Ryan Gosling ("Half-Nelson," "Blue Valentine"), who can act the pants offa your average Hollywood act-or, stars in a dark noir thriller of a movie called "Drive," based on a novel by James Sallis that is supposedly un-put-downable fun page-turny goodness.
So you've got the story.
So you've got the actor.
But about the action?
Who's the director?
Some Danish bloke named Nicolas Winding Refn. He also just so happened to pick up the Best Director award at Cannes this year for this flick.
I think it's gonna sizzle, and be original and, like I said, bad ass. Here's proof:
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Best of PBIHT: Terence Malick's "The New World" (2005)
[Originally published in 2009]
[Re-publishing because I cannot wait for "The Tree of Life" to come out]
"The New World" is not for everyone
It's not fast-paced.
There are no transforming machines.
There are long stretches without dialogue.
Terence Malick's 4th pic in over 30 years is a slow meditation of a story, as much atmosphere and image as story and it is filled with beautiful music and stunning visions of nature as it was in Virginia, America sometime in the 17th century (and which has a striking resemblance to the glory that is Algonquin Park in Ontario).
The story?
A modern take on the first white people to live in America, and their encounters with the Native Indians who already lived on the land. Modern because the white people aren't portrayed as angels.
The beauty?
Malick ("Badlands," "The Thin Red Line") is so assured in his filmmaking he is not afraid to take a minute (as in the full sixty seconds) and let camera linger, to let camera stop and fixate on the nature of water as it rolls on over a rock. Or to follow a paddling canoe up a river cutting between marshland, just the sounds of the paddles hitting water, the crickets in the marshes, the birds fluttering. Or the way he sets up a score of horns and symphony buildup to highlight the moment a few grand British ships and their powerful sails were sighted from a green forest shore between trees by the Indigenous people of that land, of America, and all the ominous tragedy of what was to come.
Need I say more?
Yes. Just the charm, spirit, wonder, wisdom and beauty of the girl they chose to call ...
...Pocahontas.
[Re-publishing because I cannot wait for "The Tree of Life" to come out]
"The New World" is not for everyone
It's not fast-paced.
There are no transforming machines.
There are long stretches without dialogue.
Terence Malick's 4th pic in over 30 years is a slow meditation of a story, as much atmosphere and image as story and it is filled with beautiful music and stunning visions of nature as it was in Virginia, America sometime in the 17th century (and which has a striking resemblance to the glory that is Algonquin Park in Ontario).
The story?
A modern take on the first white people to live in America, and their encounters with the Native Indians who already lived on the land. Modern because the white people aren't portrayed as angels.
The beauty?
Malick ("Badlands," "The Thin Red Line") is so assured in his filmmaking he is not afraid to take a minute (as in the full sixty seconds) and let camera linger, to let camera stop and fixate on the nature of water as it rolls on over a rock. Or to follow a paddling canoe up a river cutting between marshland, just the sounds of the paddles hitting water, the crickets in the marshes, the birds fluttering. Or the way he sets up a score of horns and symphony buildup to highlight the moment a few grand British ships and their powerful sails were sighted from a green forest shore between trees by the Indigenous people of that land, of America, and all the ominous tragedy of what was to come.
Need I say more?
Yes. Just the charm, spirit, wonder, wisdom and beauty of the girl they chose to call ...
...Pocahontas.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Good (Not so) Old Summer Blockbuster: Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight"
Could there be anything more exciting? Big screen, big sound, the Paramount or Warner or MGM lion roaring it out, full concert, ear bleeding sound and then all goes dark and the hundreds of millions put into the flick and its promotion all of it, all that promise, you'll know, those first minutes.
Achey for spring I guess I'm suddenly nostalgic for a good old summer blockbuster.
The Dark Knight's opening is up there for me with the best of the blockbuster openings, up there with The Matrix and the two Terminators (we'll ignore all that came after). OK maybe not quite up there with The Matrix, cause man the chills I got when Carrie-Anne Moss jumped in the air and time stopped, sort of, and you knew, you just knew - and here's where those spine tingles came in - that time had stopped for a reason; that the effect had a purpose, that in fact the whole movie might just have to do with the effect. This was gonna be awesome. Still The Dark Knight's opening is a pretty ass-whooping, popcorn-hurtling, edge-of-your-seat making killer wicked ass fun start to a pretty damn awesome summer movie.
In the second of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies (and muchos kudos to Batman Begins, which has some killer training sequences - and don't training sequences always trump a given flick's final fight?) it's a high-pitched sound, a disturbing bit of score - the high whine of a violin perhaps? - that starts things off as we circle round to get aerial views of the big city, of Gotham,
of the skyscrapers. There's a ticking sound, like a bomb that might go off any second. Focusing in now. A glass building, a window, high up. The glass shatters as the window is smashed out. Thugs in clown masks who've just shot it to shit. Rope shot out across the skyline, thugs ziplining from one building to another. A man on a street corner seen from behind, just standing there, with his greasy hair and a clown mask hung limp from the arm at his side. A bank is about to get robbed but already we know, cause we are not so much smiling as worrying, that this won't be your typical bank heist. That the masked thugs robbing the place keep killing each other off for a bigger stake is a tip off. Their discussions about some character named the Joker, even more troublesome ...In my favourite blockbusters where good battles evil and good will ultimately prevail, I need my evil to be pretty effin evil. Thus a childhood reverence of the first Termintator. I was considered a pretty good child, overall, give or take, yet I was a Darth Vader lover all the way. Skywalker was a pussy. Hans was cool, but Darth was cooler.
The Dark Knight is premised, the whole thing, on the sinister notion of an enemy so crazy as to have no motive - how are you to fight, to defeat, to even approach an enemy that because he has no motive, has no clear vulnerability? The terminator had no fear of death, but it had purpose. The Joker only celebrates chaos and kills at will.
But much much much more important than all that psycho-babble-stuff is that the opening has you knowing: this film is gonna be coo-ool. The gun play, the bank robbery, the ziplining robbers, the way it all goes down - the whole thing is just so slick and smooth. It is, at least for me, the pleasure of watching something you could never make. Something several head spaces above and beyond what I understand and know. The sheer technical feat, the utter crafty cleverness of being able to stage a gun fight, never mind one that will involve moving vehicles (ie. sixteen wheelers and fat-ass batmobiles) and a rocket launcher. Repeat viewing of a movie like this is to repeat the thrills of those action sequences (the Batmobile turns into a motorcycle - do you even remember how cool that was?) and as much to continue to marvel at not being able to answer the question: how the hell did he do that?
Of course, what separates the A-list action flick from its Van Damme equivalents is the level of acting.
What a standout performance can problematically do, though, is overshadow the ensemble behind it that props it up as high as this one did. At the forefront of this band of mere players sits Gary Oldman. Remember Gary? Remember in the 1990s when he was the crown prince, the king of cool, the ultimate bad guy. Whether Dracula or the dread-head thug that thought he was black in True Romance, he just always and consistently rocked the house. So intense, so spontaneous, smart, scary, interesting, complex. And then like that, boom! he disappeared or at least seemed to. (Another phenomenal British actor getting lost in the mediocre shuffle of the Harry Potter series just doesn't cut it for me.) I sort of see The Dark Knight as Oldman's return, but now he is older, now he is wiser and now he no longer is trying to play for drooping cigarette from the mouth cool. No, now he's gonna play it character actor beautiful, which is to say subtle. He is the character of most integrity. The family man. The quiet man. And while The Dark Knight really is one of the darkest big blockbusters in ages, it's easy to forget that there is a whole hell of a lot of heart and humanity in Oldman's portrayal of Commisioner Gordon.
Even the love story between Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) comes across as passionate and intense and strong thanks to the level of these actors' performances. Nolan's decision to replace Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal was, let's be honest, at first a disappointment. But once you get over that Gyllenhall isn't quite the looker that Homes is, you realize the lady makes up for looks in spades with her acting chops.
Even the briefest of conversations between Bruce Wayne and Alfred can feel so weighted, thanks to the gravitas of Sir Michael Caine.
Put this all together, the craft, the opening, the choice of actors, making it all work - this is a director's movie extraordinare and while I was not floored by Inception like so many others, I think his work on these Batman movies is nothing short of brilliant. Cause I don't care if you eat popcorn with your movies or if you need subtitles to call them art - whatever you're eating, whatever you're calling them The Dark Knight series of movies rocks and it's thanks to the sure hand, pretty perfect pacing (other than its being about twenty minutes too long) and the never-ending intensity that this is a movie worth owning. Love it. Love it.
Over and out.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Javier Bardem in "Biutiful"
So much difficulty, so much pain in the scenes between characters on screen
Yet so much beauty in the visuals of city between
And of course Javier Bardem whose open soul is there for all to see
To best represent darkness, to see its true depths you need some light
What makes this film so harrowing is the very humanity of its characters
There is no pure evil
There is hope
Films that portray darkness for its own sake, or worse still for the sake of manipulating the audience aren't the soul food I go to the arts for. For this reason I can't stand Lars Von Trier. Dancer in the Dark was a brilliant movie. A brilliant movie. It's also, to my mind, profoundly sadistic. It makes Black Swan seem tame in comparison. Speaking of, for all its brilliant craft and the best actor award Natalie Portman deserves to win, despite all that I didn't love Black Swan the way so many others did. But not because it wasn't brilliantly constructed. It was.
The artist is everywhere in their art. And who that artist is and what they stand for is as important to me as the work itself.
For this reason I love the books of Haruki Murakami, for the man's generosity, for his complexity and most of all for his humility. For this reason I love Javier Bardem and keep thinking about Biutiful.
This film is not being dark just to mess with the audience. It is not darkness for its own sake. The shocks and horrors aren't just sensational. They aren't just horror movie thrills. It's the humanity beneath the harrowing. It's the humanity despite the suffering.
For all these reasons I recommend Biutiful.
Yet so much beauty in the visuals of city between
And of course Javier Bardem whose open soul is there for all to see
To best represent darkness, to see its true depths you need some light
What makes this film so harrowing is the very humanity of its characters
There is no pure evil
There is hope
Films that portray darkness for its own sake, or worse still for the sake of manipulating the audience aren't the soul food I go to the arts for. For this reason I can't stand Lars Von Trier. Dancer in the Dark was a brilliant movie. A brilliant movie. It's also, to my mind, profoundly sadistic. It makes Black Swan seem tame in comparison. Speaking of, for all its brilliant craft and the best actor award Natalie Portman deserves to win, despite all that I didn't love Black Swan the way so many others did. But not because it wasn't brilliantly constructed. It was.
The artist is everywhere in their art. And who that artist is and what they stand for is as important to me as the work itself.
For this reason I love the books of Haruki Murakami, for the man's generosity, for his complexity and most of all for his humility. For this reason I love Javier Bardem and keep thinking about Biutiful.
This film is not being dark just to mess with the audience. It is not darkness for its own sake. The shocks and horrors aren't just sensational. They aren't just horror movie thrills. It's the humanity beneath the harrowing. It's the humanity despite the suffering.
For all these reasons I recommend Biutiful.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Mike Leigh's "Another Year" - I'll be watching this movie again
Like so many Mike Leigh movies, Secrets and Lies (1996), for instance, or Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), one of my favourite movies of the last few years, Another Year (2010) is a movie built on performances. Like no director I can think, save perhaps Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Closer), Leigh pulls performances from his actors so real you feel sure these people aren't actors at all. What helps is that they actually look like people, not models. They call it the Realist school of filmaking and it's not for everyone but I gather your average George Lucas fan isn't exactly loitering round my part of the web anyway.
To switch tacks a moment, there is a scene early on in Tim Burton's dumbed-down, formulaic and grossly uninspired version of Alice in Wonderland (2010) in which Alice is being proposed to. The young man proposing, we are to presume, is awful. The cues leading us to presume this are based solely on his appearance: he is ugly, no chin, hook-nose ugly. His looks are set up, in fact, to be the butt of the joke; they are why we should sympathize with Alice and root for her as she runs away from this "awful" fiancée and down the rabbit hole.
Burton's movie was terrible and not just because of this bit of superficial manipulative nastiness, but this moment sat especially uncomfortably with me.
I'm tired of models pretending to be actors. When I was fourteen I was all for "Beverly Hills 90210" beautiful people posing as actors being dramatic. Then I grew out of it. Listen, don't get me wrong, there are George Clooneys and Audrey Hepburns and all sorts of astonishingly beautiful people that are also remarkably talented and like any I'm a voyeur to their beauty. I'm just tired of pretty for its own sake. Fuck, it just gets boring! Isn't there anything more to stimulate and intrigue us than the fact of a person's looks keeping us watching? This is what I often feel like screaming at my tube TV.
If you too sometimes feel this need to yell at your screen, Mike Leigh might just be for you. Here's a director who peoples his movies with real looking human beings (the kind you actually see on your subway) going through situations that seem real and are difficult. His films, most if not all set in England, are always about people who are blue collar or maybe middle-class and who live in houses and apartments that aren't gorgeous or grand or the kinds of homes most of us could never own. These people's lives are not easy. They are in fact often quite difficult like our lives.
The old question: if my life's difficult enough why watch others' difficulties? Because for me the most engaging thing a movie offers of all, beyond space ships and dream vs reality puzzles, is psychological investigations into the human condition. I'm curious about who we are and the conflicts that make us human, that make us good and bad both, that make us grey, that make life a challenge and real and hard and beautiful. This is what Mike Leigh does, and like all my favourite artists, he isn't providing easy answers.
If the Oscars had an ensemble category for acting I'd vote for Another Year hands down. I'd also certainly nominate the film for a best picture nod. It's ten times the movie True Grit is and at least as worthy a watch as The Fighter (which I also highly recommend and will see if I can get around to writing up about in the near future). Another Year got the write up because it's that good and because hardly anyone has heard of it and so I get all the more kick for promoting it. Everyone, myself included, roots for the pretty-boy good guy. It's just sometimes the less than pretty deserve a shout-out too.
Burton's movie was terrible and not just because of this bit of superficial manipulative nastiness, but this moment sat especially uncomfortably with me.
I'm tired of models pretending to be actors. When I was fourteen I was all for "Beverly Hills 90210" beautiful people posing as actors being dramatic. Then I grew out of it. Listen, don't get me wrong, there are George Clooneys and Audrey Hepburns and all sorts of astonishingly beautiful people that are also remarkably talented and like any I'm a voyeur to their beauty. I'm just tired of pretty for its own sake. Fuck, it just gets boring! Isn't there anything more to stimulate and intrigue us than the fact of a person's looks keeping us watching? This is what I often feel like screaming at my tube TV.
If you too sometimes feel this need to yell at your screen, Mike Leigh might just be for you. Here's a director who peoples his movies with real looking human beings (the kind you actually see on your subway) going through situations that seem real and are difficult. His films, most if not all set in England, are always about people who are blue collar or maybe middle-class and who live in houses and apartments that aren't gorgeous or grand or the kinds of homes most of us could never own. These people's lives are not easy. They are in fact often quite difficult like our lives.
The old question: if my life's difficult enough why watch others' difficulties? Because for me the most engaging thing a movie offers of all, beyond space ships and dream vs reality puzzles, is psychological investigations into the human condition. I'm curious about who we are and the conflicts that make us human, that make us good and bad both, that make us grey, that make life a challenge and real and hard and beautiful. This is what Mike Leigh does, and like all my favourite artists, he isn't providing easy answers.
If the Oscars had an ensemble category for acting I'd vote for Another Year hands down. I'd also certainly nominate the film for a best picture nod. It's ten times the movie True Grit is and at least as worthy a watch as The Fighter (which I also highly recommend and will see if I can get around to writing up about in the near future). Another Year got the write up because it's that good and because hardly anyone has heard of it and so I get all the more kick for promoting it. Everyone, myself included, roots for the pretty-boy good guy. It's just sometimes the less than pretty deserve a shout-out too.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Danny Boyle's "127 Hours" - A Movie Both Fun(ny) and Smart
That in mind, I wasn't rushing to 127 Hours, wouldn't have gone in fact were it not for the great reviews.
They're well deserved for two reasons. Namely: Danny Boyle and James Franco.
How do you turn a true story that most already know the climax and ending to and churn out something entertaining?
Boyle
Danny Boyle's directorial feature film debut was the excellent and underappreciated Shallow Grave (1994; starring a very young and manic-wonderful Ewan McGregor). Appreciation on a much bigger scale came just two years later with Trainspotting. I'll also pause to mention 2002's 28 Days Later which has one of the coolest openings of any horror movie ever. But the big-time, the big bucks, the phone calls from celebrities begging to be in his next film came after 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, a fifteen million dollar movie that made ten times that in the US alone. (We'll gracefully mention the less that critically loved The Beach and A Life Less Ordinary as a parenthetical side note - hey, even Spielberg has the occasional Hook-type piece of crap.)
Boyle is a lensman so good at blending music with visuals, with taking the sense-based and the kinetic and having that ebullient energy come across to his viewers that, shee-it, the guy could make solving math problems exciting.
Boyle is a lensman so good at blending music with visuals, with taking the sense-based and the kinetic and having that ebullient energy come across to his viewers that, shee-it, the guy could make solving math problems exciting.
Franco
James Franco. He's been all over the magazines lately. Then again IMDB has him listed in seven movies in 2010. Seven! For perspective, Tom Cruise was in one (and no I didn't see it). But back to Franco. Here's a guy who at thirty-two has already played James Dean, has been a profoundly riveting side character in a massively successful series of summer blockbusters (the Spiderman movies) and has played Sean Penn's lover in the excellent Milk. This guy gets around.
Top this off with the fact that he's got a book of short stories out (pisses me off, in the ugly, jealous way - can't you just keep your superstar A-list movie making career and give the publishing contracts to your Canadian fans), he's been working on about three separate Masters degrees (I'm not exaggerating) and is thinking about a PhD. No wonder they keep writing about the guy.
Top this off with the fact that he's got a book of short stories out (pisses me off, in the ugly, jealous way - can't you just keep your superstar A-list movie making career and give the publishing contracts to your Canadian fans), he's been working on about three separate Masters degrees (I'm not exaggerating) and is thinking about a PhD. No wonder they keep writing about the guy.
Just hope he doesn't go too far, too fast.
Boyle and Franco together is good, really good. Worth an in-theatre view. True. See you.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Falling (not so slowly) for "Once" - A Movie Smart With Heart
["Falling Slowly" is the Oscar Winning Song from Once now on the jukebox on your left.]
This is the story of how my then girlfriend (not yet wife) and I came to watch a movie set in Dublin, in the city of Osaka, and then after, how we came out the theatre and into what should have been the Japanese winter's night and instead walked into an impromptu German Oktoberfest festival, sausages, milled wine and all. (Actually, I don't remember if they had milled wine. They had regular wine, I know that. It's just, milled wine sounded better. For the cold winter's night. You know?)
Actually, that's not really what this post is about at all. That story is really just an entry (and exit) point in how to recommend a lovely little movie.
Once is a low budget film set in Dublin. The cameras are often hand-held, it seems many of the scenes in public are for real (not closed-off sets) and there are, to be honest, a number of slightly less than aimed for amateurish aspects to the film as well. There are holes in the plot and the acting has moments of slipping. Yet somehow in lieu of the film's tone the whole thing works, and works beautifully. A film about imperfect people in an imperfect world gets away with not itself being crafted perfectly.
Basically it's a love story. It's also the story of an artist. Two artists, in fact. Talk about preaching to the converted. You had me at love. You had me gaga at artist.
The main Guy (so named in the credits) is played by Glen Hansard, a musician. An actor too. He had a small part as a member of the band in the now legendary (Irish) movie about musicians, The Commitments. The other Irish movie about musicians, Once, opens with Hansard strumming his guitar and belting his sorry heart out on some cobblestone downtown Dublin street. He's busking. He doesn't make much money.
She (Girl) is from the Czech Republic. Come to Ireland for reasons not known, but come downtown, to this street to watch Guy play his guitar, and sing his passionate tunes.We don't yet know how well she (Marketa Irglova) can play a piano or sing a sad song.
What works is how much you like the two of them. The Czech Girl who has that eastern European zero-tolerance-for-bullshit thing. She says what she means. (She'd have a hard time doing business in Canada.) But there is an innocence to her. She's not all harshness and ex-Communist bitter. She has hope; the romantic in her is available all the time - you see it in her big brown eyes. The Guy is good, he's honest, you know it 'the way you know a good melon' (can you reference that movie quote?). The Irish guy with the reddish hair who seems so gentle and sweet until you give him a guitar and a voice, and then it's fierce, nearly angry the way he belts out heartbreak and yearning like the greats of old. Something that he wants so badly, that he gives so largely. Yearning. I'm not going thesaurus hunting to put it another way. That's the only word for it.Yearning
When I was young I had no interest in writing. I wanted to be rich. I wanted pots of money. How could I not? I went to a private school where every kid in my grade (save three or four) were richer than me, than my family. They had massive houses and fancy cars. That's what I wanted. Big house, fancy car, vacations that involved airplanes and not your family's crappy station wagon. (Oh the cars my father chose to drive!) Things old and small depressed me. Even my movies had to be glossy, shiny, rich and pretty back then. Luckily I grew up in the 80s. Ie. There was no shortage of gloss, shine or the ever light and wonderful Michael J. Fox. Then I grew up and decided I didn't like the bubble I'd been in. I got over Michael J. Fox, started to wonder if and why the guy had no dark side and began to see the world differently.
Now I like the old and the small. Like a 28 year-old South American student I was tutoring last year told me, 'When I was a teenager I used to look down on the people who clean bathrooms and do the simple work. Now I admire them.' But exactly. I admire the hard workers, the get down on their knees and scrub the floor do-gooders. I like that I live in a small apartment. Big suburban houses no longer mesmerize me. Even more so in movies do things simple, quaint, cheap, difficult, small, dingy appeal to something starving artist in me.
In Once I love how sparse the main characters lives are. I don't mean to romanticize poverty (besides, this is developed world poor: no one's going hungry), but there simply seems a more solid honesty to the struggling artist who works in his dad's humble hoover fixing shop, or the Czech girl who is excited - excited! - at finally landing a job cleaning people's houses.
These people in this story, they struggle. They strive. They won't necessarily succeed. There is unknown. There is hardship. But then, of course there is beauty. There is love. And the truest kinds of love, the truest happinesses come only from the toughest of strivings. It's the old Dickensian trope. From humble beginnings and all that.... None of us is much interested in the story of the billionaire's son going off to make another billion.
With a joke for a budget, and Ireland as backdrop Once has got none of your Hollywoody ra ra, Tom Cruise conquers all, drum-beating nonsense. Triumph is not certain, life is not glossy, the sky is rarely blue. But when the Girl plays the piano in that music shop and learns the song to sing so harmonious gorgeous alongside the Guy, it's just perfect. It's not chance the song won the Oscar.
Take me into a world so rich and I'll come out a better man, I'll come out with that fuzzy confusion I love so much, the film trailing on in my mind, clouding my eyes. Have this happen after I leave a crappy art-house movie theatre (what's so weird is how very phenomenal the Japanese can be at presentation (think food) and how remarkably lousy they can be at other kinds of aesthetic (think: the Detroit-esque drab ugly of the city of Osaka (that I so dearly love); think: housing a cinemateque type movie theatre in a businessman's high rise), and exit the film to return to what I thought was the Japan I was just getting used to, and it turns out that night, when Ai and I left the theatre, they were holding a German Oktoberfest celebration at the base of these skyscrapers (it's actually one skyscraper, The Sky Building in Umeda, the single architectural marvel in downtown Osaka) where we'd seen the movie. It was cold, winter, we could see our breaths. The film's music, it's tone was still very much with us and we weren't ready to go home. And the Germans who'd come to Osaka to sell their wares, their beers, wine and sausage one some weeknight at the base of these towering buildings, they managed to create a mood that was enchanting.
With Once in our hearts and in our brains Ai and I walked round this little circus of German fun eating overpriced, but worth it they were so delicious, candied cashews until we finally gave in to splurge on Japanese price-inflated German red wine and Japanese price-inflated German sausage to eat with mustard we'd squirted on paper plates (the mustard was free). There were picnic benches they'd set up on this freezing winter's night and there we sat and ate our sausage and toasted our wine and felt the right joy of being young and uncertain and not wealthy, neither owning anything more expensive than a plane ticket. But just that sausage, just that wine.
As Ethan Hawke so perfectly told Winona Ryder as the two unemployed twenty-somethings walked around a downtown scene smoking and sharing a coffee and realizing they were in love in Reality Bites: "You and me and five bucks."
Cause that's all you need.
The quote is also an expression my wife and I use with each other to this day.
This is the story of how my then girlfriend (not yet wife) and I came to watch a movie set in Dublin, in the city of Osaka, and then after, how we came out the theatre and into what should have been the Japanese winter's night and instead walked into an impromptu German Oktoberfest festival, sausages, milled wine and all. (Actually, I don't remember if they had milled wine. They had regular wine, I know that. It's just, milled wine sounded better. For the cold winter's night. You know?)
Actually, that's not really what this post is about at all. That story is really just an entry (and exit) point in how to recommend a lovely little movie.
Once is a low budget film set in Dublin. The cameras are often hand-held, it seems many of the scenes in public are for real (not closed-off sets) and there are, to be honest, a number of slightly less than aimed for amateurish aspects to the film as well. There are holes in the plot and the acting has moments of slipping. Yet somehow in lieu of the film's tone the whole thing works, and works beautifully. A film about imperfect people in an imperfect world gets away with not itself being crafted perfectly.
Basically it's a love story. It's also the story of an artist. Two artists, in fact. Talk about preaching to the converted. You had me at love. You had me gaga at artist.
The main Guy (so named in the credits) is played by Glen Hansard, a musician. An actor too. He had a small part as a member of the band in the now legendary (Irish) movie about musicians, The Commitments. The other Irish movie about musicians, Once, opens with Hansard strumming his guitar and belting his sorry heart out on some cobblestone downtown Dublin street. He's busking. He doesn't make much money.
She (Girl) is from the Czech Republic. Come to Ireland for reasons not known, but come downtown, to this street to watch Guy play his guitar, and sing his passionate tunes.We don't yet know how well she (Marketa Irglova) can play a piano or sing a sad song.
What works is how much you like the two of them. The Czech Girl who has that eastern European zero-tolerance-for-bullshit thing. She says what she means. (She'd have a hard time doing business in Canada.) But there is an innocence to her. She's not all harshness and ex-Communist bitter. She has hope; the romantic in her is available all the time - you see it in her big brown eyes. The Guy is good, he's honest, you know it 'the way you know a good melon' (can you reference that movie quote?). The Irish guy with the reddish hair who seems so gentle and sweet until you give him a guitar and a voice, and then it's fierce, nearly angry the way he belts out heartbreak and yearning like the greats of old. Something that he wants so badly, that he gives so largely. Yearning. I'm not going thesaurus hunting to put it another way. That's the only word for it.Yearning
When I was young I had no interest in writing. I wanted to be rich. I wanted pots of money. How could I not? I went to a private school where every kid in my grade (save three or four) were richer than me, than my family. They had massive houses and fancy cars. That's what I wanted. Big house, fancy car, vacations that involved airplanes and not your family's crappy station wagon. (Oh the cars my father chose to drive!) Things old and small depressed me. Even my movies had to be glossy, shiny, rich and pretty back then. Luckily I grew up in the 80s. Ie. There was no shortage of gloss, shine or the ever light and wonderful Michael J. Fox. Then I grew up and decided I didn't like the bubble I'd been in. I got over Michael J. Fox, started to wonder if and why the guy had no dark side and began to see the world differently.
Now I like the old and the small. Like a 28 year-old South American student I was tutoring last year told me, 'When I was a teenager I used to look down on the people who clean bathrooms and do the simple work. Now I admire them.' But exactly. I admire the hard workers, the get down on their knees and scrub the floor do-gooders. I like that I live in a small apartment. Big suburban houses no longer mesmerize me. Even more so in movies do things simple, quaint, cheap, difficult, small, dingy appeal to something starving artist in me.
In Once I love how sparse the main characters lives are. I don't mean to romanticize poverty (besides, this is developed world poor: no one's going hungry), but there simply seems a more solid honesty to the struggling artist who works in his dad's humble hoover fixing shop, or the Czech girl who is excited - excited! - at finally landing a job cleaning people's houses.
These people in this story, they struggle. They strive. They won't necessarily succeed. There is unknown. There is hardship. But then, of course there is beauty. There is love. And the truest kinds of love, the truest happinesses come only from the toughest of strivings. It's the old Dickensian trope. From humble beginnings and all that.... None of us is much interested in the story of the billionaire's son going off to make another billion.
With a joke for a budget, and Ireland as backdrop Once has got none of your Hollywoody ra ra, Tom Cruise conquers all, drum-beating nonsense. Triumph is not certain, life is not glossy, the sky is rarely blue. But when the Girl plays the piano in that music shop and learns the song to sing so harmonious gorgeous alongside the Guy, it's just perfect. It's not chance the song won the Oscar.
With Once in our hearts and in our brains Ai and I walked round this little circus of German fun eating overpriced, but worth it they were so delicious, candied cashews until we finally gave in to splurge on Japanese price-inflated German red wine and Japanese price-inflated German sausage to eat with mustard we'd squirted on paper plates (the mustard was free). There were picnic benches they'd set up on this freezing winter's night and there we sat and ate our sausage and toasted our wine and felt the right joy of being young and uncertain and not wealthy, neither owning anything more expensive than a plane ticket. But just that sausage, just that wine.
As Ethan Hawke so perfectly told Winona Ryder as the two unemployed twenty-somethings walked around a downtown scene smoking and sharing a coffee and realizing they were in love in Reality Bites: "You and me and five bucks."
Cause that's all you need.
The quote is also an expression my wife and I use with each other to this day.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Wistful Thinking: Mark Romanek's "Never Let Me Go"
"That rare find, a fragile little four-leaf clover of a movie that's emotionally devastating, yet all too easily trampled by cynics. " - Peter Debruge, Variety.
Never Let Me Go is a tone poem.
If I were a painter I'd paint you grey English skies over cold English seas to give you a sense of the beauty of this movie.
If I could play music it would be the piano, slow, tinkling delicate sadness so you could know how this movie effected me. Better yet I'd be a symphony, a famous one, Dvorak's "New World," his ninth symphony, but then only the most heart-shuddering moments from the second movement.
If my favourite books really do break my heart as they heal my soul, or vice versa, it goes that way for movies too. I can't explain it. I'm glad I can't. But this movie has a bit of what Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood has, or what so many great Beatles ballads had (speaking of).Fragility is the perfect word, and probably so much of what made John Lennon's voice so beautiful.
If I'd read Kazuo Ishiguro's book that the movie was based on first, this post might have been quite different. I'm glad I didn't, so I could instead luxuriate in the sense-based wonder that took this compelling story from page to screen and did it with three wonderful performances.
If Carey Mulligan was a revelation in An Education, she is just plain brilliant in this.
If Andrew Garfield stars in this movie as well as The Social Network and has already been cast as Peter Parker in the next Spiderman movie, it's for good reason.
If I couldn't have cared less about Keira Knightley after she kept making pirate movies ... well, all that's changed now.
If I hadn't had to wait to leave the theatre, embarrassed that I'd cried and needed to clean up as I did, maybe I wouldn't be recommending this movie.
Never Let Me Go is a tone poem.
And if that kind of elegiac beauty speaks to you I say go.
Never Let Me Go is a tone poem.
If I were a painter I'd paint you grey English skies over cold English seas to give you a sense of the beauty of this movie.
If I could play music it would be the piano, slow, tinkling delicate sadness so you could know how this movie effected me. Better yet I'd be a symphony, a famous one, Dvorak's "New World," his ninth symphony, but then only the most heart-shuddering moments from the second movement.
If my favourite books really do break my heart as they heal my soul, or vice versa, it goes that way for movies too. I can't explain it. I'm glad I can't. But this movie has a bit of what Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood has, or what so many great Beatles ballads had (speaking of).Fragility is the perfect word, and probably so much of what made John Lennon's voice so beautiful.
If I'd read Kazuo Ishiguro's book that the movie was based on first, this post might have been quite different. I'm glad I didn't, so I could instead luxuriate in the sense-based wonder that took this compelling story from page to screen and did it with three wonderful performances.
If Carey Mulligan was a revelation in An Education, she is just plain brilliant in this.
If Andrew Garfield stars in this movie as well as The Social Network and has already been cast as Peter Parker in the next Spiderman movie, it's for good reason.
If I couldn't have cared less about Keira Knightley after she kept making pirate movies ... well, all that's changed now.
If I hadn't had to wait to leave the theatre, embarrassed that I'd cried and needed to clean up as I did, maybe I wouldn't be recommending this movie.
Never Let Me Go is a tone poem.
And if that kind of elegiac beauty speaks to you I say go.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
To Friend or Not to Friend (Mark Zuckerburg): David Fincher's "The Social Network"
Pretty Potent Mix
You know that pop song you hear once and have to hear over and over again, the one that two months later you never want to listen to again? There's that kind of music and then there are works like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue." Miles' most famous album was elevator music to me on first listen; it took five more goes, listening the whole way through, before it even began to register. Cut to ten years later and it is my favourite album of all time.I preface with that not because you need to watch The Social Network five times to understand it's good, nor does jazz music have anything to do with it, but I'm going to argue that you may want to consider giving the film a second viewing - and this before you may have even seen the flick. But truly, I think it's got that much packed in. Cause you couple David Fincher's talent as a director pressing his immense brain against that of a screenwriter of Aaron Sorkin's (creator of TV's The West Wing) abilities and have the two of them come up with a story about the guy who started the biggest internet phenomenon since Google - you get a pretty potent mix and a lot to take in one shot.
If I may pause for a split sentence and state -the obvious - that this is not just a movie about technology; as Fincher said in a press conference, they aren't trying to make The Net part II.
I can't know what I'll think of The Social Network in ten years, but I can say I'm pretty excited as I type these words.Whatever Oscar thinks (and it will) this flick's got legs. At least I certainly hope it does. Why? Because I. Cannot. Stop. Thinking. About. It.
The Stanley Kubrick of Our Time?
A lot of us knew it that first time we saw Fight Club (1999), that first time David Fincher made our jaws drop open - from the opening visuals against the Dust Brothers jarring and perfect score to the recognition that it was a gun that we were seeing and that it was in Edward Norton's mouth, but so much more so when Fincher had the camera drop some thirty storeys through the building to the basement so we could see the plastique, the explosives - explode. We knew we'd stumbled on something as exciting as Radiohead's Ok Computer or Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I also have to say that it was David Fincher that has forever poisoned me when I'm on an airplane. Norton's Narrator in Fight Club imagining his plane being crashed into by another is one of the most visually arresting - albeit disturbing - moments I've seen since A Clockwork Orange, and that's only one of how many visually mind-blowing moments in what was Fincher's fourth film. But beyond the sheer riveting and visually arresting and often terrifying entertainments that were Se7en (1995) and The Game (1997) you could tell with Fight Club that Fincher was a thinker. With Zodiac (2007) you got an unparalleled depth of thought, but what you also got, in the care with which the director would light a room (Kubrick, anyone?), or the unbelievable attention to detail in the gorgeous design of that 1970s San Fransisco Chronicle newsroom, not to mention the prettiest yet most ominous opening for a film I'd seen in years (destroyed Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" for me forever), you could tell the guy was an artist. Yet it seems hardly anyone went to see Zodiac. I used to get all hot and bothered about this - the fact that yet another great flick had gone under the radar. Till now. Till Mr. Phenomenal Director decided to make a movie with Mr. Dialogue himself, Aaron Sorkin, whose gloriously whip-smart, super fast and funny, funny dialogue that the cast of actors is lucky enough to speak is only a single slice of a phenomenally satisfying pie.
When Fincher cast Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Chloe Sevigny in Zodiac we understood he knew something about acting. Having the balls to cast such a young bunch of actors in The Social Network, many of whom I'd never seen or heard of (Andrew Garfield?) and pulling the performances out of them that he does .... phew! Thing a beauty, boy. Thing. A. Beauty.
The Thinking Person's Thrill Ride
What makes The Social Network so powerful is that you'll find yourself thinking about it days later. Such is not the case with The Town, which I only just blogged about (about how great it was, please note) or many other movies I sincerely enjoy. For perspective, how much thought did you give Avatar four hours after? And that's fine! I like pop as much as the next kid. Believe me (says the bloke who saw the latest Karate Kid in theatres this summer, and enjoyed it!). There are those movies that are zippy amusement park thrill rides (which I love) and those movies that have depth (which I love). And then there are those movies that do both. I think Fincher's latest is a masterpiece because it is so funny and so beautifully - and subtly - constructed. Love Fight Club as I did, this is a different Fincher, a more mature Fincher. Three movies later and a Fincher movie is nearing the levels of a Kubrick film; "One of his movies is like ten of someone else's," as Scorsese put it in a documentary about the late master filmmaker.
Nearing fifty, and with quite the resume now, Fincher no longer needs to resort to visual gimmicks at every turn to keep us tuned in. Perhaps that's why one viewing of the film isn't enough. I say this because I didn't initially come out with quite the high you expect from a great big movie. But I suspect I know why. I find the more formulaic the picture the greater the chance of getting that instant high feeling. It was the utter familiarity of Avatar's story arch that made it such a fun ride to follow and that gave us that quick-jolt, easy lift after. When, however, you see something as original as The Social Network, the high can take a bit of time to hit. Or, in my case, can require a second viewing.
Tantric Sh*t
There's a famous notion in the financial world ... that I'll tell you about in the Part II, when I complete my minor dissertation on The Social Network. The Hamlet reference will make sense by then too. Promise.Oh and those ideas I keep referring to, I'll mention those too. The word ambition will come up, that it is the theme of our time - this blogging tweeting fame-hungry generation of ours. The thrills and spills of our ambitions. And those of a nerdy guy named Mark.But less about him and more about me. I have a blog. I am special. So very special ...
Friday, October 1, 2010
Fun, Smart Caper Flick: Ben Affleck's "The Town"
Ben! Benny! Buddy! Where you been all my life? Well, I mean, I know you been starring in some kind of movies and such and that you even directed one before, but you know, I just wasn't so sure, you understand. Gigli and all that...
I mean, don't get me wrong, I always knew, or at least I had my suspectifications about you. But thems theys out there - you know who they are - they always thought it was Damon what was behind that Good Will Hunting thing. Me?! I knew it, Benny-boy. Oh I knew. I alway- OK. I'll come clean. I didn't know squat. Not a hint of a clue, my friend. But then, can you blame me? I mean, Damon was the Bourne frickin Identity - he could do anything. Spielberg, Scorsese. They all wanted to work with the kid. Meanwhiles there you are doin Pearl Harbor, no offence. But I'll shut my trap now, boy, and say all is forgiven. Cause believe me - if they didn't before, they get it now. Kid's got talent. I guarantee you that's what every producer in Hollywood is sayin now. They ain't doubtin who was behind that Oscar any more, no sir. Fact, I can't help wonderin how much that Damon kid really contributed. I mean, he starred in the thing - but you ... well I don't want to blow too much sunshine up your you know where...
Anyhoo I just wanted to tell you this Town movie. What a piece of work! You had me spillin my freakin popcorn all over the goddamn place, what with the tensions and the dramas and the whole thing had this great Boston authentification about it. Really. You had this mood thing happenin and the cops and robbers and the whole thing. It was great,
just great. Alright, maybe you overdid it a little with the city patriotizing my nation thing. One less shirt with a big-honkin B for Boston on it, Benny, mighta been alright. But then Bruins jerseys always get me creased. (Go Leafs!) But otherwise ... Baby, you got it going on.
God bless your big old Affleck - nothin like a good bank robber flick that actually has a bit of the drama stuff to it. Even the frickin car chase scene! And they usually bore the crap out of me. It was exciting and it didn't go on too long or nothin! Oh and that leading lady of yours! Boy oh boy, Flecky, you sure know how to pick em. I'm tellin you, if they ever let me direct a flick I'd pull the same moves. The same moves. Gettin together the cast of cats you got. The guy from that Mad Men show to be the FBI guy, and then get that loony-crazy guy from The Hurt Locker to play a loony-crazy cause who knows what the hell that guy's capable. And then you pull that frickin rabbit out the old hat and go and get yourself that lovely girl we never knew till we saw that Vicky Cristina Barcelona movie, that girl that was so good I wasn't even watching Scarlett Johansson she was so good, that English girl. Rebecca something. Rebecca Hall (I got me an internet; I'm no dummy; I know IMDB), with those freckles. And that soap and water pretty face of hers and that clean honest, sweet thing that she is. Tell me, what guy wouldn't want to protect that for days! And can she act! My word! She's so good when she cried I was frickin crying all over the goddamn seats and my old lady's gettin all embarrassed and pullin out the kleenexs and all that. And then you - this guy - you you go setting yourself up to do them love scenes with her, and you've all buffed out and you got that pull-up scene. I myself, I seen better days but if I was every gonna star myself in a movie like yours, boy I'd get me into some real 80s action star sort of shape too. Oh you better believe it. I'm be fightin lean too.
I'm shakin my head at you, Benny-boy, shakin it good I am so impressed.You Affleck boys.
For a minute there I thought it might just be your kid brother.
Regards and all that jazz,
JonnyM
PS Do me a favour? Don't do any more Michael Bay movies, alright?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I always knew, or at least I had my suspectifications about you. But thems theys out there - you know who they are - they always thought it was Damon what was behind that Good Will Hunting thing. Me?! I knew it, Benny-boy. Oh I knew. I alway- OK. I'll come clean. I didn't know squat. Not a hint of a clue, my friend. But then, can you blame me? I mean, Damon was the Bourne frickin Identity - he could do anything. Spielberg, Scorsese. They all wanted to work with the kid. Meanwhiles there you are doin Pearl Harbor, no offence. But I'll shut my trap now, boy, and say all is forgiven. Cause believe me - if they didn't before, they get it now. Kid's got talent. I guarantee you that's what every producer in Hollywood is sayin now. They ain't doubtin who was behind that Oscar any more, no sir. Fact, I can't help wonderin how much that Damon kid really contributed. I mean, he starred in the thing - but you ... well I don't want to blow too much sunshine up your you know where...
Anyhoo I just wanted to tell you this Town movie. What a piece of work! You had me spillin my freakin popcorn all over the goddamn place, what with the tensions and the dramas and the whole thing had this great Boston authentification about it. Really. You had this mood thing happenin and the cops and robbers and the whole thing. It was great,
just great. Alright, maybe you overdid it a little with the city patriotizing my nation thing. One less shirt with a big-honkin B for Boston on it, Benny, mighta been alright. But then Bruins jerseys always get me creased. (Go Leafs!) But otherwise ... Baby, you got it going on.
God bless your big old Affleck - nothin like a good bank robber flick that actually has a bit of the drama stuff to it. Even the frickin car chase scene! And they usually bore the crap out of me. It was exciting and it didn't go on too long or nothin! Oh and that leading lady of yours! Boy oh boy, Flecky, you sure know how to pick em. I'm tellin you, if they ever let me direct a flick I'd pull the same moves. The same moves. Gettin together the cast of cats you got. The guy from that Mad Men show to be the FBI guy, and then get that loony-crazy guy from The Hurt Locker to play a loony-crazy cause who knows what the hell that guy's capable. And then you pull that frickin rabbit out the old hat and go and get yourself that lovely girl we never knew till we saw that Vicky Cristina Barcelona movie, that girl that was so good I wasn't even watching Scarlett Johansson she was so good, that English girl. Rebecca something. Rebecca Hall (I got me an internet; I'm no dummy; I know IMDB), with those freckles. And that soap and water pretty face of hers and that clean honest, sweet thing that she is. Tell me, what guy wouldn't want to protect that for days! And can she act! My word! She's so good when she cried I was frickin crying all over the goddamn seats and my old lady's gettin all embarrassed and pullin out the kleenexs and all that. And then you - this guy - you you go setting yourself up to do them love scenes with her, and you've all buffed out and you got that pull-up scene. I myself, I seen better days but if I was every gonna star myself in a movie like yours, boy I'd get me into some real 80s action star sort of shape too. Oh you better believe it. I'm be fightin lean too.
I'm shakin my head at you, Benny-boy, shakin it good I am so impressed.You Affleck boys.
For a minute there I thought it might just be your kid brother.
Regards and all that jazz,
JonnyM
PS Do me a favour? Don't do any more Michael Bay movies, alright?
Monday, August 23, 2010
Movie of the Summer of 2010: "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World"
I will see this movie again before you see this movie if you haven't seen it already. I'm writing about this movie right after watching this movie because Ai is already asleep so you, dear reader, get excited run-on sentence me all hyper with how Scott Pilgrim filled me up it is that good. There it was. The run-on sentence. Did you catch it? Did it kill you? Do you care?
People walk out of this movie. They walked out of my viewing, a few did. That's how good it is. And I'm not even being half sarcastic. All great flicks divide, and half the people I know will hate this movie as much as the other half will go bonkers-bananas for it. (You have been warned!) I'm not saying you had to be good at Super Mario Brothers to even slightly enjoy this movie, but I will suggest that if you can't sing the Super Mario Brothers theme music (if only the main part, even if you can't remember the wicked underwater part) it may not be for you. This is a metaphor (the Mario Brothers theme music does not actually get played in Scott Pilgrim Vs The World). It's also a limitation. It's a shame the movie not be for everyone. But then the world is full of shame and taste remains subjective. (I'm sorry but I have yet to finish a novel by Salman Rushdie.)
Scott Pilgrim, his bass guitar, his fight against the world. This flick is funny as hell. It's silly as hell. It's smart as hell. Michael Cera who is supposed to be Scott Pilgrim but is really just Michael Cera (with some awesome CG super powers) because he is always Michael Cera in every movie he appears in, but so what and what of it? Jimmy Stewart was always Jimmny Stewart and I never got tired of him or of Audrey Hepburn playing up her Audreyness, and though Cera ain't pretty and though he certainly idn't no James Stewart, he is from Canada and he is funny and he's charming and you try to do what he does at 98 pounds.
The movie is filmed in Toronto and it's about Toronto and there is a concert at Lee's Palace, which has to be one of the great rock venues. And Casa Loma gets a role, and so many exteriors are shot at Bathurst and Bloor which has to be one of the great intersections of all time and just the fact of seeing Honest Ed's in the background, it just makes me want to write crude things expressing the extent of my pleasure... that's how excited I am. Nuff said. No. It's not. God bless Toronto cause no one else will. Everyone rags on T.O. If they're American they laugh at it as if it were Pittsburgh. If they're Canadian but not Torontonian they just hate it cause they have the mistaken impression that we think we're God's gift when really we are constantly in the New York shadow 
just fighting for a little cool, a little self-respect, a little transformation like you see at the new AGO or in the architectural marvel that is the OCAD building. Fighting for the kind of cache that only comes along when a director as talented as Edgar Wright (and boy do you bet I will be running out to rent Shaun of the Dead and kicking myself for not having done so already) puts your city at the centre of his visually awesome affair.
Kieran Culkin. Tell me something: what is it about the younger brothers of once stars and how they can so surpass their elder siblings and become something really pretty great? Think Joaquin Phoenix, think Casey Affleck. Culkin's is a supporting role but he is a great actor. With little he do much. With humor he have plenty. With my vote he be nominated for Monsieur Oscar. (Never gonna happen.)
The movie has ass kicking, rock music making, nerd video game playing, wicked-ass special-effect-creating joy all over the place. I was beaming. Beaming throughout the movie like a light bulb, like a laser beam, like a kid. It was that good. I am that hyper. It is 1:15 am (perhaps my not having to wake up and teach tomorrow is having an effect on all this).
Scott Pilgrim is like a cheesy video game come to life in the best way, full of energy and fun and music and the rest. Except it's also got heart. Oh and did I mention it's funny as hell?
I could go on. I could sing the hills are alive I could dance like Michael Jackson I could get out my joystick and play an old-school video game just to hear the ping each time I get a point and relive a little of the wacky, wonderful willy wonka genius that put this movie together.
Brilliant. I'm shaking my head. Just brilliant.
Can't wait to see it again.
People walk out of this movie. They walked out of my viewing, a few did. That's how good it is. And I'm not even being half sarcastic. All great flicks divide, and half the people I know will hate this movie as much as the other half will go bonkers-bananas for it. (You have been warned!) I'm not saying you had to be good at Super Mario Brothers to even slightly enjoy this movie, but I will suggest that if you can't sing the Super Mario Brothers theme music (if only the main part, even if you can't remember the wicked underwater part) it may not be for you. This is a metaphor (the Mario Brothers theme music does not actually get played in Scott Pilgrim Vs The World). It's also a limitation. It's a shame the movie not be for everyone. But then the world is full of shame and taste remains subjective. (I'm sorry but I have yet to finish a novel by Salman Rushdie.)
Scott Pilgrim, his bass guitar, his fight against the world. This flick is funny as hell. It's silly as hell. It's smart as hell. Michael Cera who is supposed to be Scott Pilgrim but is really just Michael Cera (with some awesome CG super powers) because he is always Michael Cera in every movie he appears in, but so what and what of it? Jimmy Stewart was always Jimmny Stewart and I never got tired of him or of Audrey Hepburn playing up her Audreyness, and though Cera ain't pretty and though he certainly idn't no James Stewart, he is from Canada and he is funny and he's charming and you try to do what he does at 98 pounds.
just fighting for a little cool, a little self-respect, a little transformation like you see at the new AGO or in the architectural marvel that is the OCAD building. Fighting for the kind of cache that only comes along when a director as talented as Edgar Wright (and boy do you bet I will be running out to rent Shaun of the Dead and kicking myself for not having done so already) puts your city at the centre of his visually awesome affair. Kieran Culkin. Tell me something: what is it about the younger brothers of once stars and how they can so surpass their elder siblings and become something really pretty great? Think Joaquin Phoenix, think Casey Affleck. Culkin's is a supporting role but he is a great actor. With little he do much. With humor he have plenty. With my vote he be nominated for Monsieur Oscar. (Never gonna happen.)
The movie has ass kicking, rock music making, nerd video game playing, wicked-ass special-effect-creating joy all over the place. I was beaming. Beaming throughout the movie like a light bulb, like a laser beam, like a kid. It was that good. I am that hyper. It is 1:15 am (perhaps my not having to wake up and teach tomorrow is having an effect on all this).
Scott Pilgrim is like a cheesy video game come to life in the best way, full of energy and fun and music and the rest. Except it's also got heart. Oh and did I mention it's funny as hell?
I could go on. I could sing the hills are alive I could dance like Michael Jackson I could get out my joystick and play an old-school video game just to hear the ping each time I get a point and relive a little of the wacky, wonderful willy wonka genius that put this movie together.
Brilliant. I'm shaking my head. Just brilliant.
Can't wait to see it again.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Another Movie Smart, With Heart : "An Education"
Is there a better writer for the screen than Nick Hornby? Yes I said for the screen. I don't mean to step on toes, but I've not been mesmerized by Hornby's prose on the page. I've not actually made it through any of his novels (I don't think). But as stories, and for my taste as movies, High Fidelity and About a Boy are two of the best films of the past decade and not just as comedies; they're both bloody works of art. I'll take either over Inception because in ten years when High Fidelity's on TV you'll stay and watch.
By luck or design, I'm not sure which, the producers of An Education got Hornby (or did Hornby get the producers?) to turn a memoir written for Granta Magazine, about a 16 going-on 17-year-old girl who has been studying so hard to fulfill her (and her father's) dream of going to Oxford until she has a relationship with a much older man in early 1960s England, into one of the best movies of last year.
An Education is, as my brother-in-law Dan might cheekily put it, the feel-good pedophilia movie of the year. The feel-good pedophilia movie of the year that was nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress for Carey Mulligan, the film's star. This is a movie that blurs lines and confuses the audience at every turn. Whose right and who is evil? Who is wise and who is the fool? In terms of genre as well the movie is a head trip. Just as Hornby managed with About a Boy, a film marketed and likely remembered and referred to as a comedy but that contains a harrowing suicide attempt by a depressive character who the movie treats sincerely and with sympathy (as opposed to Meet the Parents ridiculously), with An Education we have a movie that can get pretty damned uncomfortable it is so real and yet one that can also be very funny; or vice versa. And all the time it is so full of the joys of the style of its era.
Of course to pull off this kind of genre-blurring complexity means you need layered characters that require the best actors and An Education is a real ensemble. With Peter Sarsgaard, the chameleon I recently wrote about as the lead, you are assured of at least one character to find infinitely interesting to watch.Many a Hollywood actor (if not all) can do charming, but how many can play charming and creepy at the same time, and I don't mean Norman Bates charming - I mean genuine charm and likeability. Put him next to Mulligan, the film's true star, who plays the sometimes wise-beyond-her-years school girl to a tee - 16 one minute, 35 the next - and you get true chemistry, and some of the most uncomfortable and honest bedroom moments I've ever seen put on film. Not in a disturbing Little Children way so much as an icky, American Beauty ooh, I'm not sure how to feel sort.
That brings me to the tone of the film, which is 180 degrees from American Beauty's stodgy, overly composed scenes. The Danish director, Lone Scherfig, does something magical with An Education. From Hornby's script, she manages to keep the film light and yet give it weight. This is, I realize, a total contradiction and yet watch the movie and you'll see what I mean. That lightness is what makes An Education a seemingly small movie, especially in terms of its scope and dramatic conflict (it is, in truth, a coming-of-age story), and yet it - one scene in particular - brings me to tears every time I see it (thrice).
You gotta love An Education.
It's not big budget. It's not cut and dry good guys and bad guys. It's just so human. And it looks so good, and with great soundtrack to boot. Now if only I could get that Juliette Greco song from the movie onto my playlist...
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Problem With Inception
[You need not visit "Inception," "2001," A.O. Scott and the Problem of the Blockbuster but it is a kind of precursor to this.]
Spoiler alert - nothing major given away but a warning nonetheless that this piece is mostly intended for those who've already seen the movie or who have no real plans of seeing it.
OK, you want me to say it. I'll say it. I did not love Christopher Nolan's Inception. Why? Because I didn't buy it. I didn't buy the premise on which the whole movie stands. I'm not talking about the dream extraction stuff either. As Kafka so perfectly illustrated, you can have a character wake up and discover that they are a bug and we'll believe, we'll follow; it's what you do with that make-believe world and what it has to say that's gonna tell us whether we remember your story or not.
The attempt at an emotional core in Inception is the story about DiCaprio dealing with the loss of his wife. An attempt? Already readers are angry. Comments coming in about how you cried during certain scenes, and how you felt their love so strongly, or felt DiCaprio's pain as real. I too felt the tugs on my heart strings at times, most notably during the windowsill scene. It was, however, in hindsight, as I walked out the theatre so underwhelmed and disappointed that I hadn't loved loved loved the movie that I began to put the pieces together and came to find there was an emptiness to that whole central conceit (but more on that in a momento).
What made Memento (Nolan's first film) so brilliant was that beyond the fiercely clever craftsmanship of the story and how it unfolded, there was a genuine anxiety that pervaded the film. It wasn't just cool photography and a clever use of tattoos and editing that
made the world take notice of this new and obviously hugely talented director. We, the viewers, felt stuck in that hotel room with the main character, Leonard. We were as lost and confused and claustrophobic as he was and the experience was riveting, worrying and so satisfyingly gripping. But a key example of what for me, especially on multiple viewings, took Memento into a whole other realm of achievement was actually a subplot. Granted, it was the key to the whole understanding of the movie, but it wasn't the central action.
It was the flashbacks to the story of Sammy, the middle-aged man who needed to give his wife insulin shots for her Diabetes. Like the story's main character, Sammy suffers from a kind of short-term amnesia - he cannot form new memories. What this does to Sammy's relationship with his wife, and her ultimate decision in how to deal with it, is harrowing in the extreme. What makes the movies so powerful is both the intricacy of a complicated and wonderful puzzle of a plot, but just as crucially of how much we have invested in the characters who are not just rats running through the maze but that actually seem like real people whom we hope will not hurt, despair or god forbid die
AMC, the TV channel that produces Mad Men uses the tag line: "Story Lives Here." I read it somewhere (an issue of Esquire perhaps?) that they are using this brilliant slogan as a counterpoint to the moronification of the Hollywood blockbuster; so that high quality TV shows like The Sopranos and In Treatment are where adults who actually like stories can go when $12.50 ($18 in Japan) just might not seem worth it for The Prince of Persia.
For story to work we have to care about character. Star Wars had light sabres and special effects but no one would talk about it ever again if not for Luke and Leia and Hans Solo and of course Darth Vader. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie so cold and seemingly devoid of speaking human characters you would think it impossible to relate that film to character, has alongside its space visuals and groundbreaking use of music the character of Hal, the computer that is possibly the most memorable and chilling aspect to the whole grand movie.
But back to Inception. DiCaprio is becoming a world-class movie star. He has the intensity and the ability to share vulnerability that Tom Cruise had before he became a Scientologist (see Cruise in the 80s, some 90s), when he decided to replace actual acting with, as my wife so aptly put it, running ("That's all he does now in his movies," Ai says of Cruise. "He just runs.") I don't blame DiCaprio for Inception's disappointments, far from. Like with The Departed he's proven here again that he's no longer a boy; he's finally figured out how to get his poster off pre-teen girls' bedroom walls. Ie. men now have respect for the guy. No, DiCaprio is not the issue. The fault here lies squarely with the director, with Nolan.
Inception looks amazing and may possibly give viewers the kind of thrill I remember getting seeing Terminator 2 for the first time in theatres, or, slightly more recently, The Matrix (whose dating himself now?). The problem with Inception is I felt no real sense of danger. I was not nearly as anxious or curious as to what the hell was going on watching Inception as I had been with Memento, was not nearly as gut-twistingly terrified at the same time as I was thrilled experiencing The Dark Knight. With Nolan's latest I just didn't care enough.
The film pivots on the importance of DiCaprio's character getting back home (to America) to symbolically let his dead wife go and see his kids. The problem, as David Denby in his New Yorker review of Inception so aptly put it, is that we never get to know these children in the slightest (only the image of the backs of their heads) so that we don't care about the kids, nor did I get any sense of DiCaprio as father. If a two and a half hour movie revolves around someone getting back to something the audience needs to have some semblance of reason why we should care for that something other than just a Kodak commercial's picture of it (or the back of the heads of it). Perhaps if Nolan had had the courage to cut fifteen minutes from his James Bond guns-on-ski-slopes action sequence to actually let us see DiCaprio as father... maybe then something might have resonated. Somehow, though, even that kind of quick fix flashback would have rang false, and I think I know why.
In The Dark Knight we had characters to terrify and beguile and trouble the mental stability out of us (Heath Ledger's Joker), and we also had characters to truly love for their integrity (Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon). What, on the other hand, do your remember about DiCaprio's wife in Inception other than that she was French and beautiful and had an unusual first name (Mal)? What of DiCaprio's character himself? He was intense and focused and driven, but I can't even remember his character's name let alone care about his pain.
What rang so hollow with Inception? Why did I walk away not caring about any of these people? Because I think that the entire premise, I think that the letting go of a dead wife and the getting back to see his children were merely devices to drive a plot about an idea (something to do with memory and dreams and dreams within dreams) that was never nearly as interesting as Nolan may have thought.
There are, to be sure, ideas movies where the premise is so astonishing that we can get over the ever-wooden ways of one Keanu Reeves, but as it turns out The Matrix Christopher Nolan's Inception is not.
Spoiler alert - nothing major given away but a warning nonetheless that this piece is mostly intended for those who've already seen the movie or who have no real plans of seeing it.
OK, you want me to say it. I'll say it. I did not love Christopher Nolan's Inception. Why? Because I didn't buy it. I didn't buy the premise on which the whole movie stands. I'm not talking about the dream extraction stuff either. As Kafka so perfectly illustrated, you can have a character wake up and discover that they are a bug and we'll believe, we'll follow; it's what you do with that make-believe world and what it has to say that's gonna tell us whether we remember your story or not.
The attempt at an emotional core in Inception is the story about DiCaprio dealing with the loss of his wife. An attempt? Already readers are angry. Comments coming in about how you cried during certain scenes, and how you felt their love so strongly, or felt DiCaprio's pain as real. I too felt the tugs on my heart strings at times, most notably during the windowsill scene. It was, however, in hindsight, as I walked out the theatre so underwhelmed and disappointed that I hadn't loved loved loved the movie that I began to put the pieces together and came to find there was an emptiness to that whole central conceit (but more on that in a momento).
What made Memento (Nolan's first film) so brilliant was that beyond the fiercely clever craftsmanship of the story and how it unfolded, there was a genuine anxiety that pervaded the film. It wasn't just cool photography and a clever use of tattoos and editing that
It was the flashbacks to the story of Sammy, the middle-aged man who needed to give his wife insulin shots for her Diabetes. Like the story's main character, Sammy suffers from a kind of short-term amnesia - he cannot form new memories. What this does to Sammy's relationship with his wife, and her ultimate decision in how to deal with it, is harrowing in the extreme. What makes the movies so powerful is both the intricacy of a complicated and wonderful puzzle of a plot, but just as crucially of how much we have invested in the characters who are not just rats running through the maze but that actually seem like real people whom we hope will not hurt, despair or god forbid die
AMC, the TV channel that produces Mad Men uses the tag line: "Story Lives Here." I read it somewhere (an issue of Esquire perhaps?) that they are using this brilliant slogan as a counterpoint to the moronification of the Hollywood blockbuster; so that high quality TV shows like The Sopranos and In Treatment are where adults who actually like stories can go when $12.50 ($18 in Japan) just might not seem worth it for The Prince of Persia.
For story to work we have to care about character. Star Wars had light sabres and special effects but no one would talk about it ever again if not for Luke and Leia and Hans Solo and of course Darth Vader. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie so cold and seemingly devoid of speaking human characters you would think it impossible to relate that film to character, has alongside its space visuals and groundbreaking use of music the character of Hal, the computer that is possibly the most memorable and chilling aspect to the whole grand movie.
Inception looks amazing and may possibly give viewers the kind of thrill I remember getting seeing Terminator 2 for the first time in theatres, or, slightly more recently, The Matrix (whose dating himself now?). The problem with Inception is I felt no real sense of danger. I was not nearly as anxious or curious as to what the hell was going on watching Inception as I had been with Memento, was not nearly as gut-twistingly terrified at the same time as I was thrilled experiencing The Dark Knight. With Nolan's latest I just didn't care enough.
The film pivots on the importance of DiCaprio's character getting back home (to America) to symbolically let his dead wife go and see his kids. The problem, as David Denby in his New Yorker review of Inception so aptly put it, is that we never get to know these children in the slightest (only the image of the backs of their heads) so that we don't care about the kids, nor did I get any sense of DiCaprio as father. If a two and a half hour movie revolves around someone getting back to something the audience needs to have some semblance of reason why we should care for that something other than just a Kodak commercial's picture of it (or the back of the heads of it). Perhaps if Nolan had had the courage to cut fifteen minutes from his James Bond guns-on-ski-slopes action sequence to actually let us see DiCaprio as father... maybe then something might have resonated. Somehow, though, even that kind of quick fix flashback would have rang false, and I think I know why.
What rang so hollow with Inception? Why did I walk away not caring about any of these people? Because I think that the entire premise, I think that the letting go of a dead wife and the getting back to see his children were merely devices to drive a plot about an idea (something to do with memory and dreams and dreams within dreams) that was never nearly as interesting as Nolan may have thought.
There are, to be sure, ideas movies where the premise is so astonishing that we can get over the ever-wooden ways of one Keanu Reeves, but as it turns out The Matrix Christopher Nolan's Inception is not.
Friday, July 16, 2010
MOVIE STUFF: "Inception," "2001," A.O. Scott and the Problem of the Blockbuster
My timing is terrible. I shouldn't have gone with Ai to see Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" on the big screen last night. Why? Cause Chris Nolan's (of the Dark Knight franchise) "Inception" comes out today and chances are I'll have seen it before I next post. Fact is I've been waiting months for a decent big budget flick to come to theatres and I am sure Inception will look great and feel great and make money in the bagazillions, and that better "Inception" than another Transformers sequel. Ie. it'll fit the bill perfectly. But what NY Times movie critic A.O. Scott (is there a better critic out there now?) has already confirmed in his review- what we all probably knew anyway - 
is that, really, it's just gonna be a very cool, super slick, tale-twisting piece of fluff. Scott's piece suggests many critics out there are going a little overboard with their praise. Before continuing, let me remind you that I posted the trailer for "Inception" here not long ago - that's how excited I was and still basically am to see it.
Maybe right now you're saying, C'mon Jon, isn't that all we want from a summer movie? Fuck, would be my slightly irate reply. Is that all? Really? Ai has recommended I be less judgmental on my blog and usually I endeavour to follow her advice cause she's much brighter than I am. Perhaps this time, though, we need a little judgment. (Shit, where would morality come from if not for judgment?) Does every single Saturday night movie we go to have to be pure escape, total dumbed-down "Get Me To the Greek" dick and fart comedy? Does everything have to be "Sex and the City" fluffy? Should they just ship me off to France now to read long Russian 19th century novels? Maybe they should, though my Japanese, crap as it is, is still better than my pathetic French.
I'm beginning to feel progressively more unusual in this art-wanting obsession of mine, though the twenty-five or so other folks at the old Bloor cinema watching "2001" alongside my wife and I, folks who had the zitsfleisch to sit for two and a half hours and manage neither to talk or even once open their cell phones - they give me hope. A.O. Scott gives me hope. He longs for better pictures, wishing as he so gloriously does for a movie that could entertain and have the brains for more than just clever puzzles and beautiful set pieces. Maybe it could also have something to say?
Last night I watched a masterpiece, invited no one but my wife (that's not true; I invited one friend; he said no), secure in the knowledge that most people would rather not spend 141 minutes in an old theatre watching an at times preposterously slow and difficult movie.
Like a challenging novel, "2001" had me drifting off, which our educational and business minded system so chastises, and yet to me is the very fertile ground upon which original thought and creativity are born. My mind raced, I travelled back through memories, good and bad, thought of all the movies that could never have been without Kubrick's film. I thought of the rather indisputable theory that the summer blockbuster was born of two movies: Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" and George Lucas' "Star Wars." You need only watch the long middle third of "2001" to recognize that without Kubrick's 9th film there could have been no Millennium Falcon, no Luke Skywalker, no Death Star. "Star Wars" is "2001" for kids (of all ages), is all I kept thinking, Srauss' gorgeous music (both Richard and Johann's) booming out the old Bloor cinema's speakers. Lucas' conceit was unquestionably brilliant. Take the space show Kubrick constructed and so famously set to classic music in a way that had never been done before, dumb it down, make it easier, faster, more violent. In other words, more light sabers, less contemplation.
Thus, the first summer blockbusters: the big screen roller coasters we love.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with roller coasters. I buy my tickets, believe me (hell, I even saw the new "Karate Kid" - and actually enjoyed it!), I wait in line with the rest and love how the wind ruffles my remaining hair, how my stomach will drop at the big dip, all that fast turning caramel corn fun stuff. Who doesn't like that? I just wonder why we don't occasionally ask for more?
"2001" makes you wonder about the meaning of the universe, of man [sic], and much, much more. "Inception," I fear (and A.O. Scott has all but already confirmed), will just be another thrill ride.
Movies are so much fun; it's just sometimes I wish they could be films.
Rant over and out.
[Click here for my review: The Problem With "Inception" ]
is that, really, it's just gonna be a very cool, super slick, tale-twisting piece of fluff. Scott's piece suggests many critics out there are going a little overboard with their praise. Before continuing, let me remind you that I posted the trailer for "Inception" here not long ago - that's how excited I was and still basically am to see it.Maybe right now you're saying, C'mon Jon, isn't that all we want from a summer movie? Fuck, would be my slightly irate reply. Is that all? Really? Ai has recommended I be less judgmental on my blog and usually I endeavour to follow her advice cause she's much brighter than I am. Perhaps this time, though, we need a little judgment. (Shit, where would morality come from if not for judgment?) Does every single Saturday night movie we go to have to be pure escape, total dumbed-down "Get Me To the Greek" dick and fart comedy? Does everything have to be "Sex and the City" fluffy? Should they just ship me off to France now to read long Russian 19th century novels? Maybe they should, though my Japanese, crap as it is, is still better than my pathetic French.
I'm beginning to feel progressively more unusual in this art-wanting obsession of mine, though the twenty-five or so other folks at the old Bloor cinema watching "2001" alongside my wife and I, folks who had the zitsfleisch to sit for two and a half hours and manage neither to talk or even once open their cell phones - they give me hope. A.O. Scott gives me hope. He longs for better pictures, wishing as he so gloriously does for a movie that could entertain and have the brains for more than just clever puzzles and beautiful set pieces. Maybe it could also have something to say?
Last night I watched a masterpiece, invited no one but my wife (that's not true; I invited one friend; he said no), secure in the knowledge that most people would rather not spend 141 minutes in an old theatre watching an at times preposterously slow and difficult movie.
Thus, the first summer blockbusters: the big screen roller coasters we love.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with roller coasters. I buy my tickets, believe me (hell, I even saw the new "Karate Kid" - and actually enjoyed it!), I wait in line with the rest and love how the wind ruffles my remaining hair, how my stomach will drop at the big dip, all that fast turning caramel corn fun stuff. Who doesn't like that? I just wonder why we don't occasionally ask for more?
"2001" makes you wonder about the meaning of the universe, of man [sic], and much, much more. "Inception," I fear (and A.O. Scott has all but already confirmed), will just be another thrill ride.
Movies are so much fun; it's just sometimes I wish they could be films.
Rant over and out.
[Click here for my review: The Problem With "Inception" ]
Friday, June 11, 2010
Movie (Rental) Recommendation: Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket"
I'll never know what it feels like to go through basic training. I am only guessing then when I say the first half of Full Metal Jacket is the closest any movie has come to the truth of that feeling, the intensity of that feeling, the downright shitty reality of that feeling.
Far more to the point, no movie I know has better portrayed the cruelty to which man (in this case) is capable. The danger of the herd. Ie. the film's about a lot more than just basic training. This is why, though Platoon (which came out the same year) won the big awards in 1987, had the bigger stars, and certainly made far more money, is not 'the other' Vietnam movie film nerds like me go back to ('the other' of course being Apocalypse Now).
The greatest war movies are never just about war, much as the great love stories are never just above love, much as Field of Dreams is so much more than just a baseball movie.
The first half* of Full Metal Jacket lasts 45 minutes and is some of my favourite film making ever without using any fancy effects, big name stars, or even overly stylized film making.
Watching the first half again (I've seen it a lot; used to show it in class with my uni students in Japan; I've never been afraid to show 18 year-olds a little dark material in the classroom. Since when does school have to always be so firmly, squarely-prudishly stuck inside the box?) I was amazed at how not stylized the film is. And this is Stanley Perfectionist Reclusive Genius Kubrick we're dealing with, bar none one of the greatest filmmakers in the medium's short history. It's not just a technical genius either, not just the camera angles he chooses, the close ups he makes, or the way he lights a scene. In other words, it's not just aspect ratio ultra movie obsessiveness (which is of course the kind of nerdy detail I get orgasmic over). And it's not even his astonishingly unique and powerful use of music. What is often overlooked (and we'll just ignore Eyes Wide Shut, though I always have an affinity for that flawed film) are the remarkably powerful performances Kubrick drew out of his actors.
Full Metal Jacket was the great director's last masterpiece. Kubrick had more than a few of those. But then, I'm biased. He is my J.D. Salinger of directing, my Miles Davis of film making. Been loving the director since I saw The Shining as a teenager and, unlike John Hughes and Pink Floyd, the brilliance of his work hasn't faded. Quite the opposite.
[*I should add that the 2nd half of the movie takes place in Vietnam and is also pretty damn good.]
Far more to the point, no movie I know has better portrayed the cruelty to which man (in this case) is capable. The danger of the herd. Ie. the film's about a lot more than just basic training. This is why, though Platoon (which came out the same year) won the big awards in 1987, had the bigger stars, and certainly made far more money, is not 'the other' Vietnam movie film nerds like me go back to ('the other' of course being Apocalypse Now).
The greatest war movies are never just about war, much as the great love stories are never just above love, much as Field of Dreams is so much more than just a baseball movie.
The first half* of Full Metal Jacket lasts 45 minutes and is some of my favourite film making ever without using any fancy effects, big name stars, or even overly stylized film making.
Watching the first half again (I've seen it a lot; used to show it in class with my uni students in Japan; I've never been afraid to show 18 year-olds a little dark material in the classroom. Since when does school have to always be so firmly, squarely-prudishly stuck inside the box?) I was amazed at how not stylized the film is. And this is Stanley Perfectionist Reclusive Genius Kubrick we're dealing with, bar none one of the greatest filmmakers in the medium's short history. It's not just a technical genius either, not just the camera angles he chooses, the close ups he makes, or the way he lights a scene. In other words, it's not just aspect ratio ultra movie obsessiveness (which is of course the kind of nerdy detail I get orgasmic over). And it's not even his astonishingly unique and powerful use of music. What is often overlooked (and we'll just ignore Eyes Wide Shut, though I always have an affinity for that flawed film) are the remarkably powerful performances Kubrick drew out of his actors.
Full Metal Jacket was the great director's last masterpiece. Kubrick had more than a few of those. But then, I'm biased. He is my J.D. Salinger of directing, my Miles Davis of film making. Been loving the director since I saw The Shining as a teenager and, unlike John Hughes and Pink Floyd, the brilliance of his work hasn't faded. Quite the opposite.
[*I should add that the 2nd half of the movie takes place in Vietnam and is also pretty damn good.]
Thursday, May 13, 2010
What to Rent: Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" (1998)
The Crapfest That Is "Ocean's 11," 12, 13
I remember a film critic, I think it was, speaking to how much director Steven Soderbergh's (no relation to that other Steven) "Ocean's" movies were a joke to the players involved. This not to say that the actors and a director of this calibre were just mucking about. There's much too much money involved.
And while Brad Pitt, George Clooney and the entourage of lawyers and Ari Gold style agents behind them obviously understand how much big budget success is critical to keeping their movie stars bright, you just know the whole time they were filming that Clooney was itching to do more challenging, more political movies, that Brad Pitt already knew he was simply better suited to playing quirky characters with extreme personalities and that Soderbergh was looking down his nose at the entire project waiting to do the 'smarter' movies he made in between "Ocean" outings. The problem for me is, I don't like much of Soderbergh's 'smarter' fare either (with the notable exception of "Traffic"). "Solaris," anyone? God help us. I'd rather watch the real thing (ie. "2001") or else watch paint dry. I should admit I've not seen "The Informant" or "Che." Nor am I convinced I want to.
"Out of Sight" though. Damn. Granted, you've gotta go back more than 10 years to see Soderbergh using his definite talents to not poo-poo but instead raise up a fun and funny pulpy story to make it stylish and sexy and fucking fantastic. If you haven't seen it, there is much to love, including great jail scenes, fun heist moments and just amazing repartee between so many of the characters thanks to the movie being based on an Elmore Leonard novel ("Get Shorty," "Jackie Brown"). This is a hell of a quotable movie.
George Clooney plays Jack Foley. He is a small-time bank robber. He's smart, slick, suave but not actually that good at his job. Jennifer Lopez plays Karen Sisco. She's an FBI agent. Very good at her job. They first meet in the trunk of a car. He's broken out of jail, taken her hostage. (Run with it.)
She spends much of the rest of the movie chasing him. The scene, that to my mind, makes the movie - the reason for this post - is when they finally meet again. But more on that in a moment. First - quickly - The Second Bananas
It's fun to return to a movie and realize how well it was cast, how many of the side characters are now names you know or faces you recognize.
"Out of Sight" features:
-Don Cheadle ("Traffic," the "Ocean's" movies, celebrity poker television);
-Catherine Keener ("Being John Malkovich,"
"Where The Wild Things Are");-Dennis Farina ("Get Shorty"), a legend; and
-Steve Zahn* [see comments] ("Reality Bites"), the most scene-stealing performer of the bunch.
But none of it would be nearly so memorable, nor would I keep revisiting "Out of Sight" if not for One Great Scene.
Karen Sisco: You kept touching me, feeling my thigh.
Jack Foley: But in a nice way.
Foley has now left L.A for Detroit. It has to do with stealing diamonds. Karen Sisco has followed him there. She is in a Detroit hotel at night, the snow falling in the background.
A zippo. Her hand on a glass of bourbon. His hand wrapping round hers. The dialogue, fast, fun, sharp, playful, honest, dangerous. Them watching each other get undressed. You'll see. I'm gonna show you the clip so you can get a feel for the great stamp of style Soderbergh's put on this whole fine flick (give it a few). To set it up:
The people who put things on youtube have kindly posted the scene but unfortunately (callously) not included the first 3 minutes. So please, before you watch, if you've never seen it before, for context,
Finally,
know that Karen (J.Lo) is sitting alone at a table at this hotel bar. Three men, ad guys are up at the bar. The first, Phillip, comes up, hits on Karen. She says she doesn't want to be rude, "Phillip" but manages to stave him off. As he walks back to the bar, his bespectacled, pale-faced friend, Andy, is already coming towards Karen's table, giving Phillip a little finger tap as he passes his rejected friend by. Andy, even more over-confident than his buddy doesn't even wait to be invited. He sits at Karen's table, tells her he knows why she's depressed. He tells her she's a sales rep having a hard time because she's a girl. Andy goes on about himself, that they're "ad guys, from the Apple" and he tells her about some "Bandito, Mexi-Hispanic" ad campaign they're working on (the great ironic pleasure of watching whitey tell of his blatantly stereotype-foolish Latino ad campaign to this Latino woman) and finally Karen cuts in. She says, "Really, Andy, who gives a shit?"
Stunned he responds saying something to express his incredulity.
"Beat it, Andy" is what Lopez's character says. Finally she is again alone, as she wanted, unless of course George Clooney as Jack Foley were to walk in the bar. Which he does:
Enjoy.
Friday, May 7, 2010
A Movie Smart and With Heart: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto De Sus Ojos)
It won the Oscar for best foreign film this year.
The Internet Movie Database lists it as a Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller.
This is accurate.
Humor is something else that is abundant throughout, but it's not a comedy.
The romance and the humor offset a dark story based around the solving of a gruesome murder. The darkness balances the yearning of a love story that is tender and true and so rare on a big screen, particularly for how much it has you wanting to see it work, wonder if it will work (I won't tell you). I never thought the phrase 'It'll have you rooting for X' in a movie could be taken sincerely (thought it was reserved for Sandra Bullock vehicles). It can when the main characters have this much humanity.
He's a man of great integrity. I fell in love with her.
Though not a true story, its filled with detail that makes the lives of these people, the place they work, their homes, the bars they hang out in all feel real, but yet its not so real as to be arty (in the incomprehensible or banal senses of the word). Thought made in Argentina, the movie still has that stuff of the mythic that Hollywood is so good at, the stuff that raises a narrative above the everyday, that magic stuff we wanted before we went to sleep as kids (and still want, no?)
"The Secret in Their Eyes" won't be in theatres (for those lucky enough to even have it in theatres close to home) much longer. It may not be a perfect movie, but it's well worth the price of admission.
The Internet Movie Database lists it as a Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller.
This is accurate.
Humor is something else that is abundant throughout, but it's not a comedy.
The romance and the humor offset a dark story based around the solving of a gruesome murder. The darkness balances the yearning of a love story that is tender and true and so rare on a big screen, particularly for how much it has you wanting to see it work, wonder if it will work (I won't tell you). I never thought the phrase 'It'll have you rooting for X' in a movie could be taken sincerely (thought it was reserved for Sandra Bullock vehicles). It can when the main characters have this much humanity.
He's a man of great integrity. I fell in love with her.
Though not a true story, its filled with detail that makes the lives of these people, the place they work, their homes, the bars they hang out in all feel real, but yet its not so real as to be arty (in the incomprehensible or banal senses of the word). Thought made in Argentina, the movie still has that stuff of the mythic that Hollywood is so good at, the stuff that raises a narrative above the everyday, that magic stuff we wanted before we went to sleep as kids (and still want, no?)
"The Secret in Their Eyes" won't be in theatres (for those lucky enough to even have it in theatres close to home) much longer. It may not be a perfect movie, but it's well worth the price of admission.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
If you LOVED Avatar, chances are you'll hate The Ghost Writer
Roman Polanski's latest movie has no blue people, nothing explodes, the main character isn't a tough guy and the film isn't shot in 3-D. Ewan McGregor is the story's lead, the ghost writer. He doesn't punch anyone. There's no blood. 
And no fake-o political message either (big corporation - bad, trees - good).
Nope. Thus, The Ghost Writer is destined, like so many quality movies before it, to make very little money, to not pop up on the box office radar and to only impress the adult audiences that take the time to go out and see this old-school thriller.
While also asking some pretty potent political questions, The Ghost Writer is really a great work of suspense. Even the weather gets to you. And yet the movie harkens back to the Hollywood classics, Hitchcock-like, as it manages to mix foreboding with humor. Thrillers in my lifetime haven't usually had too many hardy hars and I forgot how effective a good laugh is when a movie has you all wound up. Better yet is how the movie's very real (character's reaction to a mugging, say) matches up against its rather campy (Kim Cattral's character).
I don't know if you'll like this movie, but I thought it was smart as hell, and the kind of perfectly crafted fun that is so seamless as to be very, very hard to explain the goodness of. I'm not sure I could have said that last sentence more awkwardly. But there you go. Nighty night.
And no fake-o political message either (big corporation - bad, trees - good). Nope. Thus, The Ghost Writer is destined, like so many quality movies before it, to make very little money, to not pop up on the box office radar and to only impress the adult audiences that take the time to go out and see this old-school thriller.
While also asking some pretty potent political questions, The Ghost Writer is really a great work of suspense. Even the weather gets to you. And yet the movie harkens back to the Hollywood classics, Hitchcock-like, as it manages to mix foreboding with humor. Thrillers in my lifetime haven't usually had too many hardy hars and I forgot how effective a good laugh is when a movie has you all wound up. Better yet is how the movie's very real (character's reaction to a mugging, say) matches up against its rather campy (Kim Cattral's character).
I don't know if you'll like this movie, but I thought it was smart as hell, and the kind of perfectly crafted fun that is so seamless as to be very, very hard to explain the goodness of. I'm not sure I could have said that last sentence more awkwardly. But there you go. Nighty night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
