Ten recent reviews

I Vitelloni (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953)
A nostalgic look back at boyhood from Fellini? Impossible! OK, maybe not so impossible. In fact, a significant part of his catalog features his memories of provincial youth and this one is perhaps his finest early example of it, centered around a group of friends making that painful transition from their fly-by-night runaround ways into adulthood - most abruptly in the case of Fausto, who is made to marry a young woman he's gotten pregnant instead of following through on his plan of skipping out of town. While they're on honeymoon, the rest of his group scams, schemes, slacks, and dreams big without doing anything about changing their situation. But the specter of their forcibly adult-ed friend hangs over things and they start to worry about really facing up to life. That's basically the thrust of it, though of course in Fellini's hands, he really invests the people with a life that my description lacks. He understands the young, small town dreamers who would like to think they're one big break from turning their lives around and he's in sympathy with their plight, even if he's not uncritical. Before he started making his films into intricate puzzles and three-ring circuses, he made these types of character studies. This is one of the best - possibly the best - of his early works.

Ashes of Time Redux (dir. Wong Kar-Wei, 2008)

Kar-Wei Wong's romantic tangle unwound a bit to be easier to follow and I'm not sure it improves things at all. I found the original version a little tough, but somehow this more circularly organized take on things seems to lose a little of the mystery, even if it's been constructed of the same materials that made up the other version. I liked it the way it was, I guess, even if it meant that I had to come back a few times to really get to the heart of the film. Given Kar-Wei's strengths in constructing multiple layers and multiple timelines in his best works, I'm wondering just why this one ended up being re-worked. It's still a good film and it was a treat to see it again, but I prefer it the way it was.

Ghost Ship (dir. Mark Robson, 1946)

Another solid Val Lewton cheapie that fulfills its ambitions to being a good film, this time without as many of the supernatural/thriller elements that are present in most of his other films of the period. As always, there are 'A' performances from 'B' actors, a script that's way stronger than the unpromising and misleading title would have you believe, and an atmosphere of creepiness even as it works toward a more conventional drama. A seaman takes to a new ship helmed by a notoriously hard captain only to find that he's beyond "hard," he's nuts. But at sea, with the cap'n in charge, what can you do about it? That's the dilemma facing our hero here, and it's done nicely in the film. It's more about how this kind of life can suck out a person's soul, not about said souls returning from the beyond. Maybe less exciting than some of Lewton's other great films of the period, but it's certainly worth seeing.

Ichi the Killer (dir. Takashi Miike, 2001)

I can't figure Miike out. Certainly he's got a flair for the outrageous, and this is by far the most outrageous of his four films that I've seen, but I don't know if he's got anything up his sleeve beyond shock value. I mean, here's a film about a timid and lethal assassin (Ichi), motivated and manipulated by a man tangentially involved in the Yakuza. The second man's motives are dirty, Ichi doesn't exactly draw our sympathy, and the ample time spent with the masochistic Yakuza boss doesn't really draw us into his psyche at all. I guess that's kind of the deal with Miike's films that I've seen - he's got a set of ideas that get no more complex than your average comic book; a character has his simple motivation and that's enough to power the film for him. There's no pathos, nothing believable to grab on to, just a flashy show of violence, blood and guts that's maybe entertaining but hardly something that can make me think much about the characters involved, much less anything beyond the confines of the film.

Tokyo Twilight (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1957)
This is as overtly (melo)dramatic as any Ozu I've ever seen. That's not to say that it's not good, just that there are dramatic outbursts onscreen that are uncharacteristic of his work and come off as pretty startling and unexpected. Two sisters - one troubled and pregnant, the other separated from her husband - live with their father while they attempt to sort out their lives and deal with the knowledge that the mother they have long believed is dead may well be alive. I've read complaints about the plot, about the drama, but it doesn't really bother me, the film is still shot beautifully and anything with both Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara in it is gonna be worth my time, if perhaps not yours. It's not great, for sure, but it's certainly worth a look, and for those who find his films a little dry, it may even be a good way in to understanding his world better.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2008)

Shall we just accept that I'm probably going to enjoy everything coming out of Judd Apatow's stable of Freaks & Geeks alumni and move on from there? Let me try for a second to explain why though - the thing that Apatow has fostered in his young group of writers that makes his films exceptional (within the confines of comedies centered around insecure young men) is that he encourages them to make character rather than plot the central focus of the films. And so here we have Jason Segel's variation on his F&G character - a slightly weird and obsessive wounded romantic who wants to get into a good relationship but has some trouble figuring out exactly how to make any headway with the opposite sex or any understanding of how odd he really is. So if the film shows women finding him somehow irresistible when his charms actually seem quite resistible, he's still got charms, like most of the leads in the Apatow films. It was funny for sure (especially Russell Brand's egocentric rock star), I bought the drama with a minimal suspension of disbelief, and I think that there's a good solid grounding in writing character here that makes the film far better than it could've been. Maybe it coulda been cut down a bit, maybe it coulda been sharpened, but I always prefer character-driven films to plot-driven ones, so I might have liked it considerably less if so.

Judgment at Nuremberg (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1961)
An exceptional pair of performances anchor this film to prevent it from becoming too preachy - Burt Lancaster and the great Spencer Tracy both set about giving some of the best work of their careers as (respectively) one of the Nazi judges on trial and the American judge brought in to act as part of the tribunal trying them. (Please note that this is not a slap at the rest of the supporting cast, nearly all of whom do superb work here, just that these two roles call for more from the actors, both of whom rise to the occasion.) Where it could easily have wandered into a mere recreation of Nazi horrors and condemnation of them, it's aiming higher, more broadly about the act of making sure that we do not let these things go once they're supposedly over and done with, ready to be buried. Nearly everyone in the film encourages Tracy's character to let bygones be bygones, drop things and acquit the judges but he persists, he wants to understand especially how a judge like Lancaster's moralist - and by extension anybody - could slide to condemning people to concentration camps from which they'd never emerge. The viewer gets to understand it too, understand that each compromise, each lie told to the self to accomodate things moves everyone closer to the atrocities that are only late in the film explicitly shown. I'm not fan of courtroom dramas, but this one really got me.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (dir. Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1943)Another great one from my chronological examination of Powell and Pressburger. Though it is perhaps not quite as exciting as 49th Parallel - and that's fine - it's yet another nuanced character study, which is what makes their films so great, or at least so interesting to me. Maybe it's a little long at 2 1/2 hours, taking time getting to where it's going in fleshing out the people involved, but there's never a scene where it feels like I don't want to be spending time with Blimp, with any of Deborah Kerr's three characters, or with Anton Walbrook's Kretschmar-Schuldorff - they're all so brilliantly drawn and acted that I don't mind that extra time. Anyway, it's a wonderful character study, putting aside even the extraordinary circumstances of the filming. Not as dazzling as I had expected for a wartime epic, but perhaps all the more affecting for the smart portrayals that it puts across that can cut across time like this.

City Lights (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
I've always found Chaplin just a hair too sentimental for my tastes, even while being fully engaged by his works - love the gags a lot of the time, but am not always on the side of The Tramp, as I think I'm supposed to be. That doesn't apply here. I found this brilliant throughout, totally engrossed and drawn in to the story beginning to end. The boxing scene in particular is great - I'd seen it before out of context and loved it then - but really, the bittersweet romance, the ups and downs with his friend the drunken millionaire, the ambiguous ending, they all add up to the most consistently entertaining and emotionally engaging of his films that I've seen yet. Helps too that I saw it with the Colorado Symphony performing the score live along with the film. Somehow Gold Rush and Modern Times both seem to have eclipsed this in the Chaplin canon and I don't know why, I think it's the best of the three, and though I haven't seen his entire catalog of full lengths I can't imagine them getting better than this. But unlike the reactions I had to the other two films just mentioned this one has made me really want to make it a priority to see them.

Katyn (dir. Andrzej Wajda, 2007)

Bringing an event heretofore not very public, especially something on the scale of the massacre that forms the main event of this film, almost automatically lends itself to a powerful cinematic adaptation. But it is at times too automatic as filmmaking, letting the event and story itself carry the weight of the film. There's no doubt that this was an event that partially defined the Polish experience of WWII (you can get a hint of its significance just by a quick look at the numerous Polish reviews on IMDB) - an entire generation of Polish officers are rounded up via a secret pact between the Nazis and the Russian army, then executed and buried in mass graves in the Katyn forest, an event later blamed by each entity by the other - but I found that it failed to draw me in the way a film trading in such heavily emotional material should have, relying not on Wajda's skills, but expecting story alone to carry it. In this, it's like dozens of films before it - a well-made, strong but curiously uninvolving film about a weighty, meaningful subject that means a lot to everyone who made it. The seriousness that the film has put across confers a lot of gravity to audiences, but despite fine cinematography, good performances, and a crafty script that juggles several timelines, I find that I'd rather go to his war films of the 50's and read a book about this topic.

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I believe that young lady is California dreamin'.

Afro-Cuba: Yesterday and Today
Bottle Rocket (Criterion Collection directed by Wes Anderson)

Chungking Express (Criterion Collection directed by Wong Kar-Wai) – Wong Kar-Wai's supposedly lightweight break from the rigors of completing Ashes of Time has proved to be as good as anything else in his catalog, if considerably less complex. More lively than the highly touted In the Mood for Love, easier to follow than anything he's done, and just as stylistically rich and obsessed with lonely longings and a past that won't let you go as anything he's ever made. (Patrick)

Hancock (2008)

Ron Howard: Spotlight Collection (8 DVD box set) – If I may quote the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant...ahem: "What? What? What?!!" (Dex)

Lady With the Dog
David Lynch: Lime Green set (9 DVD box set)
Mahabarata
A Man Named Pearl
Meet Dave
Over the GW
Pink Panther: Ultimate Collection (box set)
The Price of Sugar
Sounder
Space Chimps
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (Criterion Collection directed by Martin Ritt)

Still Life - Directed by Jia Zhangke, the leading presence from the "Sixth Generation" of Chinese directors (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang were the "Fifth Generation"), Still Life is a beautiful film filled with humor, compassion and a real understanding of the human desire to continue despite obstacles: as the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river looms over the lives of townsfolk who must leave their homes for the dam to see completion, a coal miner returns looking for his estranged wife, only to find a patch of grass sticking out of the water where his town used to be. A secondary story reverses those dynamics with a woman searching for her husband; yet after reuniting, they decide that too much time has passed. All the while, building up around these two stories, the viewer gets to see the social ramifications of Capitalist expansion as rural communities are being rapidly replaced by the industrialized progress that is building modern China. (Pike Bishop)

Johan Van der Keuken: Complete Collection Vol. 4
Visits: Hungry Ghost Anthology
Zeiram Duology

My Blueberry Blah

My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar Wai/2008/90min

I don't quite understand the blankets of praise piled upon Wong Kar Wai. To be fair, maybe I haven't given myself in to enough of his films. I've only seen 2 1/2 of them afterall. None have proven to me to be the Second Coming that so many cinephiles rave about. I saw In the Mood for Love several years ago, and the only thing that sticks with me is that bizzare ending with the rock formations. What was THAT about?!! 2046 makes any Tarkovsky look like Run Lola, Run. I turned it off halfway through. And My Blueberry Nights...well, it just kind of meanders. And maybe that's the point. It is a roadtrip picture afterall.

Norah Jones plays the scorned lover Elizabeth who decides to pack it up and head cross-country after learning her boyfriend was cheating on her. But not before striking up a friendship with the owner of a hole-in-the-wall diner. Her travels take her first to Memphis where she learns a lesson in forgiveness thanks to the crazy shenanigans of a local alcoholic sheriff and his freshly divorced wife. Then it's off to Reno where she learns the value of trust in the relationship of a compulsive gambler and her dying father. New lessons in hand, Elizabeth returns to the diner a year later to confess her love for its owner over a plate of blueberry pie and ice cream. The End.

Simplified, I know but let's face it, people watch Wong Kar Wai films for the overall look and aesthetic and here's where I have my biggest bone to pick. I was put off by the cinematography in this movie. Not by the colors or the framing, but by the choice to film certain portions of the movie using a hyper-stylized stuttering slow-motion technique. The idea, I suppose, is to give the movie a dream-like dimension. I found the liberal use of this creative choice distracting, and it pulled me out of the movie every time.

Kar Wai apparently got the idea for My Blueberry Nights after taking 2 different roadtrips across America. Yet, the whole movie plays like a foreigner's phony perception of Americana stereotypes. 50's-style diners tucked underneath overhead railways, convertibles on lonely stretches of desert highway, country bars and fistfights, and so on. It's all been done before, and better. Better acted too.

Much has been made of the casting of musician Norah Jones. Wai sought her out specifically for this role, and it's easy to tell why. She does have movie star looks. But her acting comes across as speaking meticulously rehearsed lines instead of embodying a character's actions and thoughts. Jude Law proves he's good for just about any role or character. And Natalie Portman, sporting one of those Southern accents that's only found on a movie set, is adquate enough here. The real acting award belongs to David Strathairn. Here's an actor who's always been around, but has lingered in the background like an awkward teen at a Jr. High dance. He never really has been given the praise he deserves even with his Oscar nomination just a few years ago. This is a performance that should've been talked about awards time, and he leaves the rest of his castmates in the dust.

There's more in the Wong Kar Wai filmography that requires exploration, and one of these days I'll get around to it. But from what I've seen so far, I'm just not convinced that should be anytime soon.

my blueberry blogging

Rachel Weisz waits breathlessly for Dex's latest reviews.

My Blueberry Nights (2007) - I hear two questions frontloaded onto any discussion of Wong Kar-Wai's American debut: one typically goes, "Is Norah Jones as bad as I've heard?" and the other is, "How does it look?" referring to Kar-Wai's divorce from longtime cinematographer, Christopher Doyle; answering these questions, and these two questions only, ostensibly lead the questioner to some kind of final judgment on the long-awaited film. Misplaced, and not so fair, but understandable nonetheless: Wong Kar-Wai - the beatnik auteur who directed the Hong Kong New Wave cult faves Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood For Love (2000), and 2046 (2004) - is held in pretty high regard by movie buffs. But Jones - whose character for all intents and purposes could just be called "The Ingenue" - does just fine, and cinematographer Darius Khondji's (Delicatessen (1991), The Beach (2001), The Ninth Gate (1999), Panic Room (2002) camera nuzzles up to the cast just like the lens should in a Wong Kar-Wai movie.

Instead, the flaws come by way of the script. Not the story - much like Jack Kerouac did, lovingly writing and rewriting the same book-length story a number of times, Wong Kar-Wai has carefully directed the same movie two, even three times (indeed, there's a lot here that one can see was lifted right out of Chungking Express), and the same lonely, longing archetypes pop up again and again in nearly all of his pics, even the martial arts one - but the script. The little moments and spaces of humanity and gentle revelation that adorn Wong Kar-Wai's HK films and make them such unique viewing experiences are hardly found at all in My Blueberry Nights. Kar-Wai's America seems fabricated, a little artificial, and with the exception of Jude Law's scenes, we get Method 101.

This is not to say My Blueberry Nights is a bad film - indeed, it was exactly what I needed when I saw it. But it's average, at best, and with this kind of cast and coming from this director, it's a disappointment.

Youth Without Youth (2007) - Francis Ford Coppola is not a director anymore, but the guy who directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. He's also a guy who takes interesting ideas and fucks them up - Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and now Youth Without Youth: a scintillating movie to look at that is about absolutely nothing and somehow feels like it was made 75 years ago. It made me sort of sad, frankly. Coppola was probably the first director I fell in love with, but it looks as though movies have passed him by. The only thing I got out of this was wondering what someone like Takashi Miike or Danny Boyle would have done with the material.

Lust, Caution (Se, jie) (2007) - Ang Lee's latest film is the often-brilliant story of a student and budding actress (Wei Tang) who, in a fit of patriotic fervor and blind, youthful exuberance, joins a start-up cell of resisters to the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. Tang's group plans to start small and prove their worth to the larger resistance movement, so they go about befriending the shallow, sad wife (Joan Chen) of a local collaborator (the always-marvelous Tony Leung), whom they hope to trap and assassinate; plans change, though, when the tightly-wound Leung begins to plot an affair with Tang.

Wei Tang and Tony Leung are absolutely fantastic, and the love scenes between the two leads have a delirious, uncomfortable intimacy - indeed, the story is a reflection on the roles people gladly throw themselves into, even in the midst of wartime, as well as the complexity hiding beneath those outward performances. Lee shows again that in many ways, he's become the kind of director the aforementioned Francis Ford Coppola was always supposed to be: a master storyteller who can move skillfully from genre to genre.

Joaquin's 10 Greatest Narrative Films of the 21st Century (so far, of course)

1. Talk to Her (2002) - I can never decide if All About My Mother or this film is my favorite Almodóvar. One thing is certain by a small margin: Talk to Her is his masterpiece, Spain’s enfant terrible at his most subtle, graceful and mysterious. He can take a rape, make its intentions come from love and deliver it to an audience so earnestly that we never question whether or not the criminal is a good person. We are convinced he is nothing short of an angel. That’s bold. That’s dangerous. That’s masterful storytelling. Almodóvar has an effortless control over this film that remains unmatched in his work, an auteur who listens to the organic heart of a story and then follows with his direction. His confidence and consistency make him the greatest European filmmaker of today.

2. Punch-Drunk Love (2002) - Paul Thomas Anderson exalted Philip Baker Hall in Hard Eight, made us pay attention to Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights and in Magnolia gave Tom Cruise the rare chance to personify the misogyny his franchise perpetuates. Now the comedic mogul Adam Sandler plays the loner, misfit angry man he always has, yet this time it’s heartbreaking. The harmonic forces of a blonde woman persistent to get a date, a peculiar small piano, a trail of pudding leading to Hawaii and brilliantly functional cinematography collide to save Barry Egan from himself. Equal parts Adam Sandler romantic comedy, New Wave and Warner Bros cartoon, Punch-Drunk Love is a breath of fresh air in our cynic-ruled climate. Simply put, it makes me believe in true love again.

3. In the Mood for Love (2000) - The language of this film defies time. I’m convinced if one were to watch every shot in reverse order (or any, for that matter), it would remain the same film and may perhaps even improve. It’s all about its tenor, that aching, bittersweet yearning for someone you have enough love and respect for to leave alone... or perhaps not. Do Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan consummate their affair? Wong Kar-Wai keeps this mystery preserved, creating an ageless, amorous, microcosmic enigma that easily earns its place among the greatest love stories ever told. So far and for good reason, In the Mood for Love is the only 21st century film to make the coveted “gold list” in Paul Schrader’s monumental effort to establish a true film canon.

4. Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Finally, the gays have their Gone With the Wind, their Titanic, and their place in the Hollywood conscience. Ang Lee’s approach to a closeted gay cowboy love story is stubbornly classical and abides by all the rules. This is precisely what makes Brokeback Mountain unique. For better or for worse, all the conventions and platitudes of heterosexual romance movies can now belong to Queer Cinema. This is exactly what we needed: an established, popular director to make a movie that grabs the attention of the masses and proves to them any form of love is valid and more in common with their own than they are lead to believe. It’s a miracle how good this film really is and how well it was received.

5. Dogville (2003) – Lars von Trier takes down the U.S. in a single blow with the first installment of his America trilogy. Dogville is long overdue karma, a scathing indictment of our small town mentality and exploitative disregard for the immigrant. Stripping away all the aesthetic fluff of narrative film shows what really matters is performance, which become all the more revelatory in their isolation from one another. This film is a sickening and engrossing Brechtian science experiment, similar to observing scared lab rats negotiate their way through a maze. Von Trier solely and justifiably bases this nightmarish vision on the imperialist media we are so hell bent on spreading worldwide. A foreign POV on the hypocritical myths we champion proves both refreshing and humiliating.

6. Children of Men (2006) – Kubrick’s 2001 and this film are the only science fiction movies that truly terrify me. Alfonso Cuarón gets the future right in Children of Men better than most filmmakers. Devoid of the genre clichés of flying cars, elaborate cityscapes and electronic gadgets galore, the future is accurately portrayed as our crumbling present day world suffocated by LCD and plasma screens advertising a government endorsed suicide. The ceasing of human reproduction often feels like the only fictional element of the film. All the violence, panic and desperation running rampant throughout possess a Direct Cinema quality most documentary filmmakers can only dream of. Cuarón’s vision of a rapidly disintegrating world in chaos is a plausible prophecy I can buy.

7. Far From Heaven (2002) - Todd Haynes’s tribute to Douglas Sirk is so faithful it hurts. Every detail is just right, from the blood-orange, Connecticut autumn leaves down to the aqua trim tablecloths. Watching Far From Heaven is a visual feast, a lesson in how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. And in true Hollywood melodrama fashion, the film is borderline psychotic. I’m madly in love with the Sirk aesthetic for all its garishly masked melancholy, its emotional alliance with Earth’s seasons and its heroines caught between a rock and a hard place. Melodrama is a tricky business, understandably shunned as misleading and banal. But when done right as in this film, I can only afterwards sigh and wonder when and where my Rock Hudson or Dennis Haysbert will find me.

8. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) – A stickler for details, Anderson is something of a nerdy alchemist obsessed with concocting the perfect grandiose vision only equal to the sum of its boundlessly diverse parts. The Royal Tenenbaums is a children’s storybook come to life, full of pretentious and wondrous archetypes who persist in staying locked in their failed dreams, crippled by their own shortcomings. At the end of the opening prologue, a young Richie Tenenbaum sets his hawk Mordecai free to the crescendo of “Hey Jude,” sending out an SOS for help from his family’s sinking battleship of squandered potential. How curious, classic and medieval a bird in flight over a New York skyline can become. For me, this is the most touching moment in Wes Anderson’s oeuvre.

9. The Incredibles (2004) - When Brad Bird and Pixar get together, I surrender to the so-called CGI revolution. I care about the Parr family. I understand their battle for and against familial conformity. I too want to be the greatest superhero dad in the world. All this from synthetic layers of shading, morphing and rendering? You bet. Most CGI cartoons stay afloat with gag after gag of endless pop-cultural references while Brad Bird’s visions strive for a real connection with our humanity. The likes of Shrek and Beowulf miss the mark entirely. The Incredibles is a prime example of how the instrument can only serve the artist, in this case the sharpest animation studio reaching its full potential in the hands of a master cartoon storyteller. CGI never felt so good.

10. Half Nelson (2006) – The setup is pure Disney: white, middle class basketball coach serves as guiding light to inner-city junior high students. The end result, however, is anything but. More naturally than most films, Half Nelson captures what it means to be stuck. All characters are imbued with an equivalent sense of anguish, the role of guru in constant flux between a coach with a drug habit, the drug dealer who indirectly feeds his problem and the at-risk adolescent girl they both want to save. This film balances the playing field within narrative territory typically forged for easy didacticism, forcing us to empathize with equally beaten citizens. Pious authority has no place here, only an unpretentious, surprising look at people reckoning how to break the hold their circumstances have them in.