Author: jeff

L’argent

I saw this French film, Le Souffle, about a delinquent teenage boy abandoned by his father and packed off by his mother to the countryside to live and work on his uncle’s farm. The film’s ability to conjure up the hormonally-induced fever dreams of adolescence (an uneasy mix of primitive violent impulses, rural ennui and sexual desire) is quite palpable and the black and white photography was nice to look at. Anyway, don’t go searching for the film as it is only available on a Region 2 disc, but I bring it up because some reviewers compared the film to the work of Robert Bresson (I’d probably argue Jean Cocteau seeing as the film drifts into surreal, often homoerotic territory but that’s another story). I had never seen a Bresson film and while picking up a novel at the library, I came across a DVD for Bresson’s, L’argent, which was released in 1983 and was Bresson’s final effort. I decided to check it out and see what all the fuss was about. I’m glad I did as this is a terrific yet brutal condemnation of human capriciousness. If you have seen any of Michael Haneke’s films—particularly 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance or Code Unknown—it will be self-evident that Haneke studied L’argent very closely. Continue reading L’argent

United 93

This is one intense film. It is relentless and doesn’t let up until the very. last. moment. I was moved and angered but mostly impressed by the economy of the writing and filmmaking (United 93 makes Munich look like a baroque opera). The “villains” are presented as human (for the most part); you certainly feel their passion and their fear. The passengers lack character per se, but their growing desire to try to do something is palpable, admirable, heroic even (though, by the end, things do go a bit Lord of the Flies . . . puns not intended). The chaos on the ground (in Boston, New York, Newark, Cleveland and some military location) is both outrageous and completely understandable–forgiveable even. There are a couple of ideologically loaded moments (the hijackers in the airport walking past large, glossy, back-lit advertisements for various consumer products. The FAA and the military frustrated by their inability to locate the President to make a necessary leadership decision (the gossip that the Vice President over stepped his bounds by ordering planes shot down is not broached). The audience with whom I sat were visibly emotional and very, very quiet. If one was in any way close to this event, I just don’t know how they could sit through the film.

Big Love

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?

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!

Keane

Watched Keane today, a remarkably discomforting film, written and directed by Lodge H. Kerrigan, with a central performance by Damian Lewis that defies categorization. It’s a claustrophobic exercise in eliciting viewer paranoia as it chronicles a mentally unstable man (is he manic-schizophrenic or simply a paranoid schizophrenic . . . I don’t own a copy of DSM IV so who knows) who is on the lam, off his meds, and may or may not be responsible for the abduction of a daughter the audience is not even sure ever existed. Lewis’s ability to waver from moments of lucidity to a man fighting the voices raging inside his head is downright frightening (and strangely endearing once you remind yourself the guy won’t crawl through the television), and it is this portrait of a man with whom most of us would avoid eye contact (or even cross the street to stay out of his path . . . the gritty underbelly of midtown Manhattan hasn’t looked so bleak and uninviting for a long time) that occupies the first forty-five minutes of the film. But then William connects with a young mother and her seven-year-old daughter holed up in the low-rent hotel where William lives. It is here that a more conventional plot kicks in and the relationship between Keane and this little girl is thrilling due to the film’s unwillingness to make it easy on the audience. Not for the faint of heart or the overindulgent parent; still, Keane rarely goes where you expect it to go and that makes it a truly fine piece of work.
Continue reading Keane

Winter Short Takes

North Country: The climatic scene is shite (something tells me the class action suit didn’t go down quite so dramatically) and the melodrama is ramped up to eleven (indeed, the litany of horrors on display is overwhelming), but director Nikki Caro gets good performances from her cast and her film evokes a sense of place very well. Her commitment to the material made me want to see it through to the end, but Norma Rae is far, far superior. The film also deserves the Million Dollar Baby Award for best performance by an inanimate object (and to think said object has been nominated for an Academy Award!). Continue reading Winter Short Takes

Hustle & Flow

Three parts Hoop Dreams, one part 8 Mile and one part Pretty Woman adds up to one seriously entertaining crunk fairy tale. Set in the fetid streets of Memphis in July, Hustle & Flow takes about 30 minutes to find its groove, but from then on the film is truly irresistible. Terrence Howard is really, really good, but the supporting cast is just as strong (including Isaac Hayes and Ludicris). I’ll leave it to Reynolds to offer a thesis on the film’s politics of race not to mention its representation of black male subjectivity, but I liked this film a lot.