OK “The Sopranos†. . . cool, yipee, etc. BUT. I’m really enjoying “Big Love.†At first I had a hard time finding my way in (as if I want to watch a show about a man who worries about having too much sex), but this show has a strange Lynchian bite to it. In fact, it’s downright creepy in the way it makes normal and human a practice that couldn’t be any stranger and, maybe, attractive. Chloe Sevigny is, as always, remarkable. And Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Grace Zabriskie, Mary Kay Place–all turn in good work. But the writing . . . the storylines are just so damned weird and, at times, uncomfortably titilating and frightening. Is anyone else watching?
Month: April 2006
Brick
This is a pretty cool film–a too, too bright California noir set in a metropolitan SoCal high school. Imagine Dashiell Hammett writing a script for the UPN’s “Veronica Mars” with Fritz Lang directing and you get a pretty good idea of what writer/director Rian Johnson is up to. The language is dense, performatively so, and the storyline can be confusing (but no more confusing than the first time I watched The Maltese Falcon). What I liked was the audacity of the project, the verve in which the actors (particularly Joseph Gordon-Levitt–will no one on this blog watch Mysterious Skin!!!!–, Lukas Haas and Noah Fleiss) attack their roles, and the filmmakers’ keen visual sensibility. It’s not perfect (though it may be the best grad school film project ever to grace the big screen). In fact it is rough around the edges. Still, I recommend it!
The Five Obstructions (2003)
this film is credited to jorgen leth as a director, but if you watch it you’ll be hard pressed not to think it is in fact directed by lars von trier. this is, of course, on the assumption that the two men are not acting, and the documentary-like parts of the film where they are talking to each other are bone fide, unscripted recordings of their frank conversations. this is definitely how they are presented, and the aesthetic of dogma supports the belief that there shouldn’t be any manipulations there, any plays on the viewer. Continue reading The Five Obstructions (2003)
Thank You for Smoking
Funny. Well-acted. Well-directed. Aaron Eckhart is not the angry, misogynistic asshole here that he did so incredibly well in The Company of Men. He’s a guy that wants to spend more time with his kid, and play the game that is his job really well.
It doesn’t matter to me if the people he works for are evil (or more blatantly cartoonishly evil than other companies that other people work for), or if he gets the conscience pangs that will make him renounce his past and work for cancer kids. He doesn’t, by the way. I don’t think I’m giving away much to say that this doesn’t turn into a sappy “I’ve Seen the Light!” kind of movie after 90 minutes black comedy.
But it’s not really even all that black to begin with – at least I don’t consider it to be. It’s even touching from time to time. Even when Nick (Eckhart) tries to pay off a dying cigarette spokesguy to stop badmouthing the industry, it manages to avoid the pitfalls on one side of sentimentality and on the other side of pure ruthlessness. Continue reading Thank You for Smoking