Rescue Dawn

I have not seen the documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, that Werner Herzog re-made as this fictional account of Dieter Dengler’s captivity in Laos and then escape during the Vietnam War. I am not even sure why Herzog chose to tell Dengler’s story twice, once in documentary form and once in fictional form, with Christian Bale in the role of Dengler. Perhaps someone on this blog has seen them both and can offer an opinion?

The film itself has an oddly uplifting and wildly optimistic ending that is hard to square with the rest of the film. The only real justification for this ending is that it somehow mirrors the relentless optimism that Dengler manages to display throughout his captivity, in marked contrast to the five other prisoners (including a disappointing Steve Zahn). But the great majority of the film is enjoyable (that’s probably the wrong word) and beautifully made. It captures in a matter-of-fact (documentary?) style the torture, degradation, and long period on the run in the jungle that Dengler experienced. Bale is, as usual, expressive and manages to portray strength and vulnerability throughout. Recommended.

interviews, articles etc.

maybe we should have one place to park links to interesting conversations and articles with/about film-makers?

here’s a great interview on the onion’s av club with alex cox.

AVC: Is it hard to rectify what punk stands for and also make movies that cost a lot of money?

AC: Yeah! I think so. I think that’s right, because the money… we spend an awful lot of money on a movie. Twenty percent goes back to the studio for overhead. Who knows how much is going to get eaten up by the principal actors? Even making Repo Man for $1.5 million seemed like a waste of money to me. We had two guys in a car, and yet we have to have a tow truck, a car trailer, another huge vehicle behind it, police cars in front, motorcycle outriders. The only thing we were missing was a Roman Centurion riding along at the front with a big banner. “Here comes the movie!” And I think it’s grandiose. A lot of the time, this last one we did, nobody even knew we were there. We’d be shooting in places, and people would just walk right past us. You film much quicker and have more fun that way.

Dan in Real Life and Doomsday

I saw two movies this weekend, and one was a hateful bit of crass tripe, stitching together bits of other better movies into a shoddy mass-produced mash-up, with a migraine-inducing soundtrack and not a whit of honest human compassion or sympathy.

And the other was Doomsday.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I knew I would love Doomsday when, out of a crowd of terrified Scots trying to escape the plague through a quickly closing security wall, one man reaches his hand forward, and we see not one but three separate shots, from different angles, of that hand brutally squashed off, blood and gristle spurting everywhere. I knew I would not love Dan when, after an opening which established the bare bones of silly-grieving-father trying to control his three sassy daughters while forgoing his own life, there were not three separate shots of Steve Carell’s hand brutally squashed off, blood and gristle spurting everywhere as the emo-indie-folkie on the soundtrack noodled away on a guitar only to be moments later exploded under the wheels of an armored personnel carrier.

Khadak

A lovely film pitched as a “fable” from Mongolia ended up being stranger, more conventionally (or is that unconventionally) avant-garde than I’d expected. It riffs on an underlying sense of myth: a young nomadic sheepherder, in the bouts of epilepsy, has visions which lead him to combat the forces of modernity. But from its cold opening onward, the movie works a different kind of magic. A woman in a static shot stares at the camera, a multi-colored abstract mural on the wall behind seeming like some strange kind of halo; after some long gaze she begins (slowly) counting, and as the numbers go up she struggles to maintain her composure, gripped by an inexplicable sadness. I was hooked.

The film is more poem than narrative, and I was engrossed by how its opaque, allusive plot recedes so that the wash and connectivity of the film’s gorgeous imagery carries you along. I can’t remember where I heard about this, but I liked it.

Moolaade

Ousmane Sembene’s last film manages to keep its focus tight on one community, to weave in warmth and humor and a real sense of pleasure in the everyday, while tackling the big issue of female genital mutilation. It doesn’t preach, doesn’t lay on the horrors with a trowel, in fact while being terribly moving it’s not really melodramatic….

By keeping such a focus and tone, the politics of the movie–and its feminist ethos–also remains local, and hopeful. The challenges to the ritual practice emerge from certain women’s resistance, and their critique ripples out through and changes the community. The men blame the outside world, only audible via the radios all the women listen to, but the women’s resistance is carefully orchestrated and illustrated as entirely organic. If any of you folks do see this, I’d love to discuss its approach to politics more, what seems like the film’s disinterest in (or refutation of) the “postcolonial” or global as the engine of change…..

But don’t see it just to talk abstractions or political theory. It’s a very strong, lovely, small-scale film, deceptively simple and naturalistic.

Days of Heaven (1978)

Last summer I tried to watch The Thin Red Line. I didn’t get too far. All of the huge name actors showing up throughout reminded me too much of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what Terrence Malick was going for. (Isn’t Phil Silvers in the Thin Red Line for a minute?)

The New World, well, Colin Farrell insured that I’d stay away from that one. But I was really struck by the cinematography of the Assassination of Jesse James, which of course got compared – poorly often – to Malick, though I thought the shots there were quite beautiful.

So, heartened by its 90 minute running time, I picked up the new Criterion edition of Days of Heaven. Anyone seen this recently? It’s really an impressive piece of work. The cinematography, of course, but also Sam Shepard’s performance – just the way his face looked throughout – was wonderful. Richard Gere, alas, looked like Richard Gere. Usually movies in the 1970s had the decency to cast actors who didn’t look like freaking models from the pages of Vogue. Except for Gere. He looks like the Fonz when he’s supposed to be working in a filthy Chicago factory.
Continue reading Days of Heaven (1978)

Oscar predictions?

Not much Oscar chatter here (or anywhere, for that matter). Is anyone interested in watching the ceremony? More than likely I will be switching back and forth between the Oscars and the NBA game, all the while grading papers. I do like the films up for nomination this year–they’re all very strong. But I just don’t have that much enthusiasm. Continue reading Oscar predictions?

Lust, Caution

In retrospect, this suspenseful melodrama is preposterous to the extreme. Still, I savored every moment. First, it’s an exquisitely crafted work of cinematic art (though it never strives to be anything other than a romantic thriller). Just watch the first four or five minutes as Ang Lee moves the camera with dexterity and precision to dramatically enliven a game of mahjong (the editing by Tim Squyres and the photography by Rodrigo Prieto are exemplary throughout). Wikipedia tells me mahjong involves skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of chance, which makes the game a perfect metaphor for the film’s central character: a young, idealistic woman (Wei Tang) who goes undercover for a resistance cell to seduce and trap a Chinese official (Tony Leung) collaborating with the Japanese government during Japan’s occupation of China in the late-thirties and early-forties. Continue reading Lust, Caution