In the last week, I’ve been catching up. (School’s ended.) Saw three flicks–oddly similar, in terms of content–that I’d recommend, but primarily because they offer up two, three scenes apiece that… well, in terms of acting and dramatic complexity, astonish. The films then often go a bit awry, but why quibble when there’s some unexpected perfection, midway through?
The films: P.S., Birth, The Woodsman. I’ll handle ’em in that order: Continue reading Scenes, more than films
last night: william shakespeare’s “the merchant of venice”
this is a handsome production which will likely finally be remembered only for pacino’s against all odds, restrained performance as shylock, giving us a hint of what might have become of him had scarface never happened. the film, of course, has a higher ambition than that and that is to take the play and make it about anti-semitism rather than a play shot through with the racism of its time from which only its poetry somewhat ambivalently rescues it (which is how i read it when i read it last). this sort of shift of emphasis in production is, i suppose, par for the course in the theater and i don’t really have a huge objection to it. but there are specific things that happen at the very beginning of the film that are not in the play, and which, while not huge, make me question if this is william shakespeare’s the merchant of venice. (and there are larger problems too–of which, more below.)
Continue reading looking for shylock
I saw this, and I recommend it thus: funny, eccentric, energetic, Sith-free fun.
There are some beautiful moments, some fantastically funny shtick, some repetitive fighting (a must in most any Kung Fu film), and more gee-whiz pizzazz to the pleasures of its CGI than any filmmaker outside of Pixar’s stable.
I want to emphasize: the writer/director/star Chow has a real eye–not just Jackie Chan’s or Sammo Hung’s, for choreography, but for the look of film. There’s a loving homage to “Top Hat” (of all films!) midway through, and it never settles into some kind of fight-shot/edit groove, instead consistently altering the manner in which the big showdowns get put together. Very fun.
And maybe it’d be worth stepping back to unpack the film’s smorgasbord of generic influences, or to compare it to the local talent doing the same thing (primarily Tarantino), but… someone else can do all that.
I was just going to pipe up that “Undertow,” a Southern gothic about boys (including an excellent Jamie Bell) threatened and chased by a nasty death-dealing uncle (Josh Lucas, who resembles John Bruns with a handlebar moustache), isn’t so great.
It has an outstanding credit sequence: Bell and a young woman share a tender moment, then the film flips forward and we see him outside her window, throwing a rock through it. Then he’s chased by her gun-wielding, gun-firing father, and the film deploys all kinds of tricks stolen from ‘seventies genre flicks … and it’s just thrilling to watch, as narrative and as a flashy play of technique.
Once the film starts it slows to a crawl, but even that’s okay: watching Bell in the family dynamics with his father (Dermot Mulroney) and his brother (some very cute frail thin kid, who looks like a little Mark Mauer) — it’s odd, touching, surreal… quite wonderful.
It all goes kind of to hell when Uncle shows up. Continue reading David Gordon Green
watched lang’s “the big heat” last night and was struck by a couple of things:
(spoiler warnings apply for those who haven’t seen it)
1) michael’s right about the gloria grahame/annette bening thing
2) this is such a tautly shot/narrated film–the camera literally leads the viewer through it; lang’s use of slow zoom-ins and outs and pans works almost like a manual for the beginning filmmaker. i think mike mentioned earlier a connection between kubrick and lang–can see it in this film as well.
3) i am not as knowledgeable about noir’s generic narrative elements as some of you doubtless are but this film’s juxtaposition of corrupt public life with the possibility of an autonomous private life (which is then destroyed utterly by the public) seems to make it darker than most.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there are at least a few fans of Adams among us, many of whom may be avoiding the potential misfire of this film version. Don’t; it’s well worth seeing, and amazingly good at capturing that precise Adams tone–somehow merging Spike Jones’ ceaseless ADD-led invention, Alec Guinness’ best sad-faced winsomeness, and Doctor Who’s ludicrous sci-fi noodling. (There: I wrote a cap review without mentioning Monty Python.)
I particularly loved the ‘throwaway’ bits–unlike an American counterpart, like “Airplane,” which spitfires punchlines, “Hitchhiker” offers up an endless array of wonderful set-ups. The movie’s best bits are an inventive stream of “guy walks into…” scenarios; who needs to play to the cheap seats with big yuks? From its opening credits, a bad ballad sung by dolphins, with a bad montage of jumping swimming chittering dolphins, you realize that the film is profoundly silly. Just like Adams.
When it gets “funny,” it loses a little luster. Sam Rockwell’s kind of fun, as George Bush. Mos Def is very fine, but subtle to the point of barely relevant for much of the movie. And Zooey Deschanel is about 1/3 as charming as in “All the Real Girls,” but that’s still pretty good. Even Martin Freeman–who’s good–doesn’t blow one away. Which is as it should be; the film (like the novel) is about supporting players, backgrounds, settings–the extras normally not visible in space opera. Bill Nighy walks in, late-movie, and steals the thing.
I got nothing much more to say than: it’s fun.
This originally appeared as a comment to Pete’s Shaun of the Dead post. I’m bringing it back from the dead. Mauer noted that we should keep an eye out for Black Books, but warned us that it’s not available as a region 1 DVD. I suppose this region coding has something to do with the great PAL/NTSC divide. Why do the Brits have to do everything differently? They resist standardization at every turn. Fuckers. Anyway, here’s my original post (hey, where is everyone?):
Just a note on region-freedom. I went to London last month and bought the box set (boxed set?) of Not the 9 O’Clock News in the hopes that my Dell laptop would play it, which it did (it will play any region). I should have bought more DVDs–all the Ali G specials, the League of Gentlemen seasons 2 & 3, etc. Oh well, I can get this stuff on Amazon.co.uk
Why don’t they sell region-free DVD players in the U.S.? And what’s with the region stuff anyway?
“They?!! Who the hell is thhheeeey?!â€
In honor of Derby Day, I thought I might ask everyone what their favorite horse racing films are (and Michael, I’m not referring to replays of yesterday’s races at Saratoga). Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), The Marx Bros.’ A Day at the Races are obvious choices. I may be a sucker for long-shot, “triumph of the human spirit” race films like Seabiscuit (which I’m not including here), but The Black Stallion (1979) is an absolutely gorgeous film–it was shot by Caleb Deschanel, who also shot The Right Stuff. The director lets the images do the storytelling–I don’t remember there being much dialogue (Mickey Rooney gives a thankfully restrained performance). The early scenes when the boy discovers the stallion in the ship’s stables are very simple, very poetic.
Here are some obscure racing films I’m interested in:
Continue reading Pony pics
we watched this last night. i went in expecting to dislike it–the previews and reviews mostly made it seem like a whitewashing of the crusades and i thought its politics would offend me. to my surprise i quite liked it. in a way this is scott’s “anti-gladiator”. that film was far more stirring cinematically and narratively–i enjoyed it tremendously in the theater–and it wasn’t until i thought about it later that i realized that i found its “strength and honor” politics quite repellent. “kingdom of heaven” on the other hand doesn’t provide the visceral jolts or narrative releases that “gladiator” does–there’s no great revenge or other motivational plot and the action sequences are often confusing (as in “blackhawk down” i had trouble keeping track of people during the fighting)–but it is a more thoughtful film.
(some spoilers ahead)
Continue reading kingdom of heaven
OK, this ain’t naturalism–any “three degrees of separation” ensemble drama set in the vast wastelands of Los Angeles has to be a total fantasy, right? Crash‘s politics are of the knee-jerk variety but the performances are strong, the editing clean and the sentimental moments few and far-between and well earned (absolutely needed given the film’s bleak outlook on humanity). It was worth six bucks, but I don’t think you’d be missing anything if you waited for the DVD. That being said, I was moved by the film. Haggis offers up a gut-punching script which keeps picking at scabs only to reveal deeper wounds, and such polemics make for a viscerally emotional ride. In the end Crash is a B+ movie with a fine cast (in particular, Terrence Howard, Ryan Phillipe and Matt Dillon) who are guided by a no-nonsense directing style that works. I’d rather America be watching more films like this than those in which Tom Cruise or Nicholas Cage save the world.