Author: reynolds

Women on the Verge….

In response to the Danish film Brothers, and in her astute readings of Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine, and elsewhere, Gio’s raised some great points about the depictions of female rage and anger. The topic deserves its own focus, so I’ll paste up her opening challenge and then some of the things she got me thinking about:

what if the mother had been the one to go ’round the bend? what if she had started throwing the house around? it would have been so much worse, so much more serious. but women stay put, stay sane, love everyone, understand everyone — while keeping absolutely gorgeous. i’m reminded of john cassavetes’ a woman under the influence but also, because i just saw it (and would like to write about, but please don’t let me stop you — i’ll be happy to comment!), notes on a scandal. and how about the forest for the trees? women’s rage is always a hair’s breadth away from battiness, whereas men’s rage tends to be rooted in cultural dissonances towards which we are meant to be understanding if not sympathetic.

Continue reading Women on the Verge….

Pretty Good German

The technical brilliance of Soderbergh’s latest, as you probably know a recreation of studio techniques–and some of the attitude/tone–from ’40s pictures, has been given lots of press, and deservedly so. The film’s a glorious collage of shadows and light, line and angle and shape. There are all these lovely sights: background lighting so fiercely overdeveloped that Clooney and Blanchett seem to lose their boundaries, fading into a glow; Blanchett running down a circular stairwell, top wall gone to reveal lovely artificial moonlit clouds and the silhouette of Clooney (in iconic army cap).

And you could watch it as a workshop in photography (all shot by Soderbergh). But I liked other elements as much, even more: Continue reading Pretty Good German

May I get all Mad magazine for a moment?

Depalma’s latest is “The Blecch Dullard.” There are hints of the savage lunacy of the book amped up by the director’s own perverse pleasures–and Hilary Swank is actually fun to watch, playing not just against but actively destructive of type. But sheesh. I could barely keep my eyes open at Hartnettian half-mast. Scarlett Johansson ends up seeming silly in puffy poodle sweaters, Aaron Eckhart gets a few moments of just-right before being delegated to the sidelines for “Benzedrine mania” (which more closely resembles hyperventilating than passion), and Josh Hartnett… well, I’m waiting for him to break out . . . wait for it . . . of pictures, not in ’em! YEAH! That’s what I’m talking about! Ka-ZING!

Suzuki’s Pistol Opera

We’ve discussed Youth of the Beast elsewhere and also over there, and from what I’ve read that’s the film where Seijun Suzuki blasted out of the action genre expected by his studio bosses and into some hyperstylized visual poetry assonant but not consonant with a tough-guy crime thriller. Or, put plainly, it has all the markings of a crime movie but feels like a species entirely alien.

And his films got stranger from there. I just watched the fairly-recent Pistol Opera which seems wholly unconcerned with narrative coherence, instead riffing on gorgeous, gorgeous, silly and stark images. To call this a crime film will steer people wrong; instead, imagine a pop-art reiteration of everything a crime movie might have, including quasi-professional assassin guilds, rivalries between top-ranked killers, and lots of tough-guy and tough-dame patter. It’s glorious to watch, even though I couldn’t pretend to know how one would “make sense” of the film.

Pusher

The first of a three-part series which detail intersecting characters selling drugs on the streets of Denmark. At least I’m pretty sure it’s from Denmark. (They make fun of Swedes.) We follow Frank, a generally unlikable low-level thug with hints that he might have some residual humanity, as he moves through one week–and follow at the most literal level, at times the camera jostling along right over his shoulder as he pushes his way through rave crowds, into bars, and in physical confrontations. (By confrontation I mean something a bit more extravagantly, ‘though never exuberantly, violent.)

I was impressed. The film can be quite funny but never self-consciously, ironically, never with the kind of smart-ass wit playing at tough guy patter–but real nasty guy patter. And its bleak, fairly vicious tone resembles Richard Stark’s Parker novels (captured in the great Point Blank) more than Elmore Leonard or Tarantino. Reviews claim parts 2 and 3 get even better, and the cumulative effect is even stronger. I’ll let you know.

By the by, the new Bond villain (Mads Mikkelsen) turns up as Tonny, a cheese-eating bald punk hanger-on, who takes some vicious beatings here (and, I hear, in the next film). He’s damn good. Hell, everyone is very good.

Borat

I saw Borat with Arnab and Jeff, so I know there’s stuff to say about the movie, based on our initial post-film discussion, and many I’ve had with students and friends since. I guess I’ve been waiting, hoping that others would say it. In a nutshell, the movie will make you laugh. It’s often very, very, very funny. And often a bit tamer and somewhat padded and not as exciting as we’d been hoping. . . but then again part of me is plain excited to see a mainstream(ish) comedy with such transgressive energy, with a sly sharp political edge, with a fat man and a skinny man wrestling nude. So complaining seems like whining (like my dessert was pie, and I’m crying for ice cream), and yet trumpeting seems mere repetition of arguments we’ve made before. I would be curious if someone hates it, then I could pull out my enthusiasm for a defense. I do recommend it, just can’t muster up enough sense of conflict to “make a case” for it.

Recently watched

I thought the documentary (Street Fight) on Newark’s 2002 mayoral race was pretty engaging, largely because its ‘star,’ the rising political bigwig Cory Booker, is as smart and self-effacing and … well, grounded as you’d want a politician to be. I caution: the narrative of the documentary never digs deep into party politics, represents but doesn’t really interrogate or historicize or even explicate the racial tensions which emerged between the two black democrats vying for the job. It shows a collision of corruption, race, poverty, class, politics, and urban realities, but it doesn’t really do much more than make a good showing of such problems. That said, it’s a decent film. And as a complement to the Carcetti/Royce race on The Wire, it was even more compelling to this viewer.
Continue reading Recently watched

The Prestige

An enormously-pleasurable melodrama about duelling magicians, told in a manner that while fractured into a complex time (and mindfuck) structure is never less than coherent and compelling. I’m a sucker for the lore and legend surrounding the heyday of magic (and I’d note that Ricky Jay, a real expert on those subjects, turns up too briefly onstage)–it was a cutthroat business, as interesting for the backstage infighting as for the strange ‘exoticism’ and confidence tricks of the shows. The movie captures that feel very well, even though zeroed in on the story of two rivals. Every actor is quite wonderful, particularly David Bowie in a small turn as Nikola Tesla. Much hay is made about the ‘twist,’ but I wasn’t terribly surprised–and the energies of the plot do not hinge entirely or even too much on that surprise. (As with magic, the “Prestige” may be the showy flash at the end, but the pleasures are all in the getting there. Which brings me back to my theories on narrative, but you all know them, so insert here.)

And I’ll forego further conversation so as not to ‘wreck’ anyone’s surprise. But at some future date I’d love to talk about this. And how the best films of this year have been/are crowd-pleasers–from Lee’s Inside Man to Scorsese’s Departed. Screw the serious?

Bonaddiction

I need a sponsor. Sunday evenings, Max babbling to himself in his room, I head downstairs and flick on the tv before doing some prep work for Monday’s classes. Or that is always the plan. Invariably I flip around the empty gestures on every network until I hit VH1 Celebreality. Every week I forget that it’s on, put it out of my head–as if to ease the addictive behavior once I’m back in front of Bonaduce, sick to my stomach that I’m watching but unable to turn away.

Help me. I’m not at all suckered in by the advertising; I don’t believe for a minute that this is unfettered breakdown. I see it as so much self-destructive vanity, strutting rooster-boy preening for the cameras and an imagined public. What I don’t get is why I watch it. Someone give me a clue. Be my sponsor, and help me shake that red-goateed, gravelvoiced, ropy-muscled, narcissistic monkey off my back.

But at least it’s better than Studio 60.