Vic & Walter Thiessen - On Movies...

Shame

2012-01-28T01:20:00.002-04:00

Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, who have had another great year (Jane Eyre, Drive, respectively) are two of the best young actors of our time and their brilliant raw performances in Shame will only enhance their reputations, not least because of the unsympathetic characters they play in this cold dark film.

Fassbender plays Brandon, a sex addict living alone in a cold white apartment in Manhattan. It is clear from the start that Brandon gets no pleasure from his addiction, or, for that matter, from the rest of his life. His emotions, such as they are, generally vary only from anger to frustration to self-loathing. When his sister (Sissy, played by Mulligan) moves in, Brandon is not amused. But something happens when he watches Sissy sing at a bar one night. Is he remembering something? We don’t hear much about their past, but there are hints that it was far from good. Is there any hope for these two broken and desperately lonely people?

Rated NC-17 in the U.S., Shame is not for those who are offended by sex or nudity (or dark dramas about sex addiction). But it is a haunting powerful film by Steve McQueen, featuring great acting, cinematography and music. ***+. My mug is up.

The Adventures of Tintin 3D

2012-01-25T11:23:00.004-04:00

I read many of the Tintin graphic novels (in French) back in my high school days. I loved them, especially appreciating the artwork and the sense of wonder and mystery in the clever convoluted plots. Now here comes a Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg no less (the director who has more films in my top 150 than any other director). Still, I resisted seeing the film (for a month anyway) for two reasons: 1) it’s in 3D; 2) the animation bears little resemblance to the artwork in the graphic novels. As it turns out, those are my two primary complaints about The Adventures of Tintin, though there is one more major complaint and some minor ones (which I will get to in due course).

The Adventures of Tintin provides exactly what it advertises: a nonstop thrill-ride of pure old-fashioned adventure (like Indiana Jones). The animation is remarkably realistic, which is amazing and beautiful but obviously not aimed at fans of the novels, because, as I said above, it bears little resemblance to the novels’ artwork. Given that the novels’ artwork is key to their brilliance and popularity, this seems both strange and tragic. The 3D only highlights the difference (and you all know what I think of 3D, though, as in Hugo, the 3D was not highlighted in as distracting a manner as I had expected).

If I could set aside the distraction caused by the changes made to the artwork, I would say this is a very well-made animated film with good acting (voices), lots of comedy and lots of action and adventure (though the sense of mystery I was hoping for was barely noticeable). But, alas, I could not stop there. I would have to go on to point out (no doubt risking the exasperation of some readers) that, given the realistic animation style, The Adventures of Tintin has far too much violence for a film aimed at children. I was rather shocked by how quickly and easily Tintin uses a handgun. I suppose that must be the case in the graphic novels as well (I haven’t opened one in at least a decade) but at least there is no feel of realism there. Since I encouraged my children to read Tintin at an early age, I cannot imagine that the novels had the same violent feel as the film. Still, this violence is nowhere near as offensive as it is in the Narnia films (Tintin is, after all, not a child).

So, in spite of all the flaws mentioned above, I am still going to give The Adventures of Tintin a solid *** for providing an enjoyable film-viewing experience. My mug is up.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-24T10:44:00.001-04:00

Like the British miniseries, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is painstakingly slow-moving. This is, of course, not a criticism. In fact, when you add intelligent dialogue and brilliant acting to that, you’ve got a winner. But there’s more. Tomas Alfredson has managed to perfectly recreate the feel of John le Carre’s 1974 spy novel, with its dark grey and brown palette and its dour performances. Those performances convey the real dreariness and horror of being a British Cold War spy, unlike a certain Bond fellow who usually treats it all rather lightly.

In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Smiley, recently dismissed, is called back to hunt for a mole at the very top of MI6. Gary Oldman’s performance as Smiley is particularly outstanding, but he has lots of excellent support, notably from Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy.

But despite the fact that the screenplay is well-written and well-paced, it is also the film’s biggest flaw. A slow-moving spy film should not require the many sudden leaps of logic which Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy contains. At least three times it was impossible for me to figure out how Smiley got from point A to point B in his investigations. The sold-out crowd around me (it was opening night) shared my opinion on this, as I heard person after person say they were hopelessly lost and could not figure out what was going on half the time. As a lover of spy films, I wasn’t lost, just frustrated. Without this flaw, TTSS would surely have made it into my top ten films of 2011. Another easy ***+. My mug is up.

The Artist

2012-01-22T20:03:00.004-04:00

Let me reverse my usual pattern and start by saying that The Artist is easily the most overrated film of the past year. I think film critics are drawn to films about filmmaking, especially if a film seems innovative and if there are lots of references to classic films. There were two such films released at the end of 2011 (Hugo and The Artist) and I believe critics were unduly fond of these two films (however good they might be) because they are well-made innovative films about the silent film era (weird coincidence?).

In the case of The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius has actually made an old-fashioned black & white silent film. I love black & white films, so that’s not an issue for me, but having viewed about a dozen silent films, I can safely say that silent films are not my thing (though Metropolis is wonderful and some of the comedy classics from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are definitely entertaining). Partly this is because I particularly appreciate films full of well-written intelligent dialogue (though I confess there isn’t much dialogue in some of my favourite films of 2011), especially in the case of dramas. The Artist, though it contains lots of comedy, is primarily a drama (a classic love story, to be precise). By necessity, that love story has been simplified to accommodate the restricted dialogue of a silent film.

Having complained enough, let me hasten to add that The Artist is a masterful and magical simplified love story. French actor Jean Dujardin’s acting is exceptional in the lead role and amazingly well-suited to silence (even his accent is not an issue), and Berenice Bejo is perfect in the role of Peppy Miller. The cinematography is gorgeous. The mixed score, while occasionally too distracting (as it is in silent films in general), has a fair number of magical moments, especially near the end when the theme of Vertigo is woven in.

All in all, I was thoroughly entertained and entranced and give The Artist an easy ***+. But is The Artist worthy of all the acclaim and awards it has received (i.e. of being the best picture of 2011)? IMHO, it’s just a little too simplified to say yes.

Vic's Top Ten (Fifteen) Films of 2011

2012-01-21T01:32:00.005-04:00

What a great year for film! Only one film made in 2009 and 2010 (combined) made it into my top 150 films of all time. This year, there were five such films. In the past two years, I struggled to find ten films worthy to be in my top ten films of the year. This year, there were twenty films fighting to get into my top ten. I finally gave up trying to limit myself to ten films and will be doing a top fifteen this year (sixteen actually). Even so, there are seven films which I watched in 2011 which were not 2011 releases but which also might have had a shot at my top ten (Never Let Me Go, Mr. Nobody, Enter the Void, Lebanon, The Illusionist, White Material and Blue Valentine).

This was the year of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, each of whom starred in two films in my top six. It was also the year of Ryan Gosling, whose films didn’t quite make it but two of which were among those twenty I mentioned (The Ides of March and Drive). Also in that twenty were Anonymous and Young Adult.

It’s a long list, so let’s get to it:

15. The Beaver. Mel Gibson is fantastic as a man dealing with his depression by speaking through a beaver hand-puppet. Jodie Foster directs and stars as the wife and Anton Yelchin is great as the son in this underrated drama featuring a well-written original screenplay, excellent cinematography and very good music.

15. Source Code - The plot may be illogical and the ending questionable, but this was my favourite sci-fi film of the year and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. Jake Gyllenhall continues to impress as an actor and Duncan Jones, who made one of my favourite films of 2009 (Moon), continues to impress as a director.

14. Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen’s best film in fifteen years, Midnight in Paris is a wonderful romantic comedy starring Luke Wilson as a man whose visit to Paris takes him on a journey to what he believes was the golden age of the 1920s. Full of witty, intelligent dialogue, fascinating characters and great music.

13. We Need to Talk About Kevin. Tilda Swinton deserves an Oscar for her portrayal of Eve, the mother of a boy serving time for committing a high school massacre. Lynne Ramsay’s film, based on Lionel Shriver’s controversial novel, provides a mother’s perspective on the question of nature versus nurture in the making of a sociopath. Fascinating and very well made.

12. The Time That Remains. A subtle cry for justice, The Time That Remains is a darkly funny epic tale chronicling the Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1948. This poetic thought-provoking film was directed by, and stars, Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman.

11. Jane Eyre. A gorgeous traditional re-filming of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre has the feel of a 1930s epic romance. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are excellent as Jane and Rochester.

10. Beginners. Ewan McGregor and Melanie Laurent are flawless as Oliver and Anna, two lonely, hurting people, haunted by their fathers, who try to make a lasting connection. Christopher Plummer, as Oliver’s gay father, provides outstanding support. Beginners somehow manages to be both a subdued melancholy film and a very funny one.

9. The Descendants. George Clooney is wonderful as an Hawaiian lawyer who finds himself needing to relate differently to all the people around him after his wife has a boating accident, leaving her in a coma. The Descendants was made by Alexander Payne, a master of satisfying character development.

8. Margin Call. A haunting intelligent film with a great ensemble cast, Margin Call tells the story of one fateful night in an investment firm at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. While humanizing those responsible for the crisis, it exposes the dehumanizing impact of money on all of us who are among the rich.

7. Hugo. A delightful old-fashioned adventure film with a beautifully-realized setting (a Paris train station in the 1930s), Hugo is about fixing broken people who have lost their purpose in life and about the wonder of film. Too bad it had to be in 3D.

6. Moneyball. A classic-style film written by the formidable Aaron Sorkin and featuring a brilliant performance by Brad Pitt as the manager of the Oakland A’s (baseball team) in 2002, Moneyball is moving and funny and all about relationships (not baseball).

5. Take Shelter. A spellbinding psychological drama which may, or may not, be about a coming apocalyptic storm (and about global warming), Take Shelter features awe-inspiring performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain as a couple struggling with the effects of mental illness on a loving young family.

4. The Way. A funny, inspiring and beautiful film about a man (played by Martin Sheen, whose son, Emilio Estevez, directs) who decides, on the spur of the moment, to do a famous pilgrimage in northern Spain. Along the way, he meets a number of lonely people who have lost their way and who are, like himself, searching for community and God.

3. Incendies. A haunting, expertly-crafted film from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, Incendies is the story of a woman who struggles for dignity in a world torn apart by religious violence. An insightful and poetic reflection on Middle Eastern violence.

2. The Tree of Life. Yet another profound and sublime work of cinematic art, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life uses breathtaking cinematography and classical music to create a poetic theological film about the meaning of life, specifically the life of Jack, an architect reflecting on his childhood in small-town Texas. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are wonderful as Jack’s parents and Hunter McCracken is amazing as the adolescent Jack.

1. Of Gods and Men. A profound and sublime work of cinematic art, Of Gods and Men tells the true story of nine French monks caught up in the Algerian Civil War of 1996. With one beautiful scene after another, this film depicts what loving others and following Jesus is really about while showing both Christianity and Islam in a positive (and even compatible) light.

Higher Ground

2012-01-19T17:35:00.000-04:00

Having grown up as part of an evangelical, charismatic subculture, I felt a weird emotional response while watching a movie like this (and there are very few movies like this). I’m not sure if I can describe it well – there’s a deep vulnerability as I watch a culture that feels simultaneously close to home yet notably at odds with the larger culture in which I’ve also been submerged. Maybe it’s a vulnerability that comes when I’m forced to see different parts of myself through one, public lens. And when you add to this that I had no idea where the movie would eventually lead, the vulnerable feeling - even tension - was multiplied. For these same reasons a few years back, I decided I couldn’t even watch Jesus Camp after seeing the trailer.

However, Higher Ground is no Jesus Camp (from what I’ve heard I’m glad I didn’t put myself through that, though it may have been a fine, if biased, film). It’s hard to imagine the skill and sensitivity required to have made a film that manages to be both appropriately sympathetic and appropriately critical at the same time. Corinne (Farmiga) is believable and easy to relate to. She’s an honest, struggling believer trapped in a culture that didn’t (and often still doesn’t) have room for an intelligent, critical-thinking woman with obvious leadership gifts. She had an amazing friend who was an oasis for a time (and who added some lovely colour to the film). Her marriage is stuck in realistic and complicated ways. They struggled with intimacy, weren’t growing in the same direction, and the movie largely avoids placing blame.

That avoidance of over-simplifying is the saving grace of a film like this. With the exception of the therapist (figures – helps provide me with a “how not to do therapy” clip) there are no real villains (well - maybe also the pastor's wife). There are many moments of soft humour that worked very well for me and helped lighten the story. The acting was solid and not overplayed. From reading some reviews, I suspect it is fair to say that for those who don’t have a lot of history with this subculture, the movie may be slow or flat, but I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to revisit some of their evangelical history.

In the end, my feelings of vulnerability and tension transformed into the validation and warmth that accompanies a story well told that hits home. In my own story, I feel that along the way, by the grace of God, I found some practices (like the freedom to lament) and an open-minded and supportive community that made evangelicalism less of a trap for me, but surely many have experienced stories like Corinne’s.
For this, I give it **** - the final half star is added for the subtle nod the pastor gives in the final scene.

A Dangerous Method

2012-01-17T20:19:00.003-04:00

David Cronenberg proves once again why he is one of Canada’s best filmmakers. This time he takes on Carl Jung’s early years of psychoanalysis and his relationship with Sigmund Freud. At the centre of the film, however, is Jung’s relationship with one of his early patients, Sabina Spielrein, who became a psychoanalyst herself.

A Dangerous Method boasts gorgeous cinematography, a good score and an intelligent provocative screenplay (focusing on sex of course). It also features outstanding performances by Michael Fassbender (as Jung) and Viggo Mortensen (as Freud). Keira Knightley plays Sabina and I was not as impressed by her performance, though it is likely just because I am not a Knightley fan.

All in all, A Dangerous Method was a fascinating film to watch and to think about (I have always enjoyed psychoanalysis). I wished it could have continued into Jung’s later years, but to catch a glimpse of the early years with Freud is a great start. A solid ***+. My mug is up.

P.S. I should mention that there are some rather disturbing scenes in this film.

Certified Copy

2012-01-14T12:11:00.006-04:00

Certified Copy is a bizarre and confusing film, and yet it is for that very reason that it is also endlessly fascinating. Written and directed by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy stars Juliette Binoche and William Shimell as a late-middle-age couple talking about their fifteen years of marriage as they walk the streets of a town in Italy. The only problem is that apparently they just met.

Shimell plays James Miller, a British writer who is in Italy for a book launch. Binoche plays Elle, a French shop owner who has lived in Italy for five years. Elle has a twelve-year-old son who tells her, at the beginning of the film, that she has a crush on the British writer. She leaves James her address, he comes to her shop on a Sunday afternoon and they proceed to spend the next few hours together, having this bizarre conversation. I noticed very early on that something in their behaviour toward each other was off. Soon it is clear that Kiarostami is doing something very strange with this film as James and Elle begin to talk as if they have been married for fifteen years.

We were unable to figure out what Kiarostami was up to (i.e. what was really going on). The idea that James and Elle are pretending, one way or the other, doesn’t really wash. The background theme of copies and originals (are originals more valuable than copies?) obviously has a major role, but it’s not clear how it relates to the central mystery (are James and Elle a copy of an original couple?).

Nevertheless, the dialogue is intelligent and well-written (if not as profound as it could be), the acting of Shimell and Binoche is impeccable, the cinematography is both excellent and unique (full of unusual angles and shots, including the way it focuses on one person even when others are talking in the scene) and Certified Copy is just fun to watch, so I am giving it a solid ***+. My mug is up.

Le Havre

2012-01-13T00:22:00.002-04:00

No one makes quirky comedy dramas like the French. Le Havre is a prime example, though it was written and directed by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Le Havre tells the story of an older man (Marcel Marx, played by Andre Wilms) in Le Havre who befriends an African boy who arrived in the French port city illegally (inside a shipping container).

Marcel makes his meager income shining shoes on the street and steals (i.e. buys on credit) bread and fruit from the neighbourhood shops on his way home to his wife, Arletty, who does all the cooking and cleaning. Marcel is both loved and tolerated by his neighbours, but things change when Arletty is diagnosed with cancer and Marcel befriends the boy. Both of these events elicit sympathy from most of the working-class community, even the local hard-nosed police inspector (played by the brilliant French actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin), and soon everyone is helping Marcel keep the boy out of the hands of the authorities.

This quirky film works on various levels. It is beautifully filmed and acted, it has many scenes which bring a smile to your face, it’s a wonderful representation of a compassionate community and it questions the way refugees and immigrants are treated by the French government, a very timely issue in western Europe today. For all of these reasons, Le Havre is an excellent film, though it was, for me, just a little too simple and too odd to take it to the four-star level.

Le Havre gets a solid ***+. My mug is up.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-11T00:59:00.005-04:00

It’s hard enough evaluating a film after you have read the book. If you have both read the book and seen an earlier version of the film (in the book’s original language), which also happened to be one of your favourite films of the previous year, a fair evaluation is almost impossible.

I definitely enjoyed David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (TGWDT). It was very well made and the acting was as good as it was in the original, with both Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara doing an outstanding job in the lead roles and Stellan Skarsgard and Christopher Plummer excellent in major supporting roles. Steven Zaillian did a good job with the screenplay (especially the dialogue). The cinematography was great. I appreciated the film’s dark atmosphere and very adult feel, as is only appropriate in a film like this. If anything, the sex was more graphic than in the Swedish original while the violence was under-played, which was quite unexpected for an American film. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how well Hollywood (let’s say Fincher) handled this remake of a European film (though I don’t suppose it was based on the film as much as the book). Even the changes to the book were not unwelcome (unlike the masses, I did not think Larsson’s book was particularly well-written).

Nevertheless, Fincher’s version of TGWDT lacked something. Perhaps it was the odd combination of accents (Craig’s was British; others, I assume, were meant to be Swedish). Perhaps it was the hurried feel to the solving of the central mystery. Perhaps it was the lack of real chemistry between the two protagonists, who seemed much more sure of themselves in this version. As a result, I didn’t find myself caring as much about either of them as I did with their counterparts in the original. The entire film felt different than the original, which has its good (e.g. more stylish, polished) and bad points, but the magic that put the original in my top ten last year was not here.

If you want a hint as to what TGWDT is about, I refer you to my review of the original from May, 2010.

Fincher’s TGWDT gets a solid ***+. My mug is up, but I preferred the original.

Take Shelter

2012-01-06T19:25:00.003-04:00

Wow! Yet another top five contender in one of the best film years of the last decade. It’s been a while since I started a review with “Wow!”, so you know Take Shelter is getting an easy four stars.

Take Shelter is unlike anything I have seen before and that’s high praise right there. On the surface, it seems to be the story of a man (Curtis LaForche) whose vivid nightmares of a coming storm are the beginning of a steady descent into madness, following the path of his mother who had become schizophrenic when she was his age. But from the opening scene, we are never quite sure if that is the whole story. By the time the credits roll at the end of the film, we are even less sure. Between that opening scene and the credits, the intensity in Take Shelter builds with each passing minute. In the last few minutes of the film, I was regularly holding my breath. While I would not call Take Shelter a horror film, it’s one of the scariest films I have seen in years.

Take Shelter is primarily about two people: Curtis and Samantha, an ordinary Ohio couple in their mid-thirties with a six-year-old hearing-impaired daughter. Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain play the couple and their acting is awe-inspiring. They are completely believable as the happy and loving couple whose lives are sliding into crisis. Some of the scenes between them are among the best scenes of the year. Of course, those scenes owe a lot to the screenplay. Take Shelter was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, who has crafted a masterpiece that is likely the fifth film in 2011 to make my top 150 films of all time. It may be a low-budget indie film, but everything works perfectly. My mug is up for this **** thought-provoking and timely classic.

Hugo 3D Revisited

2011-12-30T13:41:00.002-04:00

I watched Hugo 3D again last night, this time with J&L (and Kathy). I knew in my gut that they would love it, and they did. Janelle, as usual, offered reflections on the film which had not occurred to me, forcing me to reconsider what I had previously written. But first, my initial observations upon a second viewing.

I was surprised that I found the story even more compelling this time. As in my first viewing, I found the screening of the early films of George Melies somewhat distracting and the story rather predictable, but neither of these would prevent me from giving Hugo ****. However, if anything, I found the 3D even more problematic for me on second viewing and realized that my initial ***+ rating was caused almost entirely by the 3D presentation. In my previous review, I mentioned that I could appreciate the 3D if I thought of it as an experience other than a film. But the bottom line, for me, is that I find 3D ugly. I found it ugly in Avatar and I find it ugly in Hugo. For me, 3D literally saps the beauty out of any film it touches.

Janelle, however, suggested that 3D is integral to Hugo because it is about (among other things) the wonder of watching films for the very first time. Because 3D is still fresh, it can help recreate that feeling of wonder. The 3D also gives Hugo a surreal dreamlike quality which connects to Melies’ comments linking films and dreams. I can see her point, though it frightens me. Apparently the Lumiere brothers who invented film thought it would be a passing fad, as I believe 3D to be a passing fad. If I am as mistaken as they were, then I fear the world of film is heading down a dark and unfortunate path, though obviously many people must disagree with me.

Further to the theme of rediscovering the wonder of the earliest films, Janelle pointed out that viewing excerpts from Melies’ films was likewise integral to Hugo. Laurens added that the theme of fixing broken people includes the theme of finding lost things and bringing them to light to be appreciated for what they have given us.

If those aspects of Hugo which I found most distracting are in fact integral to the film, then I must reevaluate my previous rating and give Hugo a somewhat reluctant ****.

Young Adult

2011-12-21T15:01:00.008-04:00

The writer/director duo who brought us Juno (Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman) are back with another wonderful, intelligent, adult comedy drama called Young Adult. Reitman is also the director of Up in the Air, one of my favourite films of 2009.

Young Adult stars one of my favourite female actors, Charlize Theron, perhaps the most beautiful woman in film today, playing a woman who, incredibly, is actually insecure about her beauty and goes to great lengths to make herself more attractive. Theron plays Mavis, a woman who is not only insecure but also a self-absorbed, depressed alcoholic recovering from a failed marriage and a failing career (as a ghost writer of young adult fiction). Mavis is a very unsympathetic protagonist and only a terrific performance by Theron and a brilliant screenplay by Cody could make this work.

The title of the film refers not to Mavis’s writing but to the fact that she is still living in the world she writes about. She still misses the life she feels she should have had with Buddy, her high school sweetheart. When Mavis discovers he has a new baby girl, she is determined to get him back.

But the first person she meets when she returns to the small town of Mercury, Minnesota is Matt who, as a boy, had the locker next to hers and who no doubt worshipped her, but was completely ignored by her. He was the victim of a hate crime that left him permanently disabled. In a way, Matt is also still living in the past, having given up on a normal meaningful life. But he immediately understands Mavis’s desperation and tries to talk some sense into her, without much success. Patton Oswalt plays Matt to perfection and his character is the key to making Young Adult the excellent film that it is.

Young Adult’s dark intelligent humour and profound wisdom is miles away from most of the popular comedy dramas made today. Among other things, it asks important questions about the meaning of life (if you stayed in your home town, you must be stupid and worthless), about happiness (we made it to Minneapolis -we must be happy) and about self-delusion (we hear how Mavis uses the protagonist in her final book of the young adult series to justify the craziness of what she is doing).

Young Adult gets a solid ***+. My mug is up yet again as 2011 continues to impress.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (IMAX)

2011-12-20T17:18:00.008-04:00

I need to start with a story (if that sounds boring, skip to the third paragraph). So Kathy was flying in from Iraq yesterday and I planned to watch a film at the nearby mall (Polo Park) on the way to the airport. Just as I was about to leave, Kathy called to say she had missed the Winnipeg flight and would be arriving three hours later. For some reason it occurred to me that this would give me the chance to watch MI:Ghost Protocol at the IMAX. It would be tight but not impossible. Why did I want to see MI:GP at the IMAX in its first few days in town? Well (sarcasm alert!), apparently everyone else in the world is doing it and I do so much want to do what everyone else is doing. Besides, it was getting good reviews and it was NOT in 3D and I hadn’t visited an IMAX since London.

Okay. Mission One: Purchase ticket online to avoid last-minute problems. The website, however, is very unfriendly (poorly worded) and I wasted a precious three minutes finding the ticket-purchase page. Mission accomplished. Mission Two: Print out the ticket. I suddenly realized the laptop I was using was not set up to use my wireless printer. So run to my MacBook, which for some reason did not receive the email from cineplex using the same email account I had just accessed on the Dell. So run back to the Dell and forward the email to myself. Yes, it worked. Mission accomplished. Mission Three: Drive through the heart of Winnipeg in the middle of rush hour to get to the theatre before showtime. Already ten minutes later than I thought I could possibly be, this mission sounded impossible. But I drove like one of the maniacs who regularly frustrate me, weaving in and out of lanes like I was in the Indy 500. I’m getting close, but I’m trapped behind buses. Cut through the mall parking lot. Stopped by a huge crowd of college students crossing at the crosswalk. Drive another fifty yards. Stopped by an ambulance driver redirecting traffic in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. Don’t panic. Things are crowded ahead and not moving. But there’s an open parking spot. Park and hoof it, walking very fast through the entire length of Winnipeg’s largest mall six days before Christmas. Then zip through the parking lot and into the theatre. Get to the ticket checker. A newbie. Never seen an online ticket before. Don’t know why this machine not working. Getting manager. Manager scans ticket and I am in the theatre with five minutes to spare (good thing: there were no ads whatsoever before the film started - that’s worth the extra five bucks right there). It’s 25 minutes later than I had wanted it to be (I insist on a good seat) but the theatre is less than one-quarter full, so I actually found a decent seat. Mission accomplished.

That the above experience was thoroughly apropos to what I was about to see did not occur to me until well into the film. When it did, it enhanced my viewing experience, because MI:GP is just one long exhilarating roller-coaster ride of impossible missions needing to be completed within a four-minute or four-hour time frame while facing one obstacle after another. I understood. I was pumped full of adrenaline already. Bring it on!

So what have we got here? Fantastic exotic locations, nonstop action involving constant death-defying feats of agility, implausible minimalist plot, state-of-the-art cars, gorgeous women, the latest in technological gadgetry… wait a minute, this sounds like … Yeah, I’m no action fan, but I’m a sucker for a good Bond film, and when MI gets it right it is almost as good. And unlike MI II and III, MI:GP gets it right. At least at the IMAX, which immerses you in the action with its huge screen and mind-numbing sound.

The actors in MI:GP are well-cast, with Cruise at his best as Ethan Hunt (a man who endures more pain than is humanly possible; Cruise looks and acts WAY too young for his age), Simon Pegg providing lots of comic relief, Paula Patton, who grew on me throughout the film, Jeremy Renner, who can do no wrong, and my favourite Swedish actor, Michael Nyqvist, on hand as the baddie.

Brad Bird has made an action film that no action-lover or MI fan can afford to miss. I am no big fan of sequel films, so I should mention that MI:GP is no more a sequel than the Bond films. Maybe because of the IMAX or maybe because my life and that of Ethan Hunt are virtually indistinguishable ☺, I am going to give MI:GP ***+. My mug is up.

Trust

2011-12-19T01:12:00.003-04:00

Trust is a small 2011 independent film that, as far as I know, never even made an appearance in Winnipeg theatres. Its title does not seem well-chosen to induce mass attendance, but it is certainly apt, for Trust is primarily the story of how a trusting 14-year-old girl learns to distrust almost everyone around her, from her best friend to her parents to the 35-year-old man who seduced her in an online chat-room and then raped her.

If that sounds horrifying, it is. But how David Schwimmer (writer/director) deals with this horror is uniquely unsensational and unpredictable. Trust could have been a thriller of sorts or pure melodrama, but in my opinion it chose to stay real and focus on how two traumatized people (Annie and her father, Will, played very well by Liana Liberato and Clive Owen) try to deal with the horror of what has happened in their lives.

The production values may not be outstanding but they are adequate. With the excellent acting by Liberato, Owen, Catherine Keener and Viola Davis (and a very scary Chris Henry Coffey as the rapist), Trust is a powerful and haunting film well worth watching (especially for 14-year-old girls). I am therefore going to let it slide into ***+. My mug is up.

The Skin I Live In

2011-12-18T01:26:00.004-04:00

Once again I was not expecting a horror film.

Watching one of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's films always feels a little risky and unpredictable. That an Almodovar film should also feel a little perverse is nothing new (e.g. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Live Flesh, Talk To Her). But generally I appreciate most of his films and at least two in the last decade (Talk To Her, Volver) made my top ten of the year. I particularly look forward to Almodovar’s suspense films because there is an obvious Hitchcockian element to these films. The Skin I Live In is no exception and may even be one of the clearest expressions of this. But I would describe this film as Hitchcock Dark. Maybe even Hitchcock Dark and Twisted. Indeed, The Skin I Live In also reminds me of many mad scientist horror films.

More precisely, The Skin I Live In is about a mad plastic surgeon (Robert Ledgard, played by Antonio Banderas) who, after failing to give his wife a new face after a car crash, seems determined to perfect his ability to restore or recreate skin, moulding it into whatever shape he wants. But nothing in The Skin I Live In is what it seems and it takes one dark turn after another as it explores the importance of the skin we live in.

Like all of Almodovar’s films, The Skin I Live In is full of rich colours, beautiful cinematography, good acting and lots of style. Banderas makes a good mad scientist, a very different kind of role for him (at least compared to Puss in Boots). Elena Anaya is excellent as Vera, a woman Ledgard is experimenting on as if she is nothing but an android he is building. Since The Skin I Live In is as much science fiction as horror, that was indeed an option I was considering before the film took its final dark turns.

This is a film that starts off in a very disturbing place and finds a way to get more disturbing with each passing minute. It is therefore not something my average reader is likely to enjoy. But if you are a fan of Almodovar or of dark and twisted stylish thrillers, then you probably want to check it out. As for me, I will give The Skin I Live In a solid *** for keeping me intrigued and for the allusions to my favourite Hitchcock films. My mug is up.

Margin Call

2011-12-15T01:17:00.002-04:00

From the opening scene in a major Wall Street investment firm to the digging-a-grave-on-the-front-lawn scene that ends this unique film, the word that kept occurring to me was “fascinating”, in the best sense of the word. Margin Call is endlessly fascinating, providing an inside (albeit fictitious) view of the mortgage speculation crisis unfolding during one fateful night (presumably in 2008). Margin Call features a splendid ensemble cast, led by Kevin Spacey (playing Sam Rogers) in his best role since American Beauty (though I had to get over his similar, yet also very different and very inferior, role in Horrible Bosses). Margin Call feels like a play at points, probably because it is so deeply layered, the dialogue is so intelligent and real and it makes no attempt to talk down to the viewers. It certainly does not feel like Hollywood (this is a very good thing).

Margin Call was written and directed by J.C. Chandor. Amazingly, this is his first film. With a small budget, Chandor uses his excellent cast to both humanize the people who precipitated the crisis and show the dehumanizing impact of money. Spacey’s Sam is a case in point. By showing us how devastated Sam is by the death of his dog and how uncomfortable he is with what his superiors are proposing, we are invited to sympathize with him. But we also know that he has risen to his extremely well-paid (millions a year) position through constant compromise and stepping over those who callously get the axe so the firm can make a bigger profit at any given moment.

In 2008, the men most responsible for the financial crisis which messed up the lives of millions of people around the world, walked away with millions of dollars in their pockets. Margin Call does not claim to be about these men (it’s not a true story) but we presume it is giving us a glimpse of what might have happened in those first days of the crisis.

The big cheese in the firm is John Tuld, played brilliantly by Jeremy Irons. Tuld tells Sam that there will always be the haves and the have-nots and the percentage of those who are rich and those who are poor will always be the same. That is just the way the world works. I would like to see some statistics to back this up, but even if it is true it does not address the fact that in recent decades the rich minority have been getting richer while the poor majority have been getting poorer. In any event, to use such a statistic to justify being one of the wealthy and to justify destroying the lives of millions of people is the utmost in cold-hearted arrogance.

The question that comes up repeatedly in Margin Call is whether the work these investment traders are doing is worthwhile – does it contribute to the wellbeing of society. The usual response in the film is that it of course it helps people, but when Sam makes his big speech to rally his traders to sell worthless investments, he is completely unconvincing as he tells them that the work they do is for the common good. For me, the underlying message of Margin Call is that the way money is traded today is a game that only benefits the rich. As the Occupy movement has identified, it’s time to investigate and evaluate the ridiculous greedy practices on Wall Street, the ones exposed so well in the great documentary Inside Job (one of my favourite films of 2010).

Margin Call may be one of my favourite films of 2011. It gets a very solid ***+ heading toward ****. My mug is up.

Harry Potter Revealed as Christ-Figure?

2011-12-09T00:05:00.004-04:00

Months ago, I promised to provide a theological reflection on the final Harry Potter film. I did write such a reflection at the time but it was published elsewhere and I was unable to put it on this blog. I do so now:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (DH2), the final installment of the hugely popular eight-part Harry Potter film series, was released this summer to overwhelming acclaim. Like the first two Narnia films, DH2 focuses unnecessarily—and disturbingly— on a climactic epic battle between good and evil. Apparently, filmmakers are convinced that this is what filmgoers want to see. For that reason alone, DH2 is not, in my opinion, the best film in the series, although it is certainly one of the better ones, highlighted by the acting of a brilliant ensemble cast (most of Britain’s finest actors). However, DH2 is clearly the most theologically profound film of the series, positioning the young master of magic as a Christ-figure.

In a discussion during one of my seminars at this summer’s Mennonite Church Canada assembly, participants argued about the use of the term “Christ-figure.” It was noted that many so-called Christ-figures bear little resemblance to Jesus, especially in their attitudes toward violence, and are often labelled as Christ-figures simply because of the manner of their death. This argument is especially pertinent to Harry Potter, where the films and books apparently do not convey the same message.

When the first Harry Potter film—Sorcerer’s Stone—was released in 2001, many Christians condemned it because of its positive portrayal of magic and witchcraft. Since the film was about children, it was feared that impressionable young viewers would develop an unhealthy interest in paganism and witchcraft. I have seen no widespread or convincing evidence to validate this claim. In fact, a strong argument could be made that the eight Harry Potter films promote Christian values, culminating in a film which suggests that author J.K. Rowling is telling a story with a solid Christian foundation.

Throughout the series, Harry Potter is the focus of messianic expectation. His behaviour seems to be driven by an innate wisdom and “compassion for all” that is beyond his years and distinct from his peers. This is exemplified in DH2 by Harry’s willingness to risk his life to save the lives of his “enemies.” Then, near the end of the film— in a scene reminiscent of Gethsemane— Harry makes the decision to give up his life to save his friends and destroy the power of evil. When he “dies,” he finds himself at “King’s Cross” subway station, where he learns that he is protected by his mother’s blood and did not actually die. In the film, this is not as clear as it is in the book, and Harry’s return comes across as a resurrection. What did die, however, was the part of Voldemort—the evil one— which was inside Harry and which Harry needed to kill before Voldemort could be defeated.

The final confrontation between good and evil in DH2 makes it look like Harry Potter returns to life and overpowers Voldemort. But book readers interpret Voldemort as being defeated when his killing curse bounces off Harry and returns to kill him. Apparently, the final book suggests that Harry eventually renounces violence and power as a way to overcome evil. DH2 and the other films portray Harry as one who does not want to kill others and who uses violence only in defence, but not as one who rejects the possibility of redemptive violence. Such a rejection, combined with his love and compassion, his passion for justice and his willingness to die to save the world, would package the protagonist into a true, albeit fictional, Christ-figure.

In the end, the Harry Potter books and films provide a lot of food for theological reflection, especially for Christians who appreciate the re-telling of the gospels in a way that engages a new generation. For non-Christians, the thematic significance and parallels to Scripture may be lost. Among the questions I am led to ask are:

Is the fear of death, which led Voldemort to split up his soul, the root of all evil? (See Daniel Liechty’s Reflecting on Faith in a Post-Christian Time.)

Is killing the shadow within us the only way to make peace with our souls?

Can Harry Potter, despite his association with witchcraft, be a positive role model for our youth?

Whatever our answers, the Harry Potter films can be the subject of much fruitful engagement.

My Week With Marilyn

2011-12-06T22:49:00.003-04:00

Despite my love of classic films, I have never been a fan of Marilyn Monroe. My Week With Marilyn does more to help me understand why I have never been a fan than it does to help me rethink my position (i.e. I just don’t get why people were so enchanted by Monroe). It does, however, begin to make me a fan of Michelle Williams, whose portrayal of the troubled Monroe is so spot-on that she will surely be nominated for an Oscar.

My Week With Marilyn is a quiet British drama that avoids sensationalizing and melodrama and gives us a wonderful glimpse into what it was like to be involved in the making of a film starring Monroe and the great Laurence Olivier (brilliantly played by Kenneth Branagh). Based on a true story by Colin Clark, My Week With Marilyn stars Eddie Redmayne (well-cast) as the 23-year-old Clark who gets to be Monroe’s closest friend during the final days of filming The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956.

Everything about My Week With Marilyn is very well done, with the acting and the dialogue being the highlights. Judi Dench shines in a small but vital supporting role, Emma Watson is perfectly cast in another smaller role and Dougray Scott is surprisingly effective as Monroe’s husband. While some will think the dialogue uninspiring, I was impressed by its intelligence. Some, perhaps most, will also think this film is about Monroe. I am not convinced of this. Monroe’s insecurity and deeper problems are well-known. What makes My Week With Marilyn work for me is that it’s about a young man whose dream comes true when Monroe turns to him for comfort during a difficult time (well, that and the performance by Williams). Watching Clark bounce between Olivier and Monroe is precious.

My Week With Marilyn is not an outstanding film but I think it’s better than most critics think it is, so I am going to let it slide just into the ***+ category. My mug is up.

Horrible Bosses

2011-12-03T11:00:00.002-04:00

Roger Ebert gave Horrible Bosses ***+, so I thought it must be worth taking a look at. It wasn’t. Roger, my confidence in your appraisal of films is waning - sigh!

I put Horrible Bosses in the same category as The Hangover: utterly inane, insulting and offensive excuses for comedy. The cinematography, especially for such a film, is outstanding, but other than that, Horrible Bosses is a complete mess that deserves no further comment from me (because I wasted enough of my time watching the stupid thing).

If you liked The Hangover, by all means give this one a try. If you prefer intelligent rewarding comedies, well, even something like Friends With Benefits looks like a classic beside Horrible Bosses. ** for the cinematography. My mug is down.

Like Crazy

2011-12-01T00:13:00.003-04:00

Like Crazy is a serious indie romance about a British college student in L.A. (Anna, played by Felicity Jones) who falls in love with an American student (Jacob, played by Anton Yelchin). Anna decides to overstay her visa so that she can spend the summer with Jacob, with consequences that will haunt them for a very long time.

Like Crazy works as well as it does primarily because of the acting of, and chemistry between, Jones and Yelchin (with some excellent supporting work from Jennifer Lawrence, Alex Kingston and Oliver Muirhead). You may recall that I was recently singing the praises of Yelchin and Lawrence when they teamed up in The Beaver. It seems rather coincidental that they would team up again here. I predict great things for all three of the young actors.

Like Crazy’s forte is not its dialogue (which isn’t profound but did feel very real), but the way emotions are conveyed by these actors without dialogue. I always felt like I knew exactly what these characters were thinking and that drew me in and helped me to care about them. This is important because the structure of the film actually works against caring too deeply for the characters. In fact, the characters consistently disappoint (e.g. If Jacob loves Anna as much as he says he does, then why doesn’t he move to London?). At the same time, I have watched a number of actual young romances in the 21st century which have taken similar paths after that initial burst of ecstatic passion (i.e. I think Like Crazy reflects a fear of commitment which is fairly common among today’s young adults - less so when I was a young adult).

Taken on its own, Like Crazy is an original and entertaining film, with more than its fair share of precious scenes, both joyous and depressing. But I could not help but compare it to one of my favourite serious young adult romances: Before Sunrise. The dialogue in the latter film made me hang on every word, and watching the film, which also reflects the values of many of today’s young adults, was a profoundly satisfying experience. Like Crazy was not. Still, I will give it a solid *** that verges on ***+. My mug is up.

Melancholia

2011-11-30T00:09:00.002-04:00

Someone forgot to tell me this was a sci-fi film. Or is it? Of course, since I am a lover of sci-fi, this element only enhanced my enjoyment of the film, even if it is meant as a metaphor. And yes, unlike some other von Trier films, Melancholia can actually be enjoyed.

Not to say that Melancholia isn’t relentlessly depressing, as its title would suggest. But the title refers to a planet that has been hiding on the far side of the sun and is now on the move. That makes two independent films in one year dealing with this rather odd subject. If I was an astronomer, I’d be making sure there isn’t anything hiding out there.

Melancholia is divided into two parts, telling two very different stories involving the two sisters, Justine and Claire. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg are both extraordinary in playing these two roles, but it is Dunst who steals the film, well-deserving her best actress award at Cannes. All of the acting is outstanding (Kiefer Sutherland is particularly effective in the major supporting role).

Part one of Melancholia is about Justine’s wedding, a wedding that is not only depressing (partly because Justine is clearly suffering from ‘melancholia’) but eerily unsettling. And yet it is also very funny, in a darkly comic way (partly because of the dysfunctionality of Justine’s family). Part two focuses on the planet Melancholia and its effect on the two sisters. This part moves away from comedy toward a haunting beauty that stays with you long after the film.

The impact of melancholia (either as disease or planet) is life-draining. “Life on earth is evil,” says Justine at one point, indicating that there would be no great loss if it was destroyed. Sometimes I wonder whether Lars von Trier, the writer and director of Melancholia, shares that sentiment. Certainly his last film, Antichrist, would support that possibility. Von Trier is one of the most distinctive filmmakers out there and all of his films (that I have seen) are odd and disturbing. This is true of Melancholia as well, but at least this film is accessible (I would not advise any reader to watch Antichrist, thought-provoking though it may be). I think von Trier is a genius whose voice deserves to be heard, but I also think his voice needs to challenged (e.g. by films like The Way, which was playing in the next room and being watched by two of my favourite former college professors – they came out with broad smiles on their faces; I did not).

The score is a major force in Melancholia and it frequently repeats a piece from Wagner’s opera ‘Tristan and Isolde”. It is a good choice and it is used effectively, but the repetition got a little old for me after a while.

Melancholia has some stunningly beautiful cinematography but it is the cinematography which prevents Melancholia from being a great film (IMHO). To be precise, the problem was the prevalence of jerky amateur-style handheld camera work of the kind I very much dislike. While there are a limited number of films which use that style effectively, I have no use for it (as I have said before) and other than contributing to a feeling of disorientation, I did not appreciate its use in Melancholia.

I would have given Melancholia an easy ***+ for being as relentlessly fascinating as it was relentlessly depressing, but the lazy camera work deserves to be punished, so I am knocking it down to ***. My mug is up but I recommend this film only to those who enjoy watching odd independent films (which I do).

Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-11-29T00:49:00.002-04:00

Someone forgot to tell me this was a horror film, though at least it’s the kind of horror film (like Peacock) I can appreciate. And the way the horror quietly builds and subtly sneaks up on you is one of the major strengths of this altogether absorbing film.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is about a troubled young woman who gets involved in a cult. We know at the outset that Martha wants to get out of the cult, because she runs away and calls her sister and goes to live with her. In flashbacks, we then find out what precipitated Martha’s desperate departure.

Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha perfectly, giving us real insight into her character. This is Olsen’s first major film, reminding me of Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout performance in Winter’s Bone (maybe because the whole film reminded me of Winter’s Bone - it also stars John Hawkes and also takes place in backwoods America). All of the acting is very good, though Hawkes as the cult’s leader is an odd casting choice. There may be something charismatic about him, but I did not feel he should have been able to command the respect and devotion that he is able to command.

An odd thing about Martha Marcy May Marlene is the way it treats the practices of the cult. Sometimes they are apparently viewed as liberating and as positively challenging the materialism and consumerism of our society (among other things). But maybe that’s just my radical viewing of the film. Maybe the cult’s practices and teaching are all supposed to be viewed as brainwashing and obviously wrong-headed (even evil). I hope not, because if that’s true, then the film gets one star. But if it’s not true, then the way Martha processes and shares her new anti-capitalist insights comes across as ambiguous at best. It doesn’t help that many of the cult’s practices are indeed obviously wrong-headed.

Despite that flaw, this truly frightening and thought-provoking film is worthy of ***+. My mug is up.

The Descendants

2011-11-28T00:22:00.002-04:00

The Descendants stars George Clooney as Matt King, a lawyer in Hawaii whose wife is in a coma after a boating accident. Matt finds himself needing to connect in a new way to his two daughters (aged 10 and 17), his in-laws and his wife while in the midst of a huge land sale involving his cousins. He is the sole trustee of a beautiful piece of ocean-side property that has been handed down for generations and originally comes from King Kamehameha himself. The time has come to sell the land and make himself and his cousins (some of whom are poor) independently wealthy.

The land sale story provides the opportunity to make Hawaii one of the characters in the film, augmented by the prevalence of Hawaiian folk music (not that I’m a fan) and, of course, by the gorgeous Hawaiian landscape. But what makes The Descendants special are the human characters. Alexander Payne is a master of character development (as evidenced in his last two films, About Schmidt and Sideways) and The Descendants is perhaps his best effort yet. The film is full of fascinating characters and relationships, all of which centre around Matt. So we see a number of marvelous two-character scenes as Matt talks to: each of his daughters, his oldest daughter’s friend (Sid), his father-in-law, his cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges), his wife, his wife’s lover, his wife’s lover’s wife, etc. The extended scene between Matt and Sid was especially precious, one of my favourites of the year (Sideways had my favourite scene of 2004).

So here we have George Clooney (you know what I think of him) in one of his best performances (Oscar nomination?), Hawaii (did I ever mention how the South Pacific has always captivated me), an intelligent complex plot full of intelligent complex characters (you also know what I think of these) and great acting, directing and cinematography. Surely The Descendants must be getting ****. Well, actually, no, it’s not. What? First you give the wonderful Hugo ***+ and now this? What’s your problem, Vic? A bad week at work? Did the Blue Bombers lose the Grey Cup game? (They did, but not until after this review was written.)

I am, of course, generally very stingy with my awarding of four stars. Yeah, I know, I gave four stars to Anonymous, but, well, that’s the point. I went away from Anonymous feeling completely satisfied. I did not feel that way after The Descendants, or after any of Payne’s films. He’s a great filmmaker and I eagerly await his future efforts, but all of his films have, for me, missed something. It’s hard to pinpoint, but the closest I can come is to say that The Descendants felt cool (not cold) and distant. And this may have been true of the other two films as well (both of them also got only ***+). So once again I am awarding a very solid ***+, though a place in my top ten is not out of the question. My mug is up.

As I walked out of the theatre, I heard the old couple behind me complain that the preview had made The Descendants look like a comedy. “This was certainly not a comedy!” the woman said. It’s true that the preview (which I saw far too many times - I knew it by heart even after all my attempts to avoid watching it) misrepresents The Descendants (nothing new there - previews frequently misrepresent films) and makes it look like a comedy. It’s also true that it’s described as a comedy. Whether it actually is a comedy is debatable. Yes, there are a number of funny scenes, though the humour is almost always subtle. But I would put The Descendants in the category of “dramas that are intentionally mislabeled as comedy dramas” - there are far too many films in this category.

Hugo

2011-11-27T02:03:00.005-04:00

Let me say at the outset that I found Hugo to be a delightful old-fashioned adventure flick. The setting (a Paris train station in the 1930s) was wonderfully and beautifully realized, the focus on clocks and similar machines was fascinating and original, the acting was uniformly good (I particularly enjoyed watching Ben Kingsley), the cinematography and music were excellent and, as a film buff, I loved the theme of the early history of film. I also appreciated the theme of ‘fixing’ broken people, people who have lost their purpose in life. So why didn’t I like Hugo more than I did? Gareth calls it a masterpiece. I understand how Hugo can be called that, but I can’t do so.

Perhaps all the hype about Hugo, especially the glorious 3D and the fact that it is directed by Martin Scorsese, made me expect to see my WOW film of the year. After all, my WOW film of the last decade also took place in Paris and also featured a full moon. But in spite of some breathtaking scenes, Hugo failed to WOW me. Perhaps it was the story. While the story may have featured original themes and a worthy plot, I found the human drama to be rather predictable and ordinary and a little too slow-paced (which is an odd complaint from me). Or perhaps it’s because the film is about children (an orphan boy who lives in the train station and takes care of the clocks and the daughter of one of the station’s shopkeepers who befriends him), though these are hardly typical child protagonists.

Masterpiece or not, Hugo is a film I would not hesitate to recommend to almost everyone (action lovers beware). Hugo gets a solid ***+ but probably won’t make my top ten in a great film year like 2011. My mug is up.

And now, about the 3D: Did Hugo convince me that I have been too hard on 3D and will I now stop complaining about it? Not a chance. I mean, come on, I hated seeing Avatar in 3D, so no 3D film is likely to impress me. Maybe my brain is wired differently, though I maintain that this is a passing fad (unless the manufacturers of 3D TVs are more powerful than I think). But I have to say that the 3D in Hugo did make an impression on me. I was particularly impressed that Scorsese didn’t pile on the action scenes designed to highlight 3D. On the contrary, it was in the way that Hugo managed to make 3D integral to all the ordinary and quiet scenes that I realized how effective 3D can be. Just not in a film. By this I mean that as I watched Hugo I began to feel that I was watching a 3D ‘show’ (for lack of a better term) rather than a film, which is especially ironic in a ‘so-called’ film about the history of film. I think this explains why the only 3D ‘film’ I have thoroughly appreciated (for being in 3D) is U23D. U23D is also not a ‘film’ for me; it is a concert, and therefore the 3D can add to my enjoyment of the ‘experience’.

In a Better World

2011-11-23T23:17:00.004-04:00

This is a film I've been waiting to watch for a long time. It has weaknesses, but is a very well done film: beautifully filmed and acted. The story is slow but powerful and, except for a few moments, unpredictable. Strong themes are touched on - especially that of responding to violence and to tragedy. In fact, the unique way those two themes are tied together is one of the strengths of the film. Early on, one boy's response to tragedy leads him to violence that saves another boy - but is that the right response? The film is very even-handed with these kinds of choices. Difficult choices in the film where violence is opposed on principle are left messy and the viewer is forced into the romance-free difficulty of such choices. Are we really strong enough to do non-violence well? Or do we simply substitute social/verbal violence - or leave the dirty work to others?

The film is deeply European in so many respects. I could be completely out to lunch because I have not spent any recent time in Scandinavia, but it feels like a taste of some of their current paradoxes: a strong culture of non-violence and protection of human rights, but violence still simmers below the surface and there is a cool secularism that makes it all feel a little barren and devoid of some of the potent stories, symbols and Spirit that could breathe life more deeply into the lives of good and kind people. There's such an underlying tone of loneliness or of the pain and alienation that keeps people apart that I longed for every moment of connection. Fortunately there are some deep moments of that. I would give this ***+

Unknown

2011-11-19T00:51:00.001-04:00

What do we have here?:

a Hitchcockian thriller filmed in Berlin; check
Liam Neeson as a man lost in a situation beyond his understanding and control; check
reminding me of Polanski’s Frantic, which I love; check
a surprise twist near the end that actually caught me by surprise; check
Bruno Ganz in a nifty supporting role; check
Frank Langella in another nifty supporting role; check

Yes, indeed, Unknown has a lot going for it. If only it could have sustained it to the end instead of simply resorting to excessive violence to kill off all the baddies. The film immediately lost half a star for that unnecessary nonsense.

Not that Unknown was perfect before that. Let’s focus on the surprise twist for a moment (trying hard not to give anything away). Prior to the twist, the film was in the land of the utterly preposterous, with all sorts of bizarre goings-on which just didn’t seem remotely explainable. But they were. So much so that after the surprise I said to myself: “Duh, why didn’t I think of this?” Unfortunately, the surprise twist unveiled an implausible and unexplainable element that was almost as bad as what it resolved. And the ethical implications of this were particularly worrisome.

And then there were all the car chases. If you like car chases, I suppose they were quite well done. But I don’t like car chases.

The cinematography was good, the score was fine, and the acting was generally better than average for a thriller (although I’m not convinced January Jones was the best person for her role; it was a very difficult role to play but still…). Unknown needed only a decent (and I mean that in every way) ending to put it into solid ***+ country, even with all its implausibilities. Nevertheless, I did feel entertained, it did get all those checks, and it did have Bruno Ganz in that nifty supporting role (the scene with Ganz and Langella was my favourite scene in the film), so I have to give Unknown a solid ***. My mug is up. If you like thrillers, you could do far worse than this one.

J. Edgar

2011-11-18T00:14:00.005-04:00

J. Edgar might have been a great film. I can’t clearly identify the things which might have made it great. I just know it wasn’t great because it left me unsatisfied. Perhaps it was because I was never sure where it was going or what it wanted to say. I suppose if you are making a film about a mysterious unusual man and you don’t want to sensationalize the story or dig too deeply into unsubstantiated rumours, the result might be exactly this kind of unsatisfying film. This might explain Clint Eastwood’s decision to make J. Edgar the way he did, but I was still disappointed.

J. Edgar is, of course, the story of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI and one of the most powerful people in the U.S. for decades (until his death in 1972). While the film supplies some historical context, it was not enough for me to get a clear sense of what all Hoover was involved in during his many years in ‘power’. This is at least partly because the film focuses on the kind of man Hoover was and not so much on what he did. But for me to fully appreciate the story of who Hoover really was, I need to know more about what he did. How did Hoover’s personal life affect his work and the major events of which he was a part (the hints are there but I wanted more)? We know Hoover kept secret files on various politicians and leaders, but what was in them that had Nixon panicking at Hoover’s death?

Some critics have argued that Eastwood (or Dustin Lance Black, the writer of the screenplay) was too sympathetic towards Hoover, but that’s not the film I watched. What I saw was the depiction of a very disturbed, sad and lonely man who put his own obsessions and pride ahead of everything else. Sure, Hoover was also a genius who changed the science of criminal investigation forever. But behind that genius was a man obviously struggling with issues of sexual identity and, for most of his life, struggling under the thumb of an overbearing mother (the kind of mother one associates with sociopaths, not FBI directors).

Among J.Edgar’s many strengths were the period detail and the acting. Leonardo DiCaprio continues to impress me and will likely be nominated for an Academy Award for this role. Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts were excellent in major supporting roles and Judi Dench can do no wrong (as Hoover’s mother). But all that good acting could not overcome what I can only describe as a lacklustre screenplay. Clint Eastwood, one of the best directors out there, couldn’t put it all together this time, though I have to give him credit for making a film about a powerful figure as understated as he did.

I will give J.Edgar a solid ***. My mug is up, but the taste of what’s inside just doesn’t satisfy.

The Way

2011-11-17T00:48:00.007-04:00

Okay, this is what I’m talking about (i.e. insanity alert: God made me write this)! What are the odds that the next film I would watch after The Limits of Control (see previous review) would also be about a lone man on a mission across Spain who meets people on the way who give him vital clues for his journey of discovery? A million to one, Mr. Spock? And yet that is precisely what just happened to me. And no, I had no idea where The Way was set or what it was really about. Do not tell me that is coincidence. As you saw below, I do not believe in such things and never have. On the contrary, I believe, without a smidgeon of a doubt, that God put these two films in my way precisely at this time, even if for no other reason than to remind me that God is still there, still putting the pieces together a zillion times a second for all those able to see it. But of course I also believe God is trying to tell me something, to help me, as I said below, on my own journey of discovery.

I don’t want to tell you much about The Way because I want everyone to rush out and see this film (the way I wanted you to rush out and see Of Gods and Men). This has already been one of the best years for film in a long time and The Way is another proof of that (although you should know that film critics did not quite see it that way, giving The Way less than a *** average).

The Way stars Martin Sheen (whom I have admired since I was a kid and saw him in some religious TV show with Jack Albertson) and was written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. Emilio also plays Martin’s son in the film, although the son (Daniel) is dead by the time the film starts. Sheen plays Tom Avery, whose son dies in a freak accident while on the first day of a long and famous pilgrimage in France/Spain (to Santiago de Compostela). Tom flies off to France to collect the body and when he finds out what his son was doing, he decides to do the pilgrimage himself. Along the way he meets a Dutchman, an Irishman, a Canadian woman, an American priest, a Gypsy father and many more who will change his life. All of this is done in a subtle understated way that keeps The Way far away from made-for-TV land.

The Way is about people and it’s full of lonely people who are lost and trying to find their way. The Way is about God and how much more precious life is for those who know there is a God who loves them unconditionally (okay, that’s just my interpretation again; it’s never stated in the film). The Way is about life and how we live it (but not about how we choose to live it, as Daniel tells his father in a flashback). The Way is a beautiful, funny inspiring film (did I mention the actors were all perfectly cast?) and gets an easy **** from me and you will certainly find it among my favourite few films of the year.

The Limits of Control

2011-11-14T19:06:00.001-04:00

The Limits of Control (2009) was almost unanimously panned by film critics. Roger Ebert gave it all of half a star. So why, you may ask, did I feel that it was worth two hours of my time? I’m so glad you asked.

The Limits of Control was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who happens to be one of the world’s most insane, I mean ‘original’, filmmakers. Whenever I see a Jarmusch film, I think of Wim Wenders, another one of our most ‘original’ filmmakers. Not surprisingly, Jarmusch and Wenders have worked together. But my point is that some of us are attracted to ‘original’ films, films that are unlike anything else out there, films that are always trying to make you think, films that you know are attempting to communicate an important message even if you’re not sure what it is. Many critics find these ‘original’ films pretentious, self-absorbed, and even deluded. Both Jarmusch and Wenders have made films that the critics loved (Stranger than Paradise and Broken Flowers for Jarmusch; Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas for Wenders) but most of their films get a mediocre reception.

Personally, I love these guys, considering even their worst films well worth watching and almost always liking their films more than the critics. That is why I took a chance on The Limits of Control. I was not disappointed.

The Limits of Control is a thriller with almost no action, a drama with almost no dialogue. It gives a whole new meaning to the words ‘slow-moving’. It’s not exactly like watching paint dry but it is like a watching a painting. It’s plot is so minimalist that it could be filmed in twelve minutes instead of 112 minutes. The same things happen over and over again. Only the faces change. On the surface, The Limits of Control is about a man on a secret mission in Spain. We don’t know what or why. We know only that he keeps meeting people who give him one more piece of the puzzle.

Under the surface, however, we know (at least we hope) that The Limits of Control is not about a cold unnamed spy (who says almost nothing and whose expression rarely changes) trying to save the world. It’s about an existential journey of discovery. The lone spy likes to visit art galleries to look at paintings and some of the fellow ‘spies’ he meets represent art (the very paintings he is looking at) in some way. One represents science. The mysterious enemy represents a corporate structure which has lost interest in the arts and sciences and in creative thought of any kind and sees the world as being only about the acquisition of capital. That’s my interpretation, anyway, but I have not had it confirmed.

Perhaps The Limits of Control captured my attention because during the last few days I just happened to be thinking about how people who pursue careers in the fine arts (or any creative or thoughtful work) are not respected like those who go into business or computer technology. Jarmusch, like me, does not believe in chance, fate or coincidences, so I do not believe that I chose to watch this film by mere chance. Rather, I believe that its message was one of my own fellow ‘spies’ passing along information for my journey of discovery.

Perhaps you’re thinking that the reason I like Jarmusch’s films is because I am as insane as he is. Perhaps. Jarmusch’s motto is: “It’s hard to get lost if you don’t know where you’re going.” When he makes a film, he doesn’t know where he’s going. And he enjoys being ‘lost.’ “I feel free when I’m lost,” he says. His films, like those of Wenders, certainly reflect this sense of being lost and looking for freedom on the way to something or someone or somewhere. I ramble because I too feel lost when I watch films like this. Watching The Limits of Control was like looking at a gorgeous surreal painting (one which contains occasional movement) for two hours while also looking deeper and deeper into oneself. It’s mesmerizing.

BTW, the people our lone spy, played stoically enough by Isaach De Bankole, meets on his journey include Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Bill Murray, among others. The Limits of Control gets a mug up from me, though I can’t decide how many stars it’s worth (let’s say *** just to be safe). If looking at a painting (however beautiful) for two hours is not your idea of a good time, you may want to avoid this one. At the least, you should read one of the many scathing critiques before taking the plunge.

In the Air Again: Larry Crowne and Friends With Benefits

2011-11-13T01:26:00.005-04:00

I caught two films on the plane this week, both in the romantic comedy category (that’s all Air Canada had to offer that I hadn’t seen).

While I’m no fan of Julia Roberts, I thought Larry Crowne would be the strongest entry of the two. After all, who doesn’t like Tom Hanks, and in Larry Crowne, he not only plays the protagonist, he also wrote and directed the film. Unfortunately, Larry Crowne turned out to be a dull dud. The performances were okay but the story was not well written, none of the characters really interested me, and the film lacked any real energy or chemistry. So Larry Crowne gets a mug down and only **.

Friends With Benefits is a film I did not think I would ever get around to seeing. So I was very pleasantly surprised when the first half of the film compared favourably with the best romantic comedies I have seen in the past year. It was fresh and refreshingly adult (explicitly so). It was intelligent (full of clever fast-paced dialogue). It was filmed in New York. It starred two actors (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis playing Dylan and Jamie) from whom I did not expect very much but who performed admirably, with obvious chemistry.

If only Friends With Benefits had ended halfway instead of moving to L.A. for a visit to Dylan’s family. I like Richard Jenkins and he was good as the father. I like Jenna Elfman and she was good as the sister. What I didn’t like was the beginning of what would be one Hollywood cliche after another as we move to the finish line, especially in a film that actually made fun of Hollywood cliches.

If it hadn’t been for the predictable second half and the predictable ending, Friends With Benefits would have been safely in ***+ country. As it is, I will give it ***. My mug is up for this one, but let me warn you that this is not a romantic comedy for the family or for anyone offended by explicit sexual dialogue.

The Bang Bang Club

2011-11-09T02:04:00.001-04:00

I no longer remember who suggested to me that I watch this film, but I trusted that person enough to do so, with mixed results.

The Bang Bang Club tells the true story of four white combat photographers in South Africa in 1994 during the last days of apartheid. During that time, one would suppose the combat would be between the white government troops and the black members of the ANC, but the war in the film is between two black tribes, one of whom is the Zulus of the Inkatha Freedom Party which opposed the ANC.

Greg Marinovich (played by Ryan Phillippe) is the fearless rookie photographer who gets caught up in the war and has the dubious opportunity to watch (and click) as each side brutally kills a member of the other side. One of these photos wins him the Pulitzer Prize.

Greg and his colleagues go where few would dare to go. Is it courage or insanity or do they have a death wish? They document the atrocities of humanity with an objectivity that’s scary, as if they can remain unaffected by the horrors they see. Is that possible? The film provides a mixed response, focusing on a man who is able to do this work for years, regardless of the toll it takes on him, but who is sometimes depicted as hesitating in a way that implies doubt, doubt about the morality or sanity of clicking away while someone is murdered in front of him. One of Greg’s friends experiences a moral dilemma much more profound and his life takes a very dark turn as a result.

What motivates these photographers? Surely it must be more than just the money or the glory. Surely they are risking their lives to share the truth in an effort to make the world a better place? The film does not do enough with that question, as it does not do enough with many other questions, like what was actually going on in South Africa that caused black people to kill black people when the primary conflict was between white and black.

The Bang Bang Club seems to want to take an objective stand on the war, refusing to get into the politics. Is that wise? We are left with no clear sense of what was happening in South Africa in 1994 and what role the government played in the events of the film other than that the police were quite hostile to the photographers. By showing the horrors of war so starkly, one can hope the film is at least trying to highlight the insanity and absurdity of war, but even that is debatable.

The acting is quite good, the cinematography is great (as one would expect in a film made by photographers) and The Bang Bang Club has a number of very powerful scenes. But it also has many lesser scenes, it flows awkwardly (with no clear sense of the passage of time) and it doesn’t do enough character development for a film that focuses on such intense characters. In the end, Steven Silver’s The Bang Bang Club is another flawed film with lots of thought-provoking potential. On the assumption that it is trying to say something profound, even if it fails, I will be generous and give it ***. My mug is up, but just barely.

Fish Tank

2011-11-07T00:07:00.002-04:00

I waited far too long to watch this British masterpiece from 2009.

Fish Tank tells the story of Mia, an angry, lonely fifteen-year-old girl who has grown up with her mother and younger sister in a council estate just outside of London. Her young mother clearly has no clue how to be a parent and Mia struggles alone to find her way in life. She spies on her peers and seems to want to have friends, but can’t control her foul mouth and thus alienates everyone around her. To pass the time, Mia practices dancing in an empty flat because that’s what she wants to do with her life. When her mother’s latest boyfriend tells her how good she is, she develops a crush on him, with rather disastrous results. But Mia is nothing if not resilient and the word disaster seems exaggerated in this understated film, though it is hard to imagine Mia ever having a happy life.

Katie Jarvis plays Mia and she is in every second of this film, so Fish Tank lives and dies with her performance. In this case, Fish Tank lives because her performance is flawless. This is less surprising when one learns that Jarvis grew up in a housing estate just like the one in the film. Michael Fassbender as the mother’s boyfriend is also very good. But it is the writing and direction of Andrea Arnold that must be credited for creating a sublime, haunting and truthful work of cinematic art.

One of the things that makes Fish Tank special is the way we see everything from Mia’s viewpoint and begin to feel and think what she is feeling and thinking. It is rather terrifying and the whole story feels all too real.

There are far too many teenagers in the UK growing up in the kind of environment depicted in Fish Tank. With ridiculously-high levels of unemployment among young adults, these teenagers have little to look forward to and start turning to the bottle at a horrifyingly young age. Binge drinking has become far too common among the young people of the UK. The future is bleak for all the Mia’s unless the government funding that is going to the military or to protect the wealthy starts focusing on programs to help the young. The very future of the country is at stake and as a British citizen I am more than a little concerned.

Fish Tank gets an easy ****. My mug is up.

The Conspirator

2011-11-06T00:54:00.003-04:00

“I would do anything to ensure the survival of this nation,” says the war secretary (Kevin Kline) to the lawyer defending a woman accused of conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. By this he means that if a possibly innocent woman needs to be sacrificed (i.e. murdered by the state in the form of execution) in order to restore order and maintain peace in “this nation”, thus saving countless other lives, then so be it.

It is not a big leap from that statement and that sentiment to the suggestion that “the survival of this nation(‘s wealthy elite) must be ensured at any cost even if it means using lies about 9/11 and WMDs to invade and occupy a country at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives". Hundreds of other examples also apply. For that reason alone, The Conspirator is worth watching and worthy of appreciation.

The Conspirator is not about the possibly innocent woman, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), on trial for conspiracy to assassinate the president, but about the lawyer, Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), who is forced to defend her. Aiken is understandably reluctant to defend a woman all believe to be guilty of this most horrific of crimes. His reputation and friendships are at stake. But as he goes through the process of defending Mary, he realizes that the very process of justice hangs in the balance. Guilty or innocent, Mary deserves a fair trial and Aiken becomes obsessed with making sure she gets it.

As I watched Aiken fight the corrupt domination system of his time, I couldn’t help thinking that Robert Redford, at 75, made The Conspirator as his own personal attack on injustice, standing up to challenge the way the domination system today treats people as pawns in its protection of power and wealth.

While The Conspirator has a great message, it is, unfortunately, not a great film. It is intelligent, relatively well-acted, and is full of beautiful cinematography, but it is too slow-moving even for me, with a screenplay that verges on dull. It takes a lot of guts to make a film so quiet and thoughtful instead of appealing to the masses with something full of action, suspense and melodrama. It made me realize that I might have been too hasty in granting Anonymous (which has more than its share of melodrama) four stars. Nevertheless, I cannot give The Conspirator more than a solid *** for effort. My mug is up but the brew inside is rather bland.

Anonymous

2011-11-04T20:10:00.002-04:00

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fan of Roland Emmerich, the director of such classic films as Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, The Patriot, 10,000 BC and 2012, almost all of which get a mug down from me. When I saw that Emmerich had directed Anonymous, my interest in the film vanished instantly. Luckily for me, Roger Ebert gave the film ***+. I keep a list of all films getting ***+ or more from Roger and try to watch as many as possible, only rarely regretting it.

So I went to see Anonymous last night, knowing that most critics were less than impressed. At the end of the film, I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Roland Emmerich? Seriously? I suspect some nobleman didn’t want his name attached to the film (for whatever reason) and asked Emmerich to stand in. And you critics: what’s your problem? **+-star average? Did you just see Emmerich’s name and assign the required rating? Or are you really so worried about whether the plot is believable that you would bad-mouth an otherwise brilliant film just because it suggests William Shakespeare was a buffoon and could not possibly have written the plays attributed to him?

You know my opinion of the film by now. I thought Anonymous was absolutely delightful (in a dark and twisted sort of way) and was enthralled from the opening scene (with Derek Jacobi the perfect person to introduce such a film) to the surprise ending, which actually surprised me. I could find no fault with Emmerich’s direction, though it was no doubt aided by John Orloff’s superb screenplay. The set design and cinematography made me believe I was in Elizabethan London. The music was solid without being overwhelming. And as for the acting? Niccol should have been looking for his young actors in the UK (for In Time). The acting was stellar, with a particularly outstanding performance by Rhys Ifans (who was great in Greenberg and Mr. Nobody) as the earl of Oxford who lies at the heart of this bizarre tale. David Thewlis and Edward Hogg were also wonderful as the father-son bad guys (and ‘oh-joy’ they were not killed off at the end). Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave were just right as the young and old Queen Elizabeth. And then there were all those young actors, largely unknown to me, who seemed perfectly-cast.

Did I find the notion that William Shakespeare had nothing to do with his plays even remotely convincing? Well, I like to keep an open mind about such things and I found the plot, as presented, quite convincing. Whether or not it had the slightest basis in fact or was utterly preposterous is beside the point for me, because the film was intelligent, entertaining and thought-provoking and I don’t really care WHO wrote the plays, just that they survived that troubling era.

So ***+ or ****, that is the question. Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of potential disrespect by going out on a limb and granting **** when none have been so generous before me or to admit that Anonymous did not quite have the pop and WOW factor required for **** and grant it the safer ***+. Am I a coward? Nay, I shall be bold and lift my mug high (though what it contains I dare not say). **** it is.

In Time

2011-11-04T00:43:00.002-04:00

At some point in the future, genetics are used to stop the aging process of our bodies at 25. That sounds good until you realize you are only given one free year after that. From the beginning of your 27th year, you have to earn every second of your life (unless, of course, you are born into time). “Time is money” takes on a new meaning in In Time. Everyone has a clock in their arm that counts down relentlessly, measuring the seconds left in their lives. In the poorer ‘time zones’, people rarely have more than a few days worth of life left at any given moment, and that time is needed to pay for food and other services (a cup of coffee costs four minutes). So people work desperately to stay alive. Sometimes they have to borrow from friends, or from timelenders who charge exorbitant interest rates. When your clock hits zero, you die instantly.

Our hero, Will (Justin Timberlake), who is used to living on the edge, suddenly comes into some time, giving him the opportunity to see how the other half lives. This is a revelation which will start him on a crusade for justice, with a wealthy young woman (played by Amanda Seyfried) at his side and a timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) at his heels.

On the surface, In Time is a lightweight sci-fi action film. The writing is inconsistent at best, the plot needs lots of work, the 25-year-old actors are not quite up to the task (though the three actors mentioned above did well enough), the special effects are not great and so on. I can see how critics generally gave In Time mediocre reviews. But we are still on the surface.

Let’s look underneath. Among the things I did not know about this film (I knew almost nothing, as usual) was that it was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, one of the most fascinating writer/directors out there. Niccol has written such favourites of mine as The Truman Show and Gattaca. He also wrote The Terminal and Lord of War, both of which were profound in their own way. Closer to the flawed In Time was the flawed S1m0ne, but it was also full of thought-provoking ideas. That’s Niccol’s specialty and as far as I’m concerned there are few specialties more worthy of admiration than that one. In Time, for all its flaws, has more thought-provoking ideas than twenty average action films put together (maybe even 50) and that is high praise.

I mean, sure, the idea that poor people will one day rise up in protest against the wealthiest few who can live forever is obviously ludicrous. Well, okay, it’s not the most original idea in the film. But there are lots of inventive ideas and clever plays on words. For example, we think the world revolves around money, but aren’t we all just trying to live as long as we can, saving for leisure time and constantly running out of time. I, for one, am much more worried about time than money. The wealthy have all the time in the world (if they want it) because they don’t need to put in fifty hours a week to pay the bills. The underlying assumption of In Time, which unfortunately is never fleshed out, is that the wealthy few stole their time from the poor. Indeed they did, but say more.

Andrew Niccol certainly has his heart in the right place and I look forward to his next film. If I’d known that In Time was one of his, nothing could have kept me away. As it was, the critics almost dissuaded me, but I followed my gut. In Time is an intriguing film full of potential. Unfortunately the execution wasn’t there. Still, I have to give it a solid *** for making me think and for making a plea for global justice. My mug is up and the stuff inside is worth the 109 minutes it cost me to watch it.

Drag Me to Hell

2011-10-31T01:12:00.002-04:00

Classic horror flicks like Rosemary’s Baby aside, horror films just don’t do it for me, even if they are meant to be campy comedies. But since tomorrow is Halloween, and since I had this critically-acclaimed horror flick in my collection, I decided to give Drag Me To Hell a shot.

The one thing this 2009 film, written and directed by Sam Raimi of Spiderman fame, has going for it is the final scene, which was close to entertaining and certainly provides a satisfying ending. But unless your idea of fun is watching campy horror, in which case you should not miss this one, I can’t recommend Drag Me to Hell. Maybe you have to watch a lot more horror than I do to appreciate this kind of thing. But I simply have no use for the horror genre. Even Shaun of the Dead, filmed almost next door to where we were living in London, was barely tolerable.

Sure, Drag Me to Hell has some grisly humour. But nothing about the silly horror plot makes the slightest sense (our protagonist throws up two liters of blood but sees no reason to visit a doctor), the action scenes are utterly boring to me, and the acting is, well, campy (which I guess is what it is supposed to be). Sorry, it’s just not my idea of a good time. From now on, I’ll try to steer clear of the horror genre, regardless of how good the reviews are. Though maybe it’s time to watch Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow again for Halloween. You can’t go wrong with The Legend of Sleep Hollow (Disney’s version is still the best Halloween entertainment out there, with Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin coming in a close second).

My mug, I’m afraid, is appropriately pointing down for Drag Me to Hell.

The Beaver and All Good Things: Two Underrated 2011 Releases

2011-10-30T00:08:00.006-04:00

Thanks to generally poor reviews, I missed these two films at the theatre, though my gut told me I might like them more than the average critic. My gut was right, just as my gut is usually right when I instinctively (on occasion) stay away from a film the critics think is great.

The Beaver stars Mel Gibson as Walter Black, a very depressed man who is saved by a beaver hand-puppet. By pretending to speak through the puppet, Walter is able to distance himself from his fears and anxieties. It is a remarkably successful therapy; too successful, as it turns out, leading Walter ever deeper into mental illness rather than out of it. Meanwhile, Walter’s oldest son, Porter, who hates his father (partly because he is so much like him) connects with Nora in high school. Both of them are struggling, alone, with issues they can’t work through.

The critics had me believing that a film about a hand-puppet doesn’t work, but I think they are wrong. Both of these stories worked very well for me (and I was not at all distracted by the story of the son, as some critics were). The acting of Anton Yelchin as Porter and Jennifer Lawrence (who was so fantastic in Winter’s Bone) as Nora was outstanding and that played a major role in how well that part of the film worked. Gibson was also outstanding, often playing two characters (one with a strong Cockney accent) at the same time. Jodie Foster starred, and performed well, as Walter’s wife, Meredith, and also directed The Beaver.

One of the reasons that the beaver hand-puppet worked for me is because I believe we all speak through masks almost all the time. This very morning I let my mask down in public for twenty seconds and spoke from my heart. It will be days (or even weeks) before I forgive myself for dropping my mask. As the beaver says, we are not encouraged to be passionate and say what’s really on our minds. Instead, we put on a mask to speak to all the other masks. I do this even with my closest friends, and frankly it makes me want to scream.

A key theme of The Beaver, made explicit at the end, is that we are not alone (or need never be alone). Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin was definitely alone, but I understand what the writer is trying to say and I couldn’t agree more. We all need someone to talk to, to share our deepest selves with, even if it’s a hand-puppet.

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of The Beaver. It’s original, it has great cinematography and music, the writing and direction are solid and the acting, like I said, is outstanding. If it hadn’t been for some underdeveloped characters and occasional lack of credibility, I would give The Beaver four stars. As it is, I will give it a solid ***+. My mug is up and its contents may even be good enough to get a top-ten nod.

Note of interest (or not): About thirteen years ago, long before Gibson's troubles, I was doing a getting-to-know-you exercise in which I was asked to name a male and female actor I would like as neigbours (one living on each side of me). I answered with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster because they seemed like such interesting people (as well as great actors). It's good to see them together again (they starred in Maverick in 1994).

All Good Things is yet another Ryan Gosling film. It is a remarkably understated film (I’ve seen a lot of those lately and very much approve) about David Marks (played by Gosling), a man whose overbearing father (played well by Frank Langella) forces him to take on the family business in New York rather than follow his heart. The resulting personality change leads down a dark path involving his wife, Katie (played by Kirsten Dunst).

This low-key suspenser directed by Andrew Jarecki reminded me of Hitchcock from beginning to end, which is high praise. The unusual thing about All Good Things is that it is apparently based on real events and yet takes incredible liberties. Namely, it makes it clear that someone committed a serious crime for which they were never convicted. How the filmmakers can do that, I have no idea, but the result is fascinating to watch.

Gosling is very good and Dunst has one of her best roles. I felt almost like I was watching a classic from the forties and give All Good Things ***+. My mug is up again. At least on this one I had Roger Ebert on my side. He only gave The Beaver **+, which I simply do not understand.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

2011-10-27T23:11:00.005-04:00

am way too busy these days to watch films and write reviews, but I thought I should draw your attention to this four-star gem which will not be released in North America until early December (this is the one I saw in Geneva). I reviewed it for Media Matters at thirdway.com and here is the link: We Need to Talk about Kevin

My mug is up.

Can't get an image to work on this blog for now.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

2011-10-25T23:17:00.003-04:00

In my ongoing mission to find an interesting romantic comedy … Scrap that. How about: In my ongoing mission to watch as many Ryan Gosling films as I can in 2011 (I have managed to watch six so far), I caught Crazy, Stupid, Love at the cheap theatre (where I can still watch a film in a state-of-the-art cinema on Tuesday for $1.75 - Wow - I paid something like $25 to watch a film in Geneva on a Tuesday two weeks ago).

Crazy, Stupid, Love starts strong and ends strong but the first two words of the film’s title sum up the central half of the film, especially the dialogue. Maybe it’s just Steve Carell, who plays the protagonist of the the film. Carell is a very likeable actor and he has done some decent work, but so much of his dialogue (and his character in this film) is not remotely realistic. Sure this is a comedy, but I think it otherwise tries to take itself seriously enough to pretend to have a minimal level of realism. It fails.

The parts of Crazy, Stupid, Love that work do so because of the well-drawn characters and good ensemble cast. Outside of Carell, whose acting was actually fairly good, the acting was not what I would call great but it was solid. Gosling is not at his best here (just compare his performances in Drive or Blue Valentine to see what I mean) but he’s watchable if you can stand to see him topless (men, don’t do it to yourself; women, don’t even think about it). Julianne Moore and Emma Stone are solid. Marisa Tomei has done much better work, as has Kevin Bacon. The only real standout was a young actress by the name of Analeigh Tipton who plays the babysitter.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is, like other films I could mention (you know what I’m talking about), a series of apparently disconnected episodes (with very little flow) about people experiencing challenges in their love-life (or wanna-have love-life). Carell play a man whose wife (Moore) suddenly asks for a divorce because she is sleeping with another man (Bacon). Meanwhile, the son is in love with his babysitter who is in love with his father. And that’s only the beginning. To tell you any more would take away the most interesting parts of the film.

If you are a fan of this genre (and there are obviously many of you), you could do worse than Crazy, Stupid, Love, but I just couldn’t help thinking that if the basic premise and the same characters and actors had been given to a great writer (Dan Fogelman, who did much better with Tangled and Cars, should maybe stay with animated Disney films), this could have been a great romantic comedy instead of just a watchable one. I will give it *** anyway and my mug is up.

Moneyball

2011-10-19T23:27:00.004-04:00

I have always loved baseball. It’s a graceful, peaceful beautiful sport; at least it was until money took over the game and players started moving from club to club as if they were nothing but trading cards. When I was young, you could pretty well count on your favourite team having mostly the same players year after year, with the rookies making the big difference. Not anymore. I’m surprised clubs maintain any loyalty. And then of course there’s the money, with clubs like the New York Yankees buying the best players because they have the most money and as a result they have won the World Series much more often than any other team.

In Moneyball, Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s in 2001, when they lost in the playoffs after a great season. In 2002, Billy finds his star players have been bought by richer clubs and needs to find a way to put a new team together with less than a third of the budget that the Yankees have. He stumbles across an Economics graduate from Yale (Peter Brand, played very well by Jonah Hill) who thinks cost-effective player-buying is all about using computers to calculate things like “on base percentage”, and Billy decides to give it a shot.

I won’t tell you what happens, though I will say that if the film was about what happens to the A’s in 2002, I would not be inclined to give it the four stars is so clearly deserves. Indeed, a four-star film usually needs to be close to perfect, but Moneyball actually disappointed me in a number of ways: 1) It didn’t do a great job of conveying the year the A’s had in 2002. With a record of 20-26 early in the year, the sports analysts were making it sound like they hadn’t won more than a few games. What happened after, in terms of wins and losses, was never clear. In a sport that’s all about statistics, this is a serious oversight. 2) Moneyball obviously alludes to the role of money in baseball, but doesn’t provide any serious critique or offer any kind of solution. What Beane did in 2002 didn’t alter the way players are passed around like trading cards or address the many ways the game of baseball has been brought down by money and free agency during the past thirty years. Too bad. 3) It was never clear how well the players were doing (see 1). 4) I don’t like the Oakland A’s (though I don’t hate them, like I hate the Yankees).

Because of these and related disappointments, there is no way Moneyball gets more than three stars from me if I thought it was about the A’s and their 2002 season. But I didn’t. I thought it was about Beane and his relationships with his daughter, with Brand, with his colleagues and with his players. The story of Beane is so brilliantly told that I was fully engaged in the film every moment from start to finish. Part of this was the exceptionally intelligent dialogue (no surprise to learn that Aaron Sorkin was one of the writers). Part of this was the wonderful understated performance by Pitt, who deserves an oscar nomination, and the performances of his associates (who include Philip Seymour Hoffman as the A’s’ manager). Part of this was certainly the sure direction of Bennet Miller.

Moneyball is moving, it’s funny and it feels like a classic. It’s certainly a classy piece of entertainment which, like I said, deserves no less than ****. My mug is up for this top-ten contender.

The Ides of March

2011-10-18T23:54:00.002-04:00

When you have the starring role and George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Marisa Tomei are playing supporting roles beside you, you know you’ve made it as an actor. Obviously Ryan Gosling has made it. This is the fourth Gosling film I have seen in the last few months and I haven’t seen the recent Crazy Stupid Love, so this has been quite the year for the young Canadian actor (I will review his All Good Things, which I watched on the weekend, later this week).

I knew Gosling was in The Idea of March, because his face was on the poster, but that’s exactly all I knew about this film (just the way I like it). So I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the supporting cast, all of whom did very well, as did Gosling. I was also surprised to see the film was written, produced and directed by Clooney. Well done, George.

The Ides of March is a tense political drama taking place over a few days of an Ohio democratic presidential primary. Gosling plays Stephen, the assistant to Paul, the campaign manager (Hoffman). Stephen, while not above playing dirty in typical campaign style, is an idealist who has found a candidate he truly believes in (Mike Morris, played by Clooney). And based on Morris’s speeches about ending dependence on oil and opposing the distribution of government money to the wealthy, among other things, I would believe in him too, especially if his attitude in person supported his political views.

At first Morris is indeed portrayed as a man of integrity, but then we discover that he has committed the one crime no candidate is permitted to commit. (Spoiler alert!) As Stephen says, a presidential candidate can lie, cheat, steal and probably kill, but he can’t mess with an intern. Morris’s indiscretion is just one of the things which cause Stephen to become quickly disillusioned with politics but much worse is about to befall the young man. How he deals with his trials is the main subject of the film and I won’t say more about that. I will say that The Ides of March does a good job of dealing with themes like integrity, trust and loyalty.

When the campaign gets out of control (i.e. falls apart), the film loses a bit on credibility, but I have no trouble believing that these kinds of things happen in politics all the time. On the whole, I found The Ides of March to be a solid, diverting while understated entertainment, worthy of ***+. I think George Clooney (not Mike Morris) would make a good president, but if the theme of this film is any indication, he’s probably too smart to get into the stupid demoralizing absurdity called politics. My mug is up.

Flight Films: Alamanya, Bad Teacher, Julia's Eyes, Nothing to Declare, Pigeons on the Roof, Something Borrowed, The Whistleblower, Wrecked

2011-10-16T16:02:00.010-04:00

I watched eight films on my flights to Europe and back, though I will be the first to tell you that watching a film on a tiny little screen with horrible sound (partly because of the background noise) is not really watching a film at all. Reliable evaluation is therefore a challenge at best. Still, I was able to watch some foreign films I may otherwise have missed and it will come as no surprise to hear that in general the foreign films were vastly superior to the North American ones. Unfortunately, on my return flight there were few foreign films to chose from.

I will review these films from worst to best, so most of the English-language films will come first:

Bad Teacher (American, 2011)

Bad film. I kept watching in the hope that it would get better but for me Bad Teacher had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and was a complete waste of my time. *+

Something Borrowed (American, 2011)

This film about a woman in love with her best friend’s fiance (who also happens to be in love with her) starts off with promise but fizzles out after twenty minutes or so and becomes nothing more than an ordinary and silly chick flick (not to say that all chick flicks are ordinary and silly but, well, you know what I mean). I did enjoy watching Ginnifer Goodwin in the lead role. **+

Wrecked (Canadian, 2010)

A one-man film starring Adrien Brody as a man who wakes up in a car-wreck in a forest ravine with no memory of who he is or how he got there. It’s an interesting premise and the flashbacks were intriguingly done, but ultimately this is a snorer with only a few compelling scenes. **+

Julia’s Eyes (Spanish, 2010)

A psychological thriller about a blind woman and the man who keeps her that way. This film has lots of style and has its moments, but it’s derivative, contrived and predictable, so only of interest to those who like this kind of film (sometimes I do, but not precisely this kind). **+

Nothing to Declare (Belgian - French, 2010)

A comedy-drama about racism and the beginning of open border-crossings in Europe. There are too many scenes that don’t work, and the anti-racism message is much too superficial, but there are some hilarious and touching scenes and the actors are a joy to watch. ***

Pigeons on the Roof (German, 2011)

In German, this film is literally titled “The Theory of the Relativity of Love” and it’s a whacky comedy about four couples in a big German city. The acting, especially by the two lead actors, is extraordinary. You have to watch it to see why. This is one of the funniest films I have watched in a long time. ***+

The Whistleblower (American, 2010)

Rachel Weisz stars as a Nebraska police officer who is talked into becoming a peacekeeper in Bosnia after the war. The Whistleblower is not a brilliantly-made film but it’s based on actual events and it deals with vital issues like sex trafficking, UN peacekeeping and, most importantly, the way American business contracts are handed out after wars and disasters (see Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine). In this case, the prime culprit is an American security firm that takes part (with impunity) in the sex trafficking of young woman in Bosnia. This is an horrific film that somehow remains understated while becoming more gripping and frightening with each minute. ***+

Alamanya - Welcome to Germany (German, 2011)

A delightful humanizing comedy-drama about the experience of Turkish immigrants in Germany. This film about descendants of the earliest post-war Turkish immigrants who were invited to help restore Germany in 1950‘s (it includes the experience of those first immigrants) uses humour to question the status of those descendants within Germany today (surely they are now accepted as full members of the German community, you say - yeah, right). This beautifully-made film is the kind of film that has the potential to change the hearts of viewers and make the world a better place. As I’ve said before, we can never have too many films like that. ***+

Exactly half of the films I watched get a mug up - the rest are better avoided altogether.

Contagion

2011-09-22T20:38:00.001-04:00

Pandemics have always been an intriguing subject for me. A critically-acclaimed star-studded (with Matt Damon, no less) pandemic film by Steven Soderbergh was therefore a sure bet. So in the midst of my pre-Europe madness, I ran out to see Contagion. To say I regretted it would be strong, but I was certainly disappointed.

Contagion has a unique matter-of-fact style, which was fascinating and frightening on the one hand but failed to engage me on the other. By telling its story of the mysterious virus in bits and pieces spread over four and a half months, it loses a sense of continuity, with far too much left unexplained. For example, much is made of the exponential rise in riots, looting and missing workers of all kinds (including police) but nothing is ever said about how or if these were brought back under control. Never mind the disease, how did the world survive the chaos for so long? Panic is a serious scary subject, but it doesn’t go anywhere in Contagion.

On the positive side, Contagion is well-paced (especially the first hour), well-acted (many good understated performances, led by Damon and Laurence Fishburne), well-photographed and has lots of believable dialogue. It just doesn’t hang together and feel like a story.

So Contagion gets only ***. My mug is up but it’s full of another one of those bland blends.

Drive

2011-09-20T00:08:00.002-04:00

Okay, I admit that there are times when going into a film cold (i.e. knowing absolutely nothing about it, the way I prefer to watch a film) can be dangerous. Drive is a perfect example. All I knew was that it was getting good reviews and it starred Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. That’s all I needed to know to rush out to my nearest cinema - or so I thought.

Drive is a beautifully-filmed, quiet and original thriller. Sounds great so far. It is also a very dark, very intense, stylistic (in a European way) neo-noir film. Slightly more risky, but for me we are still on very safe ground. Then it gets violent - extremely and disturbingly violent. That the violence is disturbing is both good and bad. Violence should be disturbing, but I’m not a fan of watching disturbing violence and I wasn’t expecting it.

Drive is the story of a nameless stunt driver/mechanic, played very well by Ryan Gosling. Dark and intense are also the words that best describe this driver. From the opening line, we know he is an intense guy and it does not take long to recognize that there is something a little too intense about him, something that hints at a dark past. When he meets his new neighbour, Irene (Mulligan in another great role), light enters his life for a few days, until Irene’s husband returns from prison. Then Drive takes a sharp turn into a back alley most of you will want to avoid.

For me, Drive was not a fun ride but it was certainly captivating to watch, with great performances by all concerned (besides Gosling and Mulligan, both Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks were standouts), wonderful cinematography, a good soundtrack (though it features a song called “A Real Hero” which was almost as disturbing as the violence), an original screenplay (and solid direction) by Nicolas Winding Refn and lots and lots of style. So it just has to get ***+. My mug is up for some classic film-making, but the violence will keep it out of my top ten.

Another Earth

2011-09-07T21:44:00.002-04:00

What if there was another planet Earth hidden on the far side of the sun that suddenly became visible, filling the night sky like a large blue moon? And what if this planet was an exact parallel of our own, with every person and action duplicated? What if something happened which suddenly allowed events to unfold differently on each planet? What would you say if you met your double on this other Earth?

This theme was explored in an interesting sci-fi film from 1969 called Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. It is not really explored in Another Earth, where this theme is primarily a backdrop to the story of a young woman (Rhoda, played by Brit Marling) who drives while drunk, kills a mother and child and tries to figure out a way to live with herself after spending four years in prison. Living with herself includes befriending, incognito, the father and husband of the deceased, whose life Rhoda has shattered.

This quirky low-budget indie drama about two lonely broken people who find temporary relief in each other’s company is strangely compelling. The acting is not outstanding, the cinematography is of the jerky handheld variety that I don’t usually like, and the writing and directing by Mike Cahill has its share of flaws. And yet Another Earth is always engaging and thought-provoking and the characters real and sympathetic enough to make me care.

Another Earth left an impression on me and made me think (e.g. about the different directions life can take because of one small choice), so I am going to give it ***+. My mug is up.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-09-05T20:28:00.003-04:00

I enjoyed an evening out to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes - have to see one "big" kind of film in the summer, and this was the right kind of fun for that. As we've said before, it helps when one has few expectations (don't expect much in terms of characters or depth, please). I'd have to say that the apes were pretty impressive, and the way the movie sets up the starting place for the old classic worked quite well (if not entirely new and creative). Unfortunately, the acting was not a great boost to the movie, and somewhere along the way - whether the fault of the writer, director or editor - there were quite a few sudden shifts in characters and direction that really didn't work at all. James Franco makes at least two sudden shifts that are simply unreal or undeveloped. The evil research centre boss makes a sudden change that is incredibly poorly "sold." The potentially helpful role played by Freida Pinto was left shallow and one wonders where her early passion went. Really, I shouldn't have written this at all because the more I write, the more I realise that the characters were all really badly portrayed. I'm not sure I ended up liking anyone but the main chimp. Maybe that's the point - it's certainly a misanthropic film.

Vic, there is nothing to impress you at all in their take on redemptive violence. Obviously the chimps have some natural aggression when threatened, but nothing like the aggression of the humans. Yet, overall the film simply has nothing new to say about that theme.

What it does say - like Limitless to which it bears some distinct resemblance - is that we are probably already long past the point where our morality and wisdom can keep up with our scientific creativity. That warning, familiar as it is, is the most realistic part of the movie. For that and some light summer sun, I'll give it ***

Beginners

2011-08-03T23:29:00.002-04:00

Beginners is a European-style American indie film about two lonely and hurting people (Oliver and Anna), haunted in different ways by their fathers, who try, against their natural inclinations, to make a lasting connection. Oliver, played by Ewan McGregor, is an L.A. artist in his late thirties who has been unable to sustain a relationship, perhaps because of the relationship between his parents as he was growing up. His father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), has just died of cancer. Four years before, after Oliver’s mother death, Hal told Oliver he was gay and was intent on pursuing a gay relationship at the age of 75 (after 44 years of marriage that were obviously not as fulfilling as they could have been). Anna, played by Melanie Laurent, is an aspiring New York actress whose suicidal father calls her up every day to talk. Oliver and Anna meet at a costume party, with Oliver playing Sigmund Freud and Anna unable to talk (laryngitis), a perfect beginning to a relationship where silence, introspection and psychoanalysis are major players. In this first meeting, it is Anna who plays the analyst, asking Oliver why he came to a party when he is so sad. Oliver is indeed sad, as is Anna in her own way. The entire film is sad and yet it is also a comedy, with the third party in this relationship drawing the most laughs. The third party is Arthur, Hal’s dog and now Oliver’s constant companion.

Beginners, written and directed by Mike Mills, has a quirky style that feels familiar (I can’t recall the film it is reminding me of, but I think a number of indie films use similar devices). Along with the score, the cinematography, the dialogue, and even the humour, the style creates an overwhelmingly subdued and melancholy film which reflects the lives and characters of our protagonists and draws us into their somewhat desperate relationship. The fact that Oliver and Anna are two very good-looking people should be a hindrance to this, but McGregor and Laurent pull it off with flawless performances, believably giving us two characters who feel that their relationship is doomed before it even begins. I have, in the past, questioned McGregor’s acting ability but now with The Ghost Writer and Beginners, I will gladly eat my words and say that he is capable, under the right circumstances, of great things, even apart from Moulin Rouge, which remains his greatest achievement.

Beginners does an excellent job with both the romance and the relationship between Oliver and Hal (Plummer, as usual, was also great). If I understood the flashbacks correctly, Oliver cannot let go of his parents and is particularly haunted by the last years and days of Hal’s life. Oliver seems to accept Hal’s sexual orientation but as a son who was never as close to his father as he wished to be, Hal’s relationship with another man is somewhat uncomfortable. The honest and sympathetic way homosexuality is presented in Beginners is yet another highlight of this wonderfully entertaining film, which gets a very solid ***+ and may even get into my top ten of the year.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

2011-07-21T00:01:00.002-04:00

I intend to write a theological analysis on both parts of Deathly Hallows, but for now I will confine my comments to what I consider to be the inferior half of Deathly Hallows. Keep in mind that I have not read any of the books.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (DH2) is a well-crafted film. The acting, directing, dialogue, score and cinematography are all very good. DH2 is one of the darkest films I have ever seen (the feeling of constant dread is palpable), which is appropriate for the final epic-like instalment of the series. The atmosphere in Harry Potter (HP) films is one of my favourite things about the series and it is well done again here. I also loved seeing all those great British actors altogether one last time. As a final film (and a part 2), it was unnecessary to establish background or characters. By now, we had better know the story and we have already come to know and love the characters. In general, I enjoyed watching DH2 and found myself engaged from start to finish. Nevertheless (you were forewarned this time), despite the rave reviews from major critics, DH2 doesn’t even rank in my top three HP films, let alone have a chance to get into my favourite films of the year.

What didn’t I like? The bottom line is that the final HP film felt incredibly anticlimactic to me. To start with, we had the continued search for, and destruction of, the horcruxes. In DH1, this task seemed virtually impossible and was begun only with tremendous effort. In DH2, the horcruxes are found and destroyed with relative ease (just enough effort to keep the 3D action humming – and NO, I CERTAINLY DID NOT WATCH IT IN 3D and neither did almost half of those who had a choice, which is a hopeful sign for the future). Even the snake was killed with minimal and predictable effort. As for the great revelations I was expecting in DH2, the final unveiling of all the mysteries, there was very little to excite me. The moving scene of Snape’s death followed by Harry’s magical glimpse into Snape’s past were the highlight of the film for me (not least because I have always found Snape to be the most fascinating character in the HP films) but revealed little I had not already guessed from watching the previous seven films. The biggest revelation was discovering that Harry himself was one of the horcruxes, but that was also hinted at in previous films (we knew there was some kind of special link between Voldemort and Harry). And then there was the disappointment of the big final battle. The last instalment of HP is largely a battle film – how original! We have giants and spiders and giant spiders and many other strange creatures, and of course the endless magic - yawn. I have always found real magic tedious because it follows no rules that make any sense to me. That is primarily what has kept me from reading the HP books. DH2 had far too much magic for my liking (then again, all of the HP films have too much magic for my liking). But at least the battle scenes were not as long as those in The Return of the King.

So that’s what I didn’t like. Having noted my problems with DH2, I must repeat that it is a good film and I did enjoy most of it. I particularly appreciated the culmination of Harry’s character development which leads him to rescue, at great risk, two of his “enemies” and eventually to offer his own life to save his friends and the world. More discussion on this will follow in my theological reflection, but the relationship between Harry and Voldemort and the fight between them was certainly fascinating to watch, even if the ‘resurrection’ was not explained (a major oversight by the film’s writer). The idea of Harry as a role model for young people today is definitely worth promoting, even if Rowling and the filmmakers can’t find a way to avoid killing off the ultimate baddie (the embodiment of pure evil?) once again. There always needs to be one great evil to destroy so the world can be saved. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

Stay tuned for my theological analysis of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In the meantime, DH2, like DH1, gets ***+, though I liked DH1 more and neither of them touch HP3, by far the best of the eight films. My mug is up.

The Tree of Life

2011-07-12T15:10:00.002-04:00

There are some films that, even if you know virtually nothing about them, you know before the opening scene that you are going to be giving it four stars. I, at least, have had that experience every few years. So let’s get this out of the way before I start my review. The Tree of Life was always going to get four stars from me, no matter what. This will strike some people as illogical at best, utterly idiotic and nonsensical at worst. I understand. And I can’t really explain how I knew The Tree of Life was going to get four stars based on seeing only a few seconds of a preview and hearing a few very brief comments from Gareth. But I did know. I even knew that the obviously elevated expectations I had for the film would have no impact on my enjoyment of it. I just knew. It’s similar to knowing that if I ever get to see the Taj Mahal in person, it will take my breath away. Or to knowing that, despite knowing nothing whatsoever about them, no one could ever talk me into watching a Transformers film.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a profound work of art unlike almost any other. It did remind me immediately of Malick’s last two films (the great anti-war film The Thin Red Line and the fascinating The New World), and of course of Kubrick’s masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey, and of the recent Enter the Void, but The Tree of Life goes well beyond these films in its audacity: it boldly goes where no one has gone before, combining theology and science and the meaning of human existence into a stunning visual and music-filled poem. This achievement alone is worthy of four stars.

I have said enough for those who haven’t seen the film: unless you require action or at least a plot, go watch it and then come back. Okay, you’re back, so now you know the film, which has very little by way of plot, is basically about Jack (played by Sean Penn as an adult and by Hunter McCracken as a child). Jack is a late middle-aged architect surrounded by the grandeur of the 21st century’s finest architectural achievements. But it all appears cold and lifeless. As in 2001, humans have advanced to great heights, but lost their passion for life and wonder. All Jack sees out of the windows that surround him is greed. Something (a search for passion and wonder?) drives him to reflect back on his childhood, to the days of growing up in small-town Texas with a father (Brad Pitt) who is both loving and tyrannical (a God of compassion and punishment?) and a mother who is gentle and forgiving. The younger Jack is in those confusing years of adolescence when he both hates and adores his father, when he is jealous of his brothers and capable of both cruelty and kindness towards them, when the world is full of wonder and endless questions but also of confusion and despair. I suspect there are many of us who can relate to this. In poetic form, The Tree of Life captures this period of life magnificently, with the help of an impeccable performance by the young McCracken and one of Pitt’s very best performances.

The above paragraph makes The Tree of Life sound like a drama about family life. Do not be fooled, for it is much more than that. This is a film with numerous gorgeous scenes of space and a riveting scene involving dinosaurs. It’s so slow-moving that it barely moves at all and yet it covers the entire history of life, from the Big Bang to the day when we all meet again on some distant shore. And it does so from a uniquely religious (Christian?) viewpoint. It is a film about overcoming our natural tendencies and making grace central, about seeing life as responding to the needs of people around us rather than to our own, about what it means to be human and how we are all in it together. At least that’s what I saw. But since it’s a poem, it can surely be interpreted in many different ways.

I haven’t read many reviews of this film, but I have yet to see a reference to the Book of Job, which surprises me, since it is referenced at various points in The Tree of Life. My own interpretation is that, like the Book of Job, The Tree of Life is about asking why the world is such a confusing place, a place where the wonder and beauty of life are always forced to lie beside suffering, pain and tragedy and receiving the answer that God’s beautiful and meaningful creation is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Perhaps the best thing about The Tree of Life is that it demands discussion. This is a film you will be thinking about and talking about for a long time because it will touch the very core of your soul. Yet another reason that it must get ****. My mug is up and its contents sublime. Don’t miss it on the big screen, if you can help it.

Limitless, Sc-Fi and the Joy of Limtis

2011-06-30T18:48:00.003-04:00

Great to chat together at Wild Goose, Vic. I've been so over-shadowed by your productive writing of late, that I thought I should convert some of my notes from the Wild Goose film review into a blog post. So here goes...

At least three recent sci-fi films explore some of the edges of human neuroscience – one of my favourite topics. There was last year’s Inception and this year’s Source Code and Limitless. All three are interesting films worth seeing and all three are thought-provoking journeys that are worth discussing afterwards.

Before doing some of that discussing here, however, I have to get one thing off my chest. Despite the fact that recent, real discoveries in neuroscience raise fascinating questions and point to many more possibilities that could be developed in coming decades, all three of these films succumb to the temptation to stretch way beyond the possible. In other words they choose not to accept the limits of either reality or even remotely likely potential reality. Perhaps many don’t agree, but I think the best sci-fi films make you believe the worlds they are creating are possible. Even when they stretch scientific possibility, they sell you on what could be.

Inception and Source Code choose not to accept these limitations. Inception doesn’t even bother trying to create a realistic pathway into the dream intrusion and manipulation at the heart of the film. Source Code does do a good job on trying to sell you on possibilities through the bulk of the film but then slips into silliness at the end. (I admit that my charge of silliness is not fair. Very smart people seem to play with the idea of parallel universes. Personally, I find the concept logically and aesthetically unappealing, but perhaps this is just a blind spot and the billions of my other selves in other universes would think differently.) The result is an unsatisfying final ending to an otherwise intriguing film. Ending with the kiss would have been better, and showing some kind of lasting effect from the late reconciliation with his dad would have been even better (because that at least would touch on the real-life miracle of how memories can be healed with wide-ranging effects).

Limitless, ironically, does a better job of accepting its limits. The benefits of NZT-48 are conceivable if somewhat exaggerated (and the NZT advertizing campaign demonstrates this). In spite of the fact that the film encourages the unscientific myth that we only use a small fraction of our brain, it does seem realistic that drugs have the potential to significantly enhance certain cognitive skills. It also does a great (if somewhat predictable) job of showing the typical biological price of cheating. The ending, which I certainly hope is meant to bother or at least unsettle us, is much less predictable and forces us to look more deeply at the tension between morality and our drive to exceed limits.

Wendell Berry, who I take to be one of the most important prophets of our day, writes that, in most cases, hope comes through limits – through accepting them and working with them, not striving to push past them. I appreciated the way that Limitless pushed me into a new appreciation of that truth. I’m just a little afraid for those who thought it was a happy ending. (***+ for Limitless; *** for Source Code and Inception – so two mugs up all around.)

The Time that Remains

2011-06-15T00:33:00.002-04:00

Ironic title as I am currently obsessed with ‘the time that remains’ before the Over the Bridge Festival and the Wild Goose Festival and the “Assembly’. In this case, however, the title refers to a warning about the time that is remaining to us to turn things around in Palestine/Israel and the wider world.

The Time that Remains is another poetic and thought-provoking film by Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian filmmaker who wrote and directed Divine Intervention in 2002. It is a darkly funny epic tale chronicling the Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1948 through the telling of stories about Suleiman’s parents and grandparents. The film contains stories from 1948, 1970, 1980 and 2009. In the latter stories, Suleiman plays himself as a powerless observer who never utters a word or changes his facial expression. It all works brilliantly if you enjoy this kind of original filmmaking style as much as I do, but I suspect the average filmgoer would be bored to tears.

Suleiman employs mostly non-actors, which works because there is little dialogue in his films and it’s all about seeing the absurdity of daily life in oppressive situations, which is aided by the natural actions of non-actors. The cinematography is outstanding, which is vital to a film that relies on carefully-constructed framing to fuel the atmosphere.

The Time that Remains is a subtle cry for justice, not just for the Palestinian people but for all the world’s people who suffer from oppression and poverty. The use of humour diffuses the tension of such a cry without diluting the sting of its message. The film makes fun of Israeli people (especially soldiers) but not in an unkind way. And, as I mentioned, the Israeli people represent all those in the world who, blindly or knowingly, contribute to the suffering of others. There can never be too many good films which deal with issues of injustice.

The Time that Remains gets an easy ***+ and, because of its 2011 American release date, this 2009 film may even make my top ten of the year. My mug is up.

Super 8

2011-06-14T01:56:00.005-04:00

I knew so little about Super 8 (virtually nothing) that I didn’t even know it involved kids, let alone that it was a film about kids. I'm not particularly drawn to films about kids, but the drama involving the kids is what makes Super 8 work, at least to some extent.

Super 8 is written and directed by J.J. Abrams, whom I have previously described as the Steven Spielberg of the 21st century. Here Abrams makes that comparison very obvious, as Super 8 feels a lot like Close Encounters and ET. It is even set in the time those films were made (1979). Indeed the whole film feels like Spielberg with a darker edge. And the first hour, during which we follow a group of kids as they try to make a horror film, is as good as many a Spielberg film (and that’s saying something; no director has more films in my top 150 than Spielberg). To say a little more about the plot, let me add that the filming is interrupted by a colossal train wreck which, within seconds, draws the attention of the air force. And that’s all I will say about that.

I should probably just stop my review there and let you experience Super 8 without further comment. But knowing how valuable low expectations are, let me lower your expectations. I throughly enjoyed, and was very impressed by, the first two-thirds of the film, a drama focusing on two kids and their fathers. The performance of the two kids (Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning) is truly remarkable and overshadows the work of any of the adults. Unfortunately, the overarching plot goes elsewhere (though Abrams wisely considers the drama to be the heart of the film). Super 8 is generally referred to as “a monster movie.” Since even I knew that going in, I will assume most readers do as well. The ‘monster movie’ did not work for me at all. It was derivative and boring and altogether anticlimactic. In other words, as a sci-fi film, Super 8 was a major disappointment to me.

I confess to watching and enjoying Abrams’ recent TV shows (LOST, Alias, Fringe) but there is something about Abrams that worries me. Like Spielberg, Abrams has the pulse of the masses. He can do no wrong. But I have been disappointed with both of Abrams’s last two films (Star Trek and Super 8). In both films, the best parts were those that didn’t involve the overarching plot. Those plots, which I found uninteresting, were just too important a factor for me to allow the rest of the film to sufficiently impress me. But then, I am one of those strange people who think Spielberg’s A.I. is a much better film than ET.

So, in spite of the great first half, Super 8 gets only *** from me. My mug is up, but I was hoping for something more exotic inside.

I just read Ebert’s review and was gratified to see that he also thought the first half of the film was much better than the last half. But he was more forgiving of this than I was.

Midnight in Paris

2011-06-13T00:34:00.004-04:00

Regular readers will not be surprised to read that Midnight in Paris is my idea of good romantic comedy. Not that long ago I wrote that Woody Allen at his worst (Hollywood Ending, made in 2002, is his worst, in my opinion) is still better than most of what passes for comedy dramas today. Midnight in Paris may not be Woody Allen at his best (the days of Manhattan and Annie Hall) but this is easily the best film he has made since Everyone Says I Love You in 1996.

Midnight in Paris tells the story of Gil and Inez, an engaged couple visiting Paris with Inez’s parents. Gil (well-played by Luke Wilson) is a would-be novelist who likes to look back to the Golden Age of 1920’s Paris and wants to move to Paris to write. Inez (Rachel McAdams is well-cast here) wants to stay in California and wants Gil to go back to what brings in the money: screenwriting. When they meet acquaintances whom Gil finds pretentious, their paths diverge and Gil finds himself caught up in a late-night Parisian world beyond his wildest fantasies. I refuse to say more, because this is a Woody Allen film I will recommend to all my readers and you should try not to know more than this before watching the film.

Midnight in Paris is full of wonderful performances (Marion Cotillard and Kathy Bates are standouts), witty and intelligent dialogue, great music and fascinating cinematography. It is very funny (much funnier than Bridesmaids, in my opinion), even if watching yet another actor (Wilson) play Woody Allen is a little distracting. And it is very romantic in a classic kind of way. The film touches on interesting themes like finding meaning in our empty existence and why so many people think life was better in some golden days of the past. I wish it had done a little more with these ideas, but you can’t have everything.

If I wasn’t so stingy with giving four stars to a film, I would give Midnight in Paris four stars. But since I am stingy, I will stay with ***+ and add that it will almost certainly be in my top ten films of 2011.

X-Men: First Class and Why My Mug is Almost Always Up

2011-06-09T00:17:00.006-04:00

I have deliberately avoided going to see most of the biggest hits of 2011. Films like Hangover II, Thor, Fast Five, Pirates 4 and Kung Fu Panda 2 are not my idea of a fun evening at the cinema and are not likely to get an upward facing mug from me (the chance that one or more would surprise me is always there but the odds are against it). Since I am not being paid to write reviews on my blog, my life is too short to watch films that are unlikely to get three stars from me. You may recall that my foundational criterion for giving a film three stars is that I am willing to watch the film again. If I am not willing to watch it again, it gets two and a half stars or less. But since I happen to believe that any film worth watching once is worth watching twice, it follows that any film I do not think is worth watching again is not worth watching the first time. So that, my friends, is why most of the films I watch and review tend to get a mug up.

I had pretty well decided to lump X-Men: First Class with the films mentioned above, but the reviews were better than those for the others and Katrina recommended it, so I gave it a chance this evening, going in with fairly mixed expectations. Sigh. On the whole, I found X-Men: First Class a rather tedious film. The truth, which I am sure I have shared here before, is that action generally bores me. The action in First Class was definitely of the boring variety and there was altogether too much of it. When the action stopped, I occasionally found the film diverting, especially when James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were alone on the screen. So I would be willing to watch it again, thus assuring that my mug will once again be up.

X-Men: First Class takes us back to the early days of Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender). With the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a backdrop, they join together with a group of young mutants to take on another group of mutants led by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who had helped train Magneto, but also killed his mother.

The acting was mixed. I can’t say I was overly impressed by Bacon or January Jones (maybe that’s because they were the “bad guys”), but Jennifer Lawrence was very good as Raven (no surprise there after her fantastic performance in Winter’s Bone) and McAvoy and Fassbender were, as hinted at above, great to watch. The score was a little over-the-top, but that’s probably to be expected in an X-Men film. The cinematography was good enough but I am growing tired of CGI.

Needless to say, I found the violence in First Class quite disturbing, especially since kids of all ages are going to find their way into the cinema. I did appreciate the mutant versus ordinary human theme, as always, and Xavier’s generally pacifist mentality. He tries valiantly to keep Magneto from killing Shaw but in the end the filmmakers still seem to require that the ultimate bad guy (a nazi, no less) be gruesomely killed at the end of the film, and all sorts of violent mayhem was still apparently necessary to save the world. Sigh.

So, mostly because I enjoyed watching the three primary actors, X-Men: First Class gets *** and my mug is up.

Just What You Were Waiting For: Two Relentlessly Depressing Films (Biutiful and Enter the Void)

2011-06-06T21:51:00.012-04:00

Biutiful

When, early in Biutiful, our protagonist (Uxbal, played marvellously by Javier Bardem) finds out he has an advanced form of cancer and only weeks to live, you know we are in a for a fun time. And we get just as much fun as you might expect. No, I lie. We get ever so much more fun than you might expect.

Uxbal is a loving father of two adorable but troubled kids. He is separated from his wife (Marambra, played by Maricel Alvarez), who is bipolar and abusive. To make a living, Uxbal works for people who exploit recent illegal immigrants to Barcelona. He is breaking the law, but we can see that his heart is in the right place. He actually cares for the poor people he is exploiting, even before he gets diagnosed and tries to put his life in order (which includes various attempts to help the immigrants). But Uxbal’s attempts to help immigrants, like his attempts to help his wife and children, are consistently thwarted.

The result is a film that spirals downward into tragedy and despair. But Javier Bardem does such a great job of making Uxbal believable in his criminal goodness that Biutiful worked for me. I found Uxbal a very sympathetic character and had no trouble understanding the war of clashing values which made his life so difficult both before and after the diagnosis.

Biutiful is directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who made the great Amores Perros and two underrated films (21 Grams and Babel). Since I’ve loved everything he has done, I was not surprised that I would find Biutiful to be a compelling well-made film which is once again underrated (IMHO). ***+ My mug is up.

Not wanting to end my day with such a depressing film, I decided to enter the void, watching a film about which I knew nothing except that it was highly recommended by both Gareth and Jett on The Film Talk. In the immortal words of Captain Alberto Bertorelli: “What a mistake-a to make-a”.

Enter the Void

Wow! Wow!

Enough said!

Well, no, if I just give Enter the Void two wows (and you know that automatically means a minimum of ***+) then you might decide it is something you should watch, even if it is relentlessly depressing. Do not make that mistake unless you are ready to go on a trip unlike any you have ever been on in a theatre or at home (unless of course you use substances like LSD).

Enter the Void, written and directed by Gaspar Noe, is not like any film I have ever seen. If I had ever used LSD myself, I might compare this film to going on such a trip, but I do not have that experience to compare it to. So I buckled up as much as I could and went on a ride down into the dark underbelly of Tokyo, where our protagonist (Oscar, played by Nathaniel Brown) begins by taking a mesmerizing trip of the aforementioned variety (and we get to join him) before going to a bar to sell some drugs to a friend. Well, the next thing you know Oscar is dead and for the next two and a half hours we get to experience death through his eyes and mind, including watching Oscar’s life flashing before his eyes, a life that had its wonderful sweet moments but also a few too many horrific ones that we get to experience more than once (oh joy!).

It felt like a very plausible death trip to me and who wouldn’t want to see what it’s like to be dead? You, that’s who. Unless you are up for the ride of your life (a very very slow-moving ride of your life). What I’m doing here is trying to warn people to stay away from Enter the Void (like the masses have certainly done to this point) unless you have the patience and stomach for it. If you do, you may be blown away like I was, but you’ll have to sit through an incredibly disturbing graphic scene of an abortion, among other graphic scenes (sex, drugs, not too much violence), and be prepared for all that relentless depression.

Enter the Void is an amazing mind-blowing work of cinematic art that finds a new way to explore the human search for connection which so many people in our world hunger for. It is beautiful and ugly, awful and awe-full. It is an experience that requires at least a large-screen television, it is an experience you may want to share with friends (too late for me) and it is an experience you may not want to have again. It is worthy of at least ***+ and I am tempted to give it more but it didn’t leave me as numb as Requiem for a Dream (not for lack of trying), so I’ll stay at this for now. My mug is up, but be warned: this is a potent brew that not everyone is ready for.

The Experiment

2011-05-31T00:16:00.003-04:00

The Experiment is an American remake of a German film with the same name made in 2001, which was based on a real experiment conducted in California in 1971. I thought Das Experiment was a powerful and well-made film and assumed an American remake would be inferior. It was. I guess others agreed, as The Experiment didn’t even make it to theatres.

Written and directed by Paul Scheuring, and starring Adrian Brody and Forest Whitaker, The Experiment tells the story of 24 men who volunteer (i.e. for the promise of $14,000 if they see it through) to be divided up into guards and inmates at a penitentiary for two weeks. The idea is to see what happens when some people (one-third) are given power while the majority are deprived of their civil rights. They are told that the experiment will end if anyone gets hurt - no violence is allowed. It does not, however, take long for all hell to break loose.

We are never given any information on the people conducting the experiment or why they let it get out of control and this is either a huge flaw in the film or a very deliberate omission. If the latter, more thought should have been given to the audience frustration caused by the lack of explanation for countless details in the film.

In the “making-of”, Brody says The Experiment shows how violence does not resolve conflicts, it only creates more violence. The film’s producer talks about how the the film helps people to think about themselves and the people around them in a more conscious way. Scheuring admits he’s not trying to change the world, but he hopes people will think about how the dynamics of power in a prison setting is a microcosm of the world (in any group of people, and in the world itself, there are those who will assume power and those who will be deprived of it) and that it will be seen as a humanizing film.

I agree that this is a very thought-provoking film. Indeed, that is why the German original got four stars from me. And I could be persuaded that the points made above could be drawn from The Experiment. But the central message of this film, to me, is that, when pushed hard enough, everyone will break in a matter of days, even committed pacifists. It's just human nature. I am not convinced that is true and this film did not do a credible job of convincing me. Whatever the German original was trying to do, it at least seemed more credible.

It doesn’t help that neither the characters nor the performances are very inspired. The simplistic screenplay is at least partly to blame for this. The Experiment feels at times like a mediocre made-for-network-TV film. Even worse, the average acting sometimes makes the film feel like a reality show. As a result, the psychological insights, which should be the film’s strong suit, are hard to find.

The Experiment succeeds only insofar as it creates an interesting premise that provides much food for discussion. As an inspired filming of the premise, it is a major disappointment and I recommend sticking to the German version. **+ My mug is facing the wrong way.

A Special Night in Winnipeg

2011-05-30T01:43:00.001-04:00

Somehow a prairie town like Winnipeg seems an unusual and undeserving setting for the most elaborate concert set ever created and one of the best concerts the world has ever seen. But tonight it hosted both.

Yes, U2 came to Winnipeg and over 50,000 Winnipeggers came to see U2. It was a cold and windy evening and the only people who weren’t shivering were those who brought parkas. Bono shook off the cold with his arms outstreteched: “You’re Canadian, we’re Irish. What’s cold? We’re real men (and women).”

Cold breezes aside, it was a magical night and an overwhelming assault on the senses, with the elaborate 360 set producing a technological display that only U2 is capable of. Wow!

U2 somehow managed to play over half of my ten favourite U2 songs (some are relatively obscure so that is an achievement), doing a splendid job on favourites like Stay (Faraway, So Close), Pride (In the Name of Love), Miss Sarajevo and Sunday Bloody Sunday (which featured images of the 2009 election protests in Iran) before highlighting the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International by talking about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese women who won a presidential election and found herself in prison for most of the last twenty years. But sustained public pressure finally achieved her release. Walk On was the song used for this, followed by another favourite: One.

You can see more comments about U2 elsewhere on this blog. In my opinion, they are the best rock band ever and they put on another magnificent and inspiring show this evening. And for those of you living in New Brunswick, did you know that the 360 tour ends in Moncton on July 30? And I thought Winnipeg was small.

White Material

2011-05-29T18:06:00.003-04:00

Claire Denis’ White Material stars Isabelle Huppert as a French coffee plantation owner (Maria) caught in the midst of a civil war in a small African country. Filmed in Cameroon, it is actually based on recent events in Ivory Coast.

Maria is intent on getting her coffee harvested and ignores the warnings to flee for her life. With her son and her ex-husband, she stays behind while all the workers run. At the same time, the wounded rebel leader, known as The Boxer, takes refuge at the plantation. Nothing that follows is predictable. Nothing that follows is happy.

White Material is a dark, evocative and very intense film that relies on one great actress’s great performance to tell a story with few words. Huppert as Maria drives the entire film, though we are never sure why she does what she does. Is her determination a form of insanity (a word used more than once in the film)?

White Material moves back and forth in time, making it all the harder to follow the unfolding events, but this grim tale grabs hold of you anyway and keeps you anxious and engrossed throughout (though it is a very slow-moving film).

The violence in White Material is minimized and not graphic, but it is very effective, especially in a scene which shows what happens to the child soldiers who have joined the rebels. As the horror of the war plays in the background, there is a sense that Denis is sympathetic to the rebel cause. She grew up in that part of Africa and no doubt knows well the effects of French colonialism on the countries of West Africa.

Beautifully and carefully shot, White Material’s images and story will haunt me for some time. A very solid ***+. My mug is up.

Lebanon

2011-05-25T00:41:00.002-04:00

If you thought watching an entire film from inside a coffin was claustrophobic, try watching an entire war film from inside a tank.

Lebanon is an Israeli anti-war film about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The entire film takes place in a tank, though we see things happening outside the tank through the tank’s telescopic gun sight. What we see, both inside and out, is horrific. The four men trapped inside the tank during those first 24 hours of the invasion are college-age boys who have no idea what they are doing there (they just want to be home with their families). As a result, it does not take long for them to crack, each in his own way, as the tank turns into a hot, stinking nightmarish cage surrounded by the enemy (the word ‘hell’ comes to mind). Few films so clearly depict the psychological impact of war.

Mesmerizing, terrifying, agonizing and incredibly intense, Lebanon uses one small window to reveal the destructive and dehumanizing power of war for soldiers and civilians on all sides. But there are moments of profound humanity. Indeed, the most profound scenes in the film are three long scenes of men peeing.

Lebanon would not have been near as powerful a film were it not for the stellar performances by the four key actors - truly amazing work.

Apparently, the 1982 invasion of Lebanon must have been a particularly traumatic experience for the soldiers who participated. Lebanon was written and directed by Samuel Maoz, who was himself inside that tank in 1982, and a few years ago we had Waltz With Bashir, also written and directed by a man who had been an Israeli soldier during the invasion (Ari Folman). Could it be that such former soldiers are not convinced the invasion was justified and are haunted by what they were asked to do? Will these films have an impact on a country constantly at ‘war’ with its neighbours (even those within its borders)? The fact that both of these films were made with the help of Israeli government funding suggests there is reason to hope.

Like Bashir, Lebanon gets ****. My mug is up.

The Illusionist

2011-05-23T20:18:00.002-04:00

I just watched a French film without any subtitles. Either my ability to understand French has taken a sudden leap forward or I watched a film that had no dialogue. Sadly, the latter is the case. Directed by Sylvain Chomet, the director of Belleville Rendez-vous (Triplets of Belleville), The Illusionist is a gorgeous animated film with virtually no dialogue but with a wonderful score, written by Chomet.

The film itself was written by Jacques Tati, still making films almost thirty years after his death. Originally written as a live action film starring Tati (who made such classics as Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and Playtime), The Illusionist’s protagonist is drawn to look and act like Tati. This protagonist is a late middle-age magician named Tatischeff whose shows play to small disinterested crowds, forcing him to move from city to city in search of work. People want to see rock bands, not magicians. When his travels take him to Scotland, he befriends a young woman who idolizes him and allows her to follow him and eventually live with him in a small apartment in Edinburgh (he sleeping on the couch). Tatischeff does what he can for the woman but his prospects continue to decline.

The Illusionist can only be described as a melancholy film. Even the gorgeous animation has a melancholy feel throughout. For fans of Tati, it suggests that the days when people adored films like Mr. Hulot’s Holiday are, like the days of magicians and puppeteers, behind us. The fact that critics appreciate The Illusionist far more than average viewers supports such a conclusion. People like me who think The illusionist is a masterpiece that could not possibly be given less than **** therefore run the risk of being called elitist film snobs by their brothers. So be it.

If the idea of watching a gorgeous melancholy animated film with no dialogue appeals to you (and I know there are people who enjoy that kind of thing), don’t miss The Illusionist. My mug is up.

Rabbit Hole

2011-05-21T11:41:00.002-04:00

A young boy runs out into the street after his dog and is struck and killed by a car. He was the only child of Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Rabbit Hole begins eight months later. The situation is not original and neither are the marital struggles resulting from the boy’s death. Rabbit Hole, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, survives this lack of originality by giving us wonderful performances by Kidman and Eckhart (as well as Dianne Wiest as Nat, Becca’s mother), an intelligent screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire (based on his Pulitzer-prize-winning play), great cinematography and enough surprises, including the surprising presence of humour, to keep it from being predictable.

Anyone who has seen Mitchell’s previous films (Shortbus, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) will be amazed at how mainstream Rabbit Hole feels (the above-mentioned films are about as far from mainstream as you can get). Rabbit Hole almost qualifies as a family film. Ironically, it is precisely the understated mainstream reactions and decisions which come as a surprise, because one constantly expects all hell to break loose (especially if one has made the questionable decision to watch von Trier’s Antichrist, which deals with a very similar theme). Taking this non-sensationalist road probably would not work for a Hollywood film, but it works for Rabbit Hole thanks in large part to the quality of the writing and acting. It’s amazing (especially for Mitchell) how real one can make a film even without sex and foul language. While I am not offended by either one, I do hope other directors are taking note.

Perhaps the most original contribution Rabbit Hole makes to an old story is the role of Jason (newcomer Miles Teller), the teenage boy who was driving the car. Becca befriends Jason, who writes graphic novels, and Jason becomes a central plot device revealing how both Becca and Howie are dealing with their grief. That they are dealing with their grief differently goes without saying, but Rabbit Hole does an amazing job of not taking sides even as it focuses on Becca’s struggles. Becca’s family also contributes vital pieces to the plot and there are some marvellous scenes involving Nat.

One of those scenes is a telephone argument between Becca and Nat about God. Nat also lost a son and it was her belief in God which saw her through her grieving process. Nat wants Becca to see how such a belief might help her as well, but Becca cannot see how a loving God could allow such tragedies to occur. In the end, Becca must find some other belief which will allow her to set aside her hatred of God.

I won’t say how Rabbit Hole ends, but I will say that I found Rabbit Hole to be a surprisingly honest and wise film and I am eager to hear what Walter, with more experience and training in psychology, has to say about it (Walter, you need to put this on your list for Wild Goose, if it’s not there already). A very solid ***+. My mug is up.

Of Gods and Men

2011-05-17T23:57:00.006-04:00

Like Bridesmaids, Of Gods and Men opened in Winnipeg this past weekend. But where 200 people ‘joined’ me at the cinema yesterday to see a silly comedy, only 15 people ‘joined’ me today to watch a profound and exquisite work of cinematic art. Was I surprised? Of course not. Sigh.

Of Gods and Men, directed by Xavier Beauvois, tells the true story of nine French monks living in a monastery in the mountains of Algeria who get caught up in the Algerian Civil War in 1996. The monks have a very close relationship with their Arab neighbours and the local Muslim leaders. They provide medical help, supply needed clothing, and take part in Islamic worship. When the local village and monastery are threatened first by ‘terrorists’ and then by the Algerian army, the monks have to decide wether to stay and support their neighbours or take the safer path and return to France or move to another part of Africa.

Of Gods and Men does a marvelous job of conveying life in the monastery. The entire film is paced like that life. At first it is a slow relaxed pace, for it is a simple life of study, work and serving the poor among whom the monks live. The slow pace continues throughout the film but the relaxed atmosphere is soon replaced by one of constant tension, created by the escalating violence around the monks and the daily waiting and agonizing decision-making. In the midst of it all is one beautiful scene after another.

But what makes Of Gods and Men special is the way it depicts Christianity (and specifically Catholicism) in an almost entirely positive light. It does this by presenting a group of men whose idea of following Jesus is to serve others, help the poor and the sick, show compassion on all around them (whether they are considered friends or enemies), resist all offers of armed protection and forgive those who threaten their lives. No wonder such a Christianity is portrayed positively (a portrayal capable of winning awards at Cannes)! What kind of twisted perverted type of Christianity is this anyway??

Of Gods and Men nevertheless presents a very human portrait of the nine monks, with all their flaws exposed along with their profound love for each other and those around them. At the same time, the film goes so far as to humanize the Islamic extremists (‘terrorists’), partly through the humanizing actions of the monks towards them. And while the film centers entirely on the Catholic monks and their faith, it also shows a clear appreciation for Islam.

When the incredible rarity of the above is added to flawless acting (particularly by lead actors Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale) and great cinematography, I am willing to forgive almost anything on the way to giving Of Gods and Men ****. What I am forgiving is the lack of depth to the dialogue and decision-making of the monks. But really, in a film in which about 90% of the dialogue is religious, how can I possibly complain about such a trivial detail. My mug is up and full of the finest java out there. Technically this is a 2010 film but given its May release in Winnipeg, I think I am justified in putting it in my top ten of 2011, which is assured.

Bridesmaids

2011-05-16T23:57:00.004-04:00

Story time.

Thinking about popular films I should see before doing the film year in review at the Wild Goose Festival, I decided I needed to go to Bridesmaids, whether or not I had any interest in watching it. One newspaper described it as a women’s version of The Hangover. You all know how much I hated The Hangover (easily the worst critically-acclaimed film I have seen in the last decade), so this enthusiastic endorsement only served to severely lower my expectations for Bridesmaids (never a bad thing). That Bridesmaids was likewise getting critical acclaim made absolutely no positive impression on me this time, especially when the one brief line I read from Roger Ebert called it a cross between a Chick Flick and a Raunch Comedy. Oh joy!

Not having a wife around to cajole into joining me and unable to persuade my daughter to do so, I dared to enter a theatre full of women on my own. It being opening week of a popular film, there were about 200 people in the cinema; roughly ten of them were male: nine young men on dates and me. I have no idea what this crowd made of my presence and do not wish to think about it.

Bridesmaids started exactly where I expected it would, full of incredibly silly scenes which elicited endless laughter from the women surrounding me (I didn’t hear any male laughter, but maybe that wouldn’t have been possible) while barely drawing even a smile from me. The scenes were strung together in a haphazard way with no sense of one following the other and it felt like a bunch of long skits, few of which worked for me. One of these scenes, however, took place inside (and just outside) a bridal shop and I admit this scene was so …. (no word in the English language, that I know of, fits here) that, while I did not join in the uproarious laughter around me, I felt something - perhaps amazement at the daringness of what I was seeing, perhaps disgust, perhaps actually feeling wowed in some way.

At this point, I should mention that Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig, is about the adventures of a group of bridesmaids (duh!) and particularly about the maid of honour (played rather well, if occasionally way over the top, by Kristen Wiig), whose lifelong best friend is getting married while she is despairing of ever meeting the right man. When another of the bridesmaids turns out to be a competitor for the bride’s best friend status, the war is on.

About halfway through this rather long comedy, I was thinking that a comparison to The Hangover was fully warranted and that I had just thrown $10 away. But then all of a sudden Bridesmaids got serious, taking me completely by surprise. Not all of the serious stuff worked for me either but some did (especially the attempts at humanization), including a number of scenes involving a cop played by Chris O’Dowd, who was perfectly cast, and I found myself actually interested in the film for a while. The ending didn’t do anything for me, but I never expected it to.

When I left the cinema, I wondered whether one really had to be a woman to fully appreciate Bridesmaids (not that being a man helped me appreciate The Hangover). Many women were still laughing in the lobby as I walked out. Clearly they thought they had been watching an hilarious comedy. Even with the laughter all around me (how different this experience wold have been if I had been alone), I don’t believe I actually laughed more than two or three times. And yet, there was something about Bridesmaids (unlike The Hangover) which made me think I could be talked into watching it again. And on the way home, I drove over the Disraeli Bridge at precisely the moment when the giant almost-full orange moon rose over the Red River, which somehow vindicated my evening out. So I am forced to give Bridesmaids ***. My mug is up.

Buried

2011-05-15T17:57:00.001-04:00

There are few situations I can imagine that are more terrifying than waking up to find yourself buried in a coffin. This situation has been used in some great films (e.g. Dutch version of The Vanishing) to potent effect. But can you make an entire film out of it? More specifically in this case, can you make a film in which every second takes place in the confines of a wooden coffin? I would not have believed it possible, but it apparently can be done, because that is what Buried does.

Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, an American truck driver working in Iraq who is captured and put in a coffin with a cellphone so he can communicate with his captors and those who might pay the ransom. The incredible terror, anguish and frustration of this predicament is conveyed well by Reynolds and aided by the fact that the entire film focuses on him. And unless you suffer from claustrophobia (in which case you should not get anywhere near Buried), there is an appropriate level of claustrophobic tension generated throughout the film.

But something in Buried didn’t work for me. Perhaps it was the phone conversations, which occasionally didn’t feel real. Perhaps it was the kidnappers, whose actions (as conveyed over the phone) seemed to lack logic. Perhaps it was the feeling that it was a “gimmick” film (though it was certainly fascinating to watch how the filmmaker, Rodrigo Cortes, pulled it off).

Buried is the kind of film that should leave you numb for a while after watching, especially if it has an appropriate ending, which Buried has (for the most part). But I did not feel numb, which means the film did not engage with my mind at the required level. *** for effort. My mug is up but I won’t watch it again.

Generation Exile

2011-05-14T23:55:00.004-04:00

The third of the films we will be screening at Wild Goose is Generation Exile, a documentary made by Rodrigo Dorfman, who lives very near to the festival site. It is the story of people, including Dorfman himself, who were forced to leave the land of their birth and ended up in North Carolina. All of them are still deeply affected by their exile and are drawn to a nearby Sufi community. There, they think they have found the paradise they have been seeking, but such is not the case.

Generation Exile is a well-made documentary and I’m very glad we will be screening it and that we’ll have a chance to talk with the director. Dorfman was born in Chile and I found his own story the most compelling.

As mentioned, Generation Exile begins with stories of exile and then goes somewhere very different. In doing so, it remains constantly fascinating, but the relationship between the two parts of the film (between exile and the Sufi community) is never clearly explained and the result is a conclusion that is not fully satisfying. Nevertheless, it is a film that speaks in some way to all of us in the rapidly-changing world of the 21st century. It is a time when many people are longing for the kind of community where they can truly feel at home. ***+. My mug is up.

The fourth film we are screening at Wild Goose is Insatiable Moon, made in New Zealand.

Little Town of Bethlehem

2011-05-13T13:36:00.002-04:00

Little Town of Bethlehem is a unique and important 2010 documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, written and directed by Jim Hanon. It’s unique in various ways. For one thing, instead of focusing on the conflict itself, it focuses on nonviolent solutions. It does this by telling us the story of three men who grew up in Bethlehem: an Israeli Jew, a Palestinian Christian and a Palestinian Muslim. Coming from very different backgrounds and affected by the conflict in different ways, these three men nevertheless share a passion for finding a nonviolent way forward. Nonviolence itself is at the heart of the film and so Martin Luther King and Gandhi are also featured.

Little Town of Bethlehem is also unique stylistically; in fact, it is unlike any documentary I have ever seen. Fast-paced to a fault as it zips from one scene to the next, it is clearly aimed at a younger audience. That makes it ideal for something like the Wild Goose Festival (where we will be screening it), but it’s not always easy to follow the fascinating stories being told.

For decades now, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has lain at the very heart of the world’s violent struggles. Little Town of Bethlehem does not hide the issues involved, but it presents them in a way that diffuses tension. It is the way of humanization (in its telling of stories from three perspectives) and nonviolence (in its hopeful depiction of what nonviolence has accomplished and could yet accomplish). In the aftermath of the dehumanizing and violent killing of bin Laden, this is the message our world needs to hear.

Because I am not a fan of its style, I cannot give Little Town ****, but I will give it a solid ***+ and recommend it to all. My mug is up.

That Evening Sun

2011-05-10T23:53:00.001-04:00

It’s time to turn to highlighting the films we will be screening at the Wild Goose Festival.

That Evening Sun, a 2009 indie film directed by Scott Teems (who will be joining us for the festival) stars 85-year-old Hal Holbrook as Abner Meecham, a man who has had enough of life in a nursing home and returns to his Tennessee farm. Unfortunately, that farm has been leased by his son to Lonzo Choat, a man Abner does not like. Both men stubbornly claim their right to the property (both Holbrook and Ray McKinnon as Lonzo deliver great understated performances) and Abner takes up residence in a sharecropper cabin from which he watches the farmhouse he thinks is his. Sparks soon fly. Lonzo’s teenage daughter, played wonderfully by Mia Wasikowska (there she is again), tries to befriend Abner, with mixed results. Abner’s other support comes from his old friend and neighbour, Thurl, another great performance in a supporting role, this one by Barry Corbin.

As we get to know Abner, we realize there is more there than we first imagined and that Lonzo is not the only flawed character on the farm. Things get quite intense as the two men dance around each other, but nothing happens as one might expect, which is a rare treat.

Featuring great cinematography and a good score, That Evening Sun is a wonderful humanizing film about people trying to deal with their past and move on. It gets a very solid ***+. My mug is up.

Hanna

2011-05-09T23:55:00.003-04:00

Referring to my previous review, Hanna is proof that a bizarre film full of logical flaws can still make it big at the box office.

I knew just enough (which was still very little) about Hanna to have an instinctual feel that this would be a love-hate film for me. If I had known in advance that Hanna was a European film with a distinctly European feel, I would have guessed that this part of the filmmaking would fall into the love category. But I didn’t know that. Neither did I know that it would be a fairy tale, or that it would be such an odd film, which might fall into either love or hate. Or that the cinematography and score would be part of an overwhelming and unique stylistic vision, both of which fall generally into the love category, though in this case more because they wowed me than because they impressed me.

The mind-numbing, pounding loud music is clearly meant to make us feel small as we run away from the big bad wolf. There’s not much subtlety in Hanna, though some of the fairy tale allusions are more obvious than others (if you can imagine, it starts off as the story of a girl (Hanna) growing up with her father in a fairy tale house in the midst of a dark forest, utterly isolated from the rest of the world and its technological achievements, including electricity). As someone who grew up with the old German fairy tales and with countless nightmares about witches and wolves, Hanna felt to me like I was literally watching a nightmare. When, after the end credits, a voice announces “schlaf weiter” (sleep on), it blew me away (I thought I was the only one having a nightmare). Believe it or not, all of this also falls into the love category. As does the acting by all concerned (the big bad wolf is played by Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana is the father, and Hanna was impressively done by Saoirse Ronan).

So what is Hanna about, anyway, you ask? That would be telling. But any film depicting the story of a man training his 13-year-old daughter to be a lethal revenge machine, which then tries to convince us that this man loves his daughter and is somehow doing it for her own good, to protect her from the wolf (“one of you must die”) is in trouble from the start. And the end is worse than the beginning, though there is a brief illogical scene near the end in which Hanna says she is tired of hurting people or some such thing. It’s a very confusing sentiment under the circumstances (and given her training) and it is immediately belied, so I have no idea what to make of it.

Hanna is definitely a “Wow” film, and that’s a big plus, but it’s also a very violent film, as I suspected it would be, and that never impresses me. It impresses me even less when the most violent person in the film is a girl. From Mulan to the ‘girl with the dragon tattoo’ to Hanna, we are being shown that young women can fight just as well as men. Oh joy! What an achievement for gender equality! What I want to see is more films about young men who learn what most women know more instinctively than men: that fighting is pointless and achieves nothing of lasting value.

Hanna is the kind of film that deserves an even longer analysis (perhaps for a periodical), but I do not have the time for that this month. In the meantime, I am going to give Hanna a somewhat surprising ***+ for wowing me and freaking me out. My mug is up, but I’m not even going to glance inside.

Youth Without Youth

2011-05-08T23:54:00.001-04:00

I generally stay away from films which are panned by the critics. Life’s too short to waste on mediocre films (unless you are paid to review them). But Youth Without Youth intrigued me for many reasons, among which were the facts that it was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and that it was filmed mostly in Romania, a country I visited in 1994 because it was the setting for a novel I was writing at the time; a country that has always fascinated me. Until last week, I had never heard of Youth Without Youth, which was made in 2007, so its release was obviously not widely publicized.

One advantage in watching a critically-panned film is that one goes in with low expectations. And so not only was I not disappointed with the film, I was quite impressed with what it had to offer.

Youth Without Youth is a gorgeous film to look at, with old-fashioned cinematography at its finest (including minimal camera movement) and all the better for its beautiful Romanian locations. It also has a great score. The acting is not what I would call outstanding, but it is more than adequate. Tim Roth was generally convincing as Dominic, the protagonist, a man struck by lightning at age 70 who is only 35 or so when he recovers. Not only is he aging backwards, he is able to do amazing things with his brain, including reading books without even opening them and forcing an enemy to turn his gun on himself. And he has a weird double who does or does not exist on his own and with whom he discusses philosophy. If that sounds a little bizarre, it’s because this is one very bizarre film. But I like bizarre films which regularly surprise me. I can forgive much of such films.

Bruno Ganz plays the doctor who first treats Dominic and tries to protect him from the Nazis (the lightning strike happens in 1938) who want to do experiments on Dominic in order to duplicate his achievement. Alexandra Maria Lara plays Dominic’s first love, Laura, and then his second love, Veronica, who might have been Laura in a previous life but was certainly an Indian woman who lived centuries before and a woman in ancient Egypt, and so on (did I mention this was a bizarre film). And imagine my surprise to see Matt Damon make a cameo appearance.

Damon describes Youth Without Youth as an experimental film with noncommercial themes. Which probably explains why I had never heard of it. If I view the film as a dreamlike mystical poem (it is also very much about Dominic’s dreams, which are sometimes confused with reality), full of interesting ideas,I find it quite enjoyable. If, however, I try to make sense of what I am watching, I experience nothing but frustration. I had countless unanswered questions, like why are Dominic’s amazing powers of the mind never explored in any way and how much are those powers responsible for what happens to Veronica when she starts to age prematurely and so on. Nothing is satisfactorily explained and nothing comes together the way one would expect a conventional film to come together. But this is not a conventional film - it’s a beautiful eccentric mess which gets *** from me. My mug is up even if I’m not sure the stuff inside is safe to drink.

Broken Embraces

2011-05-07T11:48:00.003-04:00

I’ve been waiting a long time to see Pedro Almodovar’s most recent film (Almodovar’s films are always so gorgeous that I try to catch them in the cinema, but I missed this one while in transition between continents). Almodovar is one of my favourite European directors and has made a couple of my top 100 films of the past decade (Talk to Her and Volver), so I was looking forward to this, perhaps a little too much (i.e. the ever-dangerous high expectations).

The opening scene immediately put me on the defensive and my expectations did not take long to begin their fall. In that opening scene, which takes place in Madrid, a middle-aged blind man seduces, and has sex with, a beautiful young woman whom he just met when she helped him cross the street in front of his home. Anyone see problems with this? Perhaps if I had known exactly how pervasive the film’s undercurrent of dark humour was supposed to be, my initial response of disgust would have been tempered, but even after the film was over, I didn’t know whether Broken Embraces was supposed to be a dark comedy or a drama or a Hitchcock-like thriller.

The blind man is Mateo, a film director, and as we get to know Mateo (played very well by Lluis Homar) we realize that he is not only literally blind, he is also blind to the truth behind many pieces of his past, good pieces and tragic pieces (much of the film takes place in the past). So one assumes Almodovar is making a number of points in the film with his choice of a blind protagonist who happens to be a film director. Perhaps he is saying that directors like himself are somewhat blind to what they are making until their film is finished and/or perhaps he is saying that we are all easily blinded to the truth of what is happening around us. These are interesting things to consider and make Broken Embraces sound like a profound work. And maybe it is.

Broken Embraces certainly has a lot going for it. As already mentioned, Almodovar’s films are always beautiful to watch, full of rich primary colours and old-fashioned cinematography. And the acting is superb. Penelope Cruz, as Mateo’s lover (and perhaps the film’s true protagonist) does a great job, as she usually does for Almodovar. And Blanca Portilla as Judit, Mateo’s long-time friend and assistant, is even better. And the film is full of wonderful scenes.

So what’s the problem? Well, for one thing, the whole does not feel as satisfying as the individual parts. The plot is melodramatic in a way that can only be excused by seeing Broken Embraces as primarily a comedy. And perhaps that is what it is and I should have been laughing uproariously at the melodrama instead of grimacing. Or maybe it’s a cultural thing and people in Spain view the film differently. Whichever, for me there was a superficial feel to the film that prevented the profound ideas from taking root.

I reacted to Almodovar’s critically-acclaimed All About My Mother in a similar way, so maybe it’s a matter of taste and personality. Of course, I am not saying Broken Embraces is a bad film or that I didn’t enjoy watching it. Far from it. I found it very entertaining and am giving it a solid ***+. I just wish it had met or even exceeded my expectations. My mug is up.

Blue Valentine

2011-05-05T23:55:00.004-04:00

Three works of art in a row. This one is a distinctly American indie film showing in Winnipeg for the first time. Written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a young couple who have fallen out of love. Gosling and Williams here accomplish something rare and special in the acting world: their acting is TOO good. It is so good that they succeeded in making me feel uncomfortable from beginning to end of what is generally a depressing film (sorry, Walter, you will probably want to miss this one).

Blue Valentine is a love story of a sort. But instead of showing the young couple falling in love and getting married and then gradually falling out of love, it begins where their love ends and then takes us back to where it started. This has the effect of making the initial romance rather bittersweet. Because the film bounces back and forth in time in a carefully edited way, we see the many ways these characters have changed over the intervening six or seven years. One of the characters has changed in a largely positive way and is on a path of growth, the other has gone in the opposite direction and has even lost sight of any dream he once had.

Blue Valentine is a profound depiction of one ordinary couple’s life and marriage, with all the stresses that the above-mentioned changes can cause. Cianfrance has managed to create an achingly honest and real film, which is why it is so difficult to watch. As I suggested, even the tender and joyful moments are sad to see when we know the many dark moments ahead.

While I think the camera work is mostly or entirely handheld, this is one of those films where it’s so much a part of the way the story is told that I barely noticed. Blue Valentine probably deserves four stars for the brilliant acting alone but that uncomfortable feeling I had throughout discourages me (I needed something more than that), so I’ll settle for ***+. My mug is up.

Mademoiselle Chambon

2011-05-04T23:40:00.001-04:00

Yet another work of cinematic art that I watched a few months ago and never had a chance to write about. This 2009 French film isn’t at the same level as Turtles Can Fly, but if you enjoy beautifully-acted slow-moving European romantic dramas, then you will certainly want to check this one out.

Mademoiselle Chambon stars Vincent Lindon, one of my favourite French actors, as Jean, a contractor and happily married man who falls in love with his young son’s teacher (and violinist), Veronique Chambon, brilliantly played by Sandrine Kiberlain. I have given away the entire plot but it doesn’t matter because we all know what’s coming from early on. Knowing it is part of what makes the film so breathtaking. The other part is watching the way these two actors interact with each other, conveying their growing feelings with very little dialogue. Perhaps this duet is so successful because the two actors were once married to each other (and then divorced). Both performances are what can only be called understated.

Veronique could not be more different from Jean’s wife, Anne-Marie (played well by Aure Atika) and obviously this is part of what attracts Jean to Veronique. But what are Jean and Veronique to do with their mutual attraction? Clearly they know the consequences of going too far, so… Well, I won’t give away the ending.

Stephane Brize’s direction is flawless, as is the cinematography. So why am I not giving Mademoiselle Chambon four stars? Well, some films are a little too slow even for me and the middle of this one took just a bit too long. And the latter part of the film did not entirely work for me, though others will no doubt see it differently. I do give it a very solid ***+. My mug is up.

Turtles Can Fly

2011-05-03T23:54:00.003-04:00

Apparently I have never mentioned this masterpiece which would have been very high on my list of top 25 films of the past decade (available on this blog) if I had seen it prior to creating that list. It is also among my top 25 films of all time.

Turtles Can Fly is a 2005 Kurdish film made in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) by the acclaimed Iranian (Kurdish) director Bahman Ghobadi. The film takes place in a Kurdish refugee village just before the American invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 and uses humour and intense drama to convey a sense of life in Kurdistan at that time, especially as seen through the eyes of children.

In particular, we follow the exploits of an enterprising teenager called Satellite who hires children to disarm and collect mines which he then trades for useful things (like a giant satellite dish) at the local market. Among those working for him are a teenage girl and her brother, who has no arms. The boy with no arms carries around a young child (perhaps two or three years old) whom we are told (at first) is their younger brother. Satellite takes a keen interest in this orphaned family and develops a crush on the girl, with heart-rending results.

Using mostly non-actors, whose acting is incredibly natural, Ghobadi uses the story of a few days in the lives of these four young people to brilliantly depict the plight of the Kurdish people. Turtles Can Fly is not about the American invasion of Iraq or politics of any kind - it is a profoundly humanizing and moving tale about life in the villages of Kurdistan (where Kathy, my wife, is working as I write).

If this film has flaws, I didn’t notice them. It is a work of art in every way and should get the widest possible exposure. If you haven’t seen Turtles Can Fly and you’re on the lookout for one of the greatest films you’ve never seen, look no further. **** doesn’t seem like nearly enough for this gem. My mug is up and the stuff inside is magical.

Howl

2011-05-02T00:00:00.003-04:00

Allen Ginsberg was one of the most important poets of the 20th century. As a beatnik of the 1950s, his controversial poems challenged conformity, industrialization and dehumanization way ahead of his time. Howl is the name of his most famous poem, published in 1955. Two years later, the publisher was taken to court for violating obscenity laws. Howl, the film, takes us through that famous trial while giving us an insight into Ginsberg and letting us hear Howl for ourselves.

I love poetry but I have never been at ease with it, mainly because I like to understand what I am reading and many poems make that a challenging process. There are parts of Howl, the poem, that are fairly easy to understand; other parts are very obscure. And that’s why I enjoyed Howl, the film, so much. As James Franco, who plays Ginsberg, reads pieces of the poem throughout the film, we are treated to marvellous animation sequences which help people like me, who are more visually-oriented (even though I’m a writer - go figure), get a stronger grasp on what we are hearing. Strangely enough, this aspect of the film is what critics liked the least.

I happen to love the animation, but not everything about Howl works as well for me. Howl is not a typical film, not even a typical indie film. The courtroom scenes are fairly straight forward and, while not outstanding, they are done well enough, with some good acting from a strong cast (Jon Hamm and David Strathairn play the opposing lawyers and Bob Balaban is the judge; witnesses include Jeff Daniels and Mary-Louise Parker). Then there is a documentary part of the film, with Franco being interviewed as Ginsberg at the time of the trial. That is my favourite part and where I think Franco does his best work. Another part has Ginsberg reading his poem to some young adults in a bar. That works less well for me. A final part shows Ginsberg in the process of writing Howl and introduces us to the men in his life (Ginsberg was gay). This also doesn’t work as well for me, leaving me somewhat bored and without a clear sense of Ginsberg’s life and loves. But these five parts are woven together in an original and generally entertaining fashion.

Howl was written, directed and produced by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and they are to be commended for making such an original and imaginative film about an important man and an important poem, a poem that is all about being willing to express who we are, and what we want to say, openly and honestly. In many ways, thanks to people like Ginsberg, we’ve come a long way with this since 1955. But nowhere near far enough. Howl gets a very solid ***. My mug is up.

The Greatest

2011-05-01T02:35:00.002-04:00

This is an old-fashioned family drama, shot in a classical way, which would make one think first of Hollywood, but The Greatest is actually a low-budget indie film written and directed by first-timer Shana Feste. And it does feel like an indie film, for the most part.

The Greatest begins with the death of an eighteen-year-old boy (car crash) and then follows the grieving process of his parents, his younger brother and the girl he has just made love to (both were virgins at the time).

The critics weren’t impressed with The Greatest so I must confess that I almost certainly wouldn’t have watched it if it hadn’t been Carey Mulligan’s second film (filmed just after An Education). You’ve read my raves about this amazing young actress and she did not disappoint as Rose, the girl who finds herself pregnant and moves in with the grieving family. For that matter, all the acting was impressive. Susan Sarandon (always good) is flawless as the grieving mother and Pierce Brosnan gives one of his best performances as the father. Johnny Simmons as the brother also does well.

The cinematography is excellent and, while there’s not much music, what there is worked well. For a rookie, the writing and directing aren’t that bad either (the central theme of grieving is done well and feels real to me). But I did say “for a rookie”. There is at least one major hole in the plot, involving the mysterious background of Rose, some rather weakly written scenes, a general lack of originality throughout and and an ending that would certainly not impress the critics. I’m not a big fan of the ending either, but The Greatest was written and directed by a young woman and I think it’s clear she needed the film to end that way, so I can live with that. Personally, I’m thrilled that more and more women are making films.

While The Greatest may not have been the greatest, I was not at all disappointed that I watched it and give it ***. My mug is up.