Month: June 2005

Make Mauer Giggle Like a School Girl

Inspired by the uninspiring “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”–
What’s the meanest funny comedy ever made? And/or the funniest mean comedy?

A short list, off the top of my head:
Happiness
Little Murders
Where’s Poppa?
Prizzi’s Honor
Unfaithfully Yours
Shoah
After Hours; King of Comedy; Goodfellas
Smile — and The Candidate? A shout-out to Michael Ritchie, in his heyday
Being There

Okay, one of those is a gag. A special honorable mention for W.C. Fields. I can’t say all of his films really hold up as mean/funny narrative, but he’s perhaps the model protagonist. In “It’s a Gift” (I think it was “It’s a Gift”) he made me laugh as hard as I’ve ever laughed at a film just by turning to a co-worker and muttering “I hate you.” No punchline, no set-up, no shtick–just “I hate you.” Now that’s comedy.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Not bad. Not good. Too long. At least occasionally witty and reasonably well-edited and shot. But too often assumes that lots and lots of shooting equals rip-roaring fun. (There’s one fine fight sequence between the two ridiculously-sculpted stars that’s kind of fun–at least compared to Cinderella Man, but then the film ends with a bloated half-hour gun battle, and if you’re not John Woo and Chow-Yun Fat and Tony Leung, don’t bother.)

Can say this: made me want to see Fight Club and Made again. Jolie’s never been in a good movie, has she? She’s got pluck, though–hang in there, kid! The pictures are a tough business!

The Machinist

I’m going to jump-start Mauer–I want to hear what he has to say about this flick.

My own thoughts: certainly it’s recommended. If for no other reason, to see Christian Bale, who couples the stunt starvation with some interesting performance choices. Sure, he’s got the sunken, haunted look down pat, but I was even more surprised by the strange smarmy falsity of his interactions with a waitress who might (or might not) be a romantic interest… it was an odd and off-putting bit of swagger, that seemed way out of keeping with the character–but, like much of the movie, made sense as it went on. (And it reminded me of Nicolas Cage, of lore–the Vampire’s Kiss Cage whose weirdness amplified a film’s potential surreality.) But the flick is also well-structured, well-shot, and always pretty gripping. (Even if not all that surprising, and not as spooky or disruptive as Brad Anderson’s last sort-of-ghost-story, Session 9.)
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haasil

watched this last night on a friend’s recommendation. this is a low-profile bombay movie from a few years ago that is set mostly at a university in a smaller indian city (allahabad). there are no major stars in this but it is a wonderful little film. actually, it is like two films: the first half is a spot-on profile of the criminalized politics at pretty much any indian university, with a nicely observed and detailed love-story woven in; the second half becomes a little more formulaic but is still rousing stuff–the finale, which is set against the backdrop of the maha kumbh mela in allahabad (millions of people descend on the town for this festival that occurs every 12 years,) is not as exciting as the netflix dvd sleeve makes it out to be but is still very good. it is very well shot as well–very atmospheric (the credits sequence in particular is one of the best i’ve seen anywhere in years). and the performances are all amazing. as non-hindi speakers you guys will miss out on most of the nuances of dialect and accent (and how they further detail the characters) but i think you’ll like it very much anyway. this is more solidly in the bombay tradition than something like “company” but don’t let that stop you. now i need to find out more about this director.

one note, if you do decide to see it: in the subtitles you’ll see the two student-leaders constantly being referred to by their hangers-on as “boss”. the literal word being used is “bhai” or “(elder) brother” (as in the kitano film), and i don’t know why they didn’t use that.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Just watched his “Seance,” an updating of a ’60s English film I never saw. The plot: a medium and her husband get entangled in a kidnapping plot. Enough said.

This isn’t great Kurosawa, but it is a fine little thriller–exploiting (recent) conventions of Japanese horror (spooky hair and claw-like hands), and a reasonable little psychological suspense thriller, as well.

That’s where Kurosawa excels. One, his horror films–more than any other filmmaker working today–rely upon careful composition, evocative silences, and slow steady narrative progression to evoke dread… and that neat feeling of the “uncanny,” the anxious sense that some awful horror doesn’t just displace but underlies the everyday.

This is particularly important because (two) Kurosawa’s horrors seem resolutely social. Perhaps his best film is “Cure,” made not long after the Aum Shinrikyo subway gassing, which follows a serial-killer case… but again the genre is obliquely cited/reiterated, then subtly shifted. It’s spooky and smart.

League of Gentlemen

NOT the bowling flick, nor another terrible adaptation of Alan Moore’s comics. Instead, a very fine sort-of-sketchy, sort-of-Sherwood-Andersony comedy from Britain. Like other great sketch groups, a trio of performers enact every recurring character; unlike those shows, there is a loose plot (a man stranded in forlorn Royston Vasey, a rural town somewhere in the wilds of England) and the fun is all character-/setting-driven. There’s an undercurrent of dread and horror to the comedy that is peculiarly, brilliantly evoked.

Mark first cued me into these guys, and I saw the first series from a dvd at my library. I write simply to advise that the next two seasons come out on dvd in the next few weeks. Very much recommended.

bollywood recommendations

following on my brief comments on indian art cinema in anothe thread i thought i’d make some recommendations of bollywood films for the benefit of those who might be interested in a somewhat structured experience of the industry. first, a little definitional clarification: “bollywood” refers to the popular bombay hindi film industry. it is not a catch-all term for any indian cinema (as it is often used in american circles) and nor are people like gurinder chadha or mira nair bollywood filmmakers. these people use certain bollywood conventions in some of their films (nair entirely exploitatively/exotically) but they’re no more bollywood than someone like baz luhrman in “moulin rouge”. second clarification: this list, sorted by decade, is restricted to what’s available from netflix. i can expand it to other titles as well if people are interested (i am not sure if netflix is a good indicator of availability) . this is, of course, an idiosyncratic, highly personal list. as it should be. not sure which of these will “translate”–take your chances.

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Perils of Minimalism?

I just watched Elephant and found it both compelling and puzzling. What puzzles me partly is its schizophrenic strategy of following precisely many of the details of the Columbine Harris/Klebold shootings (the attraction to Hitler, the playing of violent videogames, the timeline and strategy of pipe bombs and shootings, the warning to a student outside, the directive to “have fun,” even the realization of the rumor that the spree ended with harris shooting klebold rather than a mutual suicide) while allowing for a very loose improvisational style. Is the film a dramatization, deliberately courting status as a kind of lyrical re-creation of Columbine, or does it mean to suggest itself as a kind of film about Anywhere USA where banality is inexplicably interrupted by violence? What am I missing in the folding together of these two approaches? Why does it deliberately court cliché—the repetition of one of the most well-known pieces of classical music, the repeated images of “storm clouds massing?”
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