As cool as a Fruitstand

Moving

2007-12-30T21:03:00.000+01:00

Almost a year ago today, on January 17th 2007, I wrote a post entitled "Let's try this again, shall we?". At the time I was frustrated about my studies, and I needed some distraction, an outlet.

The success, I'll admit, has rather overwhelmed me. Not only have I managed to post on a pretty regular basis, but *gasp* I got a readership! I now get an average of 20 visitors a day, which may not sound like much, but it still amazes me every day. What's more, in great part thanks to this blog, I got myself a real writing job, getting paid for movie reviews, which is more than I'd ever hoped for.

One year later, I think it's time to move on. No, don't worry, I won't stop, I'm having way too much fun! I am, however, getting increasingly frustrated with the limitations of blogger, and I think a change of scenery will do me good. Therefore - drum roll please - I would like to announce that as of 2008, the fruitstand will be relocated to wordpress, in particular, to http://sarcastig.wordpress.com

To go with the new site, and in keeping with New Year traditions, I have some resolutions. I will make it habit to respond to each and every comment I get (you may have noticed I've started to implement that already). I love that my blog gives me a platform to vent my ideas, but I want it to be a forum for discussion about films, too. Furthermore, I'll be more conscientious in labeling and in keeping my review index up to date, because by now I've written so much it's starting to be hard to keep up with.

So, update your bookmarks! And I hope to see you in 2008 at the bigger, better, leaner, meaner but still just as familiar fruitstand.

Two genre exercises: 3:10 to Yuma & The Black Dahlia

2007-12-29T23:53:00.000+01:00

Between these two films, 3:10 is undoubtedly the "better" one. It's more coherent, slimmer, it has more complete characterization and plenty inside into people's motivations. It has Christian Bale perfectly cast as a humorless hero, and Russell Crowe naturally as a charismatic and manly villain. And hey, I liked it, was fully engaged by it, and it's a solid piece of genre filmmaking. I just can't really think of much to say about it.

The Black Dahlia, however, is the kind of film I can really get stoked about.

Oh yes, I know, it's a much clumsier, messier movie. Scarlett Johanssen looks perfect in those period costumes, but as soon as she has to move and speak she's awkward and slightly out of place. Aaron Eckhart tries his best, but gets far too little screen time. And not only does Hilary Swank not look a bit like the real Black Dahlia OR like Mia Kirschner, who plays her in screen tests, but she has an inconsistent accent and she overacts the hell out of her femme fatale part.

Still, this movie got a grin to my face, and I enjoyed it immensely. Partly, that's because the parts that are good are great: Mia Kirchner, for instance, who brings real pathos to her victim, but strangely enough also Josh Hartnett, who surprised me by truly embodying his boxer/cop, by overcoming his boyish (and rather bland) exterior. And there is a scene where he meets the Linscott family that'll make you gasp in disbelief: it's so over the top, but it's also hilarious - and more than a little creepy.

I'm not a de Palma convert. He's too much of a showoff, I think, too brash and too cocky. But he DOES love film. Maybe I liked the Black Dahlia so much only by proxy, because through it I was reminded of so many noir favorites. But I liked it, messy as it is, maybe even because of its flaws and not in spite of them.

Black Snake Moan

2007-12-29T12:30:00.001+01:00

Just look at that poster. The tall, strong, older black man in a wifebeater holding chains tight between his hands. The tiny, disheveled young white girl in a tiny shirt and cut-offs, on her knees at his feet, holding her arm up to hold the chain like she needs it, wants it. And that chain going on around her bare midriff, too.

How could any movie live up to that poster?

The sad answer is that Black Snake Moan can't quite. Oh, it does offer some unforgettable imagery: Rae (that would be the girl) walking on a narrow road in front of an enormous tractor and giving it the finger. Lazarus (that would be the man) walking her through the fields, but who's really leading who? Rae trying to escape her wicked desires by wrapping herself as tight as she can in that chain and moaning.

In the end though, the film is much more sweet and, alas, much more tame than it has any right to be. See, they're just messed up people. The bible-toting Lazarus isn't religion-crazy, he's just been left by his wife and, you know, hurt. Rae might be a nympho, but she's really in love with Ronnie (Justin Timberlake, who actually turns in a decent performance). They even have watches that beep at the same time: ain't that cute? And in the end, everything turns out just fine - though Brewer, to his credit, doesn't make the resolutions too neat.

Black Snake Moan is a film worth seeing. But it's not the exploitation dream promised by the poster, and that's too bad.

Marie Antoinette

2007-12-24T18:40:00.000+01:00

I watched Marie Antoinette for the second time last night. The first time, I liked it. Now, I think I even loved it, and found myself defending it rather fiercely to my lukewarm parents.

Yes: it's fluff. Yes: nothing really happens. Yes: it largely ignores the historical context. But Sofia Coppola is really subverting the costume drama here in a fascinating way. The movie might still be about the costumes and the thrill of seeing historic places come to life, but at the same time it is royally disinterested in the significance of the events or being accurate. It's even not really interested in the 'why' of the events, or in fact in what exactly happened.

What it is interested in is putting you there. Right there in the middle. The modern music, 'accidental' sneakers and the relatively modern use of language is not a device to put us at a remove: on the contrary, it forbids us to see the characters just as historical personae, it puts them on our plane. It makes us see Marie-Antoinette as just a girl. A rather shallow, not particularly bright girl, but no different from a great portion of high school girls everywhere, in fact, no different from a great portion of young girls in any time, in any place. Just a girl. It might not sound radical, but by not being a history lesson, by not caring about realism or accuracy, she managed to take a stiff historical character, someone mocked, derided, hated, but never really seen, someone who was only a figure in paintings and history books, and it turns her into a person of flesh and blood. I can't think of another movie that does this, and thanks to this Marie Antoinette is a film worth revisiting not just for the purely aesthetic pleasures that can be derived from it, but also as an investigation into a genre on par with Death Proof.

Noir night: The Postman Always Rings Twice & Kiss Me Deadly

2007-12-23T19:41:00.000+01:00

The Postman Always Rings Twice

The wife-and-lover-kill-husband plot works every times, doesn't it? It certainly does here, very well even. The chemistry between John Garfield and Lana Turner just crackles. I sometimes wonder if we weren't better off in the days of the code, when sex had to be implied through a cigarette being lit or subtexts in dialogue: it can be so much sexier than the real thing. The introduction of Lana Turner is just great: the lipstick rolling on the floor, the shot resting on her legs, and the look on Garfield's face...priceless!

Kiss Me, Deadly

Some films you just feel like watching again right after they finish. It was late and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open so I didn't, but this was such a film for me. It's so out there and strange that I'm not sure if I love it or hate it. I bought the DVD mainly because I heard Southland Tales references is over and over again, and I wanted to be able to get these references. What I didn't expect is a film as weird as Southland is supposed to be.

I was entranced by it, from the fantastic opening onwards. Many moments are simply unforgettable, some shots are amazing, and well... I fell for Mike Hammer. He's just so sleazy and mean, he's the ultimate noir anti-hero, and I loved it. Girls spontaneously kiss him for no reason at all in this film, but you buy it. I think I'll go towards love, but I do need to see it a second time.

Bottle Rocket

2007-12-23T15:43:00.000+01:00

I'm on break, and that means: I have time to watch movies! Yesterday night I treated myself to a noir double bill which I'll post about later, but in the afternoon, still very much in the Anderson spirit, I re-watched his very first feature, Bottle Rocket.

It's rather strange, in a way. Bottle Rocket is clearly a Wes Anderson movie, but at the same time it doesn't have much of the characteristics we now associate with him. The camera work in particular is - dare I say it? - rather conventional, with some notable exceptions, and the frames leave a lot more breathing room. In fact, I had a rather hard time finding a screen cap that would show where Rushmore and the following movies came from.

The characters, on the other hand, couldn't have existed in any other world, especially not Dignan. Ah, Dignan. The guy who wants his friend to escape from a voluntary mental institution. The man with a 75 year plan. And his relationship with Anthony is, I think, the sweetest in all Anderson films: when Anthony insists on getting a ridiculous yellow jumpsuit like Dignan is wearing, it almost breaks your heart.

While Bottle Rocket is very Andersonion, there are several different things he could have done after this, several different directions he could have explored. He is sometimes blamed for going too precious, too emotionally remote.I kind of missed the richness here, and I have no complaints about where he's gone. It would be nice, however, to see him tackle relatively poor, not-so-highly educated characters again, because Dignan is both the most infuriating and most endearing of his characters so far.

2008

2007-12-23T10:50:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, I promised a year-end list..there's just a few films I still want to watch before that. In the meantime, I found this great list (via), and so here goes: films that make me look forward to 2008.

First, a few movies that have been released in the US, but not here yet

1. Sweeney Todd (January 24th)
2. There Will Be Blood (Febuary 28th)
3. Paranoid Park: I was supposed to see it at a press screening January 1st...then they canceled that. grrr. Will probably see it in February now.

Then, the truly new releases.

Australia: this could be a total disaster. But it's Baz Luhrman, and sometimes I just really feel like high melodrama. The impossibly beautiful Aussies Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star. The story is something of Gone with the Wind-ish proportions, apparently.
Babylon A.D.:just because it sounds so....awesomely weird. I mean, get this: Vin Diesel escorts a women who turns out to have an organism inside her that "a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah." It'll probably suck though
Be Kind Rewind: without a doubt among the most anticipated titles for me. I love me some Michel Gondry. Mos Def and Jack Black accidentally erase all the tapes in the videostore where they work...and they star reproducing them. Gondry's DIY imagination should make this one a treat.
Burn After Reading: after a film at least as good as Fargo, one worthy to be the new Big Lebowski?
Choke: I like the book, and it has Sam Rockwell AND Kelly McDonald. I'm curious, at the very least.
Cloverfield: yup, the hype worked on me, too. Next!
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: it's Fincher reteaming with Brad Pitt. So, between Choke and this one, at least one has to be as good or at least exciting as Fight Club, right?
The Dark Knight: I thought Batman begins was good, but I've never really felt like watching it again. But it looks like Heath Ledger's Joker might rival Nicholson's, and be a lot more scary to boot.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: ok, it has a lame title and a protagonist who's probably too old. But c'mon, it's Indiana Jones!
James Bond 22: is it bad that this is here mostly because Craig might get nekkid again?
Jumper: I hesitated over this one, but Doug Liman has yet to make a film I didn't like (yes, I enjoyed the heck out of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, sue me), and the premise sounds very cool: something about a guy jumping back and forth in time. The catch? Hayden Christensen, and hasn't Samuel L. Jackson played enough mentors by now?
Son of Rambow: I didn't think the Hitch-hiker film was all that amazing, but I've heard nothing but good about Garth Jennings' follow-up, about a little boy who re-enacts with his friend their favorite film: Rambo! Might make a good double-feature with be kind rewind, come to think of it.
Where the Wild Things Are: Ok, it's Spike Jonze, and it's a children's book I LOVED as a kid. Just look at these pictures: are you drooling yet? Oh, and Dave Eggers co-wrote.
Zach and Miri make a porno: Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen team up!

Looks like 2008 might be a pretty good year for film. For me, the top 3 most anticipated of the truly new releases are those in boldface, but if I missed some obvious ones, let me know!

2007-12-22T16:21:00.000+01:00

The Darjeeling Limited

2007-12-22T10:38:00.000+01:00

It might have been by virtue of lowered expectations, but I kind of loved Anderson's latest. Oh, I understand all the criticisms, even agree with most, but I don't really care: I like spending time in Andersonland, and he does, here, try a few new things. His frames are still filled to the brim with knick-knacks and his compositions are sometimes overly precious, but this film is quite a bit shaggier than his previous ones, and true emotion manages to wiggle itself into those unfinished spaces.

I don't think anyone has ever used Adrian Brody's awkward, gangly body so effectively. When he runs past Bill Murray to catch the train, it's a moment of pure comedy, almost a cartoon. But the relationship between the brothers is anything but cartoonish. Owen Wilson is more vulnerable here than he's ever been, without an ounce of smugness, and Schwartzman proves yet again that he's the ultimate Andersonlander, and most importantly you can believe them as brothers. Their dynamic is what keeps this film together.

Of course, I should probably address what happens after the brothers get kicked off the train. Quite a few critics felt the moment was undeserved. I'm not sure, also because (darn my addiction to review-reading) I knew what was coming. It certainly was a break with the rest of the film, but it didn't feel jarring, like the ending of the Life Aquatic did to me, and the flashback it leads to is probably the most mature thing Anderson's ever done.

So, yes, ok, when they got rid of their metaphorical luggage, I did think: "but there's one of those really cool Bose iPod speakers in there!", and it would be interesting to see what Anderson would do back on planet earth. But -while this film isn't quite a return to form- I enjoyed it immensely. Call me a hipster. I'd move to Andersonland anytime.

And really, how can you not walk out with a smile when over the credits, a long shot from an Indian train, you hear "Oh, Champs-Elysées"?

Rio Bravo

2007-12-21T12:07:00.000+01:00

My, but do I love, love, love this movie! It took me by surprise, since my two previous forays into the realm of western classics (as you may recall, with The Searchers and Red River) left me a little disappointed. Oh, I enjoyed them. But they didn't fill me with glee like this one did. In Hollywood terms, it simply has everything: action, romance, humor, even character development.

This film was also the first time I understood the Duke's charm, and it's all thanks to Angie Dickinson. I mean, usually you talk about actors having chemistry. Here, she just sparks so much I think Wayne had no choice but to spark back. And I loved how here, the comedy stems from the characters and from the tension. In the Searchers, the comical interludes were in too sharp contrast with the grim reality of the search and the grimness of the characters, but here, it all fit.

Isn't this Tarantino's 'test movie'? If it is, I think I'd pass.

Titanic

2007-12-19T17:05:00.001+01:00

Larry tells me that it's ten years ago today that Titanic sailed into theaters. Why does that mean anything to me? Well, I'm almost certain it was the first non-Disney film I ever saw in the cinema. It was while we were living in Casablanca, and we had to buy black-market tickets, as I recall: even in Morocco, this movie was an incredible hit.

What a film to discover the cinema experience with. It was simply overwhelming. The odd thing is, I can't remember exactly what I thought of it. Oh, I liked it, but I don't know if I loved it as much as everyone did. I did, of course, fall head over heels for Leo. What twelve-year-old wouldn't have? And I remember arguing with a boy in my class who, I believe, called Rose a "triple salope" and had quite an elaborate justification for that. I kicked him in the shins for it - at the time, this was my preferred flirting method.

Ten years. It's seems like a long time, but it really is quite short. I never watched the film again, and I don't feel the need to. But I suppose you could say that day, my cinephilia must've been born.

Inland Empire

2007-12-17T11:26:00.000+01:00

WARNING: overuse of metaphors ahead.

After seeing Mulholland Drive, I declared myself a David Lynch fan. I might have been overly hasty.

Let me explain. Mulholland Drive, like for instance Donnie Darko and to a lesser extent No Country For Old Men, is all about playing with our narrative expectations. From scene to scene the Hollywood style of continuity is obeyed: weird things may happen, but every scene leads to the next one and there seems to be an underlying "sense". However, in the end, they pull out the rug from under us: there is no "sense", there is no solution that will tie up the narrative strands in one neat bow.

(As an aside, this aspect is exactly what I hated about the celebrated Dutch book "the Darkroom of Damocles" by W.F. Hermans, which plays with our expectations in a similar way, but that was five or six years ago. I should reread it)

Inland Empire, in contrast, doesn't even try to fool you that there is any cohesion. It has a certain dream logic between scenes sometimes, true. But in dreams, everything seems logical, doesn't reveal its absurdity until you wake up and look back. In this film, everything is absurd from the get-go. Luckily, since this is Lynch, it's not like listening to someone recounting their dream -which is universally acknowledged to be dreadfully dull - but like being right inside of someone else's dream.

And a strange dream it is. I counted at least three, probably four different representations of Laura Dern's character. The one that fascinated me most is the cursing, crass one who tells her story to the private investigator, but all throughout the film it's great to see Lynch use her face as a canvas, doing anything he can think of with it, using make-up, distortions, and her great performance.

I enjoyed watching Inside Empire, not so much as a film but as an experience. In the end, though, I prefer the more ordered, more formally constructed puzzles. There are scenes featuring rabbits in this film, but I didn't even bother thinking about what they might mean, because I'm almost sure the answer is "nothing": they're probably just there as an idea, an image conceived of in a dream, without any significance. I like thinking of what Chigurh represents because there are so many possible answers, each of which can be defended. In that film, you can try to find the answer that fits the puzzle best, even if you know the puzzle is at best a Möbius strip with missing pieces. However, Inland Empire is like having a handful of pieces from half a dozen puzzles, and even the most dedicated puzzle fanatic wouldn't attempt that. I won't, in any case.

Lynch's subconscious is an intriguing place to dwell for a few hours, and I certainly don't regret my visit. Ultimately, though, this kind of film is too vague for me, too 'floaty', to translate a Dutch term literally, and my logical mind bristles.

Best Scenes

2007-12-15T21:57:00.000+01:00

I was already preparing a list of alternative awards to post here. You know, best nude fight, worst nude fight (the winners seem obvious), the "who-knew-he-was-so-funny"-award (that would be for James Marsden), etc. However, seeing how I quickly ran out of inspiration and couldn't rival Jim Emerson anyway, I decided to list a few of my favorite scenes from this year instead. One award I think deserves giving out anyway: the "would love to see show up in any movie"-award. It goes to Garret Dillahunt, who gave very different but equally fascinating performances in No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and on the smaller screen in John from Cincinnati.

Now then: my favorite scenes, in no particular order.

Carla Jean's last stand - No Country for Old Me
closely followed by: every other scene in which Chigurh interacts with other people. And every scene with Ed Tom bell talking. And any scene...you know what? The whole film is pitch-perfect. Just go see it, alright?

Goin' to Acapulco - I'm not There
closely followed by every scene with the electrifying Cate Blanchett as the electric Bob Dylan
The awkward conversation leading up to the first kiss in Waitress
The scene with Adam Goldberg, his girlfriend's phone in one hand, a dictionary in the other, getting progressively more agitated, in 2 days in Paris
The bathhouse fight - Eastern Promises.
'not many people have basements in California' - Zodiac
Jesse James in the fog, waiting for the train - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Closing ass-kicking - Death Proof
closely followed by: "You saw my car, I saw your ... legs" & Stuntman Mike sniffing Rosario Dawson's feet.
Falling Slowly - Once
Sex under a Tree & The first sleep-over - Lady Chatterley
The mano-a-mano fight in Tangiers - The Bourne Ultimatum
Le Marais - Paris je t'aime (not my favorite, but the short that lingers most)
"They fucked with the wrong Mexican" - the best of the Grindhouse trailers
Making soup - Ratatouille
The champagne and the two glasses in the fridge - Michael Clayton
Jeff Daniels as the blind Lewis chatting up a waitress - The Lookout
Toby Kebbell making his bid to be the manager - Control

There really are so many more I could mention, and this is all before having seen There Will Be Blood, Sweeney Todd, Juno, Into the Wild, Away from Her, Inland Empire and others being mentioned for awards. This was a pretty great year for film, wasn't it?

So, what were your favorite scenes this year?

Lady Chatterley

2007-12-13T11:13:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately, despite some wonderful shots and an great, layered and open performance at the center, Lady Chatterley (Ferran, 2006) is a messy, messy film. The film is fragmented, moved in strange bursts. An omniscient narrator suddenly comments in voice-over, saying about 4 lines, an hour into the movie, and only comes back once for a longer stretch of text. Near the end, a character suddenly read out a letter looking into the camera. None of it has any specific reason, and none of it makes sense.

Ah, but of course, for a film based on Lawrences book, it's not about the structure, the main question is: how are the sex scenes? And I have to admit, the sex scenes here are perfect, both erotic and providing insight into the characters and their evolution. Be warned: this is explicit, and much is shown both of the female and male anatomy, although the early sex scenes take place almost fully clothes (let's just say garters are convenient). But it never feels exploitative, and starts feeling almost natural.

However, then we come to the ending, and it's simply awful. The characters suddenly start communicating with words rather than actions, and their words couldn't be blander and unlikely. The gamekeeper especially is suddenly revealed to have a sensitive side. He suddenly confesses to be all angsty over being unlike other people, and his sudden "sharing", according to the idea there currently seems to be about the ideal man, is both entirely out of character and boring, almost negating all the good that came before.

The year in movies - pt.1: new oldies

2007-12-12T10:44:00.000+01:00

I did a bit of statistics on the many, many movies I watched in 2007. As it turns out, and contrary to my expectations, I watched about the same amount of pre- and post-millenial movies: almost 80 films made before 2000, and almost 80 made in 2000 or later.

Of these films, the most popular decade were the 50s and 90s (with 17 movies each), closely followed by the 40s (15) and the 30's (13). But of course, it's not about the numbers, and in the above counts I did not make a distinction between films seen for the first time and old favorites. What were the biggest discoveries?

First of all, I saw three early (or at least earlier) Almodóvar films, two of them for the first time: Matador and Átame. I love his more mature work, but these early films are just so filled with film making fun that it makes me giddy just to think about them. The bright colors, the shoulder pads, the camp... I just love it, and I'm determined to explore his entire oeuvre.

Then, of course, the noirs. I can never thank my dad enough for giving me that DVD box. The titles it contains might not have been the biggest ones, but they show the full range of what you can do within the boundaries of the genre, a genre now even more firmly established as my favorite. I also watched "The Big Heat" and "Double Indemnity", two films deservedly considered to be among the best noirs ever made. I just love the cynicism, the photography, the wit; I love the crooks and the dames; I love the endings, too. I'm sure I'll often revisit D.O.A. and the Hitch-Hiker on rainy days, and I look forward to watching even more classics I missed. So if you're still looking for a birthday present...

Of course, 2007 was also the year I discovered Godard. I saw Masculin/Féminin, Bande à part & A bout de Souffle, and Alphaville is waiting in my DVD drawer. I'm still undecided on whether I really enjoy his films beyond just the intellectual thrill they give, but I understand now why he's so revered.

There's more, of course. I finally saw some eighties classics (Say Anything, Back to the Future 2&3, Fast Times at Ridgemont high), some western classics (including my first Montgomery Clift film, Red River), saw two classic Hitchcock films for the first time (Rear Window and Notorious), two by Ed Wood, watched four films by Antonioni (two of them for the first time) and grew to appreciate him even more, watched my first Bergman film, my first Malick... All in all, I think this year made me a more well-rounded film lover, expanded my knowledge and my taste. At the same time, it's made me realize that there's more to explore than I'll ever have time for, but why would I complain about having so many more films left to discover?

Next time: some awards. Suggestions still welcome.

Zodiac

2007-12-09T23:00:00.000+01:00

This is such a well-made film in every detail. The cinematography is great, the acting ,even by those who are on screen for only minutes, is pitch-perfect, I loved the period details, and even the small character moments work. Despite the jumping structure, the film never feels episodic, and I was fully engrossed. And I liked the point Fincher made by having three different actors portraying the Zodiac killer: you might think you know something about who did it because you see the murders happening, but really, you can't even tell if it's the same guy.

So, a very well-made film. A great film? For that, I don't know if there's enough under the surface. Sure the film's about obsession, about making the viewer as obsessed as the characters are, but it doesn't really tell you anything about what would make someone more susceptible to obsession than another, about what it's really about.

I wonder what Fincher could do with a costume drama, a romantic comedy, a musical for all I care. It seem he's pretty much mastered this genre, and it would be interesting to see him go outside his comfort zone. It might make him loosen up a little. Benjamin Button is a start, and I'm curious what will come out.

Tell me what movies you like, and I'll tell you who you are...

2007-12-09T20:05:00.000+01:00

My movie-lovers profile, courtesy of CJ Kennedy.

Your approach to movies is more intellectual than Glimmer’s. That’s not to say you don’t like to have your emotional buttons pushed in the right way, but you like to be able to get your mind around a movie as well as your heart.

You’re a cinema omnivore and your tastes are going to continue to expand as the years go by. You’ll voraciously move from genre to genre but you won’t be stuck with just one. Your non-movie friends already raise their eyebrows at some of the strange things you like, especially the things older than you are, but just wait until you’re waxing poetic about French cinema from the 30s or silent films or Japenese films from the 50s and 60s.

There’s a hint of pride in your taste. You’re probably looked upon as “the movie girl” in certain circles and you like playing that role, but you’re careful to tend the impression that your tastes are pretty refined.

Your tastes are pretty gender neutral though leaning towards masculine. I wouldn’t be surprised to find you spent many nights watching movies with your dad or perhaps an older brother when you were little.

Finally, you’re a Coen fan so clearly you’re operating on a higher level of movie appreciation than your average person :)

In short, you’re smart and cultured and you don’t care who knows it. You can also be a romantic sentimentalist as long as you don’t feel you’re being pandered to. Sometimes you maybe wish you could be less the former and more the latter, but you’d never sell out your intelligence.

Sound about right?

It's the end of the year...

2007-12-09T17:54:00.000+01:00

Which means the time of short days, Christmas cards, and especially of year-end lists, the first of which have been rolling out. I'm planning my own little year end extravaganza: one post about statistics (how many films I saw, how many new how many old, how many for the first time, how many in the cinema etc.), one reviewing my most notable cinematic experiences of the year, maybe a top 5 or 10 of older films, and in any case a top 5 or 10 of 2007 releases.

The latter is tougher than it sounds, and not just because ranking your favorites is always hard. Quite a few good 2006 releases weren't released in the Netherlands until 2007. In order to be more or less comparable with American groups, however, I will make a top 5 of films released in America in 2007. This means for instance that Little Children will be out of consideration for the 2007 list, but Once, which is officially a 2006 movie, will be in the running since it wasn't released theatrically in the US until this year. Since I do want to give attention to some of those 2006 films, I'll also make a short side-list of 2006 releases seen this year (sounds confusing? Well, maybe it is...)

I might also do a couple of acting lists. Cinematography I'll skip: it wouldn't yield anything beyond raving about Roger Deakins anyway. I might even give out some weird awards, I'm not sure. We'll see. Suggestions for categories are welcome, in any case.

Anyhow, enough technical details. On to what I really want to talk about: which films do you think I still need to catch up on before making my final list? I'm not talking about big films that still need to be released, like Sweeney Todd. There's no press screening date for that as of yet, and I refuse to download it, as I think it's a movie that needs to be seen in theaters. I am talking more of releases from a few months ago that I might have missed. I'm already planning on watching Zodiac (it topped Jeffrey Wells' list and is mentioned on several others) and I'm considering whether I have the energy for Inland Empire. But what else should I check out? Half Nelson? Gone Baby Gone? In the Valley of Elah? Into the Wild? Let me know! And in case you're wondering what I have and have not seen, I kept a handy filmlog.

The Guardian also has a list, incidentally. Interestingly enough, in the top 8, most films are films they gave 4 or 5 stars in the original review... Except for the #2, which only got 2 stars at first. The film? Eastern Promises. Confirming that it's a film that - while it might not look all that interesting at first- grows on you as you think about it more.

Also: added to my DVD-collection as of Sinterklaas: Marie-Antoinette (Coppola, 2006), Brick (Johnson, 2005), La Luna (Bertolucci, 1979) & Tystnaden/The Silence (Bergman, 1963)

Waitress

2007-12-05T22:02:00.000+01:00

By all accounts this film should not work. And well... it doesn't, not quite. It might however, work enough.

It's a cartoon in many ways. Some of the music cues are way over the top, and the actors deal with the material with different degrees of success. Keri Russell, for example, is great as Jenna, the waitress of the title. There is one extended sequence of shots where she has an exaggerated bewildered look on her face, a look which then turns into an ecstatic smile for the next couple, and it is perfect, somehow. But aside from hers all the characters are fairly one-dimensional, the two other waitresses most egregiously: they each get their perfectly predictable plot development, but character development, apparently, was too much to ask. As for Jenna's husband, he's supposed to be both a laughingstock and genuinely threatening, and that simply doesn't work

But let's get to the things that DO work. Mostly, that's the chemistry because Nathan Fillion's Dr. Pommater and Jenna. Every time they kiss I felt it. Now, admittedly, I do have a long-standing crush on Cap'n Tight-Pants, but still. And I loved how refreshing the film's take on adultery was: the film admits that it's a foolish, potentially hurtful thing to do, but in the film it doesn't need to lead to a terrible conclusion, and it even has some positive consequences. This is the kind of nuance and realism sorely lacking from the sexualisation-of-our-culture debate currently going on in the Netherlands.

And then there's the pies. Oh, I wish I could bake pies like that. They are gorgeous and odd and delicious-looking, and having Jenna give them names like "I don't want Earl's baby-pie" is a gimmick that works. In the end, the film doesn't quite manage to reconcile the quirks on the surface with the truly depressing content, but this is a little film worth watching.

A film, too, with a worthwhile message: maybe it's best, indeed, to settle for being "happy enough".

No Country for Old Men - Second, hopefully more coherent, spoiler-riddled reaction

2007-12-03T19:55:00.000+01:00

It's right up there in the title too, but a final warning just in case: major **SPOILERS** ahead!

It's been almost 24 hours now since I started watching No Country for Old Men, and after much reading and rumination (see also the reading list below), I have come to a conclusion: the Coen brothers have put a lot, and I mean by that A LOT of ideas into this movie, but I doubt there is an overarching thought or message to be found. This should, of course, not come as a surprise: these are the Coens we're talking about. It means the only deeper meaning you'll find is the one you, yourself, bring to the table. The movie has no clear interpretation, it can be interpreted at least half a dozen ways.

And that's what makes it great.

Take, for instance, Chigurh. He works on a superficial level because - using the words of another character - he is the ultimate bad-ass. On a deeper level, he soon becomes more complicated. Is he evil personified, as some have suggested? Is he the Grim Reaper? Is he fate, a ghost, just a man of flesh and blood, or maybe just the manifestation of Sheriff Bell's fears? Each interpretation can be justified, and has been, vehemently, in various comment sections. He's evil made flesh because he destroys and/or corrupts anything on his path, and the ending can then be interpreted as "evil can be damaged, hindered, but not stopped". He's the Grim Reaper because he simply comes to take people away when their time is up, and doesn't when it isn't, etc. etc.

In the end, all these interpretations are valid, but are they really meaningful? Maybe the Coens* just enjoyed the irony of having Chirgurh, who lets other people's fate be decided by a coin toss, be taken out by chance. Maybe the scene with the two kids is nothing more than a "money corrupts" throwaway, inserting something not necessarily relevant or related to anything else into an already dense text. Then again, there is always something that CAN be connected - in this case, you could invoke the fact that there is literally bloody money being paid with. It's almost as if they're teasing us to make connections, appealing to our need to categorize and analyze, and then reveal that there is nothing but mud at the bottom of the well.

This movie already has been dismissed by some critics (most notably by Manohla Dargis) as pure craft. I don't get that complaint. Yes, the Coen's may be overly fond of stylistic tricks, but they seem to like them so much it's infectious. Yes, they like doorways, they like them A LOT, but why is that a problem when this leads to such wonderful - and sometimes suspenseful- shots? I'm not sure all the mirroring - the shirts, Anton/Ed Tom both drinking milk and watching themselves in the television, etc. - means something, but the various instances are fun to spot.

Much of the discussion on the boards seems to be about plot questions. Did he kill the accountant? (my guess, no, but does it really matter?). Did he kill Carla Jean? (Definitely). Did Llewelyn go along with the beer woman, and what happened to her? And mostly, was Chigurh in that room, and if so, how did he disappear? I don't think, however, that these details were left sketchy because the filmmakers want us to figure out the "solution". I think the details were left sketchy as a Rorschach test: the interpretation we give says something about who are, and where we stand.

The movie opens and ends with something Chigurh does and something Bell says, with Llewelyn stumbling through the movie in between, his fate and perhaps morality the stakes in the contest between the two. Let me end, too, with some words about Sheriff Bell. Tommy Lee Jones truly is one of the treasures of modern American cinema, and the deep grooves of his tired face serve this character well. He seems a straightforward good guy at first, white hat and all, a remnant of better, more straight-forward times. However, unlike the Western heroes he's meant to remind us of, he isn't sure he's up to the task, and he's scared. His big triumph is opening the door to that motel where Chigurh might be, but his relief when the room is empty is so great he decides to retire. Decides to wait for his time to be up in peace.

So much more can be said about this movie, but I think I will stop at this: I'm not sure yet if this is a masterpiece, but I do think this is a marvelous film, satisfying and challenging both on a visceral, and aesthetic, and an intellectual level. A film I look forward to revisiting in February on the big screen.

*I know, McCarthy should probably get a lot of the credit here, but I haven't read the book so I'm analyzing the film purely by itself, and seeing everything as the Coen's choice

ESSENTIAL READING

Jim Emerson's take - with many screencaps.
Matt Zoller Seitz with a very thoughtful and insightful piece
Glenn Kelly, and a later post on is-he-in-the-motel-room
CJ Kennedy's review. Don't forget to check out the comments section (but beware of There Will Be Blood spoilers)
And this piece made me bookmark the unknown-to-me Flak magazine

Also, if you're up for something a little less serious, there's always Nora Ephron.

No Country for Old Men - First, disjointed, spoiler-free reaction

2007-12-03T14:55:00.000+01:00

Whoa.

I mean, whoa.

But I don't know how, or why.

All I can say is, I got out of this film in a daze. Shattered, you could say. Not quite sure quite what I'd seen, and not quite sure if it added up to anything. Sure, however, that everything on the screen was exactly what the Coen's intended, and exactly how they intended it.

Weird thing is, much as I've been keeping away from too detailed reviews and analyses of the film until now, I keep hearing people are surprised/disappointed about the ending. Now, I can understand that some people are ticked off by the lack of a clear resolution - although, being forewarned, much more was resolved than I had expected. But the ending, in my opinion, is what makes this film something more. The first three quarters of it, I was enjoying the film very much, but on a very superficial level: I thought it was well made, tense, scary even, funny, too, but I wasn't getting the 'masterpiece' vibe. After the ending...

Well, I don't know. Something. I came back and told a friend I'd just seen a movie that might be a masterpiece. Upon hearing what movie it was, his response was "Oh, I watched that last night! It was stupid!". Now, the only thing that really tells you is that some movies should not be downloaded and seen on a tiny laptop screen, but I had a hard time articulating a response, a hard time putting into words what exactly it was that made this movie clearly NOT stupid. I still don't know how. All I know is, I have a meeting with my thesis supervisor in twenty minutes, nothing to say to him, and yet I'm not preparing something for the meeting, but writing this blog post, trying to get my head around this movie.

I'll write another post tonight, after some more digestion, and after having finally read all the analytical pieces I've been closing my eyes for so far. I just wanted to put down my first thoughts, my gut reaction. Maybe it's all a joke on the Coen bros., maybe there is no deeper significance or thoughts and this movie's just another excuse for them to insert their beloved doorway-motif. Maybe it will turn out to be a profound meditation on violence, on life and death, and predetermination and/or choosing your own fate. Maybe, hopefully, my thoughts will have crystallized tonight. I wish I could go and see it again tonight, but unless I resort to the downloaded laptop format, I'll have to wait until Valentine's day.

I'm Not There

2007-11-30T21:54:00.000+01:00

I didn't get the review assignment for I'm Not There. I did, however, sneak into the press screening, because I simply could not wait until March 13th. I am very glad I went, and not so jealous any more of the guy who has to review it.

Let me start by saying I think this is a brilliant, amazing film. With an emphasis on I think. I know for sure that I loved many of the parts, and that most fragments of the film are, yes, amazing and brilliant. I'm still debating whether they add up to an amazing hole, and I'm increasinly leaning towards.... absolutely.

I told myself this post came third because I wanted it to stay on top, but it was also in great part because I have no idea where to start. I'm not even going to try to describe the movie. It's too much like a dream: in the moment it makes perfect sense, and probably on some level it does, but the fragments, upon waking, seem too disjointed to ever have flowed smoothly together. Yet they do. The film goes from black and white to color, from documentary-like footage to lush Malick-esque nature shots, from sequences closely based on things that really happened to totally fantastical stories. But it never feels jarring, and magically, the edges between the different stories and actors blur. The personas played by Heath Ledger (the least interesting one, unfortunately) and Christian Bale (humorlessness, but as pointed out on filmspotting, appropriately so) even inhabit the same world.

Cate Blanchett has received unanimous praise, and she deserves it, but there are many more performances worth praising. Marcus Carl Franklin makes the wonderfully intricate sentences he's given come out smoothly and naturally: he's both the little boy inside Bob Dylan and believable as a grown man in a boy's body. Wishaw is great as the sort-of second narrator, Arthur Rimbaud, showing how annoying yet fascinating Dylan must've been as a seventeen or eighteen year old, smarter than his peers and knowing it too well. And last but not least, I think it's worth singling out Michelle Williams - who I didn't even know was in the movie. She's Coco Rivington, a clear Edie Sedgwick socialite, and it's not even exaggerating that much to call her performance a revelation.

I'm getting long-winded here, and honestly, I still don't know exactly what it is I want to say, nor what the film has to say. One thing is for sure: do not go see it expecting more insight into Bob Dylan. But you can go see it expecting a wonderful, surprising, beautiful, mesmerizing, etc. work of art, experimental but not difficult or impenetrable. A film that stays with you even if you see two other movies after it the same day, and a film I can't wait to revisit in March.

How does it feel? It feels like it might be my favorite film of 2007.

Also: check out #187 of FilmSpotting. It made me finally accept Matty (I had some hurt feelings after Sam left), and it has a great interview with Todd Haynes. I couldn't have had better listening material on my way home.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

2007-11-30T21:19:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, it's not supposed to be realistic, it's MELODRAMA with capital letters, actions first, characters second, but jeez, are the people in this movie dumb about certain things. It works, though, at least on some level. There's a fascination in watching these people go down, but I hesitate to throw around words like "greek tragedy" (as some critics have), because stupidity doesn't quite count as a fatal character flaw, nor do daddy issues. Furthermore, I'm usually all for playing for continuity, but it simply had no purpose in this film, and didn't really disguise the fact that the story was really quite simple. There was no reason for it, either, since the story starts out more or less at the start, and end up exactly at the end.

But enough of the whining, because despite the above, this is an enjoyable thriller, even it's more a movie to rent on a rainy day than one to see in the cinema. For the guys, there's Marisa Tomei topless about half of her screen time, and for all of us, there is yet another great performance by Philip Seymous Hoffman, who really is one of best and most reliable actors in his generation, and totally devoid of vanity. There is a scene in which he calmly, methodically turns his place upside down, and he does it in a way that's both surprising and entirely in character. He's a character who's interesting beyond the story he's trapped in. Unfortunately, he is the only one. I'm probably being overly harsh here, and possibly I was burdened with overly high expectations (88 on metacritic, and 88% fresh on rotten tomatoes), but this film, unfortunately, didn't really do it for me.

TBS

2007-11-30T20:57:00.000+01:00

First of three entries for today, and it will be the shortest one... since I signed a confidentiality agreement which forbids me to reveal the ending of the film. Now, of course, most of you don't care anyway, because it's a Dutch film that probably won't be released outside of this tiny little country. But even for those Dutchies among you it is kind of weird, since the ending's not really a twist or surprise. It makes me think this film will be marketed with an emphasis on plot and intrigue, and it's too bad, because this is a film you could, and should, sell on the performances and characters. The story's simple: an escaped TBSer (basically a prisoner kept in a psychiatric facility instead of a prison) kidnaps a thirteen year old, but it plays out in a very nice, Bonnie & Clyde meets Lolita way, and the central performance by Theo Maassen (an actor I wouldn't mind being kidnapped by) is very strong. The thirteen year old does some very stupid things, but it's all stupid in a believable, stupid-thirteen-year-old-girl way (I was one of those, I should know).

Anyway, unlike the ending, this movie was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that.

It is DONE

2007-11-30T00:38:00.000+01:00

Finally! The murderer(s) have been caught, some dangling plot threads resolved, sense, unfortunately, note quite made. The final 51081 words will be sent to anyone who would like to see how shitty writing gets when you're just pumping out words on request.

Now: back to normal life.

But first: sleep!

Eastern Promises - reconsidered

2007-11-28T10:44:00.000+01:00

WARNING: spoilers for Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, and Dirty Pretty Things.

I just wrote my review for this film, and it's amazing how much my opinion has shifted since I first saw it. Oddly enough, I see many more flaws now, many more opportunities for improvement even, yet at the same time I like it a lot more than I did then.

Let's start with the flaws. I've come to the conclusion that the narrative wouldn't be hurt much if Naomi Watts' Anna was removed from it altogether. Don't get me wrong. Girl can act - and nobody who's seen Mulholland Drive will argue otherwise. But her character, despite some desperate touches to make her edgy - black ex-boyfriend, motorcycle - is dreadfully bland, and she isn't served well by the script, which gives her groan-inducing lines like "sometimes life and death go together". She's too obviously there just to be a) an audience stand-in, and outsider discovering the world of the Vory V Zakone as we do and b) a catalyst for the action. I'd say the dead girl would have been enough for b) with anonymous cops on the hunt, and preferably without the voice-over.

It's strange how Steven Knight's script for Eastern Promises has made me like his earlier Dirty Pretty Things LESS, because it's exposed some of the tricks and manipulation as, well, tricks and manipulation. Most irritatingly, Knight uses women being sexually assaulted as an overly obvious signaler for EVIL. Of course sexually assaulting women IS evil, but wouldn't it be nicer to, you know, make the good/bad division a bit more ambiguous? In Dirty Pretty Things, it's apparently not enough that Audrey Tautou's character is so desperate to go the the US she'd give up a kidney or work in a sweat shop, and that Sergi Lopez and the sweatshop owner take advantage of her desperation. Both have to sexually violate her, degrade her. The same in Eastern Promises: Semyon and Kirill are members of a criminal organization that KILLS PEOPLE, you know, but their evilness needs to be reinforced by having Semyon be a real and Kirill a wannabe rapist. Knight probably feels all good about acting righteous, but it speaks of a profound objectification of women, seeing them merely as beings to be protected - by men.

Why, then, has Eastern Promises grown in my estimation nonetheless? Because both Cronenberg and his actors - Mortensen in particular - take this extremely flawed script and put their own idiosyncrasies and ideas into it, leaving the surface intact but inserting layers upon layers below.

Cronenberg, first. In a recent interview with Poland, he explained that especially because he is an atheist, murder is, to him, the ultimate destructive act, and that he wants to show it as such. That's why he lingers longer than most would on blood spilling out of a slit throat, that's why he doesn't offer us the luxury of looking away. In most action movies the body count is much higher than in his, but he makes every body count. It shows, for instance, in how messy it is to dispose of the first corpse: death may be swift, but it's not easy to forget. The scene in which Nicolai methodically clips off the dead man's fingers is partly played for laughs, but it's also there to remind us of how messy death is.

Then there is, of course, Cronenberg's obsession with the combined strength, malleability, and vulnerability of the human body. Nicolai is a killing machine: effective and smooth. At the same time, his body shows the signs of his life: not just scars, but tattoos. In the scene where he gets some new ones, we see it happen: a needle is inserted and his body changes. Finally, the vulnerability: despite the eventual outcome, seeing a naked man fight two clothed ones with nasty, curved knives makes you very, very aware of how easy to pierce human skin is, how easy to damage a man.

Finally, Mortensen's performance is amazing. He is, here, the polar opposite of Tom/Joey from A History of Violence: where that character was an evil man acting at being good, Nicolai is, or at least seams to be, an evil man, but he might be good inside. In History, the evil character comes back out, but the conclusion can be seen as optimistic, as Mortensen's character wants to be Tom again at the end. In parallel, Nicolai (in a 'twist' that didn't need to be so spelled out) is undercover as a Vory. His cop persona comes out: he frees the prostitute, doesn't kill Anna's uncle. But in the end, it seems that he wants to be the 'fake' persona too: he's sitting in Semyon's restaurant, staring ahead of him, and it's possible to read half a dozen conflicting feelings on his face.

Mortensen really builds this character from the inside out. Oh, the accent is good, but it's not just that. It's in the way he talks, too, in the way he stands with his hands over one another, in how he moves. In the bad-boy moves - fingers to his throat, cigarette out on his tongue - that keep you wondering about how much of it is an act, and how much is real. I can't really articulate it better than the Shamus did (in an entry he unfortunately seems to have deleted, but google "shamus mortensen"and you'll find it cached), so I won't try, but it's his performance that keeps the film together, and that makes it infinitely more interesting than in would otherwise have been.

I didn't mean this post to be so long, but I suppose that shows more clearly than any words could how much this movie has stayed in my mind. I didn't expect it to. I'm seeing it again this Sunday, and I'm curious if I'll see even more.

UPDATE: Still thinking about this movie, and discovered two very insightful posts, one looking at the movie from a very gender-oriented perspective, the other amongst other things about the strange lack of technology.

Speechless

2007-11-26T10:33:00.000+01:00

Last week of nano-ing, and I'm less that 8000 words off so I'll probably make it again. Also means that by Friday the blog should be back to its normally scheduled programming. Ironically enough, nanowrimo this year more or less coincided with the writer's strike in Hollywood. I am of course, firmly on the side of the WGA, and my blog hiatus left you bored, well, you should check out the "speechless" videos posted by Nikki Finke and conceived by George Hickenlooper, especially #11 with Laura Linney.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T15:04:00.000+01:00

I've never quite understood the whole appeal of Thanksgiving (aside from the cranberry sauce), and not being American, I've never celebrated it. In fact, I was feeling less than thankful, since a commenter on filmtotaal pointed out to me that my latest review - the one I felt so good about, the one I didn't have to labor over but that simply spilled out onto my keyboard - was actually very awkwardly written. And he was right. Quite a blow to my fragile ego, as you can imagine. However, I do not want to dwell, and hence, forced myself to write down this list of things I am thankful for.

- My new room, and watching films from my new bed
- Pepernoten
- The way Cary Elwes' hair falls in front of his face in the beginning of The Princess Bride
- The Princess Bride existing, at all
- How well my thesis is going, progressing slowly but steadily
- Friends who bring brownies and rosé to movie nights
- Getting the No Country For Old Men review, and thus getting to see it in a week and a half instead of on Valentine's day
- The fact that no matter how many great movies I see, there's always so many more to discover
- Gus van Sant still being allowed and able to make strange, noncommercial movies when he wants to
- The fact that soon, I'll be allowed to play Sufjan Stevens' Christmas albums again
- "Don't eat those old people's french fries, pigeon! Don't you know you can fly?"
- Hugh Laurie as Gregory House
- Blog-a-thons
- having people read what I write, even if on the blog it's only a hanfdul
- The internet, where there is always someone who shares your obsessions and passions
- Finally, for the fact that despite my underdeveloped writing skills, I am getting -through my job and editor- a chance to improve myself little by little. It's frustrating that I can no longer always get away with elliptic, associative nonsense, but I know that in the long term, it's going to make me a better writer.

Ok, boring rant over, and I do feel somewhat better. Very therapeutic and all. So, go ahead, what are all my many, many readers thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving

Beowulf

2007-11-20T22:25:00.000+01:00

Ok, so in my desperation to get the "No Country for Old Men" review, I offered to review Beowulf, since nobody had professed interest for that and the release date is this Thursday already. The IMAX version is already in theatres, and there I went, begrudgingly, thinking it would be another 300. But I have to admit...

I didn't hate it.

Oh, it was silly. And with those strange, almost-real, plastic characters, it's hard to truly get into the story. But except for the first fifteen minutes, I wasn't bored for a minute, and I laughed a lot more than I did at my last semi-voluntary review, which was of The Heartbreak Kid.

Still. No fair. The guys get Angie's boobs, but Ray Winstone's digital dong stays carefully, hilariously, hidden, even in a naked fight longer than Viggo's. I know this is intended for 13-yo boys, but still, no fair!

Another plus for Beowulf? It's inspired some truly funny reviews.

A tale of two Hedwigs - Queer Film blog-a-thon

2007-11-19T12:11:00.000+01:00

NOTE: this is my contribution to Damion's Queer Film Blog-a-thon. What are you waiting for, go check it out!

My name is Hedwig.

I was named after the main character from a novel published in the year 1900. "Van de koele meren des doods" by Frederik van Eeden. The title loosely translates as "Of the cool lakes of death", and the book is exactly as cheery as you would expect. The delicately nerved protagonist is a sensual creature who gets married to an impotent man and wonders about why "the mystery of marriage" is missing. She then runs off with a piano player, delivers a dead baby, and carries it in a basket with her to Paris where - if memory serves - a doctor makes her a morphine addict, after which she wanders the streets of Paris as a whore. In the end, she ends up a nun.

When I finally read the book at age 18, I hated, hated this Hedwig. Luckily for me, I found a namesake I could identify with a lot more around the same age. This one was a botched transsexual, a rocker from Berlin, with fabulous wigs and a thirst for vengeance. Someone who had no less of a tragic life, but who - unlike the turn of the century twat from the book - didn't just roll over and hope for the cool embrace of death, but instead fought with tooth and long, polished nail for justice and for love.
The movie, if you haven't guessed it by now, is Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And I'll admit, I bought the DVD mostly out of vanity. If you're called Hedwig, you don't find a lot of namesakes, and I was curious enough to spare 10 euros. I couldn't have spent them better.

John Cameron Mitchell does so much so well in this movie that's it hard to know where to start. The music, and its very own mix of mythologies, the amazing central performance, the strange ending, the humor. But what I want to talk about in particular in connection with this blog-a-thon is how naturally and flexibly gender, gender-roles and sexuality are treated.

Hedwig herself is, of course, a wonderful mess. She's not transgendered in the sense that she's felt like a girl all her life: the operation is done out of love, both for her "sugar-daddy" and the country (and associated freedom) he represents. Her surgery is botched, leaving her with the "angry inch" of the title, and as a result she is the ultimate outsider: a piece of an impossible puzzle, futilely looking for another half that will fit. Her triumph is that she refuses to stop looking.

You can tell John Cameron Mitchell believes, or at least wants to believe, that there is indeed someone out there for everyone. To use an awful Dutch proverb, there's a lid for every jar. What Hedwig points us to is that in order to find that lid, we shouldn't be halted by convention, and if we should consider both men, women, and everything in between. This movie shows that in some way, everyone is somewhere in between. It's not for nothing that Hedwig's poor, abused boyfriend Yitzak is played (wonderfully) by a woman. And the reason Tommy Gnosis is a tragic figure rather than a true villain is that he cannot look beyond a simple angry inch to find love.

I've long had a fascination for gay culture. I'm still not entirely sure why, but I think I'm starting to figure it out. Queer culture is all about taking what makes you different, what makes you a "freak" in the eyes of some limited people, and making something great out of it. I might not be gay, but I understand what it's like to be different, even in a subtle way, from what's considered the norm. Hedwig, and many other queer films sure to be discussed today, take these feelings of unbelonging and turn them into art. In this particular case, the lesson to draw is clear: be whoever you are, and find love wherever you can.

I don't know about you. But I take comfort in that.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2007-11-08T08:05:00.000+01:00

I usually don't link to my filmtotaal review any more, but I'm rather proud of this one. My editor added the word welhaast in one sentence, which I don't think I've ever used, but hey, his other changes are usually big improvements, so I can't complain.

In the end, the star rating might be a little high for the review. What I wrote down was my frustration, because this film is almost great, could have been the masterpiece it wanted to be. But almost great still deserves four stars, in my opinion, if only because of the ambition on display here, and the resulting beauty.

My earlier post

The Hitch-Hiker, and a noir-box recap

2007-11-06T23:39:00.001+01:00

Sometimes the best things come to you when you least expect them. I was feeling pretty drained from laboring over my review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (I just don't get tired of typing that), and writing on my nanonovel was not progressing, so I decided to play hooky from writing and watch the last film in my film noir box instead: the Hitch-Hiker. And I think it might be my favorite of the bunch.

It's directed by a woman, Ida Lupino (who I liked a lot in They Drive By Night), yet it features only men, three men, to be exact, two hostages and one man with a gun. A very sadistic, trigger-happy man with a gun. The music is amazing, notable also for its absence in some thrilling scenes. At one moment, the hitch-hiker forces some shooting-practice, and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

So, then, the recap. All ten films, listed from best to worst (in my opinion, of course), with grades. Letter grades, for some reason.

The Hitch-Hiker A
Detour A
D.O.A. A-
Scarlet Street A-
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers B
Quicksand B-
Impact B-
Trapped B-
He walked by night C+
Whistle Stop C-

If there is a trend at all in the above, it's that a) I like my noirs on the road b) I like em dark, though the Hitch-Hiker has a fairly happy ending and c) I like Edmond O'Brien.

I've been thinking a lot about why I love noir so much, lately. It's partly due to my love for genre pictures: I think often the most interesting art comes from having to operate within boundaries or conventions. There's a reason there's so many great sonnets, too.

Still, that's not the only thing. Westerns are very genre-y movies as well, and I like them, but after watching The Searchers and Red River not too long ago, it's becoming all too clear that while I like westerns, they often don't put a grin on my face like noirs do. I suppose part of it is that I'm a city person, and not really a nature lover. I considered that maybe it had to do with me being a verbal rather than a visual person, but I also prefer the style of noirs to that of westerns. This is all a rambling way to say: I really don't know. What I do know is that I'm glad I put all those noirs on my Sinterklaas wish list.

Quicksand

2007-11-04T22:41:00.000+01:00

Wow, this movie really is a 101 course in right screen writing. Nothing happens that hasn't been foreshadowed in some way, yet it's never obvious. Nothing comes out of nowhere: not the photo booth, not the hiding spot, not the landlady. And the story, of one man who follows every bad choice to its worse follow-up as he slowly gets himself stuck in the quicksand, is fascinating. Too bad he gets thrown a -rather unlikely - rope in the end.

Mickey Rooney's not your typical noir hero. He's too uncomplicated: he's certainly not sweet, but he has no hidden depths. His voice-over is devoid of the usual snark, but for this movie, he's the perfect protagonist: he's enough of a jerk that you don't ming seeing him tortured - and he really is a terrible criminal, gets caught at every single thing that he does- but he's not so unlovable that you don't care about him getting out. And hey, he's redeemed when he finally turns around an learns to appreciate his sweet ex-girlfriend, and who could object to that?

Enchanted

2007-11-02T19:08:00.000+01:00

So, I just saw Enchanted, and I have to admit it was...enchanting. Which is of course silly, predictable thing to say, entirely lacking in originality yet sweet, and as such a perfect description. The internal logic here is -at best- flawed, the performances are over the top, the bits with the henchman don't quite work and yet....I can't bring myself to hate on this movie. I might even have to give it 4 out of 5 stars when I review it, because this film made me remember what it was like to see Cinderella for the first time.

Like almost all animation films nowadays - and don't let the trailer fool you, this is animation, in almost every frame, despite the fact that there are live actors involved - this film tries to balance two audiences. There are even two audience substitutes here: McDreamy is the cynic rolling his eyes for us, but (like us) ultimately swept along, and his daughter is there for all the pre-teen girls who are sure to flock to this in numbers. And they won't be the worse for it: some jokes will go over their heads but none of them are crude, and the film even has a nice emancipatory vibe, without pushing its message on you.

You have to wonder though: do these kids even get all the references? I mean, have they ever seen a non-postmodern fairytale? Irony's all good and well, but I remember reading through a book of Grimm fairytales half my weight when I was a kid, and there's a power to those stories that Shrek and his followers can't quite equal. And while James Marsden sending himself up is a hoot (at one point, his helper asks "Sire. Do you like yourself?" and Marsden dryly answers "what's not to like?"), Susan Sarandon isn't likely to inspire quite as many nightmares as Snow White's evil Queen did.

Remember, remember...it's November

2007-11-01T01:03:00.000+01:00

Against my better judgment, I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo again, for the fourth time, after winning in 2003, 2004, and 2005 (and taking a break in 2006). I am, very unwisely, trying the hard-boiled genre. With, obviously, a female PI. I have one corpse already, just no idea as to the killer or the motive, but I'm hoping that will come.

I'm not blogging my attempts this time, but if you want to read along, just send me an e-mail and I'll make sure you get regular updated. Keep in mind, this would be quickly written, unrevised prose from someone without notable talent.

Wish me luck!

H. 1065 words and counting.

Control - first thoughts

2007-10-29T22:15:00.000+01:00

Is this film gorgeous or what? What else would you expect, of course, from Anton Corbijn, who surprisingly didn't act as his own DP here. I cannot find a right picture to illustrate it, but his compositions are amazingly simple, so stark, yet they work beautifully.

I almost can't believe Sam Riley is a first time actor: he's great here. I'm not even talking about the mimicry - I'm not very familiar with Joy Division and until I searched youtube fifteen minutes ago, I'd never seen Ian Curtis dance - but simply about the intensity of his portrayal, the openness, too. The tragedy of Curtis' life is that it really wasn't all that tragic, but he couldn't take it, and Riley shows us the little boy he really still was. When he was my age, he was already married, with a kid, a band to lead and a lover. All of this happened more or less impulsively. Then, when he was one year older, he had one fatal impulse.

I only have one gripe, really, and it's not even the predictable rise-and-fall structure inherent in biopics. There is one scene where Ian Curtis is -more or less- hypnotized, and Corbijn unfortunately resorts to the old method of repeating phrases he heard before in voice-over. It's such an unfortunate trick, and the scene would have been much more effective had we been able to fill in his thoughts ourselves: we've heard what's been said to him, it's even been filtered for us since this is a film, and we really don't need to be told explicitly what's in his head.

Ok. I'm off to download Joy Division songs now.

Notorious

2007-10-28T09:50:00.000+01:00

It's interesting to watch Notorious, as I did, the day after Casablanca. The first things you notice are rather superficial: how much Claude Rains aged in the three years in between, for instance - though looking at his birth date, the surprising thing really is how he managed to look so young before. But there are more telling differences.

Most of all, Ingrid Bergman is, I'll admit it, a more interesting character here. In Casablanca, she's an ideal being: a beautiful, smart, noble woman who has to make a very difficult choice between two worthwhile men. Her doubts are played out wonderfully, and you can imagine you inspire the passion of both men, but outside of the context of Casablanca, she wouldn't be very narratively interesting. Her Alicia in Notorious, on the other hand, is amazing: self-destructive, smart, full of abandon and desperate to find someone she can love and who can love her back. Witness the scene in which she tries to make a chicken dinner: it's a total failure, but she can laugh about it, and who wouldn't rather have that than a perfectly prepared dinner with a bore? It's amazingly bold for that time, too: it's obvious that not only does she drink too much, but she sleeps around, too.

All of which makes it so unpalatable that by the end of it, to be redeemed by reducing her to a powerless damsel in distress who has to be rescued by a man who's consistently humiliated her throughout. Oh, I'll admit, I got stomach pangs watching that last scene, because Grant and Bergman do have amazing chemistry, but I cannot see a single reason for her loving him so much aside from her own self-loathing. He's pristine, he's a patriotic good guy who would never admit to a mistake, and well, no match for Bogie's Rick, in my opinion.

Is it bad that I found myself sympathizing with Rains? Really, there is so little attention paid to the nefarious nazi plot (a phrase I used before, but I like alliteration, so hey) that it's hard to not see Rains simply as a poor sap fooled by a beautiful woman who betrays him. True to Hitchcock fashion, he's a mamma's boy, but he defies his - very scary - mother to marry Alicia, and what does he get for it?

Oh well. I did love the movie, despite my ranting. It's Hitchcock doing what he does best. And if you're interested in more Hitchcock, Joe Valdez has devoted the whole month of October to his films, so go check it out.

Top 50 - #1 - Casablanca

2007-10-25T20:35:00.000+02:00

Well, I really can't put it off any more, not after watching this wonderful, wonderful film for what was probably the 6th or 7th time yesterday. See, there was a house dinner. And one of my house mates has a Casablanca poster in his room, but had never seen the film. I'd been pestering him to watch it for a long time, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. "But it's black and white!" he protested. "I'll fall asleep!".

I bristled. So did another one of my house mates -one who had been mildly OK with watching the film - but not for the same reason. "Wait, it's BLACK AND WHITE? No, no way, it'll be boring." Luckily, I can be pretty persuasive, and I managed to coerce them into watching 30 minutes of the film. If they found it too boring then, the deal was, we'd switch it off and pick a color film to watch. Needless to say, we watched until the moment Louis and Rick walk off in the fog.

I know, lists of this kind, those made by the more discerning film buffs at least, are usually dominated by another black and white film, one that doesn't even appear on the list: I am talking, of course, of Citizen Kane. Thing is, while I greatly admire Citizen Kane, while I can see why it is revered and still innovative after all these years, I can't muster up any love for it. It's just too cold and analytic an exercise, with no room for real emotion, for any lovely flaws.

Casablanca does have flaws. When Ilsa says "was that cannon fire, or is that my heart pounding?" it's corny, too corny in this instance, and "The Germans wore gray. You were blue" is also stretching it a little, but the film's willing corniness works, it wins you over. And I mean, who can remember any quotes from Citizen Kane besides "Rosebud"? Contrast this with this film, which gave us "Here's looking at you, kid", "Play it once, Sam, for old times sake" "If she can stand it I can! Play it!", "I stick my neck out for nobody", "We'll always have Paris", "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine" and so many more.

Ah, but you say, Citizen Kane is all about cinematography! To which I reply, Citizen Kane is all about showing off. Yes, the camera in Casablanca moved in much more conventional ways, but it is above all effective. Take the shot which introduces us to Rick: first the check, the hand signing it "OK Rick", then taking the cigarette and in one smooth movement showing us the face of our hero.

Ah, Rick. Yes, Ingrid Bergman is glowing here, more beautiful than ever, but to me this movie belongs to Bogart. His Rick is so wounded, but he doesn't want to be pitied, doesn't want to be weak, and it's through his bitterness that it shows. The way he delivers lines like "Or aren't you the one that tells", with a sneer: it's mean, it's lashing out, but it's also profoundly touching, more so than any doe-eyes could ever have been. He doesn't "emote" in the way male actors sometimes try now, but his emotions are obvious.

Well, I don't pretend to be able to add something to all that has already been said about this film, let alone something insightful. I just love this film. And I don't think I can share that any better than by leaving you with some more wonderful exchanges:

Captain Renault: Carl, see that Major Strasser gets a good table, one close to the ladies.
Carl: I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.

___________

Captain Renault: Rick, there are many exit visas sold in this café, but we know that you've never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to remain open.
Rick: Oh? I thought it was because I let you win at roulette.
Captain Renault: That is another reason.

_____________

Ilsa: Don't, Rick! I can understand how you feel.
Rick: [scoffs] You understand how I feel. How long was it we had, honey?
Ilsa: [on the verge of tears] I didn't count the days.
Rick: Well, I did. Every one of 'em. Mostly I remember the last one. The wild finish. A guy standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look in his face because his insides have been kicked out.

_____________

Major Strasser: You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American.
Captain Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.

_____________

Rick: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.
Captain Renault: That is my least vulnerable spot.

_____________

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me!
Captain Renault: Hmmh! Diplomatist!
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

_____________

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

_____________

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

_____________

D.O.A

2007-10-23T21:29:00.000+02:00

Oh, but did I love this film. If I ever do a top 10 noirs, this is sure to be on it. The story's based on a gimmick, really: a man investigating his own murder, but it works, from the wonderful opening following a man staggering towards the police station and into the homicide division to the convoluted resolution. I also loved the sub-story about how only impending death can cure this man of his fear of commitment: in a way, his misfortune could be seen as a punishment for his lecherous behavior at the beginning, complete with lovely sound effects. The girl's a bit of a nag in person but wonderfully funny and playful on the phone, and despite the goofiness of the whole "luminous toxin" business (and its convenient timing) the ending manages to move.
_______________________________________

Dr. MacDonald: Of course, I'll have to notify the police. This is a case for Homicide.
Frank Bigelow: Homicide!
Dr. MacDonald: I don't think you fully understand, Bigelow. You've been murdered.

Impact - 1949

2007-10-22T20:00:00.000+02:00

I once argued that if it has a happy ending, it ain't a film noir, but this film has made me reconsider. It's noir alright, with the pretty, glamorous wife plotting to kill her husband with her lover, and a truly great scene leading up to said murder attempt. In the Idaho part of the movie, the lighting is probably too cheerful, the people too decent and the eventual outcome too sunny, but Ella Raines is so cute you forgive that right away. Brian Donlevy is also great, convincing both as the energetic loving husband at the beginning and as the angry, desperate man he becomes. This isn't great noir, but it is mighty enjoyable, and it fully earns its happy conclusion.

Michael Clayton - quick thoughts

2007-10-21T20:39:00.000+02:00

Ok, instead of telling screenwriters and directors about "show and tell", how about following that doctrine and just showing them Michael Clayton? Class-action suit films are generally not my thing, but there isn't a crying mom or dying kid in sight here, just professional people trying to do their jobs, and a screenwriter-turned-director showing everyone how it's done.

SPOILER WARNING

There's this wonderful moment where Michael Clayton is looking through his colleagues apartment. He opens the fridge, sees a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The shot is clear, but not overemphasized. We don't get a shot of a "Eureka" look on Clooney's face. But we understand that seeing this means the guy didn't kill himself, and we know that Clayton is smart enough to get that, too.

If there's one criticism to be made it's that for a thriller, it isn't particularly thrilling. It is never boring, however, and there is a kind of horror to seeing Tom Wilkinson's character killed, not because there's so much violence or blood or gore involved, but because of the cold professionalism of the killers: it seems that to them, there isn't much difference between installing microphones in someone's apartment, placing a bomb in a car or killing someone, checking - twice, for good measure- to make sure his pulse is gone.

The film ends with Clooney in a cab, while the credits show. He's not a great actor, probably. But he knows how to portray a character without acting too much, or making his feelings too explicit. And Tony Gilroy, the director, knows how to leave out enough, but never too much: he doesn't condescend to his audience, but he's never too clever, either. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Dead Man - Close-up Blog-a-thon

2007-10-19T10:14:00.000+02:00

I wasn't planning on participating in this blog-a-thon. Nothing immediately came to mind, and in general, I pay more attention to wide shots than close-ups: I love composition above all. However, I was watching Dead Man last night and this series of close-ups was too good NOT to blog about.

And then, the aftermath: notice especially where she is shot.

Don't forget to check out the other great entries!

Quick Thoughts - Trapped (1949)

2007-10-17T09:31:00.000+02:00

Ah, but how you can see the production code at work here. The sympathy of the film is clearly with its charming protagonist, played by Llloyd Bridges, an his smart, sexy girlfriend Meg/Laurie, but of course in the end criminals are never allowed to win. There are two great fights here, clumsy and nasty and just two bodies rolling on the floor trying to hurt each others - none of the effectiveness here of Bourne or Viggo, they don't really know how to fight, just that they want to get out looking better than the other guy.

I'm not sure I liked the documentary voice-over, quite similar in fact to the one in He Walked By Night, and the end chase sequence is not all that captivating since it doesn't involve the main character, but all in all, this is a nice little noir.

Image source

Top 50 - #2 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2007-10-14T20:44:00.000+02:00

I have a conflicted relationship with romance, and romantic movies in particular. Thing is, I'm kind of a cynic about "Love" with a capital, yet at heart I really am hopelessly romantic. I just don't put any stock in the formulaic, by the book kind of romance movies usually serve up. I don't buy two beautiful people being meant for one another just 'cause, I don't buy big romantic gestures, and that's not even mentioning the sneaky sexism often present, with many movies operating under the assumption that the main goal in a woman's life is to find "the one".

My sister suggested, yesterday, that I draw out my studies because it's in college that you have the highest probability of meeting this mysterious "one", and I don't even think she was kidding. I laughed at her, of course, and it's true: I don't make any life decisions based on how they will affect my probability of finding a mate. I don't believe there is one person out there for me who's perfect. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't long to make a connection with someone, somehow, if only for a little while.

All this is a much too long and personal detour to bring me to a simple point: I believe that aside from being a perfectly crafted and written masterpiece, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the most honestly romantic movies ever made. Not romantic like my #1. Not romantic in the sense that it makes you believe, for just a moment, in the magic Hollywood is so good at selling. But romantic in the sense that it doesn't let realism get in the way of hope.

Carrey's Joel and Winslet's Clementine aren't "meant to be", not even particularly well-matched in certain respects. They know, at the end, that they have many fights and difficulties ahead, that their relationship will be flawed. And it's knowing that, that they say "okay" to going through all of it again.

Charlie Kaufman is a brilliant screenwriter, I don't think there's anyone who'd deny it. I'd love to spend 15 minutes in his head, if not more. And I don't think he's heartless, either, his insecurities are much too close to the surface for that. His brain does however get in the way of his heart a lot of the time, leaving his films interesting, but a little cold, mental exercises that lead you to analyze them right away instead of getting lost in them. In this film, however, there's a perfect balance of the genius crazy idea and the feelings involved, and after the Science of Sleep I am inclined to give Gondry much of the credit for that. His imagery fills his film with wonder, but because he does most of his effects in camera the film never loses its footing in the real world. He managed to make this the best Kaufman movie to date, and that's no mean feat.

Next up: well, no hints this time, since any hint would give it away. Any guesses?

Eastern Promises (Cronenberg, 2007)

2007-10-13T10:05:00.000+02:00

It's impossible to say anything remotely meaningful or interesting about this movie without mentioning the (in)famous "bathhouse scene", so I won't even try. It is amazing. It's intense, it hurts, it's repulsive, yet you can't look away. It shows both how incredibly easy to harm a human body is, how tenuous human life, and at the same time in Viggo's sinewy body it shows how lean, mean, and resilient it can be at the same time. Malleable, too: all the tattoos make his body seem something manufactured, perfected, a symbol more than anything living, breathing, feeling pain.

Also, yes, he's nekkid.

Unfortunately, despite a few wonderful Cronenberg touches as described above, I'm not sure this film ultimately adds up to more than just a solid genre film. It's a bit unfair, of course: coming from an unknown I might have hailed this as a very promising debut, but coming from Cronenberg, especially just after A History of Violence, how could my expectations not be unfairly high? That movie was much simpler on the surface, but it could be read in so many ways that it got better the more you thought about it. This one? Well, there's a lot to it, and definitely a lot to say, but I'm not sure it'll yield much more on second viewing.

Oh, but there are so many nice touches here. A lot of directors don't quite know what to do with Vincent Cassel: he's ugly, really, with his extreme features, but he's magnetic on screen, and there's a strange vulnerability lurking under the surface. This latter quality especially comes through in the character of Kirill, who's psychotic, sadistic, certainly, but ultimately just a boy who knows he'll never be able to satisfy his dad's expectations.

And Viggo? Of course he's great. I often feel like resisting his self-seriousness, but his obsessive researching pays off. In just a simple sentence, "I'm the driver", he can reveal so much. The Shamus, who luckily keeps archives now, wrote memorably about him, and he makes a good point: you can see him think, but you're never told exactly what he's thinking. He's opaque, but not a cypher: he's someone who's learned not to show too much.

The screenwriter, Steve Knight, also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, a film I love, but the script is not as good as the main character, due to a third act twist in particular, that should have either been left out or explored in a little more detail. He gets the subculture right, and the desire to belong there, but he is at heart too enamored with genre plot devices. In the case of Dirty Pretty Things I think it works, breaking through all the building tension with a neat thriller resolution, but here it seems out of place. There's a kiss, too, that could easily have been left out altogether, and in my opinion should have been. Luckily, Cronenberg ends with an amazing shot, where Viggo Mortensen shows that just sitting at a table staring into the distance is acting, too.

The Searchers

2007-10-11T12:27:00.000+02:00

What a weird Western this is...Tonally, most of all: while the topic is dead-serious and the "hero" not really much of a hero at all, there are many moments of odd, jarring comic relief. Wayne plays an odd character here, one who knows much about the Comanch, speaks their language, but hates them, even wants to kill his niece for just having been close to them. He's a bit of a madman, really, especially when he starts shooting.

Nowadays, this would of course mean a psychologically motivated flashback to the incident in his past that caused this, but here it's all left to our imagination, which is unsatisfying but all the more intriguing. Unfortunately, Wayne doesn't show us many shadings, never allows us to think he's thinking something more, and the conflict in his personality can only be seen in his actions. It's a good thing Martin is there to act as an audience substitute (and to walk around shirtless a lot).

It took me a while to get into the movie, but once it grabbed me I liked it quite a bit. I'm still more in favor of the more self-conscious, reflexive kind of westerns, spaghetti westerns in particular, but this film has made me eager to watch more older ones, and find out what those were reflecting upon. Any recommendations?

2007-10-09T22:19:00.000+02:00

Oh, and you should all be reading this. Including comments. And follow-ups.

Top 50 - # 3 - The Man Who Wasn't There

2007-10-08T22:27:00.000+02:00

Finally then! Craig was right again.

One of the best cinematic experiences I've ever had was watching The Man Who Wasn't There on the big screen, 4 years after it came out, and after two or three viewings on DVD. Roger Deakins' own print was being shown, and the man himself was in attendance. I've never seen black and white more glorious, more crisp but at the same time also oddly warm, and this screening is when my love for this film turned to adoration.

Deakins also did a Q&A afterwards. I didn't really understand half of the Q's and three quarters or the A's due to all the technical lingo, but I sat there fascinated anyway because he spoke with such enthusiasm about his craft. He was impressively modest. It wasn't any sort of false humility: he knows he's good at what he does. He clearly sees what he does as a craft though, something you need some talent for but mostly a lot of experience, and there was not an ounce of pretentiousness to detect. I really think he's on the best cinematographers working today, and it's ridiculous that he has yet to win an Oscar (he was nominated 5 times, but never got to take home that statuette).

There's much more, of course, than just the cinematography. One of its greatest assets is Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, the barber who rarely speaks except in his voice-over. He's the ultimate noir protagonist: essentially good, well, not evil, but cursed by his one flaw, which ironically enough is ambition.

Ambition? You wouldn't say it from the way he flatly says "Me? I don't talk much. I just cut the hair", but there is a spark there. He doesn't want much, but he does want a little bit more. Just a bit of independence, a bit more than just cutting the hair. An escape: something undetermined, unplanned.There are too many great moments to mention. Ed shaving his wife's legs, carefully, then his legs getting shaved later on. The murder scene. The Riedenschneider speech, and the shadows of the bars. The UFO's. But the two that resonate most with me have to do with Birdie, played by Scarlett Johanssen before she got all glamorous. The first is when Ed's brought her to a fancy piano teacher. He asks him "How did she do?" and the piano teacher answers:

"She seemed like a very nice girl. She plays, monsieur, like a very nice girl. Stinks. Nice girl. However: stinks."

It's a crushing moment, and Thornton underplays it beautifully. Later, in the car, Birdie calls him an enthusiast, and it's an assessment both ridiculous and strangely accurate. He is an enthusiast, even if he never betrays any emotion more acute than slight surprise, he is someone who likes things in a quiet, but unwavering way.

Or maybe I'm just reading things into him, because above all else, Thornton's Ed is a blank slate, someone everyone projects their own idea upon, like you can see images in clouds, or in the billowing smoke that comes from Ed's permanent cigarette. To his wife he's the reliable dud she married. To her brother he's a pillar of strength and a listening ear. To her lover he's harmless, an innocent. To Birdie he's a strange sort of sugar daddy, to the wonderfully named Creighton Tolliver he's a mark. Most memorably, to Riedenschneider, he's nothing less than "the modern man".

"What kind of man are you?" Big Dave asks, repeatedly. What kind of man is he? The kind you can make an endlessly fascinating film about.

Next up... a movie which ends memorably, with both main characters saying..."Okay"

2007-10-06T22:50:00.000+02:00

I know I generally don't discuss private stuff, but I just had to share. See, I just moved in, well, am in the process, anyway: ikea was raided, many things assembled (then taken apart and assembled again because one little thing was wrong, obviously), and while most of my boxes are still packed, I know my priorities, as you can see below:

This will also (hopefully) mean posting frequency should be back up soon. And: I found the copy of Hable Con Ella that I thought I'd lost, so I now have two, and I'm thinking...contest?

Hotel Chevalier

2007-09-28T21:06:00.000+02:00

I'm never quite sure what to think about Wes Anderson. Oh, he's brilliant, especially visually, there's no debating that; unfortunately, he knows it a little too well. Still, when iTunes was being infuriatingly local last night and I was unable to download Hotel Chevalier due to being outside the US, it ruined my evening.

I managed to get a version. Low quality, and I believe the beginning has been chopped off (please tell me, my version starts with Jason Schwartzman opening the door of his room), but I was very happy with it nonetheless.

It's a strange little movie. It's unmistakably Anderson, from the way it's shot to the small details in the set decoration, and even in the way the two characters talk. It never quite takes off, but I was left wanting more, and that can't be a bad sign, can it? Unusually enough for Anderson, it doesn't feel like the characters' whole world is contained on screen, like all they ever were and will be is here, it feels like they are fully realized characters with interesting stories beyond the screen. They breathe. And that's a welcome change.

I'm looking forward to The Darjeeling Limited. The three brothers setup makes me hope it will be more Royal Tenenbaums than Life Aquatic. And to keep me entertained in the meantime, I just ordered Bottle Rocket, which I found clumsily charming the first time around.

Top 50 - #4 - Donnie Darko

2007-09-28T15:39:00.000+02:00

This is a movie I really can't be objective about. Oh, of course, we can never judge a movie truly objectively - it's about taste, after all. All kinds of things factor in: what mood you were in when you watched the film, which films you'd seen before, your own life, even. Still, I'm usually able to take a step back and see a movie for what it is, even often understand why people would have a different opinion of it.

Not Donnie Darko though. You have to understand: this was my absolute favorite movie from ages 17 to 19. I must've forced more than a dozen people to watch it with me, and I don't think there's any movie I've seen more often. It's almost as if this movie's in my veins, even now that I'm no longer a true believer or fanatic. And I have absolutely no idea what I would think if I was able to watch it today for the first time.

I can't quite put my finger on what made this movie so perfect for me at that time. Part of it is definitely that Jake Gyllenhaal plays the ultimate misunderstood teen, both aloof, feeling infinitely more intelligent and interesting than his peers and at the same time much more vulnerable and sensitive than he wants to be, or will admit to being. Another big part is that - in the original version at least - this is a film that dares to trust its audience, to not explain too much, and at the time this made me feel majorly intelligent myself, of course.

I still think the movie stands up: there's a lot of first-timer show-offy camera moves, but they work, the tracking shot through the school especially. The dialogue is great. The plot is still fascinating after twenty times. And since I've managed to avoid listening to the director's commentary, the movie is for me still very much open to interpretation, and wonderfully ambiguous.

If I sound a little defensive, it's because I no longer think my adoration of this movie is justified. I do still think it's a movie that will stand the test of time, and will be loved by many troubled teens to come, and it's certainly not just for nostalgia's sake that it ranks this high.

Gretchen: My mom had to get a restraining order against my stepdad. He has emotional problems.
Donnie: Oh, I have those too! What kind of emotional problems does your dad have?

and let's not forget:

Gretchen: You're weird.
Donnie: Sorry.
Gretchen: No, that was a compliment.

Next up: a black and white movie from this decade about "the modern man", with bonus aliens and blackmail.

Quick thoughts - Shrek the Third

2007-09-27T14:05:00.000+02:00

The Shrek sequels are surprisingly inoffensive. Yes, they lack the freshness of the original, but whereas with the bloated, convoluted Pirates sequels this bothered me to no end, the Shrek movies keep it simple and short, without any more ambition than entertaining, and in that ambition they succeed, despite a falling lpm ratio. The Shrek-based humor is quite repetitive at this point in particular, but there are lovely little visual jokes - the trees using their branches as a parachute, for instance. Also, the celebrity voices are well-cast, I especially liked that after already using John Cleese in the second movie, they now also added fellow Monty Python alum Eric Idle as a somewhat loony Merlin. The subplot about villains taking back their stories could have been more interesting and fleshed out, but it feels petty to complain about a movie that knows to stay simple, short, and light.

Of course I prefer originality, daring, and so on. But for an evening like yesterday, when I was spending the evening with a friend I hadn't spent time with in a while, there could not have been a more appropriate movie.

Top 50 - #5 - Jules et Jim

2007-09-26T17:57:00.000+02:00

Whenever I hear someone extolling the greatness of Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulian, aka. Amelie, I feel like just sitting them down in front of my TV and pushing Jules et Jim into the DVD-player. Jeunet doesn't deny his influence, of course - Amelie is seen watching a scene from Jules et Jim at one point, and he does use some of the elements, including a voice-over eerily similar in tone, to great effect. He's even able to add some things, most notably in his use of color. Ultimately though, there is one thing that makes Jules et Jim many times more fascinating that Amelie, and by far the greater film, and that is Catherine.

I don't think any woman like her has ever been put on screen: willful, strong, yet ever changing and impossible to get a grasp on. She is truly - as much as that expression is a cliche - a force of life: someone whose passion is for living and for living grandly, wildly, freely. She can stand in for every woman, but at the same time I don't know anyone even remotely like her.

Nobody could have played her as well as Jeanne Moreau, of course. She's infuriating, but you can understand why Jules and Jim can't let her go, why she exerts a fascination on them even before they meet, and why they go along with her plans, her desires. Why they try so hard to make her happy, even knowing that it's an impossible task. Why they strive to understand this strange woman, who jumps into the Seine out of protest, dresses up as a man at will, and laughs that wonderful, triumphant, and slightly intimidating laugh.

The tragedy, of course, is that just like Jules and Jim can never be free of Catherine, she can never be free, because she can never be satisfied. She simply wants too much: the home life with Jules, the love life with Jim, the sex life with Albert, even, and independence despite all this. Yet she never, ever stops trying, and even at the end, where it could be said she gives up, you can also see it as her trying out a whole new form of freedom.

There's more to the film, of course. It's gorgeous to look at, the music is amazing, and the tempo, the pace, is unlike any other film I know. It's a tragic film, in a way, but it never makes me said, just melancholic, wistful and feeling like throwing my life upside down. Feeling like simply living more.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2007-09-25T11:54:00.001+02:00

This film's not quite the masterpiece it wants to be, but I liked it, liked it a lot even. It's a western without many of the standard elements: no shoot-outs, here, no chases on horses, no cowboy hats, even, just bowlers. It's almost as much a period drama as a western, in fact. It's a movie I'd sooner recommend to my mother than to my little brother, which you don't expect from a western.

I usually hate movies that are so self-serious and solemn, but I found myself entranced by this one, its slow pace and elegiac tone, maybe because it's content not to give any straight answers. We spend a lot of time with Jesse James and Bob Ford, we get the feeling that we know them, but their precise motivation remains opaque. There are a lot of themes here, from hero worship to celebrity culture, but luckily Dominik doesn't try to convey any specific message, and the assassination of the title is left wonderfully ambigious. Some of the symbolism is heavy handed (Jesse playing with and then killing the two snakes comes to mind), but while this bothered me to no end in The Brave One, here it seemed to fit.

I know a lot of people dismiss Brad Pitt, and he does tend to pick lighter, easier roles he can just coast through on charisma, but he's perfect as Jesse James. Sure, he falls back on his familiar ticks, opening his mouth and showing his tongue, squinting, but who cares when it works? His Jesse is fascinating and charismatic, but you never forget that he is also dangerous and unpredictable.

And then, Casey Affleck. I agree his is the knock-out performance here, keeping his Robert Ford exactly on the fine line between repulsive, sympathetic, and pathetic. He gives you the willies, as another character says at some point, but at the same time you want to put your arms around his protectively and yell out "he's just a kid!". Affleck is 32, but he is totally believable as a gawky 19 year old still finding himself (and imdb tells me he studied physics, which raises him a few points more in my esteem). I could go on about the supporting cast too, but I'll just point out that Garett Dillahunt from Deadwood and John from Cincinnati is great as well.

Why not a masterpiece, then? Well, it's a pacing thing, I think. The coda feels too short, and other parts feel a little uneven. I think the elliptic storytelling works, but it just doesn't feel quite right. I also think the narration had some problems: I had a hard time getting used to it, and it is sometimes a little too explicit about what the characters are feeling. I'm not against it, and I believe the sectioning of the story into "chapters" by the narration was a good idea, but it feels like it could have used a little more tweaking.

I know, this film has been tweaked with forever already, but just like in poetry you need the exact right word in the exact right place, a film can only be a masterpiece if every cut or shot feels like it couldn't possibly have been any different, and this film still feels too fluid for that, too wavering. Too many threads are left dangling.

I do think it's a timeless movie, in the sense that it feels detached from any time and place, feels like it's on some different place, and I can imagine returning to it in ten years, in twenty, if only for some gorgeous images - like Jesse waiting for a train and disappearing in the fog - and the absolutely beautiful Nick Cave soundtrack.

Buñuel blog-a-thon: Belle de Jour

2007-09-24T19:36:00.000+02:00

And now, for my contribution to Flickhead's Buñuel-a-thon:

The title "Belle de Jour" is a strange one, and can be interpreted in many ways. The official explanation is that a "belle de jour" is a day lily, a flower that blooms only during the day, but I always associate "Belle de jour" almost automatically with its complement, 'Laide de Nuit'. The title can be translated as "beauty of the day", but also as "beautiful by day", and thus maybe implicitly ugly by night?

The interesting thing is that Séverine is a prostitute during the day, a well-mannered (though apparently frigid) BCBG woman during the night. According to the rules of society, the former is ugly, the latter "beautiful", but if you interpret the name as I do, could it not be the opposite? Might it be that Buñuel is trying to say that's it's not her work in the brothel that's wrong, her masochistic desires, but just her repression of those desires, her lies and pretense?

Buñuel invites us to be a voyeur in this film, to watch the pristine Catherine Deneuve get defiled, and we enjoy it. Are even aroused by it to some extent. The brilliance of the film, in my opinion, is that he never tells us how to feel, not just about Séverine, but also about our own feelings. I like to think that he's on her side, that all he blames her for is her shame, but it's equally possible to look at the film as a cautionary tale about what happens when you don't restrain yourself.

I think the first interpretation is more plausible, though. See, he does stack the deck a little. Just watch the look on her face. It's almost impossible not to envy her in that moment.

Nobody knew how to give the finger to the repressed bourgeoisie quite like Buñuel. And even 40 years later, few films have dared to be this sexy and provocative.

For a more straight-up review, I've recently written one here. In Dutch, alas. So only for the privileged few ;-)

They Drive by Night

2007-09-23T20:08:00.000+02:00

My 200th post, already, or so blogger tells me. Not taking this month into account, I'm kinda glad with the posting rhythm I have now, and the tone. Now, on to business.

They Drive by Night really has no right to work as well as it does. It's a weird genre-blend, part social commentary/underdog story, part noir. The plot meanders: first it's about these truckers and their hard life, then it's about how they plan to make it, then about the danger of the road, then all of a sudden it's a noir with a murder and an attempted frame-up. A pre-High Sierra Bogie is one of the two main characters in the first half, then more or less ignored, or at least neglected, afterwards.

Still, it works surprisingly well together. Part of it is because the characters are consistent through the tonal shifts. For instance, Ann Sheridan's Cassie might give in at some point, and go from hard-to-get to loving and trusting fiancee, but she never becomes so soft that we don't recognize her. Part of it is also simply that the dialogue is so good, sharp and witty, and it rolls off everybody's tongue. The cast, including supporting players, is also good, and look for our old pal Shapely in the small role of Irish.

A classic this is not, by any stretch. But just as it's possible to enjoy an unremarkable, yet well-made and entertaining film made today, it's possible to enjoy a film like that made 67 years ago.

William Wyler blog-a-thon: The Best Years of Our Lives

2007-09-23T12:15:00.000+02:00

My contribution to goatdog's William Wyler blog-a-thon. Enjoy!

Three men return from war, each wounded in similar but separate ways, both physical and mental, visible and not-so much. They try to fit back in.

It doesn't really sound like enough story to fill 3 hours, does it? But quietly, unassumingly, these three hours pass, and when it's over you look at your watch, surprised at how much time has passed while you were in this world.

I have a hard time expressing what makes this film so fascinating, I don't quite know how to describe its appeal in a way that will prompt everyone who hasn't seen it go see it, now, as they should.

Dana Andrews is the young hotshot who comes back to find that the girl he married just before leaving doesn't really like him so much out of his uniform. Frederic March does get to come back to a loving family, a faithful wife, a son, and a no-nonsense, pretty daughter who very much appeals to Andrews. But he can't stand the job he returns to at the bank, having to deny loans to people who fought alongside him, and falls back on the bottle too often. Finally, Harold Russell, himself a war invalid, plays Homer, a sweet young man who comes out without his hands without even really having participated in battle. There is a sweet girl waiting for him at home, but he can't deal with his family's reaction to his handicap, and can't accept the love and care his fiancee is willing to give him.

What I admire most of all, I think, is that the film - while admittedly being somewhat schmaltzy at times - doesn't resolve all these threads tidily. The ending is uplifting, but there are many problems still remaining, and the film acknowledges that none of these people will lead an easy life. Some resolution is possible, but the problems will never entirely disappear. Something that I suspect has never changed and is still relevant for returning soldiers.

And, of course, this being a studio film from the 40's directed by Wyler and photographed by Gregg Toland, it looks absolutely gorgeous and gets all the details right. The performances are also top-notch, especially also from Russell, who was not a professional actor but rightfully got an Oscar for this part.

It's not a flashy movie, it doesn't have any easy hooks, but it's a thoroughly honest and involving movie. Wyler maybe wasn't an "auteur" in the strictest sense of the word. But he was, as can be seen here, amazing at getting the best out of all his collaborators, putting everything together, and crafting a great film out of it.

The Departed take two

2007-09-22T23:28:00.000+02:00

"How's your mother?"
"Oh...I'm afraid she's on her way out."
"We all are. Act accordingly."

I liked this film a lot better the second time around, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I liked it the first time around too, but I thought it was a little too detached, too cold. Somehow that bothered me less this time. It's quite a focussed, fast picture, a lesson in how to cut the fat without skimping on the details that make a story, and in particular characters, work. It's not subtle in any sense of the word, but it is effective: every detail we're supposed to notice is zoomed in on for a partial second, long enough so we see it but short enough not to hit you over the head with it. The quote above is just a throwaway line, but it summarizes the spirit of the movie perfectly, just like Sullivan's "Okay" just before he, too, goes with a spray of blood.

I know, I know, after railing about the Brave One, how can I endorse this film's all-too-obvious symbolisms and dualities/doublings? Well, maybe because Scorsese doesn't pretend, for all of his flourishes, that this is a crime movie, a movie meant to entertain first and foremost. Also, maybe, because the ending here is honest, more than many other movies of its kind, while the ending of the Brave One is flabbergastingly offensive.

One small quibble: my mother commented in the many fucks in the film. No, I don't mind the word myself, and I think it's a valid - and sometimes very effective - stylistic tool. It can really tell you something about a character, or a milieu. In this film though, I believe it's overused, not so much in quantity (237 fucks, google tells me), but because everyone uses it equally and in the same way, with the exception of Queenan and the shrink (Vera Farmiga, incidentally, it an actress I'm fascinated by). Only Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg manage to infuse something of their characters in the word, and first scene together is priceless for it: but this is not so much because of the f-word but because their profanity is so creative. The use of fuck by the two rats starts feeling old pretty soon.

Oh well. If you can't get enough of the word, you can always check out my post on the Big Lebowski. Or, of course, watch what's below.

The Brave One

2007-09-21T16:43:00.001+02:00

So, turns out? Intelligent, affluent, left-wing people's stance on vigilantism... is pretty much the same one as that of the traditional, red-blooded conservative male kind, only more insidious because it thinks it's subtle. Both Neil Jordan and Jodie Foster clearly think they've made something revolutionary here, something nuanced and insightful, but it couldn't possibly more contrived and over the top, from the convenient "Es La Ley" sign all too obtrusively hung somewhere in the frame before Foster's first murder to Foster's ponderous, pretentious purple prose on her radio show. I can enjoy a dumb movie on occasion - what I can't stand is a dumb movie that thinks it's smart.

Weird thing is, just before the end of the movie, I had no idea what I would say about it. Well, that's not quite right, I had plenty of things to say, I just didn't know what the conclusion would be. The star rating. But ten minutes thinking it over afterwards was all it took to make up my mind. So yeah, my first pan? Coming right up.

Top 50 - #6 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2007-09-21T09:19:00.000+02:00

Craig guessed it, so here goes...

We see a desert. Sand, mostly. Then, all of a sudden, our eyes jump from background to close-up as one of the ugliest faces you've probably seen slides into the frame from the side. Later in the scene, a man jumps out of a broken window, meat in hand.

Later, a boy is getting water from a well when, with ominous Morricone music playing, a small dot appears on the horizon, and gets bigger and bigger as it approaches. The boy runs inside. A man appears in the doorway, walks in, eats some food.

Once upon a time in the West is the film most often regarded as a masterpiece, and when people talk about it one of the things they mention is the opening scene, and how long it takes before the first word is spoken. Once upon a time was clearly meant to be a masterpiece, but I think that the less serious-minded The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the real masterpiece. Here also, it takes forever for the first word to be spoken: Leone always was a visceral, visual director,

For every good scene in Once upon a time I can easily think of a similar, better one in GBU, as I'll call it from now on. Take the introduction of Henry Fonda as the villain: it's great, absolutely, but does it rival the gradual reveal of Blondie? First we see his hat, his gun, his hands, we hear his sarcastig voice and then finally, see his face. The hanging scene? I'll grant that it's more poignant than anything in GBA, but it's not by far as funny as the successive hangings here, and there's no rivaling the last one for an ending.

Finally, I think GBA is more succesful because its morality is more muddled, less black and white. "the Good" really isn't all that much better than Angel Eyes, "the Bad", maybe just a little more compassionate, and I've always thought Tuco, "the Ugly", is the heart of the film. His scene with his brother is amazing, and his love/hate relationship with Blondie anchors the film, makes it about more than just three men who want money. Also here, it's not words that express it, but imaged: Blondie finally handing Tuco his cigar. Muddying the moral waters even more is the cival war, which suddenly makes what three men do so much less important. The scene jars a little with the rest of the film, but I love it, and I think it's what Blondie and Tuco do for the general that redeems them.

This film is 3 hours long, but that fact still surprises me, because while this is a deliberate movie, it never feels slow or long, and when I watch it time flies. The plot is intricate, but easy to follow, and the power keeps shifting: who has the information, who has the gun, who has the upper hand?

You can't talk about Leone's spaghetti westerns, of course, without mentioning Morricone. The score is amazing, and integral to the feel of the movie, to its texture. Just listening to the music brings back images. The amazing opening titles. The scorching sun. Weathered faces. And, of course, close-ups of eyes, tense and prepared, waiting for the guns to go off.

Recently, my love for and knowledge of westerns was called into question. My gender was the main reason, the guy even admitted to it. But I dare anyone to say now that I don't love westerns. I'm seeing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on Monday, and I can hardly wait.

Next up: a movie named for two guys which really is all about a girl...

Once

2007-09-20T11:27:00.000+02:00

My review is up at filmtotaal now. Also, I've noticed the number of visitors dropping. I understand, seeing the lack of updates. But please come back in October, ok? I promise I'll be watching many, many films and writing about them.

Also: expect a (short) post on the Brave One tomorrow. Jodie Foster as a vigilante? I don't know whether I'll like it, especially considering the definitively mixed reactions it's been getting, but I AM intrigued.

Top 50 - #7 - The Third Man

2007-09-16T19:22:00.000+02:00

Oh, do I love the Third Man's crooked frames, and the grin on Orson Welles' face when light is finally shed upon him. Do I love Joseph Cotton's sad, drunk Holly Martins, who despite his tough guy exterior really is just a naive romantic at heart. Do I love Valli's wistful looks and Vienna's corrupted, crumbling ruins.

Did I hum Anton Karas' zither tunes all night after seeing this film again last Friday? Yes, indeed I did.

There's just so much here. Though the chase through the sewers is a little repetitive and long when seen for the n'th time, the lighting is still amazing, and that shot of Harry Lime's fingers through the grate? Fantastic. The ferris wheel scene is perfect, full of tension and then, of course, that speech. And let's, of course, not forget the final shot: Valli walks towards the camera, towards Holly, for what seems like an eternity, and then, without even a glance, walks out of a the frame. Holly lights a cigarette. Throws away the match. The End.

I won't write too much here as my next VersPers piece will be about this movie, but still: if you haven't seen it...what are you waiting for?
Next up: after a movie about the third man, a movie about three men.

Incidentally: if one of these "next-up" things makes you want to take a guess, feel free to do so in the comments. No prizes will be awarded, but it always nice to be right, right? Also, check out the link list -->

And now, with due thanks to the Shamus

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-09-12T22:45:00.000+02:00

My review (as always, in Dutch) is up now. And I'm quite proud of it, to be honest.

(updated)

Now, for some reactions to comments (I hope you don't mind they're all in English):

@Rene: the first Bourne already shared little with the book that originated aside from title and premise. By this installment, the books and films are an entirely different beast. I have to say, I think I read two of the books, maybe even all three, and all I can remember is some business about a killer for hire with a Spanish sounding name and that I didn't think they were all that good aside what the first film retained: a main character who didn't know who he was, and more importantly, whether he was one of the good or bad guys. Since they already departed from the books so much, and they pretty much invented the entire plot for this one anyway, I see no reason why there could be no more films.

@Nancy: I totally agree that Ultimatum is inferior to Identity plot-wise, and that they were clearly struggling for a plot here. However, I don't think the films have much to do with plot, and kinetically, this one if the best of the trilogy. As for wafer-thin plots to propel possible sequels, I can think of a couple, for instance the CIA and Bourne reluctantly working together to catch someone, followed of course by the inevitable betrayal of Bourne by the CIA etc.

@Lani: thanks for the compliment :-)

And now: as per request, a shorter version in English:

Jason Bourne is often said to be a James Bond for our times, but what does that say about the time we live in? The old JB was maybe rebellious sometimes but always a part of the system, while the biggest enemy of the new JB is the CIA, the American counterpart to Bond's MI-6. In the Bond films spying is seen as necessary to protect the ignorant citizen while in the Bourne films the government has for overshot its purposes and the constant surveillance is presented as something creepy.

Bond may have been a spy, but staying undercover was hardly his strongest point. Bourne, however, truly is the man in the shadow, invisible due to his everyman's face and neutral clothing, someone who expertly avoids all the camera's that crowd our world today. Even Greengrass' camera seems to have trouble following him. Bourne often is seen only in the periphery, and the camera dodges back and forth to get a grasp on him, zooms in, zooms out, goes out of focus and back in. You have to simply undergo the chaos and disorientation for a minute or five to get into the rhythm, but boy, it's some rhythm you've gotten into, then. The ADD-editing and soundtrack fully pull you along in this adrenaline rollercoaster (a phrase, incidentally, which nicely alliterates in Dutch).

(followed by some blabla about the plot)

(something about how this film is, of course, not about the plot, but about the paranoid atmosphere and being on the edge of your seat)

Unfortunately, Greengrass thought it necessary to delve into the moral swamp of Bourne's motivation. In first film, Bourne had no idea if he was a good or a bad guy before his memory loss, and that's exactly what made his character so fascinating, especially since the answer seemed to be "pretty bad". In the second film, he was driven by something we can all understand: revenge. In the third film, however, the body count climbs mostly because Jason dear has some nightmarish flashbacks, and though he kills mostly out of self-defense, it nonetheless seems a bit slim a justification for the high body count. Greengrass seems mostly interested in how good or bad Bourne was before his amnesia, in finding out if he was forced to become a killing machine or whether he volunteered.He thereby neatly skirts the more tricky, but also much more interesting question: whether Bourne's actions now are good or bad: after all, we wouldn't want to confront the audience with their own championing of this bloodbath, would we. Thus, the introspection is limited to a few shots of Bourne looking guiltily at his hands.

(some blabla about other flaws including plot holes and nationalism, but that this is mostly irrelevant because you only think of all this hours afterwards)

Conclusion: see this in theatres, and if the level stays this high, may Bourne live as long as Bond.

Ok, I'm afraid I'm all out of excuses to procrastinate now, my thesis beckons. I bid you adieu.

Top 50 - #8 - The Passenger

2007-09-12T11:54:00.001+02:00

I've talked about this film quite often before on the blog, and I now have an article (in Dutch, sorry) up at VersPers, so I won't go into a lot of detail here. Let it just be said Nicholson has rarely been better. And that this film is worth seeing over and over again.

My third Godard

2007-09-09T16:32:00.000+02:00

Somehow, I almost feel like reviewing this film as if it was a CD, track by track, and only at the end trying to summarize my feelings about the thing as a whole. It's strange, because this film has much more of an overarching narrative than, say, masculin/feminin, and it's more coherent in tone as well than for instance L'Eclisse, yet at the same time it feels more like a collection of terrific songs than those movies. Take the Billy the Kid moment:

It's not entirely random (it foreshadows a later moment in the film), but it feels like an inspired little riff, a moment that could stand by itself, almost, without knowing who and what it's about. The Louvre sequence is another example, memorably paid homage to in The Dreamers. But the moment that suddenly made me realize I was falling in love with this film was the minute of silence followed by the dance sequence:

There is so much pleasure here just watching these three people move, each with their own thoughts and dreams and motivation but in this moment moving so beautifully together. If you want to be deep about it, it's a metaphor for cinema itself: lives and personalities converging for a moment to create a unit, forever united on screen.

I'm not sure I'll watch the film as a whole very often, though it's entertaining enough - as with all CD's, there are some 'songs' that just aren't that memorable or special. I am sure, however, that in lost moments this is one of the films to pop into your DVD player just to enjoy a single scene.

Top 50 - #9 - The Big Lebowski

2007-09-08T20:25:00.000+02:00

I have a confession to make: the first time I saw the Big Lebowski, I was underwhelmed. I liked it, sure, but I thought it was aimless and meandering, and most importantly, I didn't think it was all that funny. Maybe I was in the wrong mood for it that first time, but maybe - and this is in fact what I think is more probable - this film is an acquired taste. It needs to grow on you. Because the second time, you stop looking for a story, and you can just sit back and enjoy its unique atmosphere and brand of humor.

It's telling that I couldn't, in my hint, think of anything that wasn't obvious. I picked nihilists, a cut off toe, and bowling, but I could just has well have mentioned a rug that really tied the room together, or white Russians, or even just mentioned that it was not about just a dude, but about THE dude. There isn't a single part of this film that you can quote without it being clear immediately which film you're referring too. It's telling that Veronica Mars made a habit of referring to it for quite a few episodes in a row and never had to repeat one. Careful, man, there's a beverage here!

The Big Lebowski didn't just grow on me, it also became funnier every time I watched it, which is more times than I can count by now. And while it's profane - as you can see in the clip below - it's also the film by the Coen brothers with the most heart. However - just to build up the suspense, it's not my favorite of theirs, and one more will appear on this list further up.

Just remember: the Dude abides.

Nex up: #8, about a man looking for something in the desert.

You know what happens...

2007-09-07T12:11:00.000+02:00

...when there's a DVD shop about to close and they sell all their DVD's for 5 euro?

This happens:

- They Drive by Night (Walsh, 1940)
- My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936)
- De Battre mon Coeur s'est Arrêté (Audiard, 2005)
- Dirty Pretty Things (Frears, 2002)
- Adaptation (Jonze, 2002)

Top 50 - #10 - The Princess Bride

2007-09-07T10:32:00.000+02:00

Is this a kissing book?

Yes, yes it is, a tale of true wuv, but it's so much more too. Yet I have a lot of trouble saying anything about it except that I cannot watch any part of it without immediately getting a huge grin on my face. Watching the whole movie means jaw cramps the next morning. Shall I try, anyway?

As you wish.

Half the time when I mention this movie, people think I'm talking about the Princess diaries. No, people, no! That doesn't have fencing and the dread pirate Roberts and R.O.U.S.es. That couldn't leave a little boy asking for more.

Grandpa: She doesn't get eaten by the eels at this time
The Grandson: What?
Grandpa: The eel doesn't get her. I'm explaining to to because you look nervous.
The Grandson: I wasn't nervous. Maybe I was a little bit "concerned" but that's not the same thing.

Maybe the best thing I can say about this movie is that I cannot pick a favorite part, not even a favorite character. I love the chemistry between Buttercup and Westley, but who can resist Wallace Shawn's "in-con-ceivable", or Fezzik, who's the prototypical brute but at the same time doesn't want his opponents to die embarrassed? Humperdinck and his six-fingered henchmen are wonderful, and then, off course:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Inigo makes sure this movie isn't just all laughs and lightness: his pain for the loss of his father is real and as such grounds the movie just enough to make sure we keep caring. Through the whole movie, bubbly as it is, there is a cynical strain that you wouldn't quite expect. Consider what Westley says:

Life is pain, highness. Everyone who says differently is selling something.

Most movies have a certain demographic. I don't take my mom to see Kill Bill, nor my dad to see a romantic comedy, nor my little brother or sister to an obscure arthouse classic. This film, however, truly has something for everyone, and though I know there are people out there who don't like it, I'm just gonna go ahead and ignore their existence.

The Grandson: Grandpa, maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.
Grandpa: As you wish.

Next up: #9, featuring nihilists, cut-off toes, and bowling.

Belle de Jour

2007-09-04T14:31:00.000+02:00

My review (in Dutch, alas) IS up at filmtotaal.nl now.

Top 50 - 11 through 15

2007-08-30T16:12:00.000+02:00

11. The Science of Sleep (Gondry, 2006)

You know the feeling that you get sometimes when you wake up from a particularly engaging dream and the world looks fake afterwards? This film, messy and sometimes incoherent as it is, is like such a dream. It's so full of imagination and creativity that after seeing it you immediately feel like making something. Part of why it works so well is that Michel Gondry doesn't like CGI, so all the effects - and there are many - each have to be made in their own, innovative way. Gael Garcia Bernal has never been better as Gondry's alter ego, a young man who misses out on his life because he's so lost in his dreams, but at the same time, if I had dreams like his, I wouldn't want to wake up either.

12. The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)

I don't generally discuss the private lives of movie stars here, and I try to separate the real life people from the characters on screen, but since Owen Wilson helped write this movie, his recent suicide attempt makes this movie all the more poignant. I love Rushmore and Bottle Rocket, and the first hour of the Life Aquatic too, but this is his masterpiece: every frame has a dozen perfect little details, all the performances are on the same plane, and I still want to write a book someday with the lovely dry tone of the narrator.

13. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

I hesitated a long time between this film and Reservoir Dogs. The latter movie is, I believe, better constructed and tighter, and originally I liked it better, maybe because it was the first Tarantino movie I saw, but Pulp Fiction grew on me. It's just so innovative and brash, and much more satisfying than it has any right to be. Of course there are things that could have been left out, like Christopher Walken's watch monologue, but on the other hand, the sheer absurdity of that scene makes it worthwhile. Favorite scene? Not a particularly original pick, but there's nothing like watching Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace do the twist.

14. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)

The first film noir according to some - one of my favorites, in any case. "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble", "I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck", the dialogue here truly is the stuff that dreams are made of, one witty line after the next, and I don't think anyone could have delivered them any better than Humphrey Bogart does here. His Sam Spade is tough, without mercy, but not without humanity, and after 66 years, he's still the epitome of cool.

15. A History of Violence (Cronenberg, 2005)

This high? Yes, this high, because under its deceptively simple exterior, this is a ruthless deconstruction of our baser urges. Cronenberg takes it slowly, so deliberately that you long for something to happen, only to regret your desire when it does. It can be read in a handful of different ways, and can be used to support opposite standpoints, and maybe most importantly: it's a movie that gets better and better the more you think about it.

Next time? #10, which has fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

Finally a real journalist

2007-08-30T07:33:00.000+02:00

For the Dutch-speaking among you, my first two reviews are now up here and here.

I feel like I should get a badge or something. Learn the secret handshake. Get delivered a fancy pen which makes all your sentences flow easier. Oh well. I suppose seeing my name on a site which is not my weblog shall just have to do, plus the euros hopefully deposited in my bank account soon. It's not so much the money that matters to me, but the simple fact that I'm being paid for it is a kind of validation.

The Simpsons Movie

2007-08-29T23:39:00.000+02:00

I would be lying if I called myself a true Simpsons fan - when I channel surf across it I always stick around to watch, but don't ask me which episode goes in which season, or to get obscure quotes - but I have to say I was thoroughly entertained by this movie. The joke-per-minute ratio is quite amazing, and the writers manage to keep your attention throughout, with a true ark going through the movie and one joke (see image above) not being resolved until the end. The satire doesn't really bite, just nibble, but the general irreverence is still, after all these years, admirable.

Also, Bart's penis!

Top 50 - 16 through 20

2007-08-28T23:26:00.000+02:00

16. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)

I know, I know, this is probably overrated. It's also one of the most impressively flashy, stylish and brash pieces of film making I know. from the credit sequence/opening shot zooming out from the main character's brain to the barrel of a gun to the endless quotability. It's a walking contradiction, but aware of it: it pretends to criticize consumerism and the pursuit of gadgets and "cool", but it's desperately cool and consumerist itself. Most of all, it's a film that remains exciting even on a fifth viewing, and I do believe it will still be watched thirty years from now.

17. Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)

All the upcoming starlets in skimpy outfits can't compete in sheer sexiness with Barbara Stanwick's ankle bracelet. This is noir at it's purest, and Stanwick plays the femme fatale to a hilt: dangerous, seductive, and ultimately so much more interesting than the man she seduces. Edward G. Robinson is also amazing here, and an integral part of the triangle. The main couple sizzles and the lines are unforgettable. Most of all, it satisfies one criterion: I can't think of anything that could possibly be improved.

18. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)

40 years ago today, this movie revolutionized movies. It isn't the violence - which was revolutionary and much protested against at the time - that makes this movie unforgettable though, even if the final scene burns itself into your brain. No, it's Faye Dunaway as she looks down onto Warren Beatty stealing her car; it's how Clyde's hat sits on his head; it's Bonnie writing their poem. It's unforgettable because it's so stylish and mythical, and because when their bodies seize, hit by a dozen bullets, it takes your breath away.

19. Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)

Typically this film is filed under "noir", and it has many of the elements to qualify: a smart-aleck voice-over, a cynical main character, and no happy ending in sight. It owes almost just as much to the gothic genre, however, from the death of the monkey to the sinister butler, played by director Erich von Stroheim, and most of all in the tragically comic role of Norma Desmond. Gloria Swanson plays her as if she's still in a silent movie, all exaggerated gestures and extreme facial expressions, and in the end, you can't help but feeling for this doomed, crazy clown, and despise William Holden for mocking her so much.

20. Ed Wood (Burton, 1994)

It wasn't until I watched Glen or Glenda that I realized how much Burton had done Ed Wood justice. It is a terrible movie, but it's terrible in such an intriguing and original way that I understand why Burton wanted to make a film about the maker. He doesn't make apologies; he doesn't try to pass Wood off as some misunderstood genius. He does however show so much understanding and affection for his character that you're happy to go along with his adventures. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Ed Wood is played by the ultimate lovable weirdo Johnny Depp, who's rarely been better, or that Martin Landau portrays Belo Lugosi - another tragic figure in the movies - so formidably.

Next time: another noir, another maybe-overrated flashy picture, one movie that recently gained some significance, and one movie which would make Sam - who's leaving Filmspotting, I'm heartbroken - very happy.

TCM

2007-08-27T16:34:00.000+02:00

I am facing a month of homelessness, yet I don't care: TCM is on TV. Temporarily - it's only there to lure peoplein to shelling 10 more euros a month more to get a more channels. But y'know? Consider me lured.

I mean, how can you not love a channel with classic movies 24/7 without commercial breaks? I had it on all day while I was stuffing my room in boxes. I saw most of Quo Vadis (I always start up slowly), big chunks of Angels with Dirty Faces, the beginning and end of Sunday in New York (someone came to visit me in the middle of it for 30 minutes), and the first 45 minutes or so of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. So admittedly, with TCM, I might not get anything done anymore, but I think it's worth it.

I was surprised how much I liked Quo Vadis, considering I'm not a sword-and-sandals type generally.I thought Nero was over the top, but so much fun, too, and while the whole Christian propaganda angle was a little heavy for me, the film manages to give you the impression that you're getting a peek into history. As for Seven Brides, I absolutely loved the extended dance sequence where the 6 younger brothers try to lure the girls from their competitors.

Ah, to be able to watch classic movies all day...of course, there's still worthwhile things getting made now: I just got back from Ratatouille, and it's absolutely charming. It's strange to call a maker of animation films an auteur, since they're typically such a team effort, but Brad Bird truly has a vision of the world that shines through in every film he makes. Basically, he's saying don't be afraid to be special. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Even if that's a cooking rat. Or, who knows, a film-reviewing physicist?

Finally, I know I'm behind on my top50, so, to tide you over, the list of a friend of mine.He's a Hitchcock fan, as you can maybe tell, and it has exactly 6 titles in common with mine. It just goes to show you how personal these types of lists are.

1. Vertigo (1958)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. North by Northwest (1959)
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
5. The Godfather Part 2 (1974)
6. Casablanca (1942)
7. Psycho (1960)
8. Citizen Kane (1941)
9. On the Waterfront (1954)
10. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
11. Blade Runner (1982)
12. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
13. Spartacus (1960)
14. Star Wars; The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
15. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
16. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
17. Some Like it Hot (1959)
18. The Prestige (2006)
19. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
20. The Marathon Man (1976)
21. Matrix (1999)
22. Easy Rider (1969)
23. Das Boot (1981)
24. The Deer Hunter (1978)
25. Marnie (1964)
26. The Third Man (1949)
27. The Graduate (1967)
28. Notorious (1948)
29. The Big Sleep (1946)
39. Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
31. Strangers on a Train (1951)
32.The French Connection (1971)
33. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
34. Dirty Harry (1971)
35. Gladiator (2000)
36. Scarface (1983)
37. The Sting (1973)
38. Jesus Camp (2006)
39. Soldaat van Oranje (1977)
40. Schindler's List (1993)
41. The Pianist (2002)
42. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
43. Als Je Begrijpt Wat Ik Bedoel (1983)
44. The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
45. Glengarry Glen Ross (1978)
46. JFK (1991)
47. To Catch a Thief (1955)
48. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
49. Dead Man (1995)
50. Fatherland (1994)

Top 50 - 21 through 25

2007-08-24T21:36:00.001+02:00

21. My Own Private Idaho (Gus van Sant, 1991)

Exhibit A in the case that Keanu Reeves can act, albeit within a rather narrow range, even if the film of course belongs to the gorgeous and sorely missed River Phoenix. This film is an odd mixture of the revered and the profane. It's a film about rent boys AND a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, it's a road movie and a catalogue of perversities. Gus van Sant uses a wonderful way to show sex scenes with still frames. It's funny and it's tragic, and impossible to dismiss as just a clever experiment: just when it starts feeling like that, a "I really want to kiss you, man" happens and breaks your heart.

22. The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)

How do you update noir? Well, apparent, one solution is to show just how ill-at-ease your character is in modern surroundings. Altman's digressive style and Chandler's clipped, hard-boiled prose are an odd fit, but somehow it fits perfectly: Elliott Gould here is Marlowe, but he isn't the smartest guy in the room, not any more, in any case. All this aside, the thing that makes this movie for me is the first 20, 30 minutes, which involve Marlowe hunting for...food for his cat. It's a sequence that establishes the mood and the character so perfectly it makes the whole film.

23. Blowup (Antonioni, 1966)

My love for Antonioni is by now well documented on this blog. This is the film I saw first, prompted by my father. I'll admit I didn't quite get it the first time: I was too busy looking for the plot to notice all the wonderful images and scenes, and I thought the film was laughably dated. I was, luckily, intrigued enough to watch it again, and that's when I started loving it. It's similar to the books of Paul Auster, in a way, playing off our conditioned search for clues and meaning, our need for stories to be more clearly delineated and logical than real life.

24. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

Our need for patterns, as well: for instance, I never meant for this, but it seems little threesomes show up in every post of 5 movies. In this case, three detective movies in a row. Chinatown, made one year after The Long Goodbye, doesn't displace its protagonist but chooses to place its story in a time where noir still fits. I'm still unsure on where I stand on Faye Dunaways maybe overly dramatic performance, but Nicholson is perfect as the cynical PI. In true noir fashion, there's no good ending here. Just an immortal line. "Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown"

25. Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)

This, in turn, fits well with Blowup: a mystery without a solution, a puzzle that can never, in any configuration, fit exactly together, with too many connections to make sense of. Naomi Watts has never been better than in her dual role as the wide-eyes ingenue and the bitterly disappointed spurned woman later, but in my eyes, it's Laura Harring who steals the show: I didn't know they still made femme fatales like her. She's mesmerizing, and I have no idea why her career didn't take off like Watts' did after this film. After seeing it 5 or 6 times it still doesn't make sense to me, and you can see some threads were abandoned due to circumstance (I would love to know what the plan was for Robert Forster's detective), but I am fascinated by its intricate beauty every time I watch it.

Coming up next: some more noir and some more Faye.

L'Eclisse

2007-08-24T09:34:00.000+02:00

The plan, yesterday, was to watch L'Eclisse a second time, this time with the commentary of a film scholar. I shut the commentary off after less than 4 minutes. Not the film though.

It's strange, because Antonioni's films almost beg to be analysed. You'd think watching one of his films side-by-side with an analysis would be illuminating, but to me it was just grating. I think it's because his films are so subjective, open to interpretation, and that nobody sees it the same way. Reading an analysis afterwards can make you realise there's another way of looking at the film, but trying to do both at the same time ruins the film. So I shut the commentary off, shut off even the subtitles - having seen the movie two days ago, my rudimentary understanding of Italian was enough to follow the film - and submerged myself once more.

My father needn't worry: his 40 bucks were not wasted, I'm sure I'll watch this movie many more times. I will admit, however, to loving the parts more than I love the whole. The unevenness of the film, going back and forth between the meditative, leaves-rustling pace of Vittoria's world and the manic energy of both Alain Delon's Piero and the stock market where he works. L'Eclisse doesn't have a central mystery to propel it forward like The Passenger and Blowup, and though those mysteries were never resolved, there is some forward momentum missing here.
But oh, there are so many beautiful shots here, utilizing shadows and chiaroscuro lighting, and there are so many scenes and sequences to fall in love with. The minute of silence on the stock market. The tour through Kenya with the African dance, and the nightly search for the dog that follows it, so perfectly captures the mood of late aimless nights it's almost scary. The scene where Monica Vitti follows a man who's just lost 50 million (though admittedly, that's in lire) and sees what he draws. The car getting tackled out of the water. The kiss through the glass. And, of course, the last sequence, where Antonioni manages to manipulate our anxiousness about seeing the main characters so well.He often films his characters, especially Monica Vitti, from the back here, not so much observing them as observing the world with them. Vitti often walks out of a shot backwards, and each time I would not have been surprised if she'd just disappeared there and then, to let the camera observe the world for itself. My crush on Alain Delon, as you can imagine, was only magnified by this film, but the true revelation is Monica Vitti. I'm not sure she'd work in a film by any other director, but she fits perfectly into the world he created here, and the look on her face when she flies above Verona is a wonder.

This is an art film, no doubt about it, but a "serious" film? Only if you don't allow yourself to see all the playfulness exhibited here. And if any of my friends want to watch it, I'll gladly watch it with them.

Top 50 - 26 through 30

2007-08-21T17:59:00.000+02:00

26. Wonder Boys (Hanson, 2000)

A perfect film with a perfect soundtrack and some amazing performances, this is one of my comfort movies: I sit down and let myself go along with it, and I feel like everything will end up ok. ish. It might be the best stoner movie for grown-ups, if it weren't for my number 9. The book, by one of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon, is great too, and the film perfectly captures its lazy rhythm and its mood. It's nothing overly ambitious, it doesn't have a grand message or extravagant style, but who needs that when you've got so much warm humor and characters you'd love to spend a weekend with?

27. Sous Le Sable (Ozon, 2000)

Another dawn of the millenium film, this is possibly the best film ever made about grief, and oh so beautiful. Interesting, seeing how this was really kind of a loose, experimental project. Ozon first filmed the part where Charlotte Rampling goes on holiday with her husband, played by Bruno Cremer of Maigret fame. They go to the beach; he goes swimming; she falls asleep, and when she wakes up he's gone. The part where we find her again, months later, was in fact not only filmed but also written months later, and it dares to be both intriguing, involving, and oddly true. Worth it just for the scene with the red dress - watch the film, and you'll know what I mean. Ozon truly is one to watch, and this is the best film of his that I've seen so far.

28. Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)

Not Hitchcock's most accomplished film by any means, but his most fascinating. Yes, the color red is infused clumsily, yes, the back-projection is much too obvious, but who cares when the main character is allowed to be so thoroughly messed up and fascinating? I'm grateful to Kim Morgan for pointing me towards this one, because it's generally not seen as great Hitchcock, far behind Vertigo, Psycho, Strangers on a Train and quite some others, and I might not have seen it otherwise. I don't think it's Hitchcock's best either, but it is my favorite.

29. Belle de Jour (Bunuel, 1967)

A nice double feature that would make: Belle de Jour and Marnie. Belle de Jour is better than Marnie because it doesn't seek to explain Severine's behavior: though there are short shots of her past, there is no neat psychological explanation here. Marnie, however, profits from the presence of a strong male character. But it's natural, in a way, that all men would pale next to the wonder of Catherine Deneuve, and ice princess with so much simmering under the veneer of sophistication -symbolized by those beautiful designer clothes - that she maintains. Bunuel trusts his audience to distinguish themselves between dream and reality, something that's still rare among directors today, and the result is a film that after these 40 years retains it's kinkiness without having to be explicit. We never learn what's in the Chinese box, nor what motivates Severine, and that's why the film still provokes.

30. All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)

And so the trio, or maybe even foursome, of strong women continues. Who says there are no good parts for actresses? Bette Davis is awe-inspiring here, fierce, smart, but also vulnerable, and nobody else could have delivered the razor-sharp lines she gets so well. The film really should have been called "All About Margo". Also, what it says about the position of women is still relevant today. Luckily, while Margo is worthy of our pity in some respects, she never becomes pathetic, and that ought to give us some hope.

I'm There

2007-08-21T11:59:00.000+02:00

Because I've been depriving you of images lately, and I cannot wait for this .

Also, more Cate.

Top 50 - 31 through 35

2007-08-18T18:44:00.002+02:00

31. Bride Of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)

I won't go into detail because I already did recently, but I do want to say that this is, in my opinion, the best of the Universal monster films, and not just that but also a true auteur film: James Whale's imprint is everywhere here, and I wish more films made for profit were made with this amount of care and fun.

32. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

I long hesitated between this film and Manhattan. It was the opening monologue that finally made me chose this one, I think. Or maybe Diane Keaton's amazing outfits. That, and seeing Allen as much younger than him as Mariel Hemingsway's Tracy is just a little bit creepy. This is a funny, smart film, which is truer about relationships than most romantic comedies dare to be.

33. Out of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998)

Soderbergh has made much more ambitious and intelligent movies than this, but this remains my favorite. It's just perfect for what it wants to achieve. George Clooney is deliciously charming, Jennifer Lopez actually, y' know, acts (too bad she hasn't done it since), and together they just sizzle. It's one of those movies where I can't bring myself to buy them since I've already seen in ten times, but everytime it's on TV, I watch it anyway. For the scene in the trunk alone, this deserves to make my top 50, and due to the rest of it (including the great Don Cheadle as Snoopy, and Michael Keaton reprising his Ray Nicolette role from Jackie Brown) makes sure it's at # 33.

34. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)

I know, I know, I promised (and am working on) a blogpost on "the trouble with Spielberg", but Indy, well, Indy is Indy. I can't think of any better pure action films: one set piece after another, a charismatic hero with great lines, a feisty girl (I like the other Indy films too, but the lack of Karen Allen makes itself felt), the only thing really missing, as Damian pointed out, is a great villain. Like Out of Sight, I watch this every time it's on TV, and I'm never bored for a second.

35. The Sting (Hill, 1973)

Completing the trio of "pure fun" films, this second pairing of Newman and Redford is probably the best heist film ever made. The jaunty Scott Joplin soundtrack makes sure this stays light despite the revenge story, the plot is intricate but not too far-fetched, and Newman and Redford once again make a fine pair. I think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a more interesting film, more inventive, but it is also, ultimately, a big uneven mess, and while I love it, I do believe this perfect and perfectly crafted film is by far the better one. If you ask me on any given day which one I want to watch, The Sting will win four out of five times, and that's why it makes this list, and Butch and Sundance did not.

Top 50 - 36 through 40

2007-08-17T19:33:00.000+02:00

36. The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)

I won't say much about this one, as there is a William Wyler blogathon coming up, and I plan to devote my entry to this movie. I don't like war movies, but this post-war movie I adore. It's very unassuming, doesn't aspire to tell a grand story or convey an important message, but by the simple tales of these three returning soldiers, it's much more moving than it has any right to be, and it makes you understand just how much war can destroy.

37. Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)

In The Dreamers, a movie which ended up just outside my top 50, there is a discussion about Chaplin vs. Keaton. To this question, I often feel like answering "Harold Lloyd" just for the sake fof being contrarion, but truth be told, For me, there's no question about it: the sad faced acrobat wins from the tramp hands down. Oh, I like Chaplin, The Kid, for instance, is wonderful, but there's something about Keaton that makes this more than just slapstick. Sherlock Jr., furthermore, is wonderfully self-referential, one of the first films explicitly also about film, as Keaton jumps from one frame to another. It's one of those films that make me wonder why people think black and white films are dull and slow: comedians nowadays wish they could make something as playful and light as this.

38. It happened one night (Capra, 1934)

There are so many screwball comedies I still have to see. I haven't seen the Lady Eve, nor the Philadelphia story, not even Bringing up Baby, although according to Adam and Sam, I'm not missing much. I did see It Happened One Night, and rewatched it only a week after the first time because I loved it so much. Cary Grant's rakish reporter Peter Warne seems to have inspired just about every George Clooney performance, but only very rarely has he approached this level: you can feel all the failed ambitions and missed chances here, and if not for his optimism, this could have been an almost tragic picture. And Claudette Colbert, ah, who would not fall in love with her? She seems so spoiled, slightly useless even, but she has more talents than you would suspect. The bon mots fly so fast you can barely catch them, and the scene where they pretend to be a married couple, well, the fourth time I saw it, I still laughed.

39. Singin' in the Rain (Donen&Kelly, 1952)

Sometimes associations go the wrong way. I saw Kill Bill II before I saw the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and so the music had strange connotations for me when I heard it in its original context. Likewise, I saw A Clockwork Orange long before I finally saw this classic musical - one of the few films I saw on the big screen twice, thanks to circumstance - so for the longest time I found it an extremely unpleasant song. No more, though, because it's impossible not to feel giddy watching Gene Kelly dancing with his umbrella. Besides being a great musical, one of the greatest, this film also gives quite a bit of background info on the transition from silents to sound film, and is all the more priceless for it.

40. Fargo (Coen bros, 1996)

The first (or actually last, but we're counting down) of three Coen brothers entries on this list. Which isn't revealing much: they made so many great movies, anything could still be above, and any one of three other Coen brothers could have taken this spot. My affection for Fargo in particular is rooted in one thing, or rather one caracter: Marge Gunderson. 8 months or so pregnant, pragmatic, and just so essentially good, she's not just the center of this movie, she's its heart. The Coens have been criticized for their perceived contempt of these characters, but I think it's rather envy, and the relationship between Marge and her husband is the most loving one they've ever put on screen. Not their best (I have two of their films ranked higher, after all), but a great, great film.

Top 50 - 41 through 45

2007-08-16T17:59:00.000+02:00

41. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

A confession: I didn't much like Vertigo the first time around. Having read a little about it, I kept waiting for the "second half" to start, and as such found the first three-quarters too mystical, pointless, even boring. And I do still think that the final part of it is much more fascinating than the rest, but I now realize it only works by virtue of what comes before. Now I'm fascinated by the whole thing, trying to decipher clues, trying to understand not only the sphinx-like Madeleine but most of all Stewarts Det. Scottie Ferguson. Hitchcock's stroke of genius was, of course, to cast James Stewart, the all-around good guy, as someone who turns out to be kind of creepy. He already tried in Rear Window, but his obsessiveness is all too understandable there: here, he truly is somewhat crazy, but it's something the viewer denies for the longest time because he just seems so normal, so healthy, and this dichotomy is what makes this one of Hitchcock's most fascinating films.

42. Moulin Rouge (Luhrmann, 2001)

This might be the most love-it-or-hate-it entry on this list. I, for only, fall firmly in the first camp. I don't like frenetic editing much, and I don't have much patience for sentimentality, but this film gets past all my defences: it's just dazzling, so unapologetically over-the-top and full of vibrant emotion I can't resist. It's hard for me even to pick the performances or the details
I like best, because I can't find anything to dislike here: neither the slapstick humor nor the high melodrama. Are there any recent movies with such intense color? I love Strictly Ballroom and Romeo+Juliet too, but this is the culmination of Luhrmann's red curtain trilogy, and the only film I know that manages to put the spirit of opera on screen.

43. Volver (Almodóvar, 2006)

Ok, ok, I should have said "recent American movie with such intense color". Almodóvar likes his reds crimson, and his blues as deep as the sky. In his films, death is often present in some form or other, but they're filled to the brim with life at the same time. Penelope Cruz has never been more beautiful than she is here, nor more feminine, and she shows once and for all that she can act, as long as she's allowed to speak Spanish. This is Almodóvar's ode to women, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, friends, and you can't help but fall in love with each and every one of them.

44. Edward Scissorhands (Burton, 1990)

This definitely is a highly stylized trio of movies. This is fairytale, but channeled through the gothic mind of Tim Burton. Johnny Depp barely speaks, but conveys an amazing amount of emotion through his big eyes. In his leather black gear, he couldn't contrast more with the town's pastels. The freak is feared, accepted, then rejected. It's a Frankenstein story, in a way: the "monster" abandoned by his creator, who doesn't quite know his own strength. Edward is more soulful even than Karloff, though, and the townspeople much more irrational and scary. This is not a subtle movie, but fairytales are not supposed to be subtle, just beautiful. And this one certainly is.

45. Before Sunrise/Sunset (Linklater, 1995/2004)

My only cheat in this list: a tie, but can these two movies really be viewed separately? One is a continuation of the other, and the second could not exist without the first. They are connected more intricately and intimately than most sequels, and as such I think they deserve to be here together. I like the first one better now, probably because I still in my early twenties, and despite my outward cynicism still have hope to once have a true connection with someone, but I do realize the second one is the better movie. I feel like I am like Jesse in Sunrise now, but will be like Celine in ten years, if that makes any sense. I probably will prefer it ten years from now, because it's truer, and as such also more romantic. No matter your age, I defy anyone not to long for romance after watching these films.

Top 50 - 46 through 50

2007-08-15T21:21:00.000+02:00

46. Dogma (Smith, 1999)

I must have watched this film over a dozen time. It's not only Kevin Smith's funniest film, but it's also a satire and critique of religions that manages to be full of belief. You can tell Kevin Smith is not an atheist, but just that he questions some of the interpretations along the way. There are too many good moments to mention here: the buddy Christ, Loki expounding on how Alice through the looking glass made him lose his belief in God, Alan Rickman as the Metatron in every scene he's in...Over the years the not-too-great filmmaking has started being more obvious to me, but the script and the performances are still awesome.

47. Lost In Translation (Coppola, 2003)

I went on about Scarlett Johansson's performance here, but there is, of course, more to this film. The mood music. The tentative atmosphere. Bill Murray at his most funny and poignant. And, of course, that last whisper in her ear. There's a lot to be said in criticism of this movie, but the truth is, it made me feel like few movies can: entranced.

48. Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997)

Tarantino's most underrated and underseen movie shows that despite all evidence to the contary, he does, in fact, have a mature side, or at least a potential for maturity. Oh, this is clearly a Tarantino picture: a shot from a trunk, violence, long dialogue laced with references and so on. But unlike the other pictures - and maybe because this is an adaptation- this isn't about impressing anyone, and his tendency for toying with conventional narrative is almost absent. Not only that, but the wonderful conversation between Robert Forster and Pam Grier about getting old seemed to indicate Tarantino might, one day, grow up. Ten years later it seems more and more unlikely, but I still have hope that he might move on beyond great style exercises.

49. Dirty Pretty Things (Frears, 2002)

An oddity, perhaps, this little under-the-radar thriller. Why did this beat out so many classics? I'm not quite sure, myself. Maybe it's simply because if I get just one more person to watch this, it'll have been worth putting this on my list. If you think Sergi Lopez was scary and evil in Pan's Labyrinth, wait until you see him here, and the other actors are also great: Chiwetel Ejiofor is deservedly an up-and-coming star now, and Audrey Tautou shows she is more than Amelie. The film also manages to sneakily address the immigrant problem without being a pamphlet: the plight of illegals in London is a strong undercurrent, but it doesn't get in the way of the suspense and the surrealism. I could have put a classic in its place, but while this might not be a perfect film, it deserves to get more notice than it has.

50. La Jetee (Marker, 1962)

The only short on this list, but definitely not a trifle. Marker's film might sound difficult and hard to approach: almost all stills with narration, it can't even be called a movie. The story he tells is incredibly compelling though, and you understand why Gilliam was inspired to make 12 Monkeys from this. Unlike 12 monkeys, you will find no empty action here, and no crazy Brad Pitt: just a meditation on the nature and unreliability of memory.

Top 50 - Introductory comments and those who just missed the cut

2007-08-15T20:33:00.000+02:00

I heard some time ago that in my new capacity as a real film journalist (tm) I would have to make a top 50 of all time. This threw me into a panic. I can never even come up with a best of favorite movie, let alone 50. Also, I felt like I just hadn't seen enough movies to qualify to even make such a list. In preparation, I looked up the top 50 movies I had seen from the top 100 at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? and I had to go up to movie #178 to find 50 I had seen.

I did start on it though, and today I impulsively started numbering along my long list, and decided this would be it: the list I'll count down from now on. Of course, this is a top 50 strictly as of today, Wednesday August 15th; ask me tomorrow, and the list will be different. But it would be similar, and I'll stick to the list as it is now.

I'll go through the 50 through 11 in groups of five, with short comments, and the top 10 I'll go through one by one, post by post. Afterwards I'll post the full list with some statistics, and some justifications as to why some films you might expect are not there.

Some criteria: one important one was whether I would want to watch it right now. This means that movies I admired but found unpleasant or harsh will not be here. Also, the top movie might have been any other in my top 10, but the one I chose is one I'm certain will still be in my top 10 ten years from now (oh, the suspense...).

To start: the bottom of the long list, the films that might have made it, the runners up, just to give you a taste:

- Masculin/Feminin (Godard, 1966)
- Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996)
- The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
- The African Queen (Huston, 1951)
- Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell, 2001)
- The Dreamers (Bertolucci, 2003)
- The Piano (Campion, 1993)
- L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)
- Say Anything (Crowe, 1989)
- 8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
- The Big Heat (Lang, 1953)
- Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969)
- Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg)
- Atame (Almodovar, 1990)
- Gun Crazy (Lewis, 1949)

So, these did not make it...stay tuned to find out which ones did.

2 Days in Paris

2007-08-14T10:04:00.000+02:00

I love going to Paris. By now, I've been there so often that I don't feel the need to do any of the touristy things any more, and especially since this time I was there all by myself, I could just wander around at my own pace, at each intersection going into the street that looked nicest, with only the vaguest of goals in mind.

I was in the same hostel I also went to with my sister two years ago. It's not that great a hostel, but the location is perfect: it's on the Rue Mouffetard, a road with many small eateries, bars and shops and people walking around at all times of the day.

I'd never really been on holiday by myself. I'd traveled alone, yes, and I'd been by myself for a day, but never two whole days. It was a bit lonely, but in the end I liked it a lot: there's a freedom to it that really allows you to relax. Nobody gets bothered if you decide to take twenty pictures of one statue, if you spend half an hour browsing in a DVD shop (bought a wonderful version of The Science of Sleep, filled with extras, and Orson Welles' The Stranger), if you just sit in a park or next to the Seine for an hour, reading or making notes. The first evening, was, however, a bit strange, I had no idea what to do with myself, but the second night I had dinner with a big group from the hostel and had a lot of fun.

You have experiences by yourself you otherwise probably wouldn't have. I had myself a "free" massage, for example (I gave a 3 euro tip), and I had a really nice conversation in a park with two clochards who were lying in the park there, one with a half a liter can of beer, the other with a bottle of wine standing next to him in the grass. When the can was finished, the guy dutifully stood up to throw it in the garbage bag, and when they left, the other even offered me a piece of flan as they left. I checked: up was still up, down was still down.

I think what made me fully accept the being alone part was seeing 2 Days in Paris on Sunday. In this Julie Delpy directed film, she and her American boyfriend (played by ex Adam Goldberg) spend, well, 2 days in Paris. Before Sunset, however, this is not. Before Sunrise and also Before Sunset are about the start of a relationship, when you discover each other and are amazed by the connection you find. Two days in Paris, on the other hand, is about what happens two years later when all the character traits and habits you used to find adorable are now highly irritating, you wonder whether it's worth all the effort and bickering, and you discover you don't really know each other at all. This sounds pretty depressing, I know. But while it is true that it made me realize that spending two days alone in Paris is definitely better than spending two days fighting with a boy or girlfriend in Paris, that wasn't why I left the theatre with a grin on my face: this is probably the funniest movie I've seen all year, funnier than Clerks 2, for instance. How funny? Well, one noise it incited in me got its own laugh from a fellow moviegoer.

The criticism the film will get is, of course, that the characters are caricatures. And yes, the are. But at the same time, let's not forget what a caricature is: a depiction that takes the flaws and funny things that are there, and magnifies them. For instance, I don't know if all French families are as open about their sex lives and sex in general as Delpy's family (her parents plaid by her real-life parents) is here, but they are definitely much more open than American families. And Adam Goldberg? His character is not a hick, he's one of those Americans who is critical of his country, who is a democrat and who images he has a European sensibility: he knows French authors, even speaks a few words, and when he encounters a group of American "code-breakers" (i.e. Dan Brown aficionados) looking for the Louvre...well, I won't spoil what he does, but you can smell his contempt. He is, nonetheless, American, in his food preferences, his paranoid sense of hygiene, and the way he thinks about relationships, and that's where the conflict stems from.

Ok, ok, admittedly, it also stems from the many exes of Delpy's Marion they run into, and their -unfortunately very French- behavior. It also comes from the fact that French people will just go on talking in French even if there's someone who doesn't speak the language in their midst. But who cares, really, where it stems from, when the result is so funny: each taxi driver they run into is worse than the previous one, a "fairy" shows up to give Goldman advice, and there's a scene with Goldman holding a phone in one hand and a dictionary in the other getting progressively angrier that had me doubled over. Its maybe a little exaggerated, ok, a lot, but the comedy stems from human behavior and emotion, not from convoluted misunderstandings and toilet humor, and that's incredibly refreshing.

The best film this year? Not by a long shot. But the funniest? I definitely think so.

The Fruitstand: in Paris

2007-08-10T23:17:00.001+02:00

Dans Paris

Writing is hard

2007-08-09T19:00:00.000+02:00

I'm being confronted with the fact that while I'm not bad at stringing sentences together, and my writing is even on occasion half-decent, when you get paid for it (however little) you need to be half-decent by habit, and on occasion spectacular.

So, in this self-improving mood - and also, not so secretly, fishing for infortmation about my handful of visitors, whose movements I track obsessively via sitemeter - I thought I'd ask: what do you think are the strong and weak points of this blog? What could be improved? What could you do without, and what would you like to see (more of)?

We live to serve, after all.

I am aware that most blogs need, and have, a niche. Nathanial loves actresses and lists, Dennis is great at in-depth articles and of course, his famous quizzes I feel too intimidated and ignorant to participate in, the Self-Styled Siren loves old movies, the Shamus subverts the whole blog medium by keeping no archives and changing template every other day, hiding himself in the shadows like a true P.I., and I could go on. What my niche should be is still a bit of a mystery, although I do feel I've been achieving a more consistent tone and style of late. All suggestions are welcome.

And while I'm dealing with blog matters, some household announcements: as you might have noticed, my blogroll has been updated. Some blogs on it had unfortunately met their untimely demise (cinemarati, in particular), others had changed URL's or even identity. Also in the right column, you'll find a link to an infrequently updated alphabetical list of reviews, and a link to my "Tumbling Log". I don't have a lot of links on my blog - I prefer to keep my entries restricted to my own thoughts - but I do of course regularly run across things I'd like to share. The tumbling log is kind of a scrapbook where you'll find few of my own thoughts, but many things I liked: quotes, videos, links to articles. Still planned is a revision of the out-of-date list of DVD's I own.

That's all folks. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Professione: Reporter aka The Passenger

2007-08-08T12:04:00.000+02:00

"This first piece of the film in this desert is a man looking for something, and that's really enough of a story for Antonioni"

A confession: I love that there's such a thing as DVD commentaries, but I rarely take the time to listen to them. It feels to much like a purely analytic pursuit, in a way: of course I analyse movies also while I watch them but that does not mean I cannot be swept away and involved by them, but when you're listening to a commentary you're seeing a movie from a much bigger remove, with a layer of analysis between you and the film.

In retrospect, it's obvious that this would be an ideal way to see an Antonioni movie, who, as Nicholson points out on his wonderful commentary track "(films) at a dispassionate distance".

It's a commentary like all commentaries should be: it offers insight, funny anecdotes, but Nicholson's also not afraid of letting some of the scenes play out, even professing his hope at the end that he didn't distract too much from the movie. It's easy to forget sometimes that actors are also often film lovers. Nicholson is known mostly for his antics, but from this commentary speaks a profound love both for film and for Antonioni.

I already loved this film: it's meditative nature, the wit of the screenplay, and of course that fabulous long shot at the end. Despite Nicholson's explanation, I still don't understand how exactly they did it, but it doesn't matter. The excruciatingly slow zoom towards the bars and then out, watching everything going on in the courtyard, it so mesmerizing it makes you hold your breath, and for it alone the movie would be worth watching.

I'll stop now - for the new free-lance thing I landed I will be writing a 1000 word essay about this film and DVD, and I don't to have some fresh thoughts left. But I know I'll be thinking about this movie for the rest of the day, at the very least.

Say Anything

2007-08-07T14:18:00.000+02:00

I've always been on the fence when it comes to Cameron Crowe. He has a true talent for writing believable characters and great dialogue, and a fantastic ear for music, but many of his films fail to convince me in the end. I think it's his inherent sentimentality that does him in, but this seems a strange accusation for a man who tries so hard to avoid typical Hollywood sentiment.

He creates indelible scenes: Jerry Maguire yelling "Show me the money!", Billy Crudup standing on the roof yelling "I am a Golden God", John Cusack holding his boombox playing "in your eyes" over his head... Even the exercise-machine suicide and the road trip in Elizabethtown are scenes that are memorable even if the film is now. But ultimately, to me, his films are often more a collection of nice moments than a good, coherent, film. I like his films, but I don't love them

Say Anything was the first exception to that rule. This movie is also not coherent, it kind of meanders, but for the first time it didn't bother me. I identified with these characters and their aimlessness. Lloyd's indecision about his future was painfully familiar, his reluctance to "sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career", and more than that, the resolution of his dilemma feels right: he decides that what he want to be is be with Diane. Because he's good at it. As for Diane, she truly is the center of this film. One of the things I really liked here is that her relationship with her father is just as fleshed out and important as the one with Lloyd, and I recognized much of my relationship with my father in it (though luckily, he's not under investigation by the IRS).

Most high school movies date fairly easily, but this one has not lost any relevance in the 18 years since its release, because it doesn't so much focus on what's "hip" at the time (clothing, language, even music) but on something more essential: where do we go from here? Fashions and lingo change, but that question still faces every graduating senior.

Of course, John Cusack's performance is crucial here. He is Lloyd Dobler: a thoroughly decent and even gallant but also fundamentally aimless guy. He's not perfect. But you can imagine just anyone falling for him: his nervous talking, his ridiculous trench coat, and of course his grand romantic gesture.

But what really makes this film better, in my opinion,, is the ambivalence of the ending. You want these two characters to make it together, but at the same time you doubt they will. The film doesn't end in a kiss or a laugh, but in tense expectation, with a plane taking off. the dialogue says it all:

DIANE: Nobody thought we'd do this. Nobody really thinks it's going to work, do they?
LLOYD: No. You just described every great success story.

Joan Cusack

2007-08-07T10:22:00.000+02:00

After my rant on serious movies, I decided to treat myself to a night of thoroughly un-serious movies, a romantic comedy and a film starring Jack Black (don't worry, they weren't the same movie): Cameron Crowe's Say Anything and Richard Linklater's School of Rock. I do admit, they can stir a giddiness I seldom experience when watching serious movies, unless you count Bride of Frankenstein as "serious". I'll probably devote separate posts to them, in any case to the first one. But first:

Joan Cusack.

I can't ask "why doesn't she get more work?", because she actually works quite a bit: she's in two or three movies almost every year. But why doesn't she get bigger parts? Why is she always relegated to be the best friend, the sister, on occasion the girlfriend?

Joan Cusack is, and I'm not afraid to say it, one of the best comedic actresses working today. She's sometimes a little broad, almost veers towards the shrill sometimes, but I don't think she's ever played a one-dimensional character: there's always a deeper layer of hurt and vulnerability and/or of humor in her performances, there's a sense that these aren't just characters there to serve a purpose, but they're characters with a history and an interesting story of their own. That, and of course she's absolutely hilarious.

It's interesting, in both films, she's someone who's lost her sense of fun. In Say Anything, John Cusack (both her on- and off-screen brother) says to her: "You used to be warped and twisted and hilarious. And I mean that in the best way". She kind of wistfully replies: "I was hilarious once, wasn't I?". In School of Rock, she confesses to Jack Black "I wasn't always like this, you know. I wasn't always wound up this tight. There was a time when I was funny. I was fun. I was".

She is funny still, of course. So please, someone write a starring role for her. Something funny and poignant where she can show she can be more than just comic relief, something that will finally raise her status above just being "sister of".

Hany Abu-Assad

2007-08-05T23:21:00.000+02:00

Zomergasten ("summer guests") is a strange show. It aspires both to show someone's "ideal TV night" and to interview them during three long hours face to face with an interviewer who is himself/herself also a public figure. This year, the interviewer is again Joris Luyendijk, and while I don't think he's that extrordinary most of the time, he was quite good tonight, interviewing Hany Abu-Assad, the director of the acclaimed "Paradise Now".

Abu-Assad is a Palestinian with the Israeli nationality who came to the Netherlands when he was 18 to study aircraft engineering. His TV-night? Many film fragments, but none of them from the town where he's now working, Hollywood: fragments from Once Upon a Time in the West, Rosetta, a Polish movie, two Egyption movies. Some TV fragments too: from documentaries (The BBC doc The Power of Nightmares) to news footage of Arafat.

Three hours is a long time, and as usual my thoughts wandered, but there were interesting points. Abu-Assad believes democracy has failed as a system, for instance (I personally agree with Churchill that democracy is a wretched system, but it's the best one we know), and he had some very interesting thoughts on the barrier between fact and fiction, in particular the trustworthiness of the documentary as a medium.

There was a controversy when it was found that Abu-Assad had staged a scene in his doc Ford Transit. He was unapologetic about it, because, he argued "this does happen", and furthermore it was not fiction since the camera was acknowledged. I think this argument is rather dodgy, but it does raise some interesting questions. We tend to see documentaries as a more objective form of film making than fiction, but this is of course nonsense: no doc is ever truly objective, even when the makers try, and fiction films can sometimes get closer to the true nature of something than any doc ever could. Still, there is this expectation viewers put on the medium, and it's always worth challenging those viewers, shocking us into being more critical spectators.

It was an interesting night, even if it was in a problematic format. Really getting to know someone in three hours, through their choices of fragments or their answers, is of course an illusion, but Abu-Assad's mind is an interesting one to get a glimpse of.

On watching "serious" films

2007-08-05T13:26:00.000+02:00

Why is it, I wondered after a recent comment from my good friend Lani, that I watch so many "serious" films? And what is it that makes a film "serious"?

It's not a strange question. Many people around me don't understand why I watch all these films in black and white, all these films from directors whose names they don't even know. It's put all the more starkly into relief now with the passing of Bergman and Antonioni, two masters who showed that films were not just movies, that films nowadays are often little more.

I don't argue that every film needs to be high art. I fell in love with the medium of cinema precisely because it can be so much: it can be art, it can be a document, a critique, and it can also just be pure undiluted entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that there is much less wiggle room in the film-as-entertainment genre, and that once you've seen quite a few, the rest often don't have many surprises.

There are exceptions, definitely: I greatly enjoyed Fast Times at Ridgemont High when I finally saw it, even if many of its elements have been imitated by so many other high school movies, and I had a blast with Ocean's 13, not so much because it surprised me but because it was so nimble and so light. But when weighing seeing the nth threequel of the summer(*) against watching one of the many classics I haven't seen yet, the latter almost always wins.

Many people nowadays seem scared of "serious" movies. The moniker already says it all: they imagine those films unapproachable, humorless and obscure. To me, however, many of these films are much more entertaining than watching robots blow each others to smithereens (my inner geek gets a thrill out of watching robots fight, but does it need to last 2.5 hours?).

Take Cronaca di un amore. It's sexy. It's a simply story with beautiful people and even more beautiful outfits. What's so intimidating about that? Plein Soleil is likewise a thriller without a boring moment. It's not an art film at all, but because it's in French and made before 1980, it gets labeled as "serious". Even the Seventh Seal, while it's conversations about the absence of God can be daunting, is also surprisingly funny.

I understand the hesitations all too well. I, too, had for example never seen an Ingmar Bergman seen because I imagined them stark and Scandinavian, depressing and dull. I don't feel like Antonioni, Fellini or -a more modern maker of art films- Gus van Sant every night. The themes they broach are often heavier, the ruminations they inspire are more complex, and the feelings they evoke are more ambiguous and lingering. But especially because these films get to you more, because they are more layered than your average Adam Sandler movie, they're much more rewarding to watch.

So every once in a while, get over that hurdle. Take a deep breat and jump. You won't regret it.

(*) I am very excited about Bourne 3 though.

Cronaca di un amore

2007-08-05T10:21:00.000+02:00

As it turns out, Antonioni films are very hard to find. Blow-up and The Passenger are available, but I had those two already. I searched everywhere for La Notte, L'Avventura, and L'Eclisse, but all I could find was a Criterion edition of L'Eclisse, which was beautiful with all the extra's you'd expect, and, as is always the case with Criterion, ridiculously expensive.

My dad, sweet as he is, decided to break his resolution not to buy me any more DVD's one more time. It won't get here for a while, but when it does, I really hope I'll like it. Ah, but how can I not love an Antonioni classic starring my very latest crush, Alain Delon?

Meanwhile, Cronaca di un amore (7.50 at the Fame in Amsterdam). The ending is spoiled even on the DVD-box, but typically for an Antonioni movie, while the plot is important, its resolution is not: it's all about the path that leads there.

This could have been a straightforward noir story: the wife and her lover conspiring to kill the husband. It would be interesting to watch this film together with Double Indemnity and Ascenseur pour L'échafaud, saving Antonioni's film for the end. In the first film it's about the mechanics of the seduction and the murder, and about the guilt that follows. In the second film, the mechanics of the murder are still important, but they're only the beginning, and guilt is not a factor: the film is about the emotions on Jeanne Moreau's face as she wanders through Paris, not about whether her act was moral or not.

Cronaca di un amore takes it even further: the mechanics of the murder are barely discussed, it's not even certain whether they have succeeded. It's about the push and pull between Paola (Lucia Bosé) and Guido (Massimo Girotti). They go from happy to miserable in a second, from fighting to kissing. One time it's Guido who hesitates, and Paola who convinces him to continue, the next it's the inverse. And just like the audience, they are on some level aware that this can never end well.

There's an interesting doubling, as a private investigator who looks into Paola's past discovers there was another "other" involved so many years ago, a girl this time, Paola's friend and Guido's fiance. She died under suspicious circumstances, but after she did, Paola and Guido didn't end up happily together, but disengaged, horrified.

I liked this movie a lot, but I didn't love it like I did Blow-up and the Passenger. Maybe this is because there is less ambiguity here: there are only a few options as to what happens in the end, but it's not a big mystery. Maybe it's because the film is visually much less inventive. Also, the film is really just about this couple, while you can read much more into the other films, as they're less focused, more broad in their themes.

In the end though, it offers some insight into Antonioni's evolution as a filmmaker. It was a nice snack. But I can't wait until I can digest L'Eclisse. And let us hope his death prompts more DVD releases.

Bride of Frankenstein

2007-08-04T20:10:00.000+02:00

I love the horror pictures Universal made in the 30's. I don't know why - horror is one of my least favorite genres overall- but I simply cannot resist them. Dracula was, I believe, the first one I saw. It was on late at night (Starting around 11 or 11:30, as I recall), when normal commercials have stopped and commercial breaks are filled with big-boobed women breathlessly reciting phone numbers, and ads for terrible phone ringtones. It made for a nice contrast with the film, which is all about repressed sexuality and hidden desires.

There are a few standard tropes in horror, and in this period in the 30's, they were explored one by one for what felt like the first time. Dracula was about the dangers of sex. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was about the duality of man, about the perversity hidden by a thin layer of civilisation. The Wolfman is about our fear of our animal nature, the Invisible Man about how much "others" looking at us influences us, and so on.

Frankenstein is of course a Faustian tale, about the hubris of trying to play God, about the dangers of science, too. There is another more literary strain too, though: both novel and movie are about the responsibility of a creator/author for his creation.

In the first movie, the big mistake Frankenstein makes is not just that he makes the monster, but also that he abandons it. The "monster" is not really evil, but he lacks education: because he was abandoned he has no restraint, no morals. He kills a little girl, not because he wants to, but because he doesn't know that she won't float, and the rest of the people are killed mostly out of fright and anger.

Interestingly enough, James Whale, who directed both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, tried to abandon his creature too after the first film. He wanted to do loftier things than horror, but eventually he was lured back, accepting to direct a sequel only if he could write it.

In the tale that he wrote, the monster gets not just one but two educators. The first one is a kind old blind man, who teaches him not only to talk but also what friendship is. The second teacher however, is the evil-minded Dr. Pretorius, who uses the monster to get Frankenstein to pick his work back up. Frankenstein resists, at first, but once he's convinced he plunges back into full-fledged obsession.

I'm afraid too much from my "return of the repressed" literature course is coming back here, I could go on and on about this film, about its handling of women, about Else Lanchester's performance(s), about the framing of the story, about how it could be analyzed in the context of queer cinema. I won;t though, because the most important thing that you can say about the film is that it's absolutely marvelous, thrilling and entertaining, better than the original, and a classic everyone should see. It will take only 75 minutes of your life, and nothing could be more worth it.

Incidentally, Gods and Monsters, Bill Condon's great film about James Whale, which features a re-creation of the set of Bride of Frankenstein, is on "Canvas" (a Belgian channel) tonight at 0:10. If you don't mind staying up late, it's worth checking out.

Plein Soleil

2007-08-02T20:42:00.001+02:00

Alain Delon is breathtakingly gorgeous. I probably could have watched him, photographed and frequently shirtless like he is here, reading the proverbial phonebook, and I still would have been captivated.

It seems shallow to point it out. But in fact, in Plein Soleil, the first film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Delon's beauty is essential. He has not just an amazing physique, but also an angelic face, a face that seems incompatible with his fundamentally evil nature. If we look just at his actions, then Ripley is a monster, a callous and cold-blooded killer with purely selfish motives, who doesn't even seem to understand love, just desire. But because we're so used to associate evil with ugliness, and beauty with truth and goodness, we go along with his story, try to understand him, try to justify his actions to ourselves, to be able to look at him and admire him without guilt.

This is a very different Ripley than Matt Damon's in Mingella's 1999 film. His Ripley was mostly a cypher, someone so empty that he needs to adapt someone else's personality and life to know who to be. He was a chameleon first and foremost, though admittedly the homoerotic subtext was also a big part of that film, a bigger one than it is in Plein Soleil. Delon's Ripley is more nefarious, also a little pathetic especially in the beginning, ultimately more evil in nature but because of his beauty also more alluring.

I liked The Talented Mr. Ripley, especially for Jude Law's amazing performance. It's the more suspenseful movie of the two. But this one digs deeper somehow. Highsmith created a fascinating character in Ripley, one whose motivation is so obscure many different interpretations are possible, a character also who makes for intriguing films. Ripley's Game, with John Malkovich in the titular role, is an underseen little gem, and I still very much want to see Hopper's take on the character in The American Friend. So far though, Plein Soleil is the Ripley film I like best.

First Bergman, then Antonioni...

2007-07-31T11:02:00.000+02:00

It's a good week to die, apparently. I have to admit this news affected me a lot more, because while I've only seen two movies by Antonioni, I love them both.

When you read a synopsis of the plot of an Antonioni movie, it often seems like it's an action movie, almost, a mystery, something suspenseful. Take Blow-Up, for example: "A man discovers he might have photographed a murder". Or the Passenger: "A man takes the identity of a dead man, who turns out to have been an arms dealer". It almost feels like there should be exclamation points at the end, but Antonioni never resorts to them, and subverts your expectations. He lures you in with these seemingly plot-driven premises, and then turns them into meditations on reality, identity, and the inability of finding an absolute truth.

Blow-up ends with the famous mime scene: mimes are playing tennis without a ball or rackets. When at some point "the ball" goes out of the tennis court, David Hemmings picks it up, throws it back, and all of a sudden we hear the sounds of the ball hitting the rackets. Then, in the famous final shot, our protagonist simply disappears. The Passenger ends with a similar disappearance, and a masterful shot that goes on forever, daring us to find meaning or purpose.

I know, I know, two films is too few to really know a filmmaker. I need to see l'Avventura, l'Eclisse, and many more. But I do know that based on the two movies I have seen, Antonioni is a filmmaker I admire and love, and in my mind, he didn't die: he simply, from one frame to the next, vanished into the unknown.

Rest in peace, Ingmar

2007-07-30T11:15:00.000+02:00

In memory of Ignmar Bergman, I finally saw one of his films tonight. "The Seventh Seal" or "Det Sjunde inseglet". Appropriately enough, it revolves around death.

I don't know why, even knowing about the iconic chess-match paid homage to by Bill and Ted, I expected stark, grim realism. The film is very grim in parts, but realistic? It's more of an absurd fairy tale, an allegory, and to my great surprise, it's funny.

I'm not sure if I like it yet, don't know quite what to make of it. I do know I've never seen anything like it, and that it's a shame I was reluctant to see Bergman's films until now. It's always sad when a great man dies, but this one leaves a legacy to be reckoned with, and one I'm planning to explore in detail.

Glen or Glenda

2007-07-28T10:11:00.000+02:00

You'd think the label "worst director of all time" would be, well, hard to live up to. It's a form of overly high expectations, after all, what if people come to your films expecting terrible and getting merely mediocre?

Don't worry though, "Glen or Glenda" is anything but merely mediocre. The reason it is this terrible, and fascinating, is because it's so incredibly earnest, so filled with ideas and good intentions, so convinced of its own importance. It's a movie that has no lesser goal than to spread understanding and acceptance of transvestism (a term which is defined, in almost the same terms, twice, as if to pound it in our head, or maybe Wood had simply forgotten he'd already done it).

But what a strange movie this is. It's hard even to talk of "scenes". Glen himself gets some lines with his Barbara, but as Glenda he is mostly just followed through the street by a voice-over. There are multiple framing devices: a doctor who tells the story of Glen "and all the other Glens" to a concerned policeman, but also strange bits with Bela Lugosi as some puppeteer going nefariously on and on about "pulling the string" and "puppy dog tails and fat big snails". There's even a scene of him in a lab, but what he's mixing we don't know. It produces a lot of smoke though.

There are weird dream sequences too, and then, there's his love of stock footage. When we see Bela, for example, it's framed by shots of lightning. The story of Alan - also told by the doctor- is mostly narrated over war footage. A shot of a highway, cars streaming through, comes back over and over again with only a mere excuse for it the first time.

It's a totally bizarre film, and while it can be applauded for at least trying to make transvestism normal, it spoils that by being thoroughly homophobic. It confirms that Wood might, indeed, be the worst director of all time, but also a director with so much ambition and so many ideas that it's amazing none of them turn out to be good.

So do yourself a favor. Don't go see the merely mediocre "I know who killed me" or anything like that this weekend. Treat yourself to something truly terrible instead.

Recently Seen Roundup

2007-07-27T10:40:00.000+02:00

2.50, less than the cost of renting a movie, for a movie a) starring Humphrey Bogart b) directed by John Huston c) with Peter Lorre in a supporting part and as I later found out d) co-written by Truman Capote, how could I resist? I'm glad I didn't, because while Beat the Devil is a mess of a movie with a plot that's both ludicrous and not quite there, the lines and the performances are wonderful. I want to see more of Jennifer Jones now, who's hilarious here, and what about this short bit by Peter Lorre on time:
"Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook. "

Also for a mere 2.50, "Reform School Girl". I already had a postcard, two in fact, of the poster, and I just had to see what was behind it. It turns out it's a lovely little B-movie, 73 minutes long, which is a lot less outrageous and sleazy than you'd think, although I'll admit it contains plenty of girls walking around in their nightgowns and pulling each other's hair. The girls here are scary, seriously, scarier than the guy who's supposed to be the main bad guy. The acting from some supporting players is as bad and over-the-top as you might expect, but all-in-all this is very worth seeing, and not only for the camp factor.

I can admit it now: I'd never seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but this gap in my cinematic education has now been filled. I liked it a lot, mostly because it has no narrative ambition aside from showing a year of this kids' lives. It also shows all too clearly how out culture had regressed and grown more conservative in the past 25 years. Sure, in sex comedies, the girls still freely have sex, but they don't think about it like the girls do here, not to mention they're not by far as complex characters as Stacey and Linda are here. And the way abortion is treated in this movie? I don't think it could happen any more today.

I also saw "The Sea" or Hafið, an Icelandic movie my cousin (hey Ruben!) lent me. I liked how it started the same way it ended: it emphasizes how images in and of themselves are often meaningless, but are given meaning by what comes before. Aside form that, the plot is overdrawn, with soap-like developments being divulged with much ado but little surprise, and the only really redeeming thing are the character quirks and the strong performances. It also gives a good impression of how claustrophobic it must be to live in such a small, isolated community.

Finally, I've also been watching "Flight of the Conchords" a lot, and I just want to say, Jemaine and Bret? I love you. The series by itself if plenty fun, with supporting characters Murray and Mal are over-the-top but hilarious, and then there's the musical numbers, which bump this series from good to great. Little things like the "binary solo" in the humans are dead are brilliant, and some songs you can't even decide which excerpts to lift out. So, I'll just leave you with the following:

Goodfellas

2007-07-24T20:17:00.001+02:00

I saw Goodfellas 4 days ago already, but I kept putting off writing about it. Why? Well...I'm afraid I'm going to blaspheme.

Oh, not blaspheme in the "fucking show yourself, you goddamn bloodsucker" way I was talking to the hiding mosquito in my room on my hunt after the movie, infected by the language. No, blaspheme as in: I didn't really like it all that much.

Oh, Scorses is definitely a master filmmaker, so I did find much to admire: there are some breathtaking tracking shots, the dialogue snaps like it should, basically every technical aspect is perfect. Somehow, though, I was unaffected.

One thing might be that it's long, and that I didn't find the story particularly engaging or suspenseful. To put it crudely, I didn't really care who lived or died. It might be that I found the switching between the perspective of the voice-over from Henry to Karen and back distracting and unnecessary. More importantly, I think it's from a lack of affinity with Scorsese's take on the mafia as a topos.

It's interesting that almost every director to take on the genre of mob movies has his own take on it. To Coppola, the family aspect, the traditional side, was most important. To Tarantino, gangsters are just the epitome of cool. In Mann's movies, being a gangster is just a job like another, with it's own rules and ethics, sure, but not all that different from being a cop, a journalist, a cab driver.

To Scorsese, it's a calling.

And see, that's where he loses me, because I can't for the life of me understand Henry. He describes it in detail: he likes the respect he gets, the perks, that he doesn't need to wait in line.

I mean really? To not have to wait in line you're ok with hurting and killing people? You're happy to exploit people?

Of course, the element of the film that is intriguing, I have to admit, is the unreliability of the narrator. Henry justifies a little too much, tries too hard to justify the mafia as a not-so-evil form of business. They protect these people after all, see? Also, in the voice-over he seems reluctant to use violence, quite a nice guy actually, but he seems just a little too eager to hit his wife for that to be true.

I'm almost scared to type the above, to justify myself by saying "it's not the movie, it's probably just me". After all, this is #92 on the most recent AFI list, #18 on the imdb top 250. But I'll be bold, and say it outright: I think Goodfellas is overrated.

If you'll excuse me, I'll go run and hide now.

Hairspray & Once

2007-07-24T18:25:00.000+02:00

Yay! My first two press screenings. Two musicals, but they couldn't possible have been more different. Whereas everything in Hairspray is oversized, from the protagonist to the hair through the feelings and the stars, Once is one of the smallest, most understated and most quietly charming films I've ever seen.

I liked Hairspray more than I thought I would. It's infectious, the way a musical should be, and even if I was a little disturbed because it seemed to equate discrimination against fat people to racism, I ended up rather liking it. It's mainly because it feels so refreshing to see people really dance instead of shots of moving body parts edited together as fast as possible, but also because of the performances. I wasn't really impressed with John Travolta, but I admire him for taking the role straight, without apologizing for it through caricature, James Marsden was a true surprise here (what a voice!) and I'm sure we'll hear more from Elijah Kelley.

But Once, well, that's an entirely different ballgame. I don't want to say too much, actually, because I think it's best seen without any expectations or prior knowledge. I'm grateful to Sam from filmspotting because he was the one reviewer not agreeing with the near universal adulation of this film. It lowered my expectations enough that I could still be surprised by how wonderful it is.

I'm very happy that Glen Hansard, of the Frames, plays the main part, and not Cillian Murphy as was apparently planned at first. Together with the hand-held camera and the naturalistic style, the fact that it's two unknown faces playing the unnamed Guy and Girl means there's a very everyday quality to the film. Realism is the last thing you expect in a musical, but the music is totally organic here.

Ok, I'll stop now. Go see it! I mean, seeing Hairspray, you'll be entertained, but it doesn't really stick in any way, not the music or the details. Once, on the other hand, is still playing in my head.