Month: January 2008

King of Kong

I was never a player of video games, still lose interest too quickly to really dig in and learn, let alone master, any game. And when it cost a quarter to play, you had to have a lot of quarters–and an obsessive slant–to sit and become anything like good. I grew tired of such antics after the initial blast of interest in the graphics or style wore off.

And my experience of those obsessive players who got really good at games–in the arcade or at home–was for the most part equally trying. I couldn’t empathize with their obsession. And while most were members of the same geek posse I got lumped with, it was hard to get past the arrogance of many game players. I mean, if I wanted boys with big attitudes about bullshit pasttimes, I could have just hung out with my brother and the athletes.

So I came at King of Kong as an ethnographer familiar with the culture, not a current or former citizen. Continue reading King of Kong

eh

Cloverfield is not bad, but nor is it particularly good. As stupid genre exercises go, it’s a reasonably entertaining one. Its strengths are similar to Sunshine‘s: energy, sensory overload, and a reasonably pacy set of genre thrills. Its weaknesses are also parallel: kind of dumb, when you step back and think on it.

Charlie Wilson’s War has the brilliant P. S. Hoffman in a great role, with some excellent screenwriting by Sorkin in the first hour, but it loses its way in the second half, forgoing snappy snarky dialogue for montages of rockets and more emotion. Now, Sorkin can do the sentimental laced with bite as well as anyone, but the film really seemed unsure of its footing, its outrage blunted by some patriotic enthusiasm, its venom diluted in sap, its thesis blurred so that it wouldn’t really offend anyone. Still, it lays out a reasonably smart backstory which does indict the historical blindness of the recent years’ foreign policy… but the film could have been so much better. Hanks is pretty good, as usual; Roberts is kind of irrelevant, and distracts more than sells the role.
Continue reading eh

The Hunting Party

…is not a good film. It’s a mess, pretty much a bad film–but part of me gives it small credit for being bad as a result of its ambition. The film recounts the story of three journalists who seek either to meet or actually capture an escaped war criminal from the Bosnian conflicts of the ’90s. It’s based on true events, an article from Esquire — and, frankly, the best thing about the dvd is that it includes the article and an interview with 2 of the journalists, and you can see the bleak wit and outrage that bubbles under the movie’s mash-up with various other generic conventions.

Continue reading The Hunting Party

Syndromes and a Century

This is such a warm, engaging and magically entertaining film. The narrative begins in the early eighties at a hospital in rural Thailand and mostly follows a young, strong-willed female doctor as she negotiates her position in a world divided by traditional beliefs systems and late-modern efficiency. The second half seemingly takes place in the present but tells (more or less) the same story with many of the same actors, focusing mostly on a young male doctor (we meet him in the first section) working in a very modern, urban hospital. I can’t tell you what it all means–Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a kinder, gentler David Lynch–but the film has a kind of dreamy, Proustian quality as it dances lightly around such themes as time, memory, repetition, and the mystery and impermanence of beauty. Of course, Syndromes is very elliptical but not frustratingly so (its ninety-minute running time breezes by). In fact, I’d describe the tone of the film as comically effervescent. In terms of form, this may be one of the most beautifully shot films I’ve seen all year.

Sacco & Vanzetti (2007)

In light of the criticism of There Will Be Blood on political grounds, I recommend watching this documentary about the lives, trial and deaths of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The events take place contemporaneously with those depicted in TWBB (from just before World War I until 1927), and Upton Sinclair wrote another book, Boston, that is a fictionalized account of the trial. Here the focus is much more clearly workers, collective action and revolutionary movements – and the state repression that they engender – as emblematic of the “golden age” of American capitalism. Continue reading Sacco & Vanzetti (2007)

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvaaaa – HEEEEEEE – na

The Ten perhaps deserves no major acclaim–as a sketchy chapter-driven film, it misses often enough to make it casually pleasurable. But it’s never less than amiably and enjoyably silly, and there are a few bits that are amazing, especially Liev Schrieber as a suburban homeowner sucked into a competition with his neighbor over CAT-scans. And it makes casual fun out of religious law, anal rape, and the death of children — what’s not to love? Certainly worth your time, although I’ll recommend Smiley Face again as being the best bet for funny-films-that-did-poorly-at-the-box-office-and-are-now-available-on-dvd.

I also have been watching The Love Bug with Max, who John is probably wondering about. I forgot the power of Dean Jones. And there’s a scene where Herbie tries to commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The car actually perches on the railing, teetering precariously over the Bay. Hilarity! Now I’m going to queue up The Apple Dumpling Gang for its long-forgotten opium-withdrawal scene, Knotts and Conway wracked with feverish rage….

Smiley Face

I don’t go in much for pothead humor, always finding Cheech and Chong too much like hanging out with pothead friends of mine to really enjoy the experience. (I liked them at first, but then I kept hoping they’d just fall asleep already.) I gave Half Baked a shot, but–nah. Maybe it’s my own non-pothead back-story. (Alas, I probably identify more with Foster Brooks.) So maybe pot movies are a genre beyond me. Until I saw Harold and Kumar, which was a loony delight, ineffably (or just effing) funny. That’s it, then. Found the one true pot film.

Then I saw Smiley Face, and–now THIS is a pot film. Continue reading Smiley Face

Offside

This goes on my year’s list, a great film about a sport that bores me silly. The film seems to be in real time, following first a man seeking his daughter who’s snuck off to see the Iranian team struggle with Bahrain’s for entrance into the World Cup, the catch being that women aren’t allowed to go to public sporting events. The film smoothly leaves the man behind, jumping to another van (as it passes by, flags waving, excited fans chanting) where a poorly-disguised woman nervously tries to avoid attention.

Continue reading Offside