Daybreakers

In its first 10 minutes (after a brief, somewhat pointless prologue), the Spierig brothers’ Daybreakers revels in a dizzying, dialogue-free rush of world-building — here we are maybe 10 years from now in a night-time late-capitalist gloom, all bluish lighting and rainy reflective streets, shadows and fedoras. A plague of vampirism turned things on their heads, humans are hunted, and the world is on the brink of fiscal and social collapse as the blood supply (ahem) thins out. I thought this was gonna be brilliant.


Continue reading Daybreakers

Recent Disappointments

A Serious Man: My new least favorite Coen Brothers movie. I didn’t make it anywhere close to the great ending. Deciding to hit stop at about 45 minutes in was my favorite thing about it.

Up in the Air: Other than some love for Lambert Field, and Clooney not playing a retard for the first time in a while, I stopped caring the moment the (obviously perceptive) guy ditched the annoying chicky by text message.

Avatar: Once the high wears off from being stoned, I frequently wonder why I took the drugs in the first place. Same thing. Yeah, it’s fun to look at, and Cameron ripping off his own movies so blatantly that he could sue is amusing… I walked out of it thinking it was worth the $13 and sitting through the IMAX ads for the National Guard that still make it look like you couldn’t possibly come home missing a limb or your sanity, but driving a tank will be a real hoot.

The Road: Just a gray joyless turd floating in the toilet at Graumann’s Chinese Theater that I desperately wanted to walk out of, but I had a guest. I kept wondering if Viggo was going to pull a tooth out of his mouth at some point, and then toss it away nonchalantly. Take me with you Charlize! I’ll go walk into the snowy forest with you to escape this! I only take solace in the hope that the family who rescued the child cooked and ate him moments after the closing credits rolled.

Here I am at the Road:
Continue reading Recent Disappointments

Region-Free

I am curious how most of you view DVDs that come from other countries–do most of you have region-free players? If so, what?

I just purchased the comprehensive Laurel and Hardy collection from Amazon UK. It had been marked down from 100 pounds to 30. Of course, the USA doesn’t have such a thing available–it’s all the same two or three mediocre films in crappy editions. However, I can’t play these discs on any of my machines.

First I learned that one might “trick” the laptop software so that it plays all DVDs. I downloaded “AnyDVD” without success and then “Region-Free” software without success. Then I learned that my drive is notoriously resistant to this kind of software.

So what to do? The options are to purchase an external DVD drive for about $100, but I don’t know if there are any complications with the laptop software and hardware. Or to purchase a portable DVD player—10″ inch screens run about 100-150. Or to purchase a full-blown player…but from where? apparently not a single electronics store in my area sells “region-free” players. What’s the deal with that? My options are to go to JR in New York city or order online from Amazon, Overstock or 220 Electronics.

Recommendations? I have to start in on the 21 DVDs of Laurel and Hardy soon! Unfortunately the collection is not complete, though it includes most of their major films–however, it pointlessly includes colorized versions of these films? Who buys a set like this but demands that the originals are colorized?

The Chaser

Insert interesting post here. Damn good–often nerve-wracking, strangely silly at times, blackly sarcastic, then horrifying, then a gut-punch emotional wallop. This is a serial killer flick, of sorts, out of South Korea — a corrupt ex-cop (a sweaty,sleazy, superb Kim Yun-seok) now a pimp, finds that some of his “girls” are going missing. He’s pissed — they’re running away, or some asshole’s selling them, after all the money he paid himself. . . and the film opens with him sending another escort out, only to realize that it’s to the same john who was the last customer for the long-gone women. . . And the film bites down hard on your nerves, razor-blade editing slicing us back and forth from potential victim and killer to angry seeking pimp, but it is (really) very familiar, and then: boom. It shifts. Suddenly the film hangs an abrupt left and it’s going in directions you hadn’t expected, and it begins to slowly ratchet up the tension again.

The performances are strong, the editing superb, director Na Hong-jin shoots with plenty of unobtrusive style… it’s like a great Sam Fuller film, pulpy and histrionic yet smart and then smart-ass and then sincerely melodramatic.

I got a region-2 disc, and I don’t think it’s out here yet–but keep an eye on Netflix. Pretty damn good.

Die Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)

Michael Haneke’s latest, subtitled “a German childrens’ story,” is an austere, black-and-white, period film set in a small, northern village a dozen or so months before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Beautifully photographed, rigorously self-disciplined, and meticulously crafted, The White Ribbon plays like mid-career Ingmar Bergman without the joie de vivre . . . and that’s not such a bad thing. Narrated by the village schoolmaster—who openly acknowledges he is an unreliable witness—some thirty or so years after the events depicted on the screen, the film opaquely yet convincingly illustrates Foucault’s dictum that power functions as a locus of struggle. In the film this struggle appears to be between an ambiguously malevolent group of children, their soft targets, and the authority figures (baron, doctor, pastor, the steward of the baron’s estate, fathers, husbands, etc.) who exercise discipline and control over said youth, who will, presumably, freely participate in the atrocities of Nazi Germany fifteen to twenty years down the road. Continue reading Die Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)

Avatar

There’s been a bit of talk, here and there, on this blog about Cameron’s digi-romance 3D thrillride, but I thought it deserved its own thread. First of all, I’ve seen quite a few films made with the latest 3D technology, but this surely is the finest yet. I don’t want to go into the story too much. It is, as Chris pointed out, Ferngully (I’m taking his word, as I have not seen it). But it is also Aliens (Ribisi doesn’t quite manage to outdo Paul Reiser, but he comes close). Bad corporate interests, good-intentioned scientists, an ambivalence about technology Continue reading Avatar

No subtitles needed, nor subtext….

…yet lest I seem less than enthusiastic, let me be clear: Mike Judge’s Extract may be a little too this or a little too little of that, but I enjoyed the film as much as any comedy this year. Judge has a masterly sense of structure–the film is a well-oiled (if a little over-determined) farce machine, but played with the kind of subtle dialogue-driven character focus for which he doesn’t often get enough credit. Jason Bateman plays the newly-middle-aged owner of a chemical-flavoring company, finding himself at a loss in his relationship with wife Kristen Wiig and unexcited by his job. Mila Kunis’ temp (who we know to be a con artist) catches his eye, but he feels too guilty to do more than dream, until his bartender friend Dean (a shaggy, invested Ben Affleck) gives him a horse tranquilizer and a plan: get a gigolo to seduce your wife, then you can cheat with guiltfree abandon.

That summary seems so busy, so hyperbolic, and the film does get stuck in some obvious bits, almost a necessary by-product of what is at base a reliably conventional comic plot. There’s hints of other stories bubbling up: a read on the workspace that complements his cult hit but doesn’t develop too substantively here; some space opened up but never explored for the two very interesting women (and two strong actors). A shame–the film could have been perhaps great. Instead, it’s just really, really, really enjoyable. What makes it work is how Judge’s style–a kind of deadpan minimalism–so perfectly fuels that silly plot; instead of getting lost in leers and exaggerated tics (his side characters are usually at base cartoonish buffoons), the film takes its sweet time listening to these people talk, even the loonies, gives the actors room to evoke and emote. And if he wraps up with a lot of sentiment, he’s earned it–as well as mocking it, by a late-film plot development that is so blithely derisive that it underscores the empathy Judge creates for (most of) these characters.

Sherlock Holmes

I despair of Reynolds, writing reviews of obscure foreign language thrillers that probably cost the equivalent of a Starbucks latte to make when there is the latest big budget Guy Ritchie movie just begging to be reviewed. Is that how you spend the holiday season? What message are you sending Max? Christ was born, and subsequently crucified and resurrected, in order that we might spend Christmas Day huddled in an air-conditioned movie theater watching explosions.

What to say? Sherlock Holmes is nowhere near as bad as we have a right to expect given that Ritchie is involved. It is probably best not to take the plot too seriously, and some of the fight sequences go on too long and serve little purpose. But Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (as Doctor Watson) do good work here. There is a slight undercurrent of chaste homoeroticism as this pair act like a fussy old married couple. In truth, I can watch Downey in anything; he relies on deadpan humor and a perpetually quizzical expression. There is humor, some nice one-liners, a suitably grimy London, and — despite what the trailer would have you believe — Sherlock Holmes really does have remarkable powers of observation and deduction. If the movie makes any money, it is set up for the appearance of Professor Moriarty in the sequel. Oh, and just like the movies that Reynolds watches, it has subtitles. Go, celebrate the holiday season as God intended.

La Mujer Sin Cabeza/The Headless Woman

Lucrecia Martel’s oblique thriller (or “thriller”?) has made many critics swoon–not just end-of-year lists but leaping into decade round-ups, too. I kinda agree…. ‘though it is the kind of knotty, imagistic film that pushes against the viewers’ (or this one’s) desire for narrative even as Maria Onetto’s brilliant performance as the bourgeois Vero Lala suggests deep wells of story that keep sucking us back in. Continue reading La Mujer Sin Cabeza/The Headless Woman