who lives alone with her cats; when they get there, they find a dead girl on the floor. The woman is practically feral, actually biting one of the police officers who joined the firemen. Before they can get him to an ambulance, though, the find there are government people sealing off the building, not giving any information to the panicked residents, and the bitten cop's partner is expected to take control despite not knowing any more than anyone else.
The Blair Witch project wasn't the first "horror verité" film, but it is the one that triggered the ones of varying quality since. [REC] makes the gimmick work better than most; even if Angela initially seems more "on-air personality" than reporter, it makes a certain amount of sense for her and cameraman Pablo (cinematographer Pablo Rosso) to keep shooting once the crazy stuff starts happening, and the enclosed building is tight enough quarters that just dropping the camera and running wouldn't help that much. More so than with many films of this type, the filmmakers make the "found footage" conceit really make sense.
Full review at eFilmCritic, along with one other review.
Labels: adventure, animation, Argentina, comedy, crime, fantasy, horror, Japan, Korea, romance, sci-fi, silent, Spain, zombies
(0) comments
Friday, May 09, 2008
IFFB 2008: My Winnipeg
Guy Maddin is not a weirdo.
If you've seen his movies, that might be a bit of a surprise, but it's true. I expected him to be something like David Lynch, or what I imagine David Lynch must be like. But, no, he's an affable, funny, self-deprecating guy who took a bunch of questions after My Winnipeg, with a ready smile and joke. The Chlotrudis folks were excited to meet him, and he seemed sincere about wanting to come back to Boston more often. I suspect he'll be next year's Chlotrudis Awards honoree.
My Winnipeg
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Guy Maddin has long had a love-hate relationship with his home town of Winnipeg; most of his previous films have been set there and portrayed it as a place nearly as dreary as it is bizarre. My Winnipeg isn't very different from his purely fictional films in that respect. The affection comes across more clearly here than in those films, even as it is delivered with a kick.
Maddin describes My Winnipeg as "docu-fantasia", which is as good a term as any. He inserts himself into the film with a couple of peculiar devices - in one, he is on a train out of town hoping to escape before the hypnotic snow causes him to sleepwalk back home; in another, he is renting his childhood home and hiring actors to play his siblings so that he and his mother can re-enact crucial moments from his childhood in a scientific experiment to determine the cause of his neuroses (Darcy Fehr plays Maddin, noir actress Ann Savage plays his mother). He posits that not only do rail lines and rivers converge in in Winnipeg - "the forks", he repeats, like a dozy mantra - but so do the ley lines along which mystic energy flows. This is Maddin's world, after all, and therefore peculiar.
It's so peculiar that the audience has to wonder how far the tall tales Maddin tells have evolved from reality. Does Winnipeg really have an uncommonly high population of sleepwalkers, and if so, do the city laws requiring their accommodation actually exist? Was a team of horses flash-frozen in the river after a fire, their protruding heads forming a grotesque yet arousing backdrop for the locals' evening promenades? Did "What If?" Day, with its simulated Nazi invasion, actually panic the city? One could look such things up, but does it really matter? These legends may say more about the city and Maddin's relation with it than mere facts might, and the stories themselves are uniformly hilarious. There's a great collection of anecdotes here, and they absolutely make Winnipeg a memorable city.
Other sections of the movie focus on how the city has changed over the years, and there's something kind of universal about those segments. He talks about how the diminishing importance of river and rail transport have reduced Winnipeg's importance as a shipping hub. There's a section on the city's uniquely constructed public swimming pool. Local department stores close and are replaced with chains. But for all that, the real passion comes out when it comes time to discuss how the city's hockey fans have been treated. We hear how the Winnipeg Arena was a major part of Maddin's youth, and there's a certain satisfaction when the 2006 implosion only destroys the additions to the original structure. There's no such love for the MTS Centre that replaced it, which isn't even large enough to host an NHL team should the Jets be replaced.
Anger fairly drips from Maddin's voice when he talks about the Jets leaving the city, a change from the whimsical or resigned tones he uses through much of the rest of the feature. It's a bit odd to hear Maddin's voice so directly; for as much as many of his films contain autobiographical material, he would distance himself by having an actor portray him, placing the stories in a fantastic context, and a visual style that suggests the first third of the twentieth century. That's all still there; My Winnipeg's black and white photography mostly looks like a long-lost movie, frequently grainy but sometimes sharp. The action itself is often silent, with just Jason Staczek's music and Madidn's narration, with the exception being the recreated scenes from Maddin's youth, where we get to enjoy femme fatale Ann Savage's first major role in fifty years.
To a certain extent, this verbiage is kind of unnecessary; this film is mainly going to appeal to those with an interest in Winnipeg and Guy Maddin's fans. If you're in the first group, remember that the title does promise that it's Maddin's Winnipeg and expect strangeness (although this may be Maddin's most mainstream film). For those in the second, well, enjoy. This is Maddin at his funniest and most playful.
Also on EFC.
(0) comments
If you've seen his movies, that might be a bit of a surprise, but it's true. I expected him to be something like David Lynch, or what I imagine David Lynch must be like. But, no, he's an affable, funny, self-deprecating guy who took a bunch of questions after My Winnipeg, with a ready smile and joke. The Chlotrudis folks were excited to meet him, and he seemed sincere about wanting to come back to Boston more often. I suspect he'll be next year's Chlotrudis Awards honoree.
My Winnipeg
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Guy Maddin has long had a love-hate relationship with his home town of Winnipeg; most of his previous films have been set there and portrayed it as a place nearly as dreary as it is bizarre. My Winnipeg isn't very different from his purely fictional films in that respect. The affection comes across more clearly here than in those films, even as it is delivered with a kick.
Maddin describes My Winnipeg as "docu-fantasia", which is as good a term as any. He inserts himself into the film with a couple of peculiar devices - in one, he is on a train out of town hoping to escape before the hypnotic snow causes him to sleepwalk back home; in another, he is renting his childhood home and hiring actors to play his siblings so that he and his mother can re-enact crucial moments from his childhood in a scientific experiment to determine the cause of his neuroses (Darcy Fehr plays Maddin, noir actress Ann Savage plays his mother). He posits that not only do rail lines and rivers converge in in Winnipeg - "the forks", he repeats, like a dozy mantra - but so do the ley lines along which mystic energy flows. This is Maddin's world, after all, and therefore peculiar.
It's so peculiar that the audience has to wonder how far the tall tales Maddin tells have evolved from reality. Does Winnipeg really have an uncommonly high population of sleepwalkers, and if so, do the city laws requiring their accommodation actually exist? Was a team of horses flash-frozen in the river after a fire, their protruding heads forming a grotesque yet arousing backdrop for the locals' evening promenades? Did "What If?" Day, with its simulated Nazi invasion, actually panic the city? One could look such things up, but does it really matter? These legends may say more about the city and Maddin's relation with it than mere facts might, and the stories themselves are uniformly hilarious. There's a great collection of anecdotes here, and they absolutely make Winnipeg a memorable city.
Other sections of the movie focus on how the city has changed over the years, and there's something kind of universal about those segments. He talks about how the diminishing importance of river and rail transport have reduced Winnipeg's importance as a shipping hub. There's a section on the city's uniquely constructed public swimming pool. Local department stores close and are replaced with chains. But for all that, the real passion comes out when it comes time to discuss how the city's hockey fans have been treated. We hear how the Winnipeg Arena was a major part of Maddin's youth, and there's a certain satisfaction when the 2006 implosion only destroys the additions to the original structure. There's no such love for the MTS Centre that replaced it, which isn't even large enough to host an NHL team should the Jets be replaced.
Anger fairly drips from Maddin's voice when he talks about the Jets leaving the city, a change from the whimsical or resigned tones he uses through much of the rest of the feature. It's a bit odd to hear Maddin's voice so directly; for as much as many of his films contain autobiographical material, he would distance himself by having an actor portray him, placing the stories in a fantastic context, and a visual style that suggests the first third of the twentieth century. That's all still there; My Winnipeg's black and white photography mostly looks like a long-lost movie, frequently grainy but sometimes sharp. The action itself is often silent, with just Jason Staczek's music and Madidn's narration, with the exception being the recreated scenes from Maddin's youth, where we get to enjoy femme fatale Ann Savage's first major role in fifty years.
To a certain extent, this verbiage is kind of unnecessary; this film is mainly going to appeal to those with an interest in Winnipeg and Guy Maddin's fans. If you're in the first group, remember that the title does promise that it's Maddin's Winnipeg and expect strangeness (although this may be Maddin's most mainstream film). For those in the second, well, enjoy. This is Maddin at his funniest and most playful.
Also on EFC.
Labels: Canada, comedy, documentary, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, indiefilmcafe, silent
(0) comments
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Lightning round: February 2008
Stuff has started falling out the back of my brain, so it's time to do some capsules and then see which ones expand themselves into full reviews. President's Day weekend was kind of a cruncher - something like 11 films at the sci-fi marathon, the Academy Award shorts, and three other features. My brain just can't store that many details about that many movies.
Evil Dead 2
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (Blu-ray Disc)
At last count, I think I've purchased something like four copies of this movie - one on VHS, two on DVD, and this one on Blu-ray Disc. I knew from reading reviews of the disc that it probably doesn't look as great as it could, so there's a good chance that copy #5 could be in the future when Anchor Bay inevitably issues another edition. It doesn't look bad - far from it! - but the quality of the transfer is a bit wonky. There are some sections which look too bright, with the result that it looks more like a set than a real place. Not that I'll likely go back to the DVD very often, but it's a tad disappointing.
I'll probably watch it again sometime in the next few months because watching it again reminded me that this is a really weird movie. Army of Darkness, the musical, the comics that have played up the comedy, and the whole Monty Python-ish cult that has sprung up around this movie makes one tend to think of it as funny, but the first half hour to forty-five minutes plays the absurdity as much as a descent into madness as slapstick, especially considering how it is, for the most part, just Bruce Campbell in the cabin. The parallel universe version of this film is Ash as a murderous, hallucinating madman, and you wouldn't have to change the first half of the movie very much at all to get it.
The rest of the movie is more straight-ahead, and it's amazing to see how good Sam Raimi was at action and comedy, and how to mix the two without either of them suffering, so early in his career. It really is amazing how many different styles and approaches Raimi used in this movie, and it's the mark of a fine, under-appreciated director that he fuses them into his own style rather than making it feel like a jumbled mess.
Let's Get Lost
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)
I suspect a biopic with Nick Nolte playing Chet Baker would be a huge hit in Europe. This documentary does a lot of the basics - the humble beginnings, the testimonials from fellow musicians, the stories of drug abuse and infidelity. What makes it unusual, I think, is the way it so baldly portrays the tremendous, sometimes humiliating loyalty that genius inspires in people.
Because there's no redemptive portion here. Baker's death came soon after Let's Get Lost was shot, but more than that, there's a gut punch about a half an hour or so into the film, when a former mistress talks for a while about Chet, clearly still very fond of him, and then finishes it off by flatly saying what a selfish bastard he is. Then there's the ex-wife, a former English beauty queen, living in Baker's native Oklahoma with their kids, blithely acting like Baker will be back someday.
Then there's Baker himself, his face and body imploded from years of indulgence and self-destruction. He still has admirers and talent, but there's not much else of him left. Even the music chosen to score the film is lonely, as he switches between trumpet and raspy vocals.
And yet, the women in his life still pine for him, despite everything.
Night Moves
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (Arthur Penn in person)
I first heard of Night Moves in GAMES magazine, which used it to introduce a chess puzzle similar to the game that Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby studies at various points in the film. He's looking at it as being about missed opportunities and not being able to see what's in front of one's own face as his marriage falls apart and the full facts of the case he's working on are often just out of reach.
Night Moves is a nifty little crime story with a few extra things going on. Part of what's really neat about it is the way it shifts back and forth between detection and drama. We follow a trail with Moseby as he tracks down a missing girl, but then we watch them for a bit as the crime story simmers in the background before it bursts back into the foreground. During the discussion, director Arthur Penn mentioned how proud he was of the finale, which eschews exposition for showing the audience the answers visually, and it is a very welcome change.
The movie also has a fantastic cast - Gene Hackman had a number of great roles during the seventies, and this is right up there. Jennifer Warren is similarly terrific as the mystery woman he meets while looking for a missing girl. We also get early roles from Melanie Griffith and James Woods, which is extra fun, in part because of how James Woods has always been James Woods; even back in his mid-twenties, he had the sort of scuzzy, sarcastic persona figured out.
Mickey One
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (Arthur Penn in person)
Mickey One was the second part of the Archive's Arthur Penn double feature, and it was... different. Warren Beatty plays a Detroit comedian who runs afoul of the mob, escapes to Chicago, but finds himself unable to resist getting back on stage, even though that leads to fears of the Detroit mob finding him again...
It's an interesting movie, sort of avant-garde, and Beatty and Alexandra Stewart are both pretty good in it. It does get kind of jumpy in the second half, blurring the line between what's actually happening and Mickey's fears, and the illogic of Mickey's dilemma is hard to escape. Beautiful black and white cinematography, though.
Also on the program: A short film from the 1972 Olympics ("The Hightest", part of Visions of Eight) about pole-vaulting. You never know, until you've seen it in slow motion, just how specific and non-transferable to anything else pole-vaulting skills are.
The Pursuit of Happyness
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (rental Blu-ray Disc)
If Will Smith ever runs for President, I'll probably vote for him. I don't think he has yet taken on a project he couldn't handle - even his bad movies are generally bad in spite of him, rather than because of him - even when people are underestimating him. It's a quality that serves him well in Pursuit of Happyness as he drops his cool and cocky personas to play a father trying to hold it together for his son without much in the way of resources. The film wears its aspirations to inspiration on its sleeve, but Smith's a guy with the knack for making the audience believe in him, so it's pretty easy to believe in what we're seeing.
27 Dresses
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2008 at Regal Fenway #13 (first-run)
... or "what I hadn't seen the night of the Super Bowl".
I like Katherine Heigl. She's built herself a solid on-screen persona; ever since Roswell she's been playing smart, excessively organized young women who are still fun to be around, and her role in 27 Dresses fits that to a tee. It's got a clever hook for a story, decent-enough actors in the supporting roles, and a fun opening sequence.
What it doesn't have, sadly, is much in the way of jokes. It's not a heavy movie, by any means, but that's not really enough to qualify as a really good romantic comedy; such a movie should probably make me laugh a lot more often than it did. And I'm not trying to pull "it's called romantic comedy" the way others pull "it's called science fiction"; having the characters make us laugh would make us root for them to end up together more.
Brothers Sklandowsky (aka A Trick of the Light)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (VES free screenings)
This one was a feature presentation to go with a bunch of early silents, all of them screened on DVD, which was kind of disappointing. You'd think the HFA would have a copy of something like "Une Voyage dans la Lune", at the very least, but apparently those don't get broken out for what are basically classroom screenings to which the general public is invited.
I did rather love Wim Wenders's story of a German clan who built a motion picture camera at around the same time Edison and the Lumiere did. He and his students take plenty of liberties with the story at times, and note that they've done so, but this is really a joyous little film - the silent film pastiche is a great deal of fun, and the interview with the nonagenarian daughter of one of the brothers is one of those awe-inspiring bits where you realize just how much happened in the course of the twentieth century, over the course of just one human life. There's a kind of melancholy to it, too, as one realizes how the stories she tells will just become facts and history after she passes, rather than an experience that shaped a person and that she cherishes.
Romantico
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (rental DVD/Chlotrudis "Buried Treasure" nominee)
More buried than treasure, I think. It's not a bad movie by any means, and it's one where I hope i'm not falling into the common documentary trap of judging a film by the importance of its subject matter rather than its own merit when I dismiss it. It is, after all, a very small film, focusing mainly on one mariachi playing for tips in San Francisco. And it does a nice enough job of that, giving voice to him and his partner in music, teaching us things we may not have known.
It doesn't take it to that next level, though, where we the audience get emotionally invested in their lives. Things that are good and bad for them are interesting, but there's never the reaction that something is particularly unjust or fortunate or surprising. Things are just how they are.
Of course, I may not have given it the fairest shake; I watched it kind of late on a Sunday evening and felt myself drifting off at times. It was also pretty clearly shot on either video or lesser film stock, and one of my first clear indications that while my Toshiba HD-A1 can make a good looking DVD look pretty decent on my HDTV, it won't do much to help a bad-looking one, and might even aggravate the situation.
Body Heat
* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2008 at the Coolidge Corner #1 (Science on Screen)
Let met tell you, there's nothing that sets the stage for an erotic thriller quite like a lecture on ferret sexuality. I kid, a little; the lecture that accompanied the film as part of the Coolidge's Science on Screen series was interesting in its own right and didn't have me looking at what was going on too clinically.
The movie itself is a pretty good one; it's good old-fashioned noir set in the sweltering Florida sun. Kathleen Turner reeks of sex as the femme fatale whose body temperature runs a degree or two hotter than normal, while William Hurt hits all the right notes as the guy whose weak moral compass is completely thrown off by her. The folks in the supporting roles (notably Richard Crenna and a pre-CheersTed Danson) are also good. The plot is the sort where the audience knows what will and must happen, but the exact details are a fun surprise and likely still trashy fun even after the first viewing.
The Spiderwick Chronicles
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 February 2008 at AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run)
The purpose behind this one was simple - it was the movie that I knew Paramount was attaching a trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to; I'd later get lucky and see it again with Jumper and Definitely Maybe, but I wanted to be sure.
There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, especially if you've got a kid in tow. It was a little disconcerting for me to see Freddie Highmore speaking with an American accent, but that's my problem more than the film's. The story is the usual for a kids' fantasy: Kid from broken home discovers a hidden world where he gets to be strong and important, and he ultimately gets to show his family that he's not just a crazy troublemaker. The filmmakers do it well, and they've got some better-than-expected talent tagging along in the persons of David Strathairn and Nick Nolte. Some of the fantasy settings are unexpectedly beautiful, while others are enjoyable cartoony. I have to admit, I was happily taken aback to how Seth Rogen's hobgoblin fit into the final sequence.
Good fun. And Indiana Jones is back, too.
2007 Oscar-Animated Shorts
Seen 16 February 2008 in the Coolidge Corner Theatre Screening Room (special engagement)
On the one hand, I kind of miss when the Coolidge's "We've Got Oscar's Shorts!" program was a big, special deal; on the other, it's cool more people are getting the opportunity to see these. What I really miss are the nominated documentary feature screenings that don't seem to be happening anywhere in Boston any more.
The individual shorts:
"My Love (Moya Lyubov)" - A very pretty painted piece from Russia. It's kind of long and full of people thinking of doing things rather than actually acting for an animated piece, but very nice to look at.
"Même les Pigeons vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)" - I'm pretty sure I saw this somewhere else last year, but it's one I like: A CGI short that looks like stop-motion about a con man selling an old man a tip to heaven.
"I Met the Walrus" - Cute; it's at fun idea to illustrate a rambling conversation with John Lennon this way, and although the visuals are sometimes a little on-the-nose, it's a nicely active piece that doesn't wear out its welcome.
"Madame Tutli-Putli" - One of my favorites among the bunch, a dialogue-free horror piece that has a woman confronting various freaky occurances on a train. The stop-motion animation is quite nice, and the atmosphere of lurking nastiness out to get our heroine doesn't prevent some nicely comic bits.
"Peter & The Wolf" - A deserving winner, packed with drama, comedy, and thrills, along with some terrific animation and music. It's also the rare film where another animal surpasses the duck in terms of being the charmer (I loved the blue jay).
The Draughtsman's Contract
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 February 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)
I might be tempted to bump this one up to three stars on a second viewing; I generally liked what I was seeing and Peter Greenaway has an absurdist sense of humor that can be a lot of fun. It was kind of a log day, though, and my mind was kind of wandering toward the end, and I really had no idea what was going on as it finished. That's probably more on me than the film.
A Zed and Two Noughts
* * (out of four)
Seen 23 February 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)
But don't give that rating too much credence; I was tired by the time this started, and Greenaway demands alertness. That said, I don't think this would be my thing even under the best of circumstances. As a friend put it the other day, there's "quirky", and there's "random", and this thing is definitely random. It didn't even wind up being fun random for me, just unpleasant for the most part.
Whew. That just leaves a backlog of six plus a post for the marathon. Eminently doable, I think.
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Evil Dead 2
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (Blu-ray Disc)
At last count, I think I've purchased something like four copies of this movie - one on VHS, two on DVD, and this one on Blu-ray Disc. I knew from reading reviews of the disc that it probably doesn't look as great as it could, so there's a good chance that copy #5 could be in the future when Anchor Bay inevitably issues another edition. It doesn't look bad - far from it! - but the quality of the transfer is a bit wonky. There are some sections which look too bright, with the result that it looks more like a set than a real place. Not that I'll likely go back to the DVD very often, but it's a tad disappointing.
I'll probably watch it again sometime in the next few months because watching it again reminded me that this is a really weird movie. Army of Darkness, the musical, the comics that have played up the comedy, and the whole Monty Python-ish cult that has sprung up around this movie makes one tend to think of it as funny, but the first half hour to forty-five minutes plays the absurdity as much as a descent into madness as slapstick, especially considering how it is, for the most part, just Bruce Campbell in the cabin. The parallel universe version of this film is Ash as a murderous, hallucinating madman, and you wouldn't have to change the first half of the movie very much at all to get it.
The rest of the movie is more straight-ahead, and it's amazing to see how good Sam Raimi was at action and comedy, and how to mix the two without either of them suffering, so early in his career. It really is amazing how many different styles and approaches Raimi used in this movie, and it's the mark of a fine, under-appreciated director that he fuses them into his own style rather than making it feel like a jumbled mess.
Let's Get Lost
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)
I suspect a biopic with Nick Nolte playing Chet Baker would be a huge hit in Europe. This documentary does a lot of the basics - the humble beginnings, the testimonials from fellow musicians, the stories of drug abuse and infidelity. What makes it unusual, I think, is the way it so baldly portrays the tremendous, sometimes humiliating loyalty that genius inspires in people.
Because there's no redemptive portion here. Baker's death came soon after Let's Get Lost was shot, but more than that, there's a gut punch about a half an hour or so into the film, when a former mistress talks for a while about Chet, clearly still very fond of him, and then finishes it off by flatly saying what a selfish bastard he is. Then there's the ex-wife, a former English beauty queen, living in Baker's native Oklahoma with their kids, blithely acting like Baker will be back someday.
Then there's Baker himself, his face and body imploded from years of indulgence and self-destruction. He still has admirers and talent, but there's not much else of him left. Even the music chosen to score the film is lonely, as he switches between trumpet and raspy vocals.
And yet, the women in his life still pine for him, despite everything.
Night Moves
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (Arthur Penn in person)
I first heard of Night Moves in GAMES magazine, which used it to introduce a chess puzzle similar to the game that Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby studies at various points in the film. He's looking at it as being about missed opportunities and not being able to see what's in front of one's own face as his marriage falls apart and the full facts of the case he's working on are often just out of reach.
Night Moves is a nifty little crime story with a few extra things going on. Part of what's really neat about it is the way it shifts back and forth between detection and drama. We follow a trail with Moseby as he tracks down a missing girl, but then we watch them for a bit as the crime story simmers in the background before it bursts back into the foreground. During the discussion, director Arthur Penn mentioned how proud he was of the finale, which eschews exposition for showing the audience the answers visually, and it is a very welcome change.
The movie also has a fantastic cast - Gene Hackman had a number of great roles during the seventies, and this is right up there. Jennifer Warren is similarly terrific as the mystery woman he meets while looking for a missing girl. We also get early roles from Melanie Griffith and James Woods, which is extra fun, in part because of how James Woods has always been James Woods; even back in his mid-twenties, he had the sort of scuzzy, sarcastic persona figured out.
Mickey One
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (Arthur Penn in person)
Mickey One was the second part of the Archive's Arthur Penn double feature, and it was... different. Warren Beatty plays a Detroit comedian who runs afoul of the mob, escapes to Chicago, but finds himself unable to resist getting back on stage, even though that leads to fears of the Detroit mob finding him again...
It's an interesting movie, sort of avant-garde, and Beatty and Alexandra Stewart are both pretty good in it. It does get kind of jumpy in the second half, blurring the line between what's actually happening and Mickey's fears, and the illogic of Mickey's dilemma is hard to escape. Beautiful black and white cinematography, though.
Also on the program: A short film from the 1972 Olympics ("The Hightest", part of Visions of Eight) about pole-vaulting. You never know, until you've seen it in slow motion, just how specific and non-transferable to anything else pole-vaulting skills are.
The Pursuit of Happyness
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (rental Blu-ray Disc)
If Will Smith ever runs for President, I'll probably vote for him. I don't think he has yet taken on a project he couldn't handle - even his bad movies are generally bad in spite of him, rather than because of him - even when people are underestimating him. It's a quality that serves him well in Pursuit of Happyness as he drops his cool and cocky personas to play a father trying to hold it together for his son without much in the way of resources. The film wears its aspirations to inspiration on its sleeve, but Smith's a guy with the knack for making the audience believe in him, so it's pretty easy to believe in what we're seeing.
27 Dresses
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2008 at Regal Fenway #13 (first-run)
... or "what I hadn't seen the night of the Super Bowl".
I like Katherine Heigl. She's built herself a solid on-screen persona; ever since Roswell she's been playing smart, excessively organized young women who are still fun to be around, and her role in 27 Dresses fits that to a tee. It's got a clever hook for a story, decent-enough actors in the supporting roles, and a fun opening sequence.
What it doesn't have, sadly, is much in the way of jokes. It's not a heavy movie, by any means, but that's not really enough to qualify as a really good romantic comedy; such a movie should probably make me laugh a lot more often than it did. And I'm not trying to pull "it's called romantic comedy" the way others pull "it's called science fiction"; having the characters make us laugh would make us root for them to end up together more.
Brothers Sklandowsky (aka A Trick of the Light)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive (VES free screenings)
This one was a feature presentation to go with a bunch of early silents, all of them screened on DVD, which was kind of disappointing. You'd think the HFA would have a copy of something like "Une Voyage dans la Lune", at the very least, but apparently those don't get broken out for what are basically classroom screenings to which the general public is invited.
I did rather love Wim Wenders's story of a German clan who built a motion picture camera at around the same time Edison and the Lumiere did. He and his students take plenty of liberties with the story at times, and note that they've done so, but this is really a joyous little film - the silent film pastiche is a great deal of fun, and the interview with the nonagenarian daughter of one of the brothers is one of those awe-inspiring bits where you realize just how much happened in the course of the twentieth century, over the course of just one human life. There's a kind of melancholy to it, too, as one realizes how the stories she tells will just become facts and history after she passes, rather than an experience that shaped a person and that she cherishes.
Romantico
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (rental DVD/Chlotrudis "Buried Treasure" nominee)
More buried than treasure, I think. It's not a bad movie by any means, and it's one where I hope i'm not falling into the common documentary trap of judging a film by the importance of its subject matter rather than its own merit when I dismiss it. It is, after all, a very small film, focusing mainly on one mariachi playing for tips in San Francisco. And it does a nice enough job of that, giving voice to him and his partner in music, teaching us things we may not have known.
It doesn't take it to that next level, though, where we the audience get emotionally invested in their lives. Things that are good and bad for them are interesting, but there's never the reaction that something is particularly unjust or fortunate or surprising. Things are just how they are.
Of course, I may not have given it the fairest shake; I watched it kind of late on a Sunday evening and felt myself drifting off at times. It was also pretty clearly shot on either video or lesser film stock, and one of my first clear indications that while my Toshiba HD-A1 can make a good looking DVD look pretty decent on my HDTV, it won't do much to help a bad-looking one, and might even aggravate the situation.
Body Heat
* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2008 at the Coolidge Corner #1 (Science on Screen)
Let met tell you, there's nothing that sets the stage for an erotic thriller quite like a lecture on ferret sexuality. I kid, a little; the lecture that accompanied the film as part of the Coolidge's Science on Screen series was interesting in its own right and didn't have me looking at what was going on too clinically.
The movie itself is a pretty good one; it's good old-fashioned noir set in the sweltering Florida sun. Kathleen Turner reeks of sex as the femme fatale whose body temperature runs a degree or two hotter than normal, while William Hurt hits all the right notes as the guy whose weak moral compass is completely thrown off by her. The folks in the supporting roles (notably Richard Crenna and a pre-CheersTed Danson) are also good. The plot is the sort where the audience knows what will and must happen, but the exact details are a fun surprise and likely still trashy fun even after the first viewing.
The Spiderwick Chronicles
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 February 2008 at AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run)
The purpose behind this one was simple - it was the movie that I knew Paramount was attaching a trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to; I'd later get lucky and see it again with Jumper and Definitely Maybe, but I wanted to be sure.
There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, especially if you've got a kid in tow. It was a little disconcerting for me to see Freddie Highmore speaking with an American accent, but that's my problem more than the film's. The story is the usual for a kids' fantasy: Kid from broken home discovers a hidden world where he gets to be strong and important, and he ultimately gets to show his family that he's not just a crazy troublemaker. The filmmakers do it well, and they've got some better-than-expected talent tagging along in the persons of David Strathairn and Nick Nolte. Some of the fantasy settings are unexpectedly beautiful, while others are enjoyable cartoony. I have to admit, I was happily taken aback to how Seth Rogen's hobgoblin fit into the final sequence.
Good fun. And Indiana Jones is back, too.
2007 Oscar-Animated Shorts
Seen 16 February 2008 in the Coolidge Corner Theatre Screening Room (special engagement)
On the one hand, I kind of miss when the Coolidge's "We've Got Oscar's Shorts!" program was a big, special deal; on the other, it's cool more people are getting the opportunity to see these. What I really miss are the nominated documentary feature screenings that don't seem to be happening anywhere in Boston any more.
The individual shorts:
"My Love (Moya Lyubov)" - A very pretty painted piece from Russia. It's kind of long and full of people thinking of doing things rather than actually acting for an animated piece, but very nice to look at.
"Même les Pigeons vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)" - I'm pretty sure I saw this somewhere else last year, but it's one I like: A CGI short that looks like stop-motion about a con man selling an old man a tip to heaven.
"I Met the Walrus" - Cute; it's at fun idea to illustrate a rambling conversation with John Lennon this way, and although the visuals are sometimes a little on-the-nose, it's a nicely active piece that doesn't wear out its welcome.
"Madame Tutli-Putli" - One of my favorites among the bunch, a dialogue-free horror piece that has a woman confronting various freaky occurances on a train. The stop-motion animation is quite nice, and the atmosphere of lurking nastiness out to get our heroine doesn't prevent some nicely comic bits.
"Peter & The Wolf" - A deserving winner, packed with drama, comedy, and thrills, along with some terrific animation and music. It's also the rare film where another animal surpasses the duck in terms of being the charmer (I loved the blue jay).
The Draughtsman's Contract
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 February 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)
I might be tempted to bump this one up to three stars on a second viewing; I generally liked what I was seeing and Peter Greenaway has an absurdist sense of humor that can be a lot of fun. It was kind of a log day, though, and my mind was kind of wandering toward the end, and I really had no idea what was going on as it finished. That's probably more on me than the film.
A Zed and Two Noughts
* * (out of four)
Seen 23 February 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)
But don't give that rating too much credence; I was tired by the time this started, and Greenaway demands alertness. That said, I don't think this would be my thing even under the best of circumstances. As a friend put it the other day, there's "quirky", and there's "random", and this thing is definitely random. It didn't even wind up being fun random for me, just unpleasant for the most part.
Whew. That just leaves a backlog of six plus a post for the marathon. Eminently doable, I think.
Labels: adventure, animation, comedy, documentary, drama, fantasy, horror, independent, mystery, romance, Romania, shorts, silent, thriller, UK, USA
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