Author: reynolds

Life Aquatic

So I reacquainted myself with Steve Zissou last night–Kris hadn’t seen the film. I had, and felt positive but less enthusiastic … it felt that first time through a bit scattered, familiar in tone and some of its technical and thematic peccadilloes, but somehow less cohesive than my favorite Wes Anderson films. I think it’s worth re-assessing, however. I found myself struck by the expanded range and nuance of Anderson’s style and concerns, and I was even more thunderstruck by the emotional wallop of the last scene. Continue reading Life Aquatic

Junebug

I know Jeff can (will!) pipe up about his appreciation of this, too–and I’m curious what others would/do/will think. But I think this is a fantastic film, with a distinct visual and narrative sensibility, and Phil Morrison should (will!) be a big name in American film in the next few years.

Plot in one line: rich Chicago art-gallery owner heads South with her husband to woo a strange folk artist, and stays a stretch with hubby’s family, who seem–at first–like a glorious gallery of absurdist Southern caricatures. Continue reading Junebug

What a country!

In formerly repressive Soviet Union, vampires is so crazy! Is like whole country a battleground–between good and evil!

I should do all my posts in Yakov Smirnoff’s voice. So, like, Jeff and I saw Night Watch, which was kind of deliriously fun. I’m going to cautiously draw a comparison with Von Trier’s The Kingdom, because both films have a loopy laughing-gas good time reinvigorating some pretty standard cliches. (The caution is: no way no how does Watch approach Lars-ian lunacy. But it’s at least far afield from the somber darkness of much “horror/fantasy”.) Will it appeal to D&D players? You’ll have to ask Bruns, but for those of us who can’t tell this world-building mythos from that one, I Continue reading What a country!

Shame

The old grad school game, reimagined: following Chris’ comment that he almost felt embarrassed that he hadn’t ever seen McCabe and Mrs. Miller, two versions of the Shame game.

1. What ‘great film’ have you not seen (that you seriously regret not having seen)?
Me: Renoir’s Rules of the Game. I even own it, and still haven’t watched it. Pitiful.

2. What ‘great film’ do you shamefully not like/enjoy/appreciate? (NOTE: NOT those films others call great but you despise. Instead, ones you shamefacedly would avoid disparaging unless pushed.)
Me: Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. I know I should like it, but…. every time I try again, I stop liking the movie after the scorpion fight.

(Another version might be: What ‘mediocre film’ do you secretly love, one you know is NOT good but nonetheless cherish? Jeff, you’re only allowed one answer.)

Johnny To

I’ve praised this director before, but I’ll bump him up again, having just watched Running on Karma, a neatly-strange little mix of genres that plays out quite enjoyably. In a nutshell: bodybuilder/male-stripper (Andy Lau, in a muscle suit) is a former Buddhist monk and sees karma, which gets him entangled with a police investigation. Yes.

It takes its notions of karma and the pleasurable protocol of action sequences seriously, yet its tone avoids that kind of unblinking engagement in genre or tone that other Hong Kong directors (like Woo) sometimes fall into–the conventions are, when you’re being melodramatic, play it over-the-top melodramatic, and the same when being funny, or romantic, or…. To, on the other hand, has this lightness of touch–while never mocking or ironic, his films also dance across generic boundaries so that, thinking you’re watching a comedy, something fairly violent happens, and vice versa. Besides the pleasures of Lau (I’ll go ahead and say it–as charismatic as and far more interesting than Chow Yun Fat), and the textbook beauty of To’s action choreography, you get a surefooted spinning that meets and disrupts our expectations.

So check out Karma, or even better, my favorite The Mission, or any of the many films of his Netflix carries. I mean you, Howell and Chakladar. These are damn fine action films.

Time again for short takes: the why bother? version

To save others from what I endured:

Don’t Meet the Fockers. Even with Dustin Hoffman’s enthusiasm, an exercise in apathy. Imagine if Bresson made a Hollywood comedy, then got drunk and let his monkey direct.

Stay away from R-Point, which is a war-slash-ghost movie from Korea. A troop ends up in the middle of no-man’s-land, and so do viewers. There’s no good violence–nothing lopped off, only a few stray bullets and carefully-sprinkled blood (yawn)–and the pallid female ghost with long unwashed hair, required for all horror films made in Asia these days, doesn’t even hunch over or crawl on the floor.

Cache/Hidden

Jeff and I saw this together last night. We walked in as fans of director Michael Haneke, and walked out with that adoration confirmed, if not exuberantly so–I think it was a strong, smart, challenging film, if not quite the equal of his finest (Time of the Wolf). So it is highly recommended, and I think we both want to puzzle over its objectives and accomplishments.

That said, it is also a film best discussed after viewing, and I don’t want to disrupt any of the pleasures of the text by giving away this or that–you can’t really start addressing without naming, so I’ll avoid explicit spoilers but can’t sidestep certain specifics. Continue reading Cache/Hidden

13 Short Films about Arnab and Jeff

Perhaps, like me, you’ve noticed an underlying–sometimes surfacing–tension between Jeff and Arnab in posts on this site. As I have learned from the movies, such tensions inevitably signal a future moment of intense connection and union. I have been trying to imagine how that future union may occur…. (air gets all wavy and fuzzy:) Continue reading 13 Short Films about Arnab and Jeff