The star of this delirious, chaotic, hilarious movie is Hit Girl (the utterly wonderful Chloe Grace Moretz), daughter of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, in a return to crazy-eyed form), and one of a new breed of superhero stalking the streets of New York. The trailers, and even the first 15 minutes of the movie might suggest that Kick-Ass himself (Aaron Johnson) is our hero, but he just provides the narration and the brief moments of self-reflection. The movie belongs to Hit Girl, from the slew of profanity that comes out of her eleven-year old mouth, to her proficiency with gun and knife, to her glorious impersonation of Chow Yun-Fat (Big Daddy raised her on John Woo movies). I could recount the plot, but that would be silly. Just go see it and have some fun.
women’s films
just kidding. the embalmer, a 2002 italian movie by gomorrah‘s director matteo garrone, is a longing, brave, heartbreaking dirge to doomed desire. peppino, a dwarfish and very ungainly middle-aged neapolitan taxidermist played by a fabulous ernesto mahieux, falls in love with a spectacularly handsome young man who, too, has a passion for taxidermy. peppino convinces young valerio to come to work for him. but, then, who knows: maybe valerio doesn’t have a passion for taxidermy but simply a sense of the dead-endedness of what he’s currently doing. or maybe he’s just flattered that peppino should like him so much. this is only one of the multiple uncertainties on which this film so brilliantly pivots. Continue reading women’s films
The Good Old Stuff
The fussy particulars of every stray image, every slightly off-center accent or line reading, make Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer a gloriously fun visually-enthralling puzzlebox, even if the storyline seems a bit thinner, a bit more dependent upon a too-easy associative political anxiety. (And a bit too invested in a shrill misogyny that seems both allusively and reductively Hitchcockian.)
Zhaownrrhhh
I lack any good rationale for linking these three films under a loose “point” about genre, but I’m lazy and haven’t posted in forever.
Prachya Pinkaew’s Tom yum goong (renamed in the US The Protector by some dolt) is in many ways simply a showcase for Tony Jaa jumping really high and kicking people in the face, or flying through the air to land with his knees on someone’s nose, or jumping from a standstill to smash a lightpost over a guy’s head, or doing a backflip and landing on a narrow scaffold over a long fall to escape a crazy BMX guy trying to run him over. And so on. It’s got a prototypical faux-classical schmaltzy set-up: the ancient protectors of elephants lose an elephant–and her baby!–to mafiosi in Sydney. Revenge/rescue ensues. Cue Tony Jaa’s thighs and steel toes. Continue reading Zhaownrrhhh
John Forsythe, R.I.P.
Adieu, John. Even when I was 12 years old I wanted hair like his.
Justified
Based on the first two episodes, this is worth continuing with. Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a US Marshal who is quick to draw his gun, and for whom the parallels with the role of a marshal in the early West still seems relevant. Early in the first episode he is posted back to Harlan County, Kentucky, where he grew up, and the rest of the series appears to take place there. Givens is based on a recurrent Elmore Leonard character, and Leonard is credited as an executive producer.
Part of the pleasure of the series is seeing Olyphant reprising his role as Seth Bullock, but with far more enjoyment than he showed in Deadwood. In that show he was one of the weakest characters: all repressed fury without a hint of irony. But in Justified, Olyphant is far more relaxed, with an easy smile and a sly sense of humor. There is menace when he threatens a suspect, but it is always delivered gently.
But the real reason to watch this is the locale in which it takes place. This is rural Kentucky, and the show displays a real sympathy for the ex-coal miners and the assorted losers who populate the trailers and shacks that litter the show, even when those same people become Nazi thugs, or small time thieves. In each of the first two episodes the audience is invited to develop some empathy with those on the wrong side of the law. And there are some lovely touches that bring out the clash of worlds, for example a prison bluegrass band performing at a birthday party held at an exclusive country club.
netflix
is there any way at all to find out what one’s friends’ scores on a specific movie are? seems like netflix disabled that function. i really liked it.
Brooklyn’s Finest
Parallel but intersecting stories, the perspective of the street and the cops, gritty realism, the presence of actors we know from their portrayals of Clay Davis, Wee-Bey and Omar… it is not hard to figure out that Brooklyn’s Finest is trying to mine the rich territory staked out in The Wire. It fails, unsurprisingly given that the bar is pretty high, but it does so predictably and disappointingly. The movie, filmed on location in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, follows three cops. Ethan Hawke is desperately trying to cash in on some drug raids to make a down payment on a new house for his large and expanding family (his Catholicism is referenced often). Don Cheadle is an undercover cop, who has infiltrated a drug gang (led by Wesley Snipes, in a fine performance), and feels the tug of dual loyalties. Richard Gere is a weary alcoholic, a few days from retirement, in love with a prostitute, unable to find meaning in what he does. Inevitably, these three stories converge in the final half hour. Continue reading Brooklyn’s Finest
Riparo
i’m going to waste some breath here on an italian film i just saw which no one on this blog will, and probably should, watch. It’s about a lesbian couple who, coming back from a lovely holiday in tunisia, finds hidden in the trunk a stowaway moroccan kid (17? 18?). in fact, this is not exactly what happens. it is one of the lovers, a conflicted and tender maria de medeiros, who sees the boy while looking for something in the trunk. she doesn’t tell her girlfriend mara until they are safely in italy and in a deserted place. in fact, she doesn’t tell her at all; she just darts to the back of the car and lets the poor kid, who’s by now cramped, sick, and dehydrated, out of the miserable tight spot in which he has spent at least 24 hours. Continue reading Riparo
Film Criticism in the Internet Era
This is not my bailiwick, and I assume you have all seen this, but I’d be interested in your reactions:Â The Death of Film Criticism. I’m particularly interested in how colleges and universities — the discipline — evaluates and weighs scholarship published outside of the usual refereed print formats.