Juno

Kris and I both loved this, its acid-tongued stream of one-liners a tart complement to its openhearted appreciation of all characters. Every performer in this film is pitch-perfect, special mention for Ellen Page who is as vivid and lovely and moving as everyone says, and has as good an ear for her lines as the always-remarkable Michael Cera (who seems to have an uncanny ability to find whole new symphonies of nuance in the blank-faced befuddlement of the poor guy to whom things happen).

I was most impressed by how the film, even as it turned into the skid toward certain generic expectations, confounded the tendency to lay blame or find a convenient villain or foil.

[Minor spoliers ahead]

Continue reading Juno

the center of the world (molly parker)

i met luminous canadian actress molly parker, who plays a main character in deadwood and may be known to some of you through that show, in marion bridge, an equally luminous, if painful, 2003 canadian drama of family, abuse, and endurance. since i found molly parker stunning — she is, yes, beautiful, but she’s also an actress who can convey a whole depth of feelings with just the way she looks — i went looking for other films of hers and saw last night wayne wang’s 2001 leaving-las-vegas-remake(of sorts) the center of the world, based on a story by wang, miranda july, paul auster, and siri hustvedt. Continue reading the center of the world (molly parker)

Two-Lane Blacktop

I’m surprised how much I liked this film; its fanciful reification of American myths as played out by three car jockeys and a hippie drifter girl on the homosocial backroads of early-seventies America is both nostalgically evocative and comically addictive. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson can’t act their way out of paper bags, but the script doesn’t really ask much from them. They eat, sleep and shit car-talk; the scenes they occupy are so pure, generically speaking, they’re apt to put you to sleep. The film’s heart and soul, however, belongs to the trickster/mythmaker “G.T.O.” As played to perfection by Warren Oates, this character is a slippery, mercurial, American original, and Oates races away with the film. While Oates’ iconic character may attempt to steal fire from the gods, he’s also haunted by a nagging rootlessness. “If I’m not grounded soon, I’m going to go into orbit” he cautions himself. It’s a moment both touching and ludicrous, yet Oates makes you believe.

The Golden Compass

This movie was always going to be something of a disappointment to those (like me) who enjoyed and admired Philip Pullman’s book, and indeed the entire ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a children’s adventure movie, it is a creditable effort.

The religious elements of the book disappear from the movie, though only in name. We never hear the words ‘religion’ or ‘church’ but the connections between the ‘Magisterium’ (itself an explicitly religious term) of the movie and organized religion is obvious enough, from the garb worn by its priests to the iconography on the walls and ceilings. The genesis story is mildly disguised in its telling, but again, anyone over the age of 13 will be able to connect the dots. And it is a terrifying story, as good a critique of modern Christianity as one could hope for: the attempt by the church to sever the connection between children and their souls in order to render them obedient and safe from sin. Continue reading The Golden Compass

Johnny T—just kidding. Lift

DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter’s low-budget Lift never quite escapes the gravity well of certain over-determined conflicts or plot dynamics, but that’s the only negative thing I’m going to say about it. After reading about this in some article (I think at Slate) about indie films that slip between the cracks, I stuck it on my Netflix queue and found it pretty damn rewarding. Niecy (an excellent, excellent Kerry Washington) is a young woman trying to move past service to more leadership roles at a department store, grappling with a complex relationship with her demanding mother (Lonette McKee), and struggling with a relationship with her trying-to-go-straight (off the pot, off the game) boyfriend (Eugene Byrd). Oh, and she makes a real good living by stealing the very finest of designer products. Continue reading Johnny T—just kidding. Lift

Instead of another Johnny To thread…

…let’s call it “Reconceiving the Action Flick.” I’ve seen in the last week three pretty strong, strange films which seem bound up in the generic constraints of the action film but, with Houdini’s flair, slip the shackles to become (in 2 of the 3) something kind of wonderful, odd, sui generis. Continue reading Instead of another Johnny To thread…

Blame It On Fidel (La Faute a Fidel)

Directed by Julie Gavras (daughter of Costa-Gavras), this tells the story of a young, nine year-old girl in early 1970s Paris. Born of a well-to-do family, and used to bourgeois comforts, she reacts angrily when her parents become radicalized by events in Franco’s Spain and Allende’s Chile, and by the women’s liberation movement. The movie watches and evaluates the parents through the eyes of the girl, Anna (played by an impressive Nina Kervel-Bey). Not a great film, primarily because the parents’ are never believable, either as radicals or parents, and because the trajectory of the film is too obvious, as Anna softens to the revolution, questions her catholic nun teachers, and comes to like the “beatnik-hippy” friends that her parents make in their solidarity work. It lacks the hard edge of Costa-Gavras’s films, exploring the human reaction to great events rather than the events themselves. Still, it is an affecting film, if only because these were genuinely momentous events going on, and to live through them was to be transformed. As soon as I finished watching I found good versions of ‘Ay Carmela’, ‘Hasta Siempre’ and ‘Bella Ciao’ to download and listen to. It could almost have been the 1970s again.

The Mist

A gut-punching horror film that captures with almost perfect pitch the pervasive dread of Stephen King’s best work. Okay, sure: this is a giant other-dimensional bug movie, with a creature-feature set-up (a group of civilians trapped in a small space, facing this aggressive unknown), and laden with many of the sorts of corn-poney character tics that sometimes drowns King’s work. Even with such constraints, though, Frank Darabont works some wonders: the creatures are generally be-misted, foggy hints of things we’re left imagining, or–when dragged into the limelight for stop-motion or goofy-puppet attacks, they’re consistently freaky; the group trapped in the supermarket hew to certain stock traits but the actors and the writing make the human dynamics something consistently stronger than you’d expect from a skeletal plot outline (particularly fine are Toby Jones and William Sadler).

But what fucking nailed me was the way the camera would turn and face–unflinchingly, for far too long–raw human fear and anxiety. Sure, the set-up’s silly, but you take the leap (there are things in the Mist!) and suddenly Thomas Jane trying to console his terrified crying boy for what seems like three full minutes is beyond unnerving–it’s deeply unsettling. Continue reading The Mist

A Woman Under the Influence (1974) / Cassavetes / Peter Falk

We talked a while back about the remarkable movie Keane, and a couple questions were brought up concerning depictions of mental illness on film that don’t collapse into the redemption-by-love / Sally-Field-TV-movie stereotypes.

We had just finished watching Return of the Secaucus 7 and were talking about filmmakers who self-financed their work through acting and writing for other people’s movies. So we decided to watch a few Cassavetes films.

This is a tough one to start with. Continue reading A Woman Under the Influence (1974) / Cassavetes / Peter Falk