Gorgeous Degradation

It’s hard to like a film about a broken-down, narcissistic head-banger with a special gift for sentimentalism and self-destruction. Having the character played by Mickey Rourke doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve always thought of Rourke as something of an oddball, and Darren Aronofsky has provided him the perfect character to both rehabilitate and reify his superfreaky aura. The first forty minutes of The Wrestler burn past with a searing, nearly anthropological furor. I have to admit I was initially enthralled by this portrait of a sub-culture that would ordinarily leave me more than cold. The writing is lean, raw and intense, the acting honest and risky, and Aronofsky utilizes hand held cameras to give the film a DIY, Def Leppard-worthy, visual punch. Shortly thereafter the film settles into something more recognizable and less surprising, but that’s to be expected I guess. Rourke is good, maybe even great. Marisa Tomei is also really good.

Curious Indeed

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a stunning technical achievement in filmmaking. In some ways it is a valentine to the grand pleasures of movie making, but director David Fincher has put his computers to use on a haunting, emotionally resonant, and deeply satisfying story full of heart and soul and loss and love. It’s a movie star movie—a sweeping, epic, Hollywood romance—and one of my favorite films of the year. Continue reading Curious Indeed

Best Music of 2008

With the caveats that I have not yet seen The Wrestler, and that some of these movies were released on DVD in 2008, but in theaters in 2007, here (in alphabetical order) are the movies I most enjoyed in 2008:

The Dark Knight
Hellboy 2
I’m not there
Into the wild
Iron Man
Milk
Paranoid Park
Quantum of Solace
Sukiyaki Western Django
War, Inc.

Gran Torino

In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean war veteran and retired Detroit autoworker who, as the movie opens, is mourning the death of his wife. There are three acts. In the first, Eastwood plays a crotchety, deeply racist and unhappy man whose ire is raised by everything, but especially the Hmong family next door. Act II sees his character mellow, become friendly and attached to this family, or at least the teenage son and daughter, and try to help the son gain skills, a job and some sort of confidence in himself. The Hmong family substitutes for his own family and children, from whom he has become estranged, and he becomes the de facto protector of the largely Hmong neighborhood. In Act III Eastwood contemplates vengeance in response to the brutality of a local Hmong gang. Continue reading Gran Torino

cahiers du cinema’s 100 greatest films

somehow we have managed to not have any discussion of this list published last month in conjunction with some fancy book. lots of fine movies, but also some head-scratchers in both inclusions and omissions. let me say first of all that, for all its blind-spots and excessive emphases, it is nice to see a list that doesn’t have casablanca anywhere on it, let alone in the top 5. on the other hand, they manage to leave out everything by scorsese while finding room for blake edwards’ the party. yes, “birdie num-num” the party. poor jerry lewis must really be upset. other major notables who’re left out completely include herzog, fassbinder, ghatak and malick. chaplin gets five nods (the most for any director, i believe) while most of the screwball classics (plus the marx bros.) get shafted. this is not entirely unexpected, given issues of language–the english language films selected are largely either silent or visual-atmospheric (this also explains manhattan over annie hall as the sole allen), and as you’d expect the heroes of the new wave are represented in spades. hitchcock has three (though i’m not convinced notorious should be in there over shadow of a doubt or psycho) and familiar names from the western and noir canons crop up.

some other surprises are in the rankings. i love the night of the hunter and was pleasantly surprised to see it included, but at #2? we have actually begun to slowly make our way through viewings of films on the list that we’ve either never seen or saw so long ago that we’ve completely forgotten. i’ll post more about these later, but let me note my surprise that vigo’s l’atalante is ranked #5. it’s a nice film, but what am i missing?

more later.

Un film de Arnaud Desplechin: Un conte de Noël

Full of heart and bile, whiskey drenched and reeking of cigarettes, A Christmas Tale hurls the viewer headfirst into a sprawling, gloriously messy, bourgeois comedy populated by a likeable, charming though often irascible, family full of sad-sacks, philosophers and self-obsessed neurotics. There’s the matriarch, Junon (Catherine Deneuve), a dragon lady who exudes maternal warmth when necessary; her husband Abel, who works diligently to keep the peace; their oldest daughter, Elizabeth, a successful playwright who banished her irredeemable younger brother, Henri (Mathieu Amalric), six years earlier; and the baby of the family, Ivan, whose puppyish contentment belies his own fading youth. Hovering above all is the ghost of young Joseph, the first-born son who died from leukemia at age six (Henri was conceived in hopes that his placenta would heal his dying, older brother). These folks, their spouses and children, gather together for a Christmas celebration tinged with dry-eyed melancholy. Junon has recently been diagnosed with leukemia and needs a donor match for a bone-marrow transplant. Thus, much to Elizabeth’s chagrin, Henri returns to the fold. Continue reading Un film de Arnaud Desplechin: Un conte de Noël

Short Takes: Three Films

After voting for Obama, I drove over to Minneapolis to see Happy-Go-Lucky (so as to avoid the internet and CNN). Mike Leigh’s latest functions as a kind of yin to Naked’s yang, centering on a truly happy woman who carefully and successfully negotiates the angry, xenophobic, violent, unfair world that streams around her. Sally Hawkins delivers a lovely, quirky yet believable performance. Her Poppy may be happy but she’s no flake. An elementary school teacher who has traveled the world with her best friend and flatmate Zoe (fine, grounded work by newcomer Alexis Zegerman), Poppy likes to party about as much as she enjoys taking the piss out of life’s rude awakenings. The film opens on one such event when her bike is stolen and Poppy is forced, for the first time, to learn how to drive. It is her driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan channeling David Thewlis) that provides the main thrust of the dramatic action. Continue reading Short Takes: Three Films

Soccer and the visual arts

I mostly started this thread in the hope of goading Arnab and Gio into discussions of Italian soccer. But a couple of movie-related soccer topics have recently come to mind.

First, I just re-watched the central scene of the original Fever Pitch (the re-make was beyond horrible) with Colin Firth as a fanatical, obsessed Arsenal fan. It is a fine portrait of how sports obsession can make you miserable. I loathe Arsenal, and I’m concerned about the decency of the short shorts being worn by soccer players in 1989, but it is still worth seeing: here.

Continue reading Soccer and the visual arts