The Agronomist

Jonathan Demme’s documentary about Haitian journalist/activist Jean Dominique gets a quick recommendation from me. It doesn’t reinvent the form, nor is it the one film to see about Haiti’s political struggles over the last 40 years. But–kind of like the doc on William Eggleston–this film emerges from a personal relationship between filmmaker and subject; its talking head footage of Dominique was collected over a few years, during his periods of exile in NYC, and after Dominique’s assassination Demme spliced it together, fleshed out the history, caught up with some others.

What I very much appreciated about the film was that it didn’t stop to provide tons of explication–it demands that you either inform yourself or pay close attention, rather than giving you Haiti 101 on a plate. I also loved Dominique, garrulous and theatrical and impassioned–the film hews to his personality as a vehicle for conveying the storm of Haiti’s history, but never in that too-pat bio-doc format that collapses personal and national histories into one shared story. Instead, we are learning about Dominique… and necessarily, with this committed social activist, we engage with Haiti.
Continue reading The Agronomist

The Ringer

Mostly dead. I so wanted this to be a sly, subversively funny dismantling of disability tropes which employs–and then implodes–cultural stereotypes. Instead, it was not so sly, rarely funny, even if still nicely subversive of said tropes.

For those interested, it’s about a loser-wimp type (the ingratiating Johnny Knoxville) who tries to make some needed money by playing “disabled” so that he and a scurrilous uncle (the game Brian Cox) can rig bets on the Special Olympics. What’s kind of neat is that the film’s producers (the Farrelly Brothers, who have I think an *excellent* track record in upsetting disability tropes) engaged with the Olympics and it was filmed on site, with in-jokes and inside humor (sidestepping the frequent criticism of “laughing at”) and with performers with variously different abilities. One of the good jokes is that the other athletes recognize how bad Knoxville’s mimicry is, while the “norms” all get suckered. What’s less good is that the filmmakers employ a mix of actors, some of whom are playing disabled, and doing so generously but not persuasively (i.e., the movie’s central gimmick is itself replicated by the movie, inartfully).

I wanted it to be funnier, or even just funny. Nope. I recommend instead the under-appreciated Stuck on You and the brilliant documentary How’s Your News?.

incredible beauty, incredible sadness

i want to write about two beautiful films i just saw. they are, among other things, about children, a subject that lends itself to sentimentalism. i generally avoid films about kids, and i was tempted to avoid these too, had they not been by directors i like very much. one is deepa mehta’s water, the other is hirokazu koreeda nobody knows (koreeda made the sublime afterlife). i think that, for the most part, the directors do a good job at staying away from sentimentalism. nobody knows is hardly sentimental at all, though the beautiful face of the protagonist, young Yûya Yagira (who won best actor at cannes), is tremendously captivating and sweet. deepa mehta’s young protagonist is not a “cute” child (i at least didn’t find her so), but the film does get a bit sentimental at points. i suspect this may be due to the genre, i.e. that fact that water is an indian film that is certainly indebted to bollywood esthetics. since i know absolutely nothing about bollywood, whose beauty i don’t quite get (sorrysorrysorry), i will leave it at this, hoping someone can fill in this specific connection for me. Continue reading incredible beauty, incredible sadness

Summer Club

Okay–a proposal. We are (obviously) already starting conversations, suggesting films, following up on others’ suggestions and entering into discussion…. but for the summer months, I’m proposing that every week or two, someone suggest a movie that we all (or many) try to see, and jump into conversation on. I might suggest picking something less familiar, or an old favorite not recently seen, or insert-motif-here. But what the hell: let’s say anything goes. I’m not even going to suggest a timeline or anything. I’m just going to offer up the open-ended proposal.

If you’re interested, post on a flick–Summer Club: “X”–and those of us who are interested will track down said flick and watch it, too. I will wait a couple of days and do one of my own.

Obviously, I am trying to take my mind off tonight’s Sopranos closer, which I will see in a few days, thanks to Jeff.

spider

i just saw spider, my second cronenberg exposure, and i need to ask: does cronenberg only do boring films?

this film made me think a little bit about the discussion people have been having about action images vs time images vs protracted, boring images (themselves a kind of time images, in their defiance of normative parameters of cinematic time and cinematic orientation). and the primary thought that gelled in my mind is the following: you can’t have it both ways. if you give us textual clues straining towards a resolution and you then delay the resolution by using loooong descriptive shots (in this case descriptive of mental decay through physical decay), you mess with the audience in an uncool, unproductive, uncreative way. if, furthermore, after all this watching and enduring, you give us a lame resolution, then you are a bad filmmaker and i’ll never watch your films again.

Violence

I have had a couple days at home alone, after taking Kris and Max to Omaha. I’d scurry about during the day to do all this end-of-year crap I need to get done, then come home and see stuff I normally wouldn’t have the time or space to see–maybe things a bit more violent than Kris would ever want to watch (and by “bit more” I of course mean “excessively, ridiculously, extravagantly more”). I can turn up the volume, go nuts.

What follows are a couple of strong recommendations and others just to be recorded. There’s a loose running issue in my responses about the ways they depict violence. But mostly it’s just a quick set of recs: Continue reading Violence

British New Wave

The Cinematheque recently ran a 2 week program of films called Angry Young Cinema: The Original British New Wave. The full list of the films can be seen here. I managed to see none of the films, despite working literally across the street from ther excellent Hollywood theater, The Egyptian.

I won’t list all of the film that played – the link above will let you see that – but I hope some here will check out the films that played and recommend a few in comments. They sound interesting, and I plan to rent a batch of them, though several have not been released on DVD. Continue reading British New Wave

Crimen Ferpecto…

…or Ferpect Crime is a low-rent blast, starting out as a sleek sort-of-obvious satire about a department-store Lothario but slowly creeping toward Grand Guignol black comedy and finally ending in a garish burst of surrealist comedy. This ain’t for everybody. But it looks grand (director Alex de la Iglesia got an initial boost from Almodovar, and they share an eye and taste for the cartoonish taken seriously–or vice versa). Its meanness is slowly sapped away by an obvious love for those “freaks” and “uglies” it mocks.

I’m having trouble nailing it down, but it was fun. Imagine if Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny got caught up in a bleak noirish erotic thriller, and then had it out for one another. I’m rushing to my queue to line up some more of his stuff.