…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.
Category: (by verdict)
Syndromes and a Century
This is such a warm, engaging and magically entertaining film. The narrative begins in the early eighties at a hospital in rural Thailand and mostly follows a young, strong-willed female doctor as she negotiates her position in a world divided by traditional beliefs systems and late-modern efficiency. The second half seemingly takes place in the present but tells (more or less) the same story with many of the same actors, focusing mostly on a young male doctor (we meet him in the first section) working in a very modern, urban hospital. I can’t tell you what it all means–Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a kinder, gentler David Lynch–but the film has a kind of dreamy, Proustian quality as it dances lightly around such themes as time, memory, repetition, and the mystery and impermanence of beauty. Of course, Syndromes is very elliptical but not frustratingly so (its ninety-minute running time breezes by). In fact, I’d describe the tone of the film as comically effervescent. In terms of form, this may be one of the most beautifully shot films I’ve seen all year.
How tasteless would it be….
… to ask Why So Serious?
Sacco & Vanzetti (2007)
In light of the criticism of There Will Be Blood on political grounds, I recommend watching this documentary about the lives, trial and deaths of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The events take place contemporaneously with those depicted in TWBB (from just before World War I until 1927), and Upton Sinclair wrote another book, Boston, that is a fictionalized account of the trial. Here the focus is much more clearly workers, collective action and revolutionary movements – and the state repression that they engender – as emblematic of the “golden age†of American capitalism. Continue reading Sacco & Vanzetti (2007)
Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvaaaa – HEEEEEEE – na
The Ten perhaps deserves no major acclaim–as a sketchy chapter-driven film, it misses often enough to make it casually pleasurable. But it’s never less than amiably and enjoyably silly, and there are a few bits that are amazing, especially Liev Schrieber as a suburban homeowner sucked into a competition with his neighbor over CAT-scans. And it makes casual fun out of religious law, anal rape, and the death of children — what’s not to love? Certainly worth your time, although I’ll recommend Smiley Face again as being the best bet for funny-films-that-did-poorly-at-the-box-office-and-are-now-available-on-dvd.
I also have been watching The Love Bug with Max, who John is probably wondering about. I forgot the power of Dean Jones. And there’s a scene where Herbie tries to commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The car actually perches on the railing, teetering precariously over the Bay. Hilarity! Now I’m going to queue up The Apple Dumpling Gang for its long-forgotten opium-withdrawal scene, Knotts and Conway wracked with feverish rage….
Smiley Face
I don’t go in much for pothead humor, always finding Cheech and Chong too much like hanging out with pothead friends of mine to really enjoy the experience. (I liked them at first, but then I kept hoping they’d just fall asleep already.) I gave Half Baked a shot, but–nah. Maybe it’s my own non-pothead back-story. (Alas, I probably identify more with Foster Brooks.) So maybe pot movies are a genre beyond me. Until I saw Harold and Kumar, which was a loony delight, ineffably (or just effing) funny. That’s it, then. Found the one true pot film.
Then I saw Smiley Face, and–now THIS is a pot film. Continue reading Smiley Face
Offside
This goes on my year’s list, a great film about a sport that bores me silly. The film seems to be in real time, following first a man seeking his daughter who’s snuck off to see the Iranian team struggle with Bahrain’s for entrance into the World Cup, the catch being that women aren’t allowed to go to public sporting events. The film smoothly leaves the man behind, jumping to another van (as it passes by, flags waving, excited fans chanting) where a poorly-disguised woman nervously tries to avoid attention.
There Will Be Blood
Wow. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it. Sure, there are echoes of Griffith, Welles, Wyler, Huston, Kubrick, Malick, and Coppola but There Will Be Blood is its own beast—a remarkably assured, unpretentious, muscular work of American filmmaking (I’ll compare it right now to Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Part II and Raging Bull). Anderson tells an epic narrative of power and providence, fathers and sons, religion and commerce, sin and hypocrisy; and he is assisted by a towering, career-defining performance from Daniel Day Lewis. Lewis is rail-thin, his shoulders hunched forward, his body askew and slightly out of balance; nevertheless, his Daniel Plainview is a determined, singularly-obsessed yet tortured maverick of a character, and Lewis fills the screen with a searing, charismatic, misanthropic intensity. He is equally matched by Paul Dano who mesmerizes as the evangelical preacher who won’t back down as well as this preturnaturally astute child actor, Dillon Freasier, who plays Plainview’s son H.W. Jonny Greenwood’s score punctuates Robert Elswit’s hardscrabbled images with scraping discordant notes. I can’t think of a thing I would want changed and can’t wait to see it again. Run, don’t walk.
A Tale of Two Crappy Movies
I watched 300 yesterday and Shoot ‘Em Up today, neither with great expectations, but at least with the hope of some visceral pleasure. 300 was, to my mind, easily the worst 2007 movie that I watched. It’s pretensions to seriousness, its vicious message about masculinity and child-rearing, its frankly racist representation of “Persians†and its complete lack of irony and self-reflection mostly made me angry. Even the presence of McNulty as a Spartan traitor was not enough to relieve the stupidity of the movie.
Shoot ‘Em Up, on the other hand, despite a lack of any socially redeeming value, and some occasional lapses into misogyny (in particular, a scene with Giamatti, Bellucci and a gun), was a blast. It is exactly what it promises: a series of utterly implausible gun battles, leavened with some double entendres and deadpan humor. I have no idea what could have persuaded Giamatti, Bellucci and Clive Owens to have agreed to appear in the movie, and they appear to have made up the plot as they went along, but Owens makes a damn fine gunfighter with no name. The bottom line, I suppose, is that 300 is moronic, but takes itself seriously, while Shoot ‘Em Up is a little less stupid, a lot more fun, and does not take itself seriously at all.
Once
The premise of this little musical about an Irish street busker/vacuum repairman and a Czech immigrant is so simple you wonder why it’s never been done before. Over the course of a week or so, these two meet cute and you think, OK, indie musical rom-com, but all generic expectations get thrown out the window as the film slowly but surely evolves into something completely different–a moving testament to creativity, determination, love, loss, compromise, stasis, and the never-ending joys of a melodically infectious pop song. Noel Coward would be proud.