Month: August 2006

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili

Great little film. Some of the reviews I read said “harrowing”–to agonizingly work away, “with painful slowness”. I wouldn’t say painful, but there is a grim dedication, in the characters and in the advancement of the plot, which in the last thirty minutes (of a short film) does have an absolutely enthralling hold on the viewer.

Set in the high plains of Tibet, the (based-on-a-true) story conveys the tribulations of a group of a volunteer, anti-poaching posse, intent on protecting the dwindling herds of antelopes. Continue reading Mountain Patrol: Kekexili

duck season

I watched this Mexican film last night, Duck Season, which was released by Warner Independent Pictures under Alfonso Cuarón’s deal with the studio. This is a charming, unforced, wry ensemble comedy about four characters who spend a lazy Sunday in a middle-class apartment complex in Mexico City. The apartment belongs to fourteen-year-old Flama, and it is currently something of a battleground as the kid’s parents are raging through a messy divorce. The one pleasure is Sundays when Flama’s mom travels to another city for the day leaving Flama and his best friend Moko alone to eat pizza, drink Coka-Cola and play video games. All is well until a power outage shuts down the game and then Flama’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, Rita, interrupts and asks to borrow his kitchen to bake a cake. When the pizza delivery man, Ulises (who looks to be in his mid to late-twenties), arrives eleven seconds late, Flama refuses to pay and Ulises refuses to leave. Continue reading duck season

v for vendetta

I don’t want to let ‘V for Vendetta’ enter obscurity without some mention on this blog. There are various complaints one could make about V, but it is still superior to most movies of the past year. It is a political thriller much more than an action movie, with a very real puzzle at its center. The story has been prettified from its comic book origins, and updated to include Iraq, but it remains a story about how fascism arrives in myriad small ways rather than a big bang, so that the tipping point between our present society and a fascist state is very hard to identify.

It is a remarkably smart movie about terrorism for this day and age, perhaps why critics had such a problem with it. Some of the dialogue, besides being quite beautiful, provides a far more intelligent discussion of the justifications for terrorism than anything on PBS or NPR.

And there are a series of strong and moving performances, of which Stephen Rea’s world weary police detective is the best.

Silent Hill

Perhaps better silent. Or, if possible, with the dialogue cut, but moans and screams and echoes intact. I must say I did enjoy this movie, and to be honest would not have enjoyed it in the theater. At home, I could cut all the lights, sink into a chair, turn the sound mostly down and speed through just to catch cool visuals. And there are a slew of great visuals: it’s a genuinely creepy aesthetic, and there’s rarely a shot that doesn’t have some nice touch, some cool glint off a moist surface or a sharp angled line through a beautiful wide shot. The story is of course piffle, and I feel bad for Alice Krige, who I first recall from the lousy film adaptation of Ghost Story, playing there and then playing everywhere ever since a spooky evil woman. Would have been nice if this had been simply strange, instead of trying to explain… or if there was a clearer, more starkly-defined sense of urgency to the thing. Instead, it works as a not-terribly-frightening but still malicious dream.

Sketches Of Gehry

I don’t want to be particularly snarky about this one, though director and interviewer Sydney Pollack makes a rather tempting target. I like architecture and Gehry’s buildings can be staggering. LA’s Disney Music Hall is. Seattle’s EMP Museum isn’t. Billbao’s Guggenheim almost certainly is, though I’ve not seen it in person. Continue reading Sketches Of Gehry

Snakes on a Product Placement

The witness to a terrible gangland slaying, the mcguffin getting those motherfucking Snakes up onto the Plane, rather ostentatiously drains a can of Red Bull as he steps off his motorbike. The audience I was with laughed–if the can had been flashing neon, we couldn’t have been more savvy consumers, fully aware of how the movie was shilling before it began. A short while later (in the quick dispensing of plot), as the witness watches a tv news report about the slaying (and just before the goons come calling to gun him down), the camera slyly includes in the frame around the tv literally stacks of Red Bull cans, all wrapped in plastic. Five minutes and most of the plot later, the witness having been saved by FBI hero Sam Jackson is being cajoled/bullied into testifying, and the good guys toss on the table some evidence of him from the scene of the slaying: encased in a baggie, a drained can of Red Bull.

I really wanted to like Snakes, but the film is an aggressively smart-ass deployment of the crude tools of B-film without any of the smarts or real pleasure the best B-films and recreations of B-films offer. Continue reading Snakes on a Product Placement

The Wire

Since I am addicted to On Demand, I’ve been watching this HBO series the last couple of weeks. I’m on the early part of Season Three; Season Four is supposed to begin in September. Has anyone seen this?

I have to say that overall, I’m really liking it. It’s basically a cop show set in Baltimore, focused on a special detail that tracks medium to large cases. Season one was about cracking a drug circuit (which is still ongoing), the second season was a port investigation, and the third is also drug-related but has widened to treat city government corruption. Continue reading The Wire

TV

I’ve been catching up on last year’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, about which I have. It isn’t the masterpiece it once was, or perhaps (three episodes in) I see no gathering momentum, simply a solid funny half-hour of comedy. Its familiar rhythms and pacing and gags may not startle, but I’m still happy to see ’em.

I also either accepted the suckerbait or made an efficient decision, and ordered up the NBC promo disc for two new shows, available only on Netflix. Continue reading TV

Good Movie Season Around the Corner

Rather than continually posting in the old trailers thread, I thought I’d fire up a new one as finally there are some good movies on the horizon. For starters, I’m digging the trailer for the excellently titled The Last King of Scotland, which is of course about Idi Amin, and like everything in the 21st century, based on A True Story.