Listen Eggroll

28 September 2011

Viewing Journal: Week of 26 Sep–2 Oct

LEST YOU BE CONFUSED: Films in /brackets/ I had previously seen. The ratings are on a 100-point scale that merely signifies my personal and highly subjective degree of enthusiasm, and I use the entire damn scale, e.g. 65 is equivalent to 6.5/10, a mild thumbs-up. Anything 70+ I really liked, and 80+ is generally top ten for any given non-phenomenal year.

/The Arbor/ (2010, Clio Barnard): 81

It's not a gimmick. Or, I dunno, maybe it was something of a gimmick at first (given that Barnard had previously created theater pieces using the same technique), but its use here is so brilliantly conceived that it transcends gimmickry. Dunbar's work was intensely autobiographical and yet also (at least in the case of the titular play) deliberately artificial, and this film walks the same arresting tightrope—not just in terms of having actors lip-sync the interviews, and the cognitive dissonance created thereby, but in the juxtaposition of those performances with excerpts from The Arbor itself, performed on location (as the actors from the lip-sync sections observe, in character, thereby quasi-fictionalizing the neighborhood), as well as...man, I'm getting kinda dizzy here...archival footage of the real Dunbar and her family, shot for television during her initial burst of success. How many freakin' layers of representation is that, I lost count. To be sure, it's a weird push-pull on the emotions and intellect: Lorraine's history in particular is unrelentingly bleak, yet our constant awareness that we're hearing the actual woman and watching an actor makes it almost impossible to either fully empathize or fully detach. Which of course is the entire point, and I've been waiting my whole life for someone to bulldoze the notion of documentary authenticity/objectivity with this degree of mind-altering flair. In fact, all that holds The Arbor back from my personal canon are the glimpses it occasionally affords of how it could have been even more stunning, viz. by combining separate interviews into a single overtly theatrical text of Barnard's own devising—think of Lorraine and Lisa standing side by side as each recounts her memory of the fire that broke out in their childhood bedroom, or (especially) of the camera circling Lisa and others in their seats as each in turn recalls the premiere of A State Affair. Something about seeing these "characters" in close proximity yet not quite interacting hits even harder than does the lip-sync process alone, and I wish Barnard had found more occasions to go that route; also wish the play didn't recede quite so much in the latter half, even though finding parallels between its narrative and Lorraine's plight must have been tricky. Quibbles, quibbles. Just imagine me lip-syncing to Johnny Depp as Ed Wood: "This story's gonna grab people. It's about this guy, he's crazy about this girl, but he likes to wear dresses. Should he tell her? Should he not tell her? He's torn, Georgie. This is drama." (Hmm, bit of a reach, isn't it? Now that's a gimmick.)

/Straw Dogs/ (1971, Sam Peckinpah): 30

Lots of smart folks, including Peckinpah himself, have attempted to make a case for this as something other than vile misogynistic Neanderthal bullshit, but I remain unconvinced. If his intention was to make David the movie's stealth villain, I think he completely whiffed; Hoffman was then a formidable enough actor to provide the character with multiple shadings (and the moment where David doesn't warn Amy that her cat is hanging in the closet does suggest a sadistic streak), but his actions in the finale are too well-justified to provoke any real discomfort in those inclined to cheer him on. (Also, I was surprised and disheartened by how closely the final act conforms to what would become Hollywood thriller convention, what with the carefully planted trap that dispatches the final marauder in unexpectedly gruesome fashion and the weary sigh of denouement-heralding relief followed by SURPRISE! STILL ONE DUDE LEFT! The line between this film and something like Pacific Heights—anyone remember that one?—is alarmingly thin.) At best, we're talking about a painfully reductive view of masculinity as sheer poison, which no thanks as far as I'm concerned. But then there's the rape scene, which I gather it's no longer fashionable to find grotesque and appalling and frankly indefensible, but which I consider roughly 1000x more offensive than its far more hideous counterpart in Irreversible—say what you will about Noé, he's not suggesting for an instant that women secretly dig being brutalized. Obviously one could write a book on this subject, but let me just quickly say: (1) I am aware that many women (and men) have rape fantasies and/or get off on submission—that does not mean they'll wind up tenderly kissing someone who actually assaults them, ex- or no; (2) there's a huge difference between genuinely tackling the thorny potential reality of a rape victim responding sexually even as she's terrorized (which would really demand an entire film unto itself, and for all I know there is one—surely there's a novel) and what Peckinpah does here, which is depict a decisive moment where Amy's switch flips and she completely welcomes what's happening to her, rising to meet him and caressing his face with her hands, etc. (There's also a cut to her smoking a cigarette afterwards that has to have been intended as a sick joke.) Anyway, I could go on, but bottom line: superbly made does not trump hateful.

Margaret (2011, Kenneth Lonergan): 80

So sad that this became such a post-production nightmare—not just because we probably lost the three-hour masterpiece Lonergan intended, but because now people are having trouble distinguishing (or are just not bothering to distinguish) the ways in which the film is kind of a mess from the ways in which it deliberately employs messiness as a worldview. Practically every scene has half a dozen things happening at once, some of them irrelevant; entire conversations exist solely to demonstrate the difficulty of navigating competing agendas. At the center of it all is one of the least romantic or sentimental portraits of adolescence ever filmed, embodied by Paquin in a courageously off-putting performance that never once flinches from Lisa's misdirected self-absorption. Some folks have complained about the various shouting matches (between Lisa and her mom, during classroom discussions), but one of the things Lonergan so expertly depicts here is people not listening, too focused on their own narrow perspective to pay attention to anything else (which is of course what causes the accident in the first place). He's made great strides as a filmmaker, too—nothing theatrical about the dazzling cut from Joan having her entire life summarily dismissed by a pissy Lisa to Joan having to hold her opening line until the audience stops applauding her entrance (and then a brisk cut elsewhere before she speaks). I could go on forever citing things I adored: Janney snapping at the bystanders struggling to apply a tourniquet to her severed leg ("Are they doctors? Then get them the fuck away from me!"); an awkward ritual deflowering straight out of Breillat ("You sound insane"); then-unknown Rosemarie DeWitt's epic struggle between suspicion and solicitousness; Lisa firing off a blunt exit line and then having the moment killed when not one but two deadbolts prevent her from swiftly exiting; etc. etc. etc. Only in the last 20 minutes or so does the movie really kind of lose its way—partly because of the scenes involving Matt Damon, whose character never really works as intended (he seems weirdly lost); partly because Lonergan does what I was praying he wouldn't do and actually has Lisa state aloud her true reason for persecuting the bus driver, which was already abundantly clear to any viewer with an ounce of perception and is the kind of Grand Underlying Behavioral Dysfunction that needs to remain unspoken, lest it seem too tidy. Also, the final scene, though apropos, didn't quite wallop me—I wanted to be crying with them, and wasn't. But maybe next time. What worries me about Margaret's troubled path is whether or not there'll be a next time for Lonergan. He's too brilliant to lose.

/Planes, Trains & Automobiles/ (1987, John Hughes): 66

Think I might devote a Scenic Routes column to the hotel-room tirade, which is truly extraordinary—not just because it takes Del's pain seriously, but because it allows Neal's outburst to be viciously funny at the same time, so that you're identifying with both men simultaneously. "Not everything is an anecdote," I've longed to tell certain people over the last 24 years. "You have to discriminate." But then I imagine their faces falling and falling and falling like John Candy's (what a loss that was—he was only 43), and I keep my mouth shut. Nothing that follows is anywhere near as potent, but the residue of that confrontation informs their dynamic throughout, making them more than just a generic odd couple and giving subsequent squabbles a little extra edge. Actual comedy tends to be hit-and-miss for me, with a bit too much emphasis on plot mechanics (i.e., giving them a new setback every 5-10 minutes); Midnight Run found a stronger balance between story and character the following year. I would have preferred more stuff like Del grooving to "Mess Around," less stuff like that leading to him accidentally setting the car on fire. (Though even there you get Candy + McKean. "You got no outside mirror." "No, we lost that." "You have no functioning gauges." "No, not a one.") But I'd kill for a contemporary studio comedy with two characters whose mere company I so much enjoy.

Circumstance (2011, Maryam Keshavarz): 46

Still catching up with Toronto capsules, so I'm just gonna give you the Las Vegas Weekly review and leave it at that. But this really is identical to the glut of mediocre gay-struggle movies that opened at the Quad every week throughout the '90s (and beyond), except in Farsi.

/Dressed to Kill/ (1980, Brian De Palma): 58

It all boils down to one question, really: Do you find De Palma's purely visual setpieces so intensely thrilling that nothing else much matters? Philistine that I am, I still can't get past the idiocies that surface every time this movie stops to attend to its moronic plot; there's something almost literal about the way the magnificent museum sequence—an unsettling, supercharged minuet of erotic possibility—leads to the words YOU HAVE CONTRACTED A VENEREAL DISEASE! That's just how most De Palma films make me feel: seduced by a leper. For every moment like the one in which Caine, asked by Dickinson why he doesn't go ahead and sleep with her if that's what he wants, glances up at the mirror on the wall opposite, motivating a cut to its reflection (hardly subtle, but powerful nonetheless), there's a small eternity of e.g. Dennis Franz's brusque Noo Yawk cop routine, or a pathetic attempt to make Nancy Allen's hooker "well-rounded" by showing her on the phone with her stockbroker. And that's not even touching the stuff that riled up special-interest groups at the time, though I'm more troubled by the film's moralism (libido = death) than by the nature of its psycho killer. Final ten minutes seal the deal for skeptics, confirming that De Palma has zero interest in anything except goosing the audience by whatever means necessary. Which if that's your plan you might want to avoid deliberately and repeatedly inviting comparison to a masterpiece like Psycho that's as interested in people as it is in elegant camerawork and shock effects.

22 September 2011

Viewing Journal: Week of 19-25 Sep

Warrior (2011, Gavin O'Connor): 46

Every time I thought this would-be emotional juggernaut had achieved maximum hokiness, it somehow managed to get even hokier. Odds are I could have rolled with Fighter Who Despises His Formerly Alcoholic Father Nonetheless Needs To Train With Him, But Strictly Business Pop No Mushy Stuff, or Retired Fighter Can't Afford His Mortgage On Salary As High-School Physics Teacher, Decides To Return To The Ring Even Though He Promised His Wife He Was Finished With All That And Will Now Have To Listen To Her Whine Until She Inevitably Turns Into Adrian In Rocky II, or Out-of-Nowhere Mixed Martial Arts Sensation Turns Out To Be AWOL War Hero Who Pledges Entire $5 Million Purse To Widow Of Fallen Comrade Should He Win, But He's Headed To Jail Now Regardless, or Get This The Two Dudes Who Have Made It To The Finals Of This Elimination Tournament Against All Odds By Defeating The Most Brutal Competition Imaginable Just Happen To Be Brothers, One Of Whom Holds A Sizable Grudge Against The Other And Refuses To Reconcile Outside The Cage. Any of those potential male weepies, pick one. But not all of them freakin' combined. O'Connor hedges his bets by splitting the movie in two, depicting Joel Edgerton's half more or less naturalistically and Tom Hardy's half as pure myth—an approach that sounds reasonable enough on paper but mostly clanks on screen. (It's like two hours of cross-cutting between Jimmy Stewart in Bend of the River and Eastwood's Man With No Name.) Judging from reviews, the film's many fans recognize how shameless and manipulative it all is and just don't care. It got to them, which I can respect and appreciate. For whatever reason, though, I resisted.

Moneyball (2011, Bennett Miller): 65

Fascinating even to an avowed hater of the national pastime like myself—they should chuck the games entirely and just televise managers' strategy sessions, if you ask me. We'll always wonder what Soderbergh's version would have looked like, but there's something to be said for this approach, which basically follows the underdog-sports template but focuses almost exclusively on what's happening off the field, thereby fulfilling the desires of romantics and wonks at the same time. Helps that Zaillian and/or Sorkin (more likely the latter) keep things so zingy—you could splice the Ricardo Rincón trade into His Girl Friday, just about—and that Jonah Hill was somehow persuaded to dial it way back and steal scene after scene with his befuddled, deer-in-the-headlights stillness. Never really delves below the surface, though, which was driven home hard for me somehow by the only moment in the film that suggests real feeling, despite being a total throwaway buried deep in the closing credits. ("You're such a loser, dad.") And I wish some sort of lip service had been paid to the question of whether it's in baseball's long-term best interest if teams can beat the system by assembling a perfect combination of mediocre athletes, many of whom are valuable solely because they frequently get walked (though I gather that the film's portrait of sabermetrics is a gross simplification). Still, Moneyball held my attention for well over two hours, which is more than I can say for any actual ball game I've ever endured.

Genevieve (1953, Henry Cornelius): 65

Pleasant little goof of a comedy...though it doesn't exactly sell you on the fun of owning an antique automobile, given how frequently they apparently break down (even when cared for obsessively). Sharp on the absurdity of male competitiveness in general, less so when it comes to the subdivision involving romance and jealousy—suggestion of a lingering attraction between Wendy and Ambrose just kinda peters out, and the opportunity for Alan to get all va-va-voom when Kay Kendall shows up is sadly wasted. And I confess I don't know what to make of the bizarre, self-contained interlude in which Kendall's snobby socialite blows the lid off the joint via jazz trumpet, which turns the character on her head for one brief moment before reverting her to broad stereotype. But the climactic race to Westminster Bridge makes for a rollicking succession of polite British gotchas, and it's hard not to choke up a bit when Alan can't bring himself to interrupt the old duffer who wants to reminisce about his history with the '04 Darracq, even though listening potentially means losing both race and car. (Likewise, Ambrose loses ground earlier because he can't not give a lift to some dude who needs to fetch a nurse for his pregnant wife. What a bunch of softies.) Hard to judge from a single film how much of its flavor is attributable to Cornelius, but if someone would be so kind as to release an equally improbable Blu-ray of Passport to Pimlico, I'd be glad to find out.

/Manhunter/ (1986, Michael Mann): 71

Must play like CSI: Miami Vice to folks discovering it now, but its emphasis on forensic minutiae was unprecedented at the time, and arguably as bold as Mann and Spinotti's color-coded visual scheme. First half sticks closely to Harris, emulating his procedural directness while simultaneously creating operatic counterpoints unique to the film; apart from the unfortunate need to have Graham speak his thoughts aloud, which sometimes comes off a bit cheesy ("DIDN'T YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH?!?"), it's a textbook example of how to adapt a novel in a way that combines respect for the source and cinematic innovation to maximum effect. Alas, the convoluted second half of Red Dragon would defeat almost any attempt at streamlining. Mann sensibly ditches Dolarhyde's entire backstory, but he also rewrites the final act to allow Graham and his family a measure of peace, which voids the film of all meaning—a decision foreshadowed by the otherwise odd choice to make the kid Graham's actual son rather than his stepson, while retaining scenes in which Graham struggles to earn the kid's confidence. (No father treats his own offspring with such studied reserve, unless he's been away from home for years or something.) Even when I saw Manhunter in first-run, unfamiliar with the book, it was clear that something was missing—I just didn't yet know what it was. Priming the viewer for an abyss that gazes also, Mann ultimately settles for an abyss that blinks a few times before starting to feel vaguely uncomfortable and looking at its shoes. Also: Cox's "Lecktor" is hammier than I remembered, far from ideal, but he still wipes the floor with Hopkins' sepulchral self-consciousness.

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996, Dario Argento): 28

Part of me admires the bait-and-switch Argento employs here, in which the titular malady (which seems an unrewarding dramatic fulcrum from the outset—sensitive souls quaking at the sight of Art can't help but look goofy) gets all but chucked aside halfway through in favor of something straight out of the De Palma playbook. Trouble is, the new conceit demands a densely layered performance, and while I know Asia has her fans today, I think they'd have to admit that her range at the time was, uh, limited. Meanwhile, Dad's exploration of hokey CGI apparently commanded the bulk of his attention, meaning there are few elegant camera moves or arresting compositions to distract from his ineptitude with actors and his general Z-grade approach to the mundane. I mean, seriously: look at just the first minute of this clip. I could write an entire essay solely on the awfulness of its opening exchange—"Where are we?" "Rome. But you can't pass here"—starting with the dialogue's sheer absurdity (the dude is from Rome, has never seen Asia before, doesn't know she's just stepped through a painting on a wall in Florence, might as well be speaking directly to camera), then marveling at how the actor manages to turn toward her in a way that communicates his awareness of his impending cue, then recoiling in horror from his one-two combination of artlessly raised brow and meaningless palms-up gesture, etc. Subsequent speech from Inspector Manetti could fuel an entire chapter on Verisimilitude, hilarious and clearly unintentional absence of. (That's not even considering that he's badly dubbed—as is Asia, I'm pretty sure.) I can tolerate this level of clumsiness when it's just downtime between stunning set pieces, but it's mostly front and center here, and truly painful.

23rd Psalm Branch (1967, Brakhage): 53

Here we go again. I like Brakhage. Just don't think his style translates especially well to feature length—he's a short-form artist. And there are a number of fine shorts embedded in this sprawling intimate epic, notably the opening horrors-of-war montage and a sequence in which massed armies and geometric dots seem to do battle for the frame. Plus he throws in multiple abstract hand-painted interludes, though I'm not precisely sure what they're doing here. No doubt Fred Krumper [name changed lest the actual person find this in a Google search and appear to make pedantic, humorless pronouncements] could walk me through 23rd Psalm Branch, explicating each movement in turn; if I set my mind to it, I could probably even formulate a hypothesis of my own regarding the film's gradual shift from images of horrific violence to relatively benign portraits of Vienna and East Berlin, bridged by flashes of color, black leader, and repeated shots of Brakhage (I assume) scrawling notes on a pad of paper. But I don't feel as if conscious understanding would help all that much. At this length, the effect of his rapid-fire free-association is just plain numbing. (In fact, it's kinda numbing even to watch a bunch of his shorts in quick succession, which is why I'm gonna spend a couple of weeks working through the second volume of By Brakhage, rather than a couple of days.) That he made so few films longer than 30 minutes or so suggests that he understood that on some level himself.

Hop-o'-My-Thumb (2011, Marina de Van): 51

Did Bluebeard and The Sleeping Beauty rake in tons of European coin, to the point where the producer decided that Breillat isn't moving quickly enough and sought out another French director, preferably female, to helm a psychosexual Perrault adaptation? I was previously unfamiliar with this particular fairy tale, but it's more or less the same narrative as "Hansel and Gretel," with a different configuration of siblings and an ogre in lieu of a witch; apart from the daughters smacking their lips at the prospect of eating the boys—a striking interlude that speaks vividly to male fears of female sexuality—there isn't much in the way of subtext here. Nor does De Van really demonstrate a coherent formal strategy, unless "make it murky" qualifies. Really, the only reason to see this is to enjoy Denis Lavant's almost literal scenery-chewing as the ogre, who eventually puts on some magic boots or something and grows to enormous size but for most of the film is just a completely ordinary-looking dude, with no ogre-like qualities save the ability to smell human flesh. "Overcompensate!" De Van apparently told Levant, and so he does, albeit to less hilariously grotesque effect than in Carax's Tokyo! short. All in all, though, this is a trifle, seemingly made to serve a market that as far as I can tell doesn't actually exist. In My Skin remains a better Cronenberg movie than Cronenberg has made in many years, but it's looking more and more like a fluke.

07 September 2011

Placeholder.

I'm leaving shortly for the Toronto fest, so the viewing journal now goes on hold for a couple weeks, at least in this longer format. As always, I'll be posting shorter drive-by capsules on everything I see, though I'm not sure yet whether that'll be here or on the designated TIFF page—depends on which seems easier. Thoughts on Attack the Block (recommended) and Contagion (interesting failure) will have to wait a bit, unless I get motivated to write 'em up on the plane.

01 September 2011

Viewing Journal: Week of 29 Aug – 4 Sep

Okay, let's try this again. Top of the month. If you read these entries on a regular basis, find them in any way valuable, want to ensure that I don't get discouraged and give up, throw me a few bucks (link's at the top of my main site)—whatever you think a month's worth of near-daily capsules is worth to you. The amount is unimportant. (I suggested as little as $2; $5-10 is more common.) Knowing that a fair number of folks care whether or not I'm doing this, however, is crucial. I'm too old now and insufficiently hungry for attention to toss words out into a void.

/Meek's Cutoff/ (2010, Kelly Reichardt): 85

Just skimming the Metacritic blurbs threatens to render you comatose: "104 minutes of punishment"; "visually and emotionally severe"; "courts tedium"; "ponderously slow in pace"; "threaten[s] occasionally to stultify"; "there are stretches that are, frankly, boring." So why do I find it nonstop mesmerizing, even on second viewing? Above and beyond the strange tension Reichardt derives from the sheer arduousness of even simple tasks (previously addressed in my TIFF capsule), there's a relaxed vigor to every shot that forestalls inattention, at least in my case. Other directors (most notably Van Sant) have employed the Academy ratio in recent years, but this is the first time it's seemed like more than an affectation—the boxy frame forces Reichardt to achieve certain "obvious" effects in unexpected ways, and so we get vibrant, precise compositions rather than generic vistas (plus such stunners as the dissolve that melds two radically different horizon lines). And even here, in a film notable for its fairly long takes, I find myself supremely alert to the deliberate use of contrast from one shot to the next, which in this case frequently involves a cut from blinding sunshine to darkness so nearly impenetrable that the actors can barely be seen, even when the film is properly projected. So the suggestion, made explicitly or implicitly by many folks I respect, that Meek's Cutoff is a respectable but faintly dull film that somehow "lacks juice" befuddles me on one level, even though I can see what they mean (in the sense that there's little in the way of action or high drama). I genuinely find it exciting, not worthy. Anyone who's shared more than one meal with me knows how much I hate vegetables of any kind.

/For a Few Dollars More/ (1965, Sergio Leone): 81

More confident and assured than Fistful (which I nonetheless somehow misremembered as superior) right from the opening shot: a fantastic formalist gag that also serves to calibrate your expectations w/r/t pace (slow), rhythm (measured) and respect for human life (absent). That sly sense of humor carries over into the wary partnership between Eastwood and Van Cleef, whose first proper meeting amounts to the traditional Robin Hood archery contest with the challengers doubling as targets; The Man With Several Names proves even more mesmerizing when he's not obviously the most capable motherfucker in any given one-horse town, and it's bracing to see him actually sit down on the Old West equivalent of the curb at the climax, as eager as we are to see what happens next. Musical pocket watch device doesn't entirely work (which Leone probably recognized, as he brings it back to much greater effect three years later as Bronson's harmonica), and I'm not quite sure what to make of Indio's tortured backstory—crippling though his guilt seems to be, it has no real effect that I can discern on any of his present-tense Big Bad decisions. (I theorized at one point that he's yearning to be punished, which would be a truly unconventional dynamic for this sort of movie, but there's no indication of that whatsoever in his final scene.) As pure quasi-mythic sensation, though, this film is just breathtaking. You know you're in capable hands when even the villain's diabolical laughing fit abruptly metamorphoses from hoary cliché to a genuinely thrilling postmodern jape.

Policeman (2011, Nadav Lapid): 43

[Pedigree: Jerusalem '11; Locarno [Jury Prize]; NYFF.]

But give it some credit for continually finding new ways to be uninteresting. First two reels function as an overbearing character study in which occasional instances of complex, credible human behavior, such as the title character massaging his hugely pregnant wife's thighs, are constantly undermined by didactic nudging. It's not enough for these macho cops to engage in endless, vaguely homoerotic hugging and back-slapping—Lapid's so concerned we won't get it that he actually lays in "Hulk running"-caliber foley effects, so that a series of casual greetings at a party sound like Round 4 of Ali v. Frazier. (I wish I could believe he intended this as comedy, but the movie couldn't possibly be more dour.) Before you can get too exasperated, however, Policeman unaccountably (given its title) switches focus to an obnoxious cell of privileged would-be terrorists, thereby revealing what Carlos would have looked like without an intensely charismatic performance at its center (and minus Assayas' formal mastery). I gather we're meant to register the fundamental similarity between these two solipsistic units, but as Charlie said to Donald: "On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this." ("The Locarno jury called it 'psychologically taut.'") And then suddenly at the end there are some cheap jabs at the mutual exploitation of the terrorists and the media, as if it belatedly occurred to Lapid that he ought to include that angle. Even the ending, while suitably arty and open to interpretation, seems fundamentally misguided, though I can't say why without getting into spoiler territory. Let's just say it comes treacherously close to equating "not an Arab" with "whoa, young and hot!"

Slow Action (2011, Ben Rivers): W/O

[Pedigree: Rotterdam '11; TIFF Future Projections.]

At 45 minutes and a little change, this just squeaks over my wholly arbitrary dividing line between "short" and "feature" (which for the record is based on the Maltin Guide's stated running time for Sherlock, Jr.), so in this case "W/O" means I gave it only one reel. But that was more than enough to confirm my sense that concept > execution. Imaginary histories are by nature a pretty dry affair, and hence require considerable visual and/or verbal wit to pull off (see Greenaway's The Falls, if you can find it, for an epic example); Rivers offers mundane location footage accompanied by banal voiceover narration intoned (at least in the first two sections) by people with exceptionally poor speaking voices. Excerpts from his other work look promising, but this probably wasn't the best introduction.

/Babe/ (1995, Chris Noonan): 64

Odd for a children's movie to push two completely distinct morals. The primary one—"Don't be trapped by societal expectations; you can be whatever you're determined to be"—has become so ubiquitous that it no longer makes an impression, especially when its anticlimactic visual representation involves six sheep walking in formation behind a pig. But the other—"Kindness can achieve the same results as intimidation"—packs a surprising punch...even though it, too, overestimates our (or at least my) interest in ovine crowd control. All in all, I prefer this to Pig in the City, even though Miller's sequel is far more singular and ambitious; Noonan's pastoral rhythm feels natural, unstrained, yet he still builds first-rate comic suspense from e.g. Babe and Ferdinand's raid on the Hoggett home to capture the "mechanical rooster." (Note the careful setup of the paint can on the table and subsequent punchline of a blue-spattered Babe. Miller's touch in City is far less elegant—we'd definitely have been shown the accident itself, probably at noisy, frenetic length.) Also, could this movie get made today with Miriam Margolyes and Hugo Weaving rather than Meryl Streep and Hugh Jackman? Such a pleasure not to be aurally distracted all the time. Chapter mice still annoy me, and I remain flummoxed by James Cromwell's sudden coronation—he nails the closing "That'll do," otherwise mostly just stands around looking insanely tall. But whatever it took to get him in L.A. Confidential is okay by me.

A Married Woman (1964, Jean-Luc Godard): 86

But married to what? is the question, which Godard answers via an arresting tactical bombardment of hyperbolic print ads, detached body parts and inane prattle. And yet the film, while clearly an indictment, never comes across as mean-spirited or contemptuous toward its title character, embodied by Macha Méril with a quality that I can only call sophisticated naïveté. (He did well not to cast Karina, who lacks the necessary ingenuousness.) Not surprising, really, that it wound up semi-forgotten—it's less playful and movie-mad than most of JLG's early work, more circumspect and measured with its outrage—but for my taste it achieves the ideal balance of formal audacity, pointed meta-commentary and sincere curiosity about human behavior, with emphasis (mine, not his) on the last. Even truly goofy bits, like Charlotte using a tape measure to compare her bust size with some glossy magazine's stated ideal, seem grounded in some semblance of the real world, which only serves to make Godard's self-conscious digressions—the direct-to-camera interviews, the marquee word games, the ad montages—seem even more pointed and liberating. And there's a tenderness here that's almost startling, especially since it often surfaces precisely where you'd expect ridicule. Charlotte's silent, subtitled conversation with the two teen girls discussing their fear of sex may be the most openly emotional sequence in Godard's entire oeuvre, in part because Méril makes no attempt to convey anything. (I'd wager she was never even told what Charlotte's thinking, just instructed to sit there and eavesdrop. If so, that's great direction.) Or consider the long, long scene of Charlotte and her husband listening to the album of "erotica," regarding each other in awkward silence, fidgeting and pacing, as their hi-fi plays the sound of a woman just laughing hysterically nonstop. It's unnervingly surreal and discomfitingly authentic at the same time: bold and intimate, cynical and compassionate, ridiculous and tragic. How I wish this filmmaker were still around.

24 August 2011

Viewing Journal: Week of 22-28 Aug

The Guard (2011, John Michael McDonagh): 63

Plays like a cozier, friendlier version of Boorman's The General, allowing Gleeson the same freedom to run roughshod over everybody but striving to keep him fundamentally likeable. Which is problematic, but not so problematic that I didn't laugh. McDonagh doesn't always seem quite sure whether he's making a straight-ahead buddy comedy or an offbeat, flavorful slice of anti-authoritarian life à la Armitage, but he manages to make both approaches work to some degree, with the former anchored by Cheadle's deadpan incredulousness and the latter exemplified by yet another casually riveting performance from Mark Strong, whose continued relegation to stock villain roles I find utterly baffling. (Liam Cunningham does pungent work as well, though he's stuck with the "Ode to Billie Joe" riff, which feels very mid-'90s sub-Tarantino.) Emphasis is more on behavior than jokes, to the point where I've forgotten a clever line one character gets off but vividly recall his partner's delighted laughter in response; it's the kind of detail you don't consciously realize is missing from most movies until you finally see it. Still, I resisted The Guard for a good while because it just seemed too taken with its titular quasi-antihero, reveling in his bad behavior without even implicit qualification; his dalliance with the two hookers has no function save to further establish his nose-thumbing bona fides, which had already been made abundantly clear. Yeah yeah, he's a rebel, fook propriety -- what else you got? Gleeson's shrewd enough to ensure that Sgt. Boyle never becomes outright grating, but there's a lingering smugness surrounding the character that I can't fully shake.

/Fistful of Dollars/ (1964, Sergio Leone): 72

Hadn't yet seen Yojimbo the last time I watched this (in '96), and I must say it looked more impressive minus a direct, scene-by-scene comparison to near-perfection. Leone's still working out the bugs here to some extent, haphazardly constructing the style he'd refine over the next two films in the "trilogy" and then push to a monumental apotheosis with Once Upon a Time in the West; close-ups are imposing without quite being mythic, and he hasn't yet started dilating time in a way that creates the illusion of slow motion even at regular speed. Eastwood, however, seems to have arrived on the set with his steely persona fully established, ready to glower his way into iconic legend (with a crucial assist from Morricone, needless to say). His mild grimace when he realizes he's decked an innocent woman rather than a gunslinger sets the all-but-amoral tone: Oops, oh well. That he subsequently delivers her from bondage, by way of demonstrating that he isn't completely heartless, is the only non-scuzzy moment in a film that views humanity as a Darwinian nightmare, featuring The Man With No Name Except For Repeatedly Being Called 'Joe' as the species' most highly evolved predator. If it's sometimes a bit clumsy and amateurish, sheer conviction and enthusiasm largely compensate, though I do find myself wishing for even less dialogue. "When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with the pistol will be a dead man," says Ramon solemnly. "That's an old Mexican proverb." Confidential to Mexico: Get better proverbs.

/Donnie Brasco/ (1997, Mike Newell): 66

Wrote at length about this one upon its initial release, and I stand by that general assessment (while renouncing certain aspects of the prose style, plus it was 1997 so it takes me 100+ words just to say "[SPOILER!]"). Only real exception is my praise for Depp, who I then found "equally fine [vis-à-vis Pacino] in a much-needed change-of-pace role as an adult with recognizable human behavior patterns and emotions." Which of course perfectly describes the one variety of role in which Depp does not excel. As Brasco, he dials it down so low that he's almost generic—the performance is exactly what's required, in the sense that Donnie should appear somewhat nondescript (that's what allows him to infiltrate), but Depp isn't the kind of presence who can make nondescript riveting. He needs to be doing something, which unfortunately means that he overplays the tired domestic scenes that afford him an opportunity to yell a bit. Pacino, on the other hand, still mightily impresses in one of his least showy late-career turns; that he makes no attempt whatsoever to sell the poignance of Lefty's final scene, allowing his actions as scripted to rip our guts out, is the hallmark of a great actor with nothing to prove. Might have been a minor classic with a more muscular director than Newell at the helm—he was only two films away from Mona Lisa Smile.

Volcano (2011, Rúnar Rúnarsson): W/O

[Pedigree: Cannes '11 Fortnight; TIFF Discovery.]

Panic-stricken tourists fleeing hot molten lava: 0. Crotchety, quasi-suicidal just-retired geezers moping balefully into the middle distance: one too many. Not bad, just utterly devoid of inspiration; no doubt the dude gets shaken out of his lethargy by the stroke his long-suffering wife suddenly experienced right before I gave up, but two full reels of stultifying, formulaic set-up doesn't exactly boost one's confidence. Also, while I don't trust my aesthetic judgment of movies streamed on a computer, this looked cruddier than anything else I've watched that way, despite reportedly having been shot on 16mm. Hope that's a transfer issue of some sort and not me getting too accustomed to digital.

The Silver Cliff (2011, Karim Aïnouz): 64

[Pedigree: Cannes '11 Fortnight; TIFF CWC.]

Further proof, if any were necessary, that the easiest and most effective means of generating tension and excitement is to skip right past the Inciting Incident. Here, the protagonist (who we haven't even yet identified in that role, barring foreknowledge) goes from serene to frantic in the space of an ordinary, unobtrusive cut, for reasons initially and cannily unexplained; it's amazing how unreservedly one identifies with a character in crisis even—perhaps especially—when the nature of said crisis isn't known. By the time Aïnouz finally reveals what's going on, the hook is sunk deep enough to ward off any possible oh-is-that-all? reaction, especially given Alessandra Negrini's magnificently volatile performance as a woman who can't stand still but for the time being has nowhere to go. (I wouldn't have thought a movie could still pull off the old dance-your-stress-away setpiece, but Negrini and Aïnouz find a way to make it thrilling yet again. Though I must now declare a 10-year moratorium on Flashdance homages.) Goes a bit soft toward the end, following the introduction of a father-daughter combo who are equally adrift and ripe for tentative bonding, but even there the film mostly avoids cheap sentiment, remaining alive to e.g. the vaguely forbidding emptiness of an airport in the wee hours. A lovely, minor-key portrait of intolerable impotence gradually dissipating into weary acquiescence, framed by Rio's daylight cacophony and nighttime twinkling.

The Other Side of Sleep (2011, Rebecca Daly): 69

[Pedigree: Cannes '11 Fortnight; TIFF Discovery.]

Evidently I should seek out all the films at Cannes that are widely reviled, since I tend to prefer them to alleged triumphs like The Artist and Le Havre. Like Sorrentino and Bonello, Daly invests faintly absurd content with surprising force via sheer formal bravado—this movie is 100% pure rhythm, existing entirely in the juxtaposition of one shot to the next, with exquisite attention not just to composition but to duration (by which I mean not the standard "let's play this out at extraordinary length," but rather a harmonious interplay of varying shot lengths, so that the film shifts from staccato to legato and back again), contrast, direction of motion, etc. Negative reviews complain that it's insufficiently dreamlike for a movie about a sleepwalker, but that's the glory of it, actually: Daly's approach is intently anti-oneiric, an ambitious attempt to construct an entire film upon the sense of alarming disorientation one feels upon awakening. She can't quite sustain that for 90 minutes, but she comes thrillingly close; only in the final reel does the rather banal story assert itself strongly enough to disappoint. Not sure whether it's help or hindrance that her lead actress is such a dead ringer for Sissy Spacek circa Carrie—she's required only to be a striking presence, which mission accomplished, but that presence does at times feel a bit secondhand, as if leaning hard on the associations we can't help but make. At any rate, for my money this is the year's most striking debut (Martha Marcy May Marlene is a much better film but not nearly as cinematically accomplished); that it was so brutally dismissed (even by Blake, who loved House of Tolerance and at least tolerated This Must Be the Place) is dispiriting.

/The Magnificent Seven/ (1960, John Sturges): 57

Watched this "by accident," in the sense that I'd thought I'd seen it long, long ago, discovering only after the Blu-ray arrived in the mail that my first viewing was in April 2008. Clearly it makes quite the strong impression. But since I'd revisited Seven Samurai in the interim, I figured what the hell, and am thus now able to cite the one small way in which I think it improves on the original: Brad Dexter. Not so much his performance, which is barely there (it's kind of remarkable how indistinct most of the seven are; Brynner dominates to an insane degree), but the inspired idea to have one of the men convinced that there must be some secret financial agenda to the mission—it's a distinctly American touch that gives the film a little flavor of its own. (That he dies still believing untold riches await the survivors is Hollywood hokiness at its finest.) Otherwise paltry by comparison, devoid of the ferocity Kurosawa brought to battle scenes and downtime alike; Sturges plays it much jauntier, which makes the climax's 57% casualty rate and final dialogue exchange (identical to the original, as I recall) feel like a non sequitur. Still diverting, of course, and it's hard to say whether e.g. I'd find Horst Buchholz somewhat less irritating were I not acutely aware that he's butchering one of Mifune's greatest performances. Even on its own terms, though, it gives short shrift to too much of the ensemble—Robert Vaughn, in particular, gets almost nothing to do except stand around looking way dandier than everybody else, even though his character is perhaps the most potentially compelling on paper. It's not like there's 13 of them or anything.

18 August 2011

Viewing Journal: Week of 15-21 Aug

/Crimson Tide/ (1995, Tony Scott): 70

Weird, arresting tension here between the dramatic structure, which is entirely one-sided in favor of Denzel the cautious humanitarian, and the dialogue and performances, which take great pains to make Hackman's case for launching not just defensible but downright sensible. "What'd you think, son? That I was just some crazy old coot putting everyone in harm's way as I yelled 'Yee-ha!'?" Screenwriting courses should teach the drill sequence, which establishes the conflict in miniature even as it teaches the audience everything we need to know about the rules of nuclear engagement, thereby freeing us to enjoy the later spectacle of two powerhouses shouting each other down in one of the most electrifying stand-offs of the modern era. (Screenplay is by Michael Schiffer, who also wrote The Peacemaker—not nearly as strong, but still surprisingly sharp by studio standards.) Tony Scott, for his part, has the good sense to stay largely out of their way, even if he makes a mess of the sub's spatial coherence—it's always apparent that we're looking at one of several disconnected sets rather than contiguous areas of a single vessel. (That I watched Das Boot not long ago didn't help.) Crowd-pleasing entertainment with just a soupçon of ethical ambiguity; I turned it on late at night expecting to hit the sack after maybe half an hour, pick it up in the morning, and suddenly the closing credits were rolling. Pity that the timeless quality—profanity aside, this could almost be a '50s movie à la The Caine Mutiny (only better)—gets ruined by Tarantino's sore-thumb contributions, which were cringeworthy even in the immediate wake of Pulp Fiction and are just painfully embarrassing now. I suspect even he would agree.

Submarine (2010, Richard Ayoade): W/O

Now I know what Wes Anderson movies look like to people who don't find them remotely witty or charming. Ayoade's timing is impeccable but I found the combination of breezy and whiny off-putting—Max Fischer's delusions of grandeur are funny because he's so mightily industrious, whereas it's hard for me to empathize with Oliver Tate daydreaming for several minutes about the outpouring of grief that would consume Wales if he died. Thought maybe I was just in the wrong mood until Ayoade cut from Oliver telling off the school bully to Oliver lying prone and bleeding on the ground with Jordana sitting impassively nearby, which was sharp enough to suggest the movie I wanted to be watching and wasn't (with that exception and one other I can recall). And then right at my standard W/O point there was a chapter heading informing me that the film would now shift focus to Paddy Considine's mullet-headed New Age rival for Mum's affection, which thank you no. Oddly enough, the one aspect that really appealed to me was the unexpectedly striking location work. Postcard-stunning views that might seem insipid in the period dramas where you usually find them take on surprising weight in this context.

Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders): 61

Quite the rollercoaster ride, this one. First of all, a theatrical print eluded me forever, and it's such an essentially modest film that years of accumulated hype and expectation do it no real favors. Then it kicked off in what I think of as Ballast mode, with the protagonist's soulsickness exaggerated to the point where he seems neurologically damaged. (It's not the movie's fault, obviously, but watching one brother struggle in vain to communicate with another, on a road trip necessitated by the damaged brother's freakout over the prospect of flying, had me constantly thinking of Rain Man, especially during the scene in which Travis insists on finding the exact same rental car.) Once Travis magically snaps out of it and starts behaving like an actual human being, Wenders finds a gently lyrical groove; the middle section, depicting the slow reparation of Travis and Hunter's severed bond, comes thrillingly close to perfection, with the progress of their relationship echoed visually by their surroundings as they travel from L.A. to the director's beloved forgotten America (with one small moment that must make Sicinski laugh aloud: "This is Houston?!?"). And then, just when I was ready to surrender my heart completely, it suddenly turns into a fucking Sam Shepard play. I kind of hate Sam Shepard, to be honest (as a writer, including for the stage)—his spill-your-guts approach to dramaturgy, while catnip to actors, tends to be the exact opposite of what moves me, and the extended finale here, which I assume the movie's ardent fans treasure, seemed to me that most egregious of sins, the regurgitated backstory. (I will give him and Wenders some credit for making it cinematically compelling via the one-way mirror, though even that gets negated by the implausibility of her failing to recognize his voice for as long as she does.) Part of my dissatisfaction, I confess, may stem from the mistaken assumption to which I leaped as Travis and Hunter were tailing Jane's car, only to find two similar-looking cars heading in different directions; to my mind, the final act becomes 10x more potent if Nastassja Kinski actually isn't Jane, yet Travis speaks to her as if she is. (The home-movie footage kills that idea in advance, but that only occurred to me some minutes later.) That's really the only context in which hearing about Travis' lost years is remotely justifiable; if he's actually narrating his past trangressions to the woman who endured them, it's just mannered bathos. Which is to say, a Sam Shepard monologue.

Sleeping Sickness (2011, Ulrich Köhler): 48

[Pedigree: Berlin '11 Comp. {Director}; NYFF.]

Save for the fact that it's quietly observational rather than (I presume) an overbearing shoutfest, I'm not quite sure what sets Sleeping Sickness apart from White Man's Burden, the Travolta flick set in an alternate universe where Caucasians are the oppressed minority and African-Americans like Harry Belafonte control everything. Köhler's film takes place in the real world, to be sure, but his agenda seems much the same; apart from the ironic contrast of a German who feels so at home in Cameroon that (UNEXPECTED-ELISION SPOILER!) he abandons his family to remain there—"you're blacker than I am," one local helpfully observes—with a French-born black dude who finds Africa threatening and disorienting, there isn't a whole lot going on here. It's essentially a high-concept film that does everything possible to obscure and/or downplay its high concept, which sounds laudable in theory but only winds up making ostensibly mundane scenes look pretentious. The opening bit, for example, in which Dr. Velten confidently negotiates terms with a military officer seeking a ride into town, seems impressively thorny and multifaceted...until you realize that it exists solely to dovetail with the later scene of Dr. Nzila refusing to get into an illegal taxi for fear that he's about to be robbed and/or murdered. (I surely would have responded more strongly to the latter sequence had I not felt like I was being prodded, as I've been in that exact situation myself more than once.) Köhler obviously has considerable chops—I quite liked Bungalow, for the record, never did see Windows on Monday—and I get the sense that he wants to say something cogent about the utility of foreign aid, but the implicit didacticism overwhelms whatever questions he hopes to raise, at least for me. Fine performances, expert direction, assured rhythms, all in service of CLONK!

/Bullitt/ (1968, Peter Yates): 74

Astonishing to think that a movie like this could have been a hit once, thrilling car chase or no. (Adjusted for inflation, it grossed roughly $120 mil.) I'd dimly remembered it as being faintly dull whenever hubcaps aren't flying, and now I see why: Yates deliberately flattens everything into a near-autistic level of procedural concentration, creating a stealth character study that grows steadily in power as McQueen's canny non-performance just keeps yielding nothing. That car chase acts as a single enormous spike in an EKG that's otherwise strictly horizontal; even Robert Vaughn's unctuous, interfering pol, last seen perusing the Wall Street Journal in the back of a limo, brushes the movie off his trousers like so much lint after being defeated. Scene after scene is uninflected to the point of seeming perverse. I even briefly thought Jacqueline Bisset's freakout when she sees Frank unaffected by some woman's corpse would play without dialogue, shot from a distance—that approach didn't seem remotely out of character. Alas, someone clearly felt the need to throw the audience at least one tiny bone, so Bisset (whose character otherwise has no function) does get a too-pointed speech accusing him of being inhuman, to which he responds with predictable indifference. Thing is, though, while we can admire Bullitt's integrity and professionalism, his laconic terseness, unlike Eastwood's, isn't remotely "cool," which the film's amazingly prosaic final shot seems to recognize. He doesn't even get to toss out a few unconvincing "I love you"s, like Carol in Safe. But he's just as much of a hollow shell.

Mr. Tree (2011, Han Jie): W/O

[Pedigree: Shanghai '11 {Jury Prize, Director}; TIFF '11 CWC.]

If I ever need to explain to somebody what visual rhythm entails, remind me to use this shambling Jia wannabe (he produced) as an example of what it looks like when a film has no discernible rhythm whatsoever. Possibly the most formally/structurally incompetent picture I've seen since Dogma—individual shots look fine (in a generic fest-approved way), but Han has clearly put zero thought into how they'll interact, so that you seem to have switched the channel to a different movie with every cut, even when the action is continuous. Which probably sounds more interesting than it plays, because it plays choppy and maddening. Meanwhile, Mr. Tree himself makes for a singularly uninteresting layabout, and the modernization angle feels like Jia's reheated leftovers. Reviews suggest it turns pretty surreal later on, but that sounds like a threat in this case.

Stolen Desire (1958, Shohei Imamura): 59

Never thought I'd see a Japanese film that merits the term Fellini-esque. Detailing the ribald misadventures of an itinerant theater troupe during its sojourn in a provincial wasteland outside of Osaka, Imamura's debut features hints of perversity to come but traffics largely in exaggerated leering and catcalling in the tradition of Amarcord (or Porky's, frankly—there's even a peeking-while-they-shower bit); it's a sprawling collection of raucous comic incidents intermittently interrupted by an unconvincing love triangle and the whining of Imamura's onscreen stand-in, who can't persuade his actors to take artistic risks that might alienate the punters. Film's apparently a direct response to Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds, which I haven't yet seen (though I've seen the '59 color remake, possibly same diff), but its ramshackle goofiness and casual vulgarity suggest repudiation more than homage. Which makes me wonder about its most perplexing moment: Whiny director, determined to run off with the lead actor's wife, goes to confront him but winds up silently watching him rehearse, as Imamura slowly pushes in on whiny director's awestruck face—a visual gesture that unmistakably conveys dawning respect and clearly sets up his decision to gracefully bow out. And then whiny director goes ahead and says "I'm takin' yer woman" anyway, as if that moment had never happened. That's gotta be intentional cynicism, right? Even so, it's rare to see a filmmaker confound viewer expectations strictly via mise-en-scène; I can't think offhand of another case in which the entire meaning of a shot gets ignored. Pretty sure I would have flagged this dude as Someone to Watch.

12 August 2011

That's all, folks. UPDATED: (Maybe.)

Looks like there just wasn't that much interest in these entries. A whopping 11 people had contributed so far this month, and while some of them were quite generous, that just isn't enough of a response to keep motivating me to do this. So I'm shutting it down. All donations since 1 August have been refunded. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped out a couple of months ago, when I really did desperately need the money; you're all swell. And my apologies to the tiny handful of you who'll be disappointed.

UPDATE, AN HOUR LATER: Okay, some crazy person out there—a total stranger, as far as I know—just sent me $100 and the comment "Keep it going, sir!" It's not really about the money, though. That's just a way for folks to indicate that they give a damn whether I'm doing this or not. I'd much rather receive $2 each month from 50 people than $200 each month from one devoted (and wealthy?) fan. Pain in the ass though it is, you're better off sending me a small amount every four weeks than a large amount meant to cover you for half a year or more. I can't keep track of who's "prepaying" vs. who's just being generous, so when nothing much comes in, as was the case this month, I just assume people don't much care. And then I ask myself why I'm bothering, and then, well, I stop bothering.

In honor of this crazy dude's grand gesture, I'll keep it going for the rest of this month. Beyond that, though, it depends more on the number of donations, however small, than on the sum received. It's mostly a symbolic payment.

(BY THE WAY, capsules have indeed resumed below, just in case you didn't see them. I'm just keeping this here for the moment so nobody gets confused.)