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.

Continue reading Offside

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.

Sweeney Todd

The first forty-five minutes or so are slower than expected (there’s a lot of musty exposition to wade through and all is delivered via solemn arias, duets and trios). This, I thought, was for fans of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Stephen Sondheim and Dante Ferretti only (OK, so that’s a pretty big group of fans and they were being well-rewarded, but still). Then the blood starts to flow (and flow) and the mood grows darker, more macabre, more wickedly comic, and the narrative’s original melodramatic leanings give way to something best labled Jacobean revenge tragedy. I’m a fan of Hal Prince’s 1979 staging–which can be found on VHS and DVD here and there–with its Brechtian flourishes and its larger than life Grand Guignol gestures; but Burton strives for something more intimate, more interior, less stagy. Poetic justice has no room in Burton’s version of Sondheim’s musical and, therefore, sweet sailor Anthony Hope and Judge Turpin’s “pretty little ward” Johanna are somewhat minimized in order to focus more specifically on Sweeney Todd’s obsessive desire to avenge the destruction of his family. The film has its share of flaws, but I think it may be one of Burton’s greatest achievements. The stunningly beautiful, stunningly grotesque, stunningly bloody final tableau may be Burton’s most compassionately horrific image ever committed to celluloid.

bladerunner

from the brief discussion of bladerunner in the film quiz thread, chris:

I think there are four versions released (5, 4, 3 and 2 discs respectively). This was the only version that gave me the new cut (no doubt containing 17 seconds of new material) plus the old director’s cut. Truthfully, I just wanted ‘Bladerunner’ on DVD so I can throw out my old video version. I’ve always liked the movie (a lot) but I found myself teaching a bit of it this past semester, so I thought it would be useful to have it on DVD.

can someone explain to me why so many smart critics (and reynolds as well) slam this movie? i don’t think it is as good as i thought it was when i saw it as a teenager but does it really deserve to be reviled as it so often is, or just faintly praised? here, for instance, is stephen metcalf on the new dvd set, on slate. he has very positive things to say about the film’s stunning visuals and atmospherics, but the review is framed more in terms of the film’s mythos and is finally dismissive. okay, so there are some lame narrative moments–but isn’t this on many levels a visionary film that has had a gigantic impact on its genre?

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

I can’t decide if this was enjoyable crap or utter crap. A bit of both, I suppose. Mostly the latter. Bigger budget than the first, and even more preposterous plot. Helen Mirren is humiliated by the awful dialogue. Nicholas Cage plays the role seriously, and there is an intensely annoying subplot of the dysfunctional relationships between Cage and Kruger, and Voight and Mirren. That said, the sidekick, Riley (Justin Bartha), is a lot of fun, and some of the set piece action sequences are good. On reflection, this is utter crap. Even the kids thought it sucked.