We went to see Wallace and Grommet: Attack of the Were-Rabbit on Saturday. I enjoyed it. I suppose if it takes you five years to make the clay move, you have plenty of time to think of a story. It wasn’t original, but it was solid with nods to the genre. I felt a little ripped-off that the bunnies (whence the were-rabbit) looked so slapdash, I mean, they had five years to make them. It scared the kids, and there are a couple of funny double entedres that indicate it’s not really for them anyway. The best part is that I now know how to revive Pete should he die.
Category: likey
Coming of Age
Saw a couple worthy additions to this tired yet never waning genre: My Summer of Love and Thumbsucker. Both are definitely worth the effort. My Summer of Love hovers somewhere between the work of Ken Loach and Eric Rohmer–an atmospheric love story suffused with dejection and desire about two adolescent girls whose sexual relationship is shaped by class division. Thumbsucker is that rare bird–a funny yet poignant, American coming-of-age film that actually feels deftly original (I didn’t read Kirn’s novel). Strong performances (in particular, Tilda Swinton, Lou Pucci and Kelli Garner) and a serio-comic script that captures the awkwardness of adolescence while also showing great respect for those adults (teachers, parents, dentists) whose commitment to working with young people often leave them confused and floundering in that liminal space between these two worlds (Vincent D’Onofrio and Vince Vaughn should not go unnoticed). I did not imagine I would like this film as much as I did.
The Upside of Anger
Another one of Joan Allen’s flurry of good and overlooked films this year. This is more melodramatic than I am usually willing to sit through, but it’s well done. Nothing “stupid” happens in the plot, which I appreciate on one hand. However, I wonder how realistic it is that a mother and four daughters get abandoned by the father and none of them strike out at Kevin Costner, or do anything less than act like a grown-up. The mother is the least stable of the bunch, and that seems unlikely, though certainly possible; and even she deals with the obstacles thrown into her life in a mostly grown-up way (She does drink a lot, but so do I. Who am I to cast stones?) Continue reading The Upside of Anger
3-iron
Around the television series which clog up our account but which Kris and I both like watching (“Lost” and the upcoming “Battlestar Galactica,” if Netflix ever releases it to us), I seem to have all these small films in the queue. (And I never get to the theater at all.) I’m not sure if I should post on any of these–I’ve liked the majority of them, but they also don’t open up whole new cinematic vistas for me… they’re just good. So, if you’re interested: The aforementioned Assisted Living is recommended, a capsule review tacked onto my incoherent post regarding good and evil.
Here’s another: Kim Ki-Duk’s 3-iron is about a guy somewhat adrift in his life, sneaking into vacationers’ homes to live for a few days while they’re gone, before moving on. One house he happens into isn’t empty; a woman is there, and emerges bruised and beaten after he’d settled in. What follows lacks grandiose conflict, although there is a brief, brutal, and powerful collision with her husband, but it is a film that manages–with little dialogue, and without too much plotting–to convey a real sense of the inner lives of its characters. It feels like a poem more than a narrative, and it looks like one, too. I’m not sure what that means, but it’d look good on the poster. It’s rare to see a film so enamored of how its characters bathe, dress, eat, just silently circle around one another in small spaces… (but, don’t worry, it’s not Bresson–there is narrative to hang our identifications on).
I liked it.
Palindromes
OK, here’s a truly dangerous work of indie filmmaking. I have very fond memories of Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, but I absolutely hated Happiness and was mostly indifferent to Storytelling. Palindromes, however, is a wholly original, viscerally discomforting film which incisively interrogates our cultural obsession with childhood and innocence, family and individuality, self and other, normals and deviants, faith and hypocrisy, the grotesque and the sublime. It comes at the pro-life/pro-choice debate from such a skewed angle, but, in the end, I think it to be a deeply human film and worth the effort.
light, frothy fun
keeping the topic title general so that others can add to it as well, but what i really want to plug is a bollywood blockbuster from this summer: bunty aur babli. a wonderful piece of entertainment about a young man and a young woman from two small towns somewhere in north india who decide that they want the kind of exciting life that they read about happening elsewhere in the country. so they run away, meet each other and begin a life of cons and scams. the plot (or the film’s view of the small town/big city divide) doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny but the film is so giddy it doesn’t matter. the actors–abhishek bachchan and rani mukherjee–are perfect, the writing is good (and the subtitles mostly adequate), and the direction and music are also excellent. the movie does sag for the last 25 minutes (it is about 2 hours 40 long) but moves pretty quickly until then. i think it should be pretty accessible to non-indian audiences, though some of the nuances of accent and demeanour (which are codes for issues of class etc.) will probably get lost. netflix has it, so if you’re interested in mostly mindless fun or in seeing what’s big in india these days, rent it. it also features a blockbuster “item” song (featuring aishwarya rai) that’s been all the rage in the country for some months now.
The Constant Gardener
This is a first rate film, directed with assurance and maturity by Fernando Meirelles. Reynolds has mentioned before how I felt great ambivalence about City of God. It was a dazzling piece of filmmaking but it seemed to me that Meirelles foregrounded his skills as a director over the provocative material; the results being a film that makes a commodity spectacle out of poverty and crime. There is some of that in The Constant Gardener, but I still feel as if the filmmakers work very diligently to not get in the way of the story (even if the generic designs of Le Carre’s conspiracy thriller drag things down in its final act). I look forward to our discussion. This is a film worth talking and arguing about.
More Quick Takes
I watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior the other night and enjoyed it. Tony Jaa seems to defy gravity and the big set pieces were well constructed and entertaining, and, I think, there was little use of wires to manufacture the illusion (though I may be proved wrong). One chase scene through the Bangkok streets was excellently orchestrated and a Tuk-Tuk chase scene was a lot of fun. Pure genre flick–nothing necessarily original–and though it lacks the audacious high style of Kung Fu Hustle, I would argue this modest tale of rural values overcoming urban corruption has a lot more heart. Continue reading More Quick Takes
Quick takes
Bad Boy Bubby–I had much trouble getting past the sound issues. (A prefatory note on the dvd indicates that the movie was recorded in binaural sound, replicating the way the protagonist hears. I thought–how interesting–and then struggled and grimaced my way through the movie, unable to pick up all that much of what was going on one moment, then blasted the next.)
Continue reading Quick takes
The Americanization of Emily
Another quick recommendation: this apparently came out as part of a box set of “controversial” films. It’s a doozy–in some ways structured (and scored, and shot) like a romantic comedy set in Britain during WWII, with James Garner as the hero/cad, James Coburn in the Tony Randall sidekick role (but getting a lot more action), and Julie Andrews as the perky, spunky British war widow. But Paddy Chayefsky wrote the script, and there are these dizzying moments of speechifying — Garner ripping apart the European contempt for Americans or savaging the glorification of war; a lovers’ fight between Garner and Andrews that is ruthlessly cutting, not cutesy — and a dark, dark satire on the way wars are run and remembered. I’m not sure what exactly made it controversial–the heroine’s loose (and unconcerned) sexuality, the savage demystification of D-Day and WWII heroics… but it still has a
It’s not Network-good, but it’s pretty damn good.