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Inside Deep Throat (2005, Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato): 45
I, along with Dick Cavett (who oddly enough appears in this film as a commentator on the times), am one of the few people who have never seen Deep Throat. Watching this Documentary on its history though, makes me want to remedy that (and the original will once again hit theatres in a midnight madness kind of way very soon) - at least for some campy cheap kind of thrill.
Looking at it from the angle of porn once being about art and anti-establishmentism, as opposed to today's business-like factory farm porn industry, Inside Deep Throat tells the story of the little film that could (made for $25,000 / raked in over $600,000,000). It also shows how thanks to Nixon and an assorted assembly line of puritans, this was also the little film that almost didn't make it at all (its lead actor was even sentenced to five years in prison for his participation in the film). Funny at times and illuminating at times, Inside Deep Throat, still merely plays out as a rather stodgy look at the times - a thing that is of course ironic as hell.
-February 22, 2005
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The Interpreter (2005, Sydney Pollack, USA): 48
Such a slick film. Such great actors. Such an implausibly idiotic script. Sydney Pollack, who is great as Will's bewildered dad on TV's Will & Grace, has never really been much of a director. Able to grunt out some moderately enjoyable pieces, such as Tootsie and The Electric Horseman, Pollack has mainly had a career as an upper middle class studio hack - full of formulaic unimpressives like The Firm and his Oscar winner, Out of Africa. Here Pollack has again made a visually slick film that never manages to go any deeper than its own ultra-reflective surfaces.
Taking the global dilemma of African genocide, and putting a white face to it - a very white face, as in Nicole Kidman as a Southern African UN interpreter from the make-believe country of Matobo - manages to only downplay the plight of black Africa - in a rather backhanded manner at that.
Kidman, along with Sean Penn and a much-wasted Catherine Keener, give palpable performances - if only they were in a better film. A film that wasn't coincidenced into a laughable mess. The single gripping, nail-biting scene, which was a master feat of timing and supurb staging by Pollack, only goes to show how wasted the rest of this movie is.
The first film to be shot inside the United Nations headquarters, The Interpreter is as slick as it is soft, and the UN - unjustly lambasted by recent right wing naysayers - deserves a more higher ground to be shown in.
-April 27, 2005
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L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis, France): 71
The repulsed pulchritude of Claire Denis' filmography is (appropiatly) both a thing of visual erotica and repugnant horror - sometimes at the very same instant. Not unlike contemporaries and countrymen such as Gasper Noe, Catherine Breillat and Francois Ozon, as well as Frenchman by default, the Austrian born provocateur Michael Haneke, and those Eastern-born shock-jocks if you will, Shohei Immamura and Nagisa Oshima, Denis knows - and treads - that fine line between ugliness and beauty so well.
Unfortunately - for the most part - L'Intrus, Denis' film about one man and his myriad delusions (but are they delusions?), falls flat on too many accounts to be considered on the same level as many of her prior films (Beau Travail, her true masterpiece, heads that class). What L'Intrus does manage to do is periodically titillate the senses enough to keep itself above water, but not far enough up, I'm afraid, to be worth a second viewing (although I have heard of one critic hating the film the first time around and switching allegiences on the second time around - so who knows?).
-January 10, 2006
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JSA: Joint Security Area (2000, Chan-wook Park, South Korea): 36
Before Chan-wook Park became the revenge-fetishist Auteur that we all know and love, in OldBoy, he was a slick yet shallow-seeming huckster of top-line mainstream fare - particularly the formulaic JSA. Finally making it to US theatres five years after its completion (and three months after his 2004 film, OldBoy), this is the story of four men (two from each side), guarding the demilitirized zone on the border of North and South Korea.
A typical political thriller on par with the politicized films of Sydney Pollack - in other words, sleek and fashionable, but lacking in any but the lowest form of suspense and/or intrigue. We can see an inkling of the film stylist Park will become one day, and I suppose the highly homoerotic undertones (or maybe one should say more like blatantly overtoned), gives a touch of non-conformist to this otherwise bland atypical thriller also ran.
-July 7, 2005
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Jarhead (2005, Sam Mendes, USA): 49
There is a lethargy in Jarhead that seeps through its entire core. There is also a lethargy in the U.S. Marines of Jarhead that coils throughout the entire corps. Okay, that was a really pathetic attempt at wordplay, but then again, Sam Mendes' Jarhead is rather a pathetic attempt at showing the rigors of war. Okay, perhaps that was being a bit too harsh. Not necessarily a bad film - far from it, there are moments of intense beauty and impassioned, nearly surreal horror - Mendes' take on the first Gulf War (taken in turn from the same-titled autobiography of Private Anthony Swofford) is a sadly true diatribe on war and the effects it has on those trapped inside its swirling, ridiculous vortex.
There is a moment, at the end of the first act, when all these Marines are watching Apocalypse Now in their rec center. We see the famous Flight of the Valkyries scene, and as the Wagner blares out of the speakers and the Vietnamese village is strifed with gunfire and missles, these Marines - all ready for war to happen - go wild as if animals finally being able to taste the meaty flesh of another animal. The room is electric with testosterone and bloodlust. The men are screaming for the soldiers on the screen. Suddenly the projector is shut off, the lights go up and a voice comes across the loudspeaker. The voice tells these Marines that they are going to war. The bloodlust never abates. The taste of flesh is in their mouths. They are finally going to war. Of course, this is pretty much the most any of these soldiers will see of war. Their entire time in Kuwait is spent walking and looking and waiting. The lethargy sinks in. The bloodlust is never satiated.
This scene, along with perhaps two others (all completely surreal in the manner), are the heart of this film. The rest seems to be nothing more than filler, to harden up the cracks of an otherwise wishy-washy film. Mendes, who made the supremely overrated suburban dark comedy, American Beauty, and the strangely alluring, yet ultimately disappointing Road to Perdition, hits here with pretty much the same kind of film - primarily lackluster, to be occasionally stippled with bruvara images that never really connect outside of their own uniqueness.
-November 7, 2005
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Junebug (2005, Phil Morrison, USA): 71
This film was probably the biggest - and most legitimate - surprise of the cinematic year for me. The only bigger surprise came at the New York Film Festival, when I was devastated by my utter distaste for von Trier's Manderlay (after adoring Dogville), but this surprise was a much more welcomed one. With expectations at the middling to lackadaisical level, I was pleasently refreshed by the dance that is Junebug.
Well acted on all fronts - the somewhat overpraised Amy Adams and the sorely underpraised Celia Weston were the highlights in a great ensemble - Morrison's debut film is as funny as it is endearing as it is unique. Never a hint of oversentimentality in the sharply acerbic screenplay. Not a great film, but a strongly good one - especially considering my attitude going in.
-October 7, 2005
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Rois et reine (Kings & Queen) (2005, Arnaud Desplechin, France): 79
Emmanuelle Devos plays Nora as one might portray the very center of the universe - if said center of the universe were a neurotic failure at love and life. Meanwhile, Mathieu Amalric plays Ismaël, Nora's clown prince (or ex-clown prince I suppose is more accurate) as the most bumfuzzled put together musical genius cum asylum inmate ever on screen.
Both Devos and Amalric play their parts to perfection (ed. note: Devos won Best Actress at the 2nd Annual Cinematheque Awards) in Desplechin's adroitly manicured and atypically convoluted film (second in cinematic wonderment only to his Esther Kahn back in 2000).
The story of one women (Devos) and the men that revolve around her center of the universe thing - her dying father, confused son, the displaced father of her child and Ismaël, the albeit wriggly, yet most stable person in her life. Sometimes a quirky comedy, sometimes a morose tragedy, Desplechin's Rois et reine is an actor's tour de force stage, full of the deep dark secrets of relationships. Beautiful and brilliantly acted. 'nuff said.
-March 20, 2005
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Kontroll (2004, Nimrod Antal, Hungary): 76
Kontroll is the kind of film that Jean-Pierre Jeaunet (Amelie, A very Long Engagement) would make, if he wasn't tethered down with so much cutesy-pie marshmallow fluff that make his films nothing more than visual eye-candy with absolutely no vitamins or minerals whatsoever. Antal's film - his first - is both a visual eye-popper (at least in a darkened Eastern European kind of flavour) and an emotionally tolling wunderkind.
Taking place entirely in the underground caverns of the Budapest subway system (complete with an opening monologue sorta-disclaimer/sorta-endosement from a nervous-looking Budapest Subway Manager), Kontroll is full of every creature one could imagine lurking about these darkened caves. Gang-like commuter-harrassing ticket-enforcers with delusions of grandeur, bitter middle management desk dweebs, a narcoleptic doofus, a mysterious cloaken killer who gets his jollies pushing innocent bystanders in front of fast-moving trains and even a girl who inexplicably wanders around the subway dressed in a big teddy bear costume. She is merely so commonplace that the only response toward her appearance is when one subway ticket-checker asks if the teddy bear has a ticket.
Full-blown cerebral surreality (there is, for some strange unresolved reason, even a rave happening at one point in the middle of the subway station) in the vein of a somewhat funnier version of fellow Hungarian Bela Tarr, Antal has posed a grand comic drama into a refreshingly quirky international hit (getting raves all over the globe). I can't wait to see Antal's follow-up.
-April 30, 2005
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Kung Fu Hustle (2004, Stephen Chow, Hong Kong): 67
Full of fun little sight gags, a la the Zucker Brothers, and some pretty fucking awesome fight scenes, courtesy of the same choreography team that gave us the punches, kicks and swinging swordplay of The Matrix AND Kill Bill, but lacking any real emotional heft that made the visually stunning backdrops of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and the aforementioned Kill Bill fly with furious histrionics and spectacularity.
Roger Ebert called it a mix between Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan, Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny, and I can see all those influences in Chow's film, even if they are rather inferior here. The comic timing of Keaton. The elaborate mishmash of flying limbs that Jackie Chan brings to his films. The cocky yet lovable cinematic worship of Tarantino. The pliable fluidity (and Roadrunneresque chase scenes) of Bugs Bunny and friends. I'd like to add here, that there are also references to everything from Spider-Man to The Shining to The Untouchables to (of course) the films of Bruce Lee. Chow's film is also laden with a hell of a lot of in-jokes, or at least in-jokes if you happen to be the type of chop-sockey addicted über geek that Quentin Tarantino is. Not to add myself to that list (I had to look this fact up), but the man who plays the Landlord of Pig-sty Alley was once the stand-in sparring partner of Bruce Lee.
All-in-all, a pretty fun film with some pretty fun things to watch and listen to - even though it will never go on the mantle with the films it is being compared to - a good film just for its irreverent self-mockery and simultaneous self-worship.
-April 24, 2005
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Land of the Dead (2005, Gearge A. Romero, USA): 72
It has been 37 years since George Romero put the walking dead on screen in Night of the Living Dead. It has been 26 years since his Dawn of the Dead creeped out America. It has been 20 years since Romero last brought us those flesheaters he made so famous, in his wreck of a third film, Day of the Dead. Now, Land of the Dead, not quite as bad as the last time, but nowhere near the audacious seductiveness of the original two films, makes its screen debut - finally. The last time we went to see Romero's zombies in a theatre, Jon Parr's St. Elmo's Fire was probably playing on the car radio on the way to the theatre.
Not brazen enough to be a good film, and worst of all, it just isn't that scary. Zombies normally creep me the hell out. Can't explain why - maybe it's the lumbering and loping they do, but then Danny Boyle's fast moving Zombies from 28 Days Later had the same creepy effect. Here though, with their grunting in some mock communication and their carrying of weapons, they just seem like some sort of renegade military faction. The scare is gone and for the most part, so is the social conscience - although there is some throwaway bits that give a good social kick to them. But in the end, all I can say is - the scare is not there.
-June 27, 2005
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Layer Cake (2004, Matthew Vaughn, UK): 46
Sure, Daniel Craig is one of the most talented actors around these days, although nobody knows who the hell he is - or at least the general public doesn't know (well, if he gets the James Bond gig, that will surely change). Sure, Daniel Craig looks and feels a lot like the next Steve McQueen (director Vaughn even emphesizes that similarity by posing Craig in stylized McQueenesque angles, if that even makes any sense). Sure, the appearances of Michael Gambon and Colm Meaney bring a sense of angry Englishman to the pot. Sure, all these factors come together to create Layer Cake, but none of them stopped my wife from getting up no more than thirty-five minutes into the film and retiring to the lobby of the Midtown Cinema to read her new copy of the O. Henry Prize Short Stories.
My own first reaction to Matthew Vaughn's Layer Cake, a tepidly lukewarm we've-seen-it-all-before kind of typically moody Tarantino-wanna-be Brit gangster flick, was a resigned coolness to the whole affair, but then when I thought about it and realized that it was just a tepidly lukewarm we've-seen-it-all-before kind of typically moody Tarantino-wanna-be Brit gangster flick, my opinion, although not as drastically dismissing as my wife, who was still out in the lobby, was of a more cold nature. Matthew Vaughn, producer of a coupla other similar Brit gangster flicks (Guy Ritchie's uninspiring Snatch and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels) knows no more about making a stylish film than any other Europoptrash johnny-come-lately out of the Manchester psuedo-punk electronica scene.
Sure, Daniel Craig gives it his Steve McQueen best, but sadly to no avail, because all we end up with is a highly overrated tepidly lukewarm we've-seen-it-all-before kind of typically moody Tarantino-wanna-be Brit gangster flick - with but a flicker of hopeful hopelessness.
-June 4, 2005
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Look at Me (2004, Agnes Jaoui, France): 61
This is a film full of great naturalistic acting, a sharply witted script and a strongly verbalized directing style - the only problem is that it's just not that interesting. This film should be interesting - it plays like vintage 1980's Woody Allen - and director Jaoui gives it a realistic non-acting-style flare (or should I say, non-flare - these people are not talking like movie characters talk, they are talking like real people talk - complete with unspoken inner explosions that never boil past their surfaces).
The story of a young girl, Lolita, braving not only her weight problem (at least in the eyes of society), but also a self-absorbed half-absentee father and a well-meaning but mean-spirited step-mother. Add to this a manipulative boyfriend and a voice teacher who is only using Lolita to get close to her bourgeois writer father, and you get the makings of a possibly tragic tale of depression and anger. Instead though, Jaoui fills the screen with a rather dark and acerbic wit - much like a somewhat less pretentious and more modernly hip Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde.
It is for these many reasons that I find it hard not to like Look at Me, but sadly enough, there is also just enough lacking here to make the truly great film that seems to be just out of reach. Overall, this is a well played film venture that languidly ends up being somewhat forgettable - regretably forgettable, but still forgettable.
-May 21, 2005
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March of the Penguins (2005, Luc Jacquet, France): 38
Pretty. Wonderous. Touching. Funny. Remarkable at times. Like a big screen version of a Discovery Channel special. Otherwise, rather boring and uneventful. Alas.
-Jan 18, 2006
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Millions (2004, Danny Boyle, UK): 45
Who would have thought that the man who brought us the terrifyingly surreal Trainspotting, the macabre dark comedy Shallow Grave and the morbidly frenetic 28 Days Later, could pull off a sweet-natured children's fable - and do it with very little saccharine aftertaste. Okay, Boyle's film does flatten itself into near über-sentimentality during its final twenty minutes or so, but before that we get to enjoy a wry (and sometimes wicked) little comedy about the British pound, the new Euro and what happens when the two collide.
Damian, recently rendered motherless by tragedy, and hallucinating, among others, St. Peter and St. Francis of Assisi, has fortune suddenly fall into his lap - or actually onto his cardboard-constructed hideaway by the railroad tracks. It is the final week before England's pound system transfers to the new Euro currency and after a semi-foiled bank heist, Damian finds himself the proud new owner of several hundred thousand pounds. Damian's big brother, Anthony, flaunts the money like a miniature gangsta rapper who only knows how to spend spend spend. Damian, on the other hand, wants to do good with his half - he wants to help the poor and downtrodden, just like the Catholic Saints he idolizes like rock stars.
With many of the visual nuances that made his other films memorable - albeit in a much more light-hearted manner - Boyle has punched out a pleasently witty and deftly mannered new film A new film that may go deeper into the questions of good and evil than is immediately noticeable. Never really going too deep - it is a "kids" movie after all - Boyle still manages to stay on track through most of the film. That is until the sugar-laden finale nearly ruins it all.
-April 29, 2005
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Moments Choisis: Histoire(s) du Cinema (2004, Jean Luc Godard, Switz/France): 72
How does one describe a film that is such a sensory overload, it needs to be seen to be grasped? Like this... *&^!&$#!^!!@*&&%##@#$@#$@#$&*&*&&^##!@~!*&*&?$#
Not that I don't want to explain it, but how does one explain Post-Modernism anyway? Godard's latest, a wrap-up of his decade long Post-Modern history of Cinema, is a visual melting pot of everything from old film clips to stock footage of war and desolation. His attempt at showing the end of civilization - at least civilization as we know it - through the "eyes" of Cinema, may be more bang than buck, but what a spectacle he puts together. Seen at MOMA, and making an appearence at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Godard's film love affair with Cinematic glories may never get a US theatrical release, but should be seen by any and all Cinephilia. A collage of his own mind, Godard - the master manipulator - plays like Nostradamus on acid. But hey, that's a good thing right?
-November 29, 2004
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My Summer of Love (2004, Pawel Pawelowski, UK): 73
There is nothing more intense than two teenage girls in love. Everything else seemingly drops off the map. Girls are already more openly emotional than boys (and that is not meant in any sexist way, just the facts - boys may have the emotions, but hide them in fear of punishment from bullies of all types). Add to that the intensity of a first love and you have a quite possibly super-obsessive relationship. What you get in My Summer of Love is more than mere intensity and/or obsessiveness. What you get is a volcanic explosion of emotion - love, lust, fear, anger, remorse, hatred, confusion et cetera. The film's tagline is "The most dangerous thing to want is more." - a truer statement has never been uttered, at least in any descriptive of this film.
Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt - both unknowns - are the two girls who fall in love one Summer in the English countryside, and both of these girls - who hopefully will have long careers (especially the firebrimmed sexual powderkeg Ms. Press) - play off their vivid relationship with both aching hunger and emotive horror.
Although ending on a rather predictive sour-tasting note (is anyone going to surprise us anymore!?), My Summer of Love leads us down that inevitable path with conviction and cunningness - all the way until (almost) the end.
-July 12, 2005
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