Author: reynolds

Moolaade

Ousmane Sembene’s last film manages to keep its focus tight on one community, to weave in warmth and humor and a real sense of pleasure in the everyday, while tackling the big issue of female genital mutilation. It doesn’t preach, doesn’t lay on the horrors with a trowel, in fact while being terribly moving it’s not really melodramatic….

By keeping such a focus and tone, the politics of the movie–and its feminist ethos–also remains local, and hopeful. The challenges to the ritual practice emerge from certain women’s resistance, and their critique ripples out through and changes the community. The men blame the outside world, only audible via the radios all the women listen to, but the women’s resistance is carefully orchestrated and illustrated as entirely organic. If any of you folks do see this, I’d love to discuss its approach to politics more, what seems like the film’s disinterest in (or refutation of) the “postcolonial” or global as the engine of change…..

But don’t see it just to talk abstractions or political theory. It’s a very strong, lovely, small-scale film, deceptively simple and naturalistic.

Seductive destructions

I promised a post on In Bruges, which Kris and I very much enjoyed, but I’ve been wracking my brain about what exactly grabbed me about it. The plot’s too Tarantino: two hitmen sent to cool their heels in Bruges, and they do the sightseeing thing, while one (Ray, played by Colin Farrell) suffers both a crushing (funny) ennui with all things Bruges and the lingering ethical after-effects of their last gig. Farrell is not just better than I’ve seen him, and not just finally good (since I don’t think I’ve ever really thought much of his performances), he’s pretty damn good–holds his own in the constant precise shadings and even more constant tonal shifts of writer-director McDonagh’s dialogue. Ralph Fiennes shows up two-thirds of the way through and rips it up, gloriously unblinkingly BenKingsleyinSexyBeastish as the ridiculous vicious boss Harry.

Ostensibly the film uses this black-comic set-up as cover for a plot/theme about violence, kids, … stuff McDonagh’s exploited before in his play “The Pillowman.” But as a morality play, the thing’s quite thin–clearly, the pleasures of viciousness don’t just outweigh a moral vision, they stomp the shit out of it. Continue reading Seductive destructions

Better than eh

After you get past (or just used to) its Wes-Andersonny tics, Rocket Science boasts great acting from its actually-adolescent-looking cast, and manages to be that teen-angsty-romance-schoolcompetition sort of film without fading into those films’ ruts. It was funny, moving — but really the leads (Reece Thompson and Anna Kendrick) made the film more than a minor pleasure.

Acting also amps up the rewards of The Assassination of Jesse James, with the justly-nominated Casey Affleck as the weaselly Bob Ford wheedling across the screen in a really great performance, and lots of strong work from supporting cast (Sam Rockwell is reliably great, Paul Schneider quite funny, and Garret Dillahunt outstanding as the hangdog Ed Miller). Plus the film looks a wonder, shot by Roger Deakins to enthusiastically capture the look of images (photographed and painted) from the era depicted. Still, I found the story often muddled — some great dialogue, but… well, James was a cipher, and I couldn’t even get a real handle on Ford, let alone the film itself. Intriguing at first, always ravishing to see, but after a while (and it goes on a while) wandering with the emphasis on wan.

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