Advertisements and plot synopses I read online told me that Will Gluck's new high school-set comedy Easy A is a modern take on Nathaniel Hawthorne's English class staple The Scarlet Letter. Having enjoyed both the book and the film, I'm wondering in what ways they are similar at all, apart from each work's respective protagonist donning the crimson "A". In The Scarlet Letter, the "A" stood for "adulteress"; In Easy A, I have no idea what the fuck Emma Stone is wearing it for, except as a way of showing that she feels ostracized. This "A" ended up being more of a problem for me than maybe it should have been. She's clearly wearing a huge, red "A" on her chest to school everyday. No one finds this odd, or even seems to notice, except for the tragically hip English teacher responsible for the reading assignment (Thomas Hayden Church).
Surprisingly, this is one of my two major problems with an otherwise very witty, and funny movie; I'll get to the other one in a moment. Emma Stone is particularly great as socially invisible highschooler, Olive Penderghast, who suddenly finds notoriety as a "slut" after she fibs to her best friend (Ally Michalka, currently on CW's "Hellcats") about losing her virginity to a college boy while Christian do-gooder Amanda Bynes eavesdrops in the girls' room. She uses this notoriety to fake sleep with other socially inept males in exchange for gift cards, thinking no one will get hurt, all the while waiting for long-time crush Penn Badgley to make a move.
The initial premise is a bit too much "only in the movies" for me, but the film goes way out of its way to stress its connections with the '80s high school classics of John Hughes to almost justify it. The best friend arc is eerily similar to the one shared by Lindsay Lohan and Lizzy Caplan in Mean Girls, but feels forced, as though the writer didn't know what to do with Michalka's character after the intitial set-up. Stone's relationship with her parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) is always a delight, but the characters straddle a thin line between charmingly funny, and bat-shit quirky. The only other important adult is Church's guidance counselor wife, Lisa Kudrow, who acts way more Phoebe from "Friends" than her serious arc could handle.
On the plus side, Will Gluck proves he can actually direct. I was worried Fired Up! was just a weird fluke of stupidity that somehow was very enjoyable. Nope. He even has some nice tricks that exaggerate the immediacy and fickle nature of adolescent emotions. I think it is no accident that the events can seem long-developing and epic, but all take place within a time-span of two weeks. That revelation felt almost brilliant to me. And again, I can't stress enough how great the whole cast was. Thomas Hayden Church's deadpan cracked me up every time he opened his mouth; Amanda Bynes takes on the Mandy Moore role in Saved and more than makes it her own; and Emma Stone owns every second of the movie with her wise-cracking, steely demeanor. She has given what is easily one of my favorite performances of 2010.
But here's the real issue with the film; why it can't be a teen movie classic. It brings up serious high school issues like gender dynamics and double standards, hypocrisies found in any given high school, and then it abandons them. It merely skirts the surface of the real world problems it wants you to think it's addressing. And it doesn't avoid its issues with more humor or general levity. Instead it takes a dark turn towards the serious; a move that almost kills the whole experience. Serious is fine, but this twist, involving infidelity and venereal disease, felt like it was from a different universe. It also became just another subject that writer Ben V. Royal felt the need to quickly get out of. It's a shame,too, given that other components of Easy A really hit right on the money.
Easy A: 7.3/10
Also, one serious character oversight. Emma Stone's Olive is very familiar with Victor Sjostrom's 127 version of The Scarlet Letter, one of the most beautifully filmed silent films I've ever seen, but when one of the boys gives her a giftcard to the local foreign theater, she scoffs at the idea of foreign cinema.
Silly
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Quiz time
You ain't nobody in the film blogosphere until you take one of Dennis for The Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. This year it's not 95 questions, so I decided to be somebody.
1) Classic film you most want to experience that has so far eluded you.
If this is in reference to any classic films I just haven't got around to yet, well, there are just too many to name. Most of Eric Rohmer's filmography, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, many film noir classics. If instead this is to be taken as a classic film loved by critics and audiences that I haven't enjoyed nearly as much, then I'd have to say Stayajit Ray's Pather Panchali. I watched this very recently and enjoyed its humble slice of life India, but I thought the heaviness toward the end of the film was just too much.
2) Greatest Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release ever
Either Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows, because the film is so great and it had some great extras; or their "Eisenstein: The Sound Years", featuring Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 and Alexander Nevsky. 2 of the most visually arresting films ever made from one of the greatest of all directors, all packed into one, cool looking box? It's almost too much
3) The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon?
The Big Sleep is the better novel, but The Maltese Falcon wins the movie battle. Marlowe is funnier than Spade.
4) Jason Bateman or Paul Rudd?
Both are so funny. Both appear in some terrible films. Rudd was in Knocked Up, Clueless, and a surprise guest appearance in "Veronica Mars." The guy knows what's up.
5) Best mother/child (male or female) movie star combo
Ummmm.... Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson. Am I right, or what?
6) Who are the Robert Mitchums and Ida Lupinos among working movie actors? Do modern parallels to such masculine and no-nonsense feminine stars even exist? If not, why not?
I'm not the film historian it takes to explain why, but they definitely do not exist today.
7) Favorite Preston Sturges movie
The Lady Eve. Sullivan's Travels is a close second.
8) Odette Yustman or Mary Elizabeth Winstead?
Winstead is just so darn purdy.
9) Is there a movie that if you found out a partner or love interest loved (or didn't love) would qualify as a Relationship Deal Breaker?
Personally, I believe we're all entitled to our own opinions, and whether someone is a good person or not does not, in any way, hinge on whether or not they like In The Mood for Love or not. Not all of my girlfriends have felt the same way....
10) Favorite DVD commentary
This might be a surprising pick, but I love Joe Wright's thoughts on his own Pride and Prejudice. He openly criticizes his flawed film, acknowledging choices that would have helped the film, and bringing a wonderful sense of humor to the proceedings that makes it incredibly enjoyable.
11) Movies most recently seen on DVD, Blu-ray and theatrically
DVD - Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion; Blu-ray - Friday the 13th; Theatically - Winter's Bone.
12) Dirk Bogarde or Alan Bates?
Bates
13) Favorite DVD extra
Usually anything on a Criterion disc.
14) Brian De Palma’s Scarface— yes or no?
Holy fucking God, no.
15) Best comic moment from a horror film that is not a horror comedy (Young Frankenstein, Love At First Bite, et al.)
Anytime Jackie Earle Hailey says anything in The Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
16) Jane Birkin or Edwige Fenech?
Gotta go with Jane Birkin here. Not an easy decision.
17) Favorite Wong Kar-wai movie
In the Mood for Love. Always.
18) Best horrific moment from a comedy that is not a horror comedy
Anything Jackie Earle Hailey says in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
19) From 2010, a specific example of what movies are doing right…
Mother is the only perfectly told film I've seen this year, so not story. Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World make a case for a new era of visual excellence.
20) Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans?
Chris Evans showed some serious chops in Sunshine, and some crack comic abilities in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
21) Speculate about the future of online film writing. What’s next?
It will continue. It will become increasingly less knowledgeable and grammatically incorrect. Am I the future of film writing?
22) Roger Livesey or David Farrar?
Neither. Sorry.
23) Best father/child (male or female) movie star combo
Kirk and Michael Douglas
24) Favorite Freddie Francis movie (as Director)
25) Bringing Up Baby or The Awful Truth?
Bringing Up Baby
26) Tina Fey or Kristen Wiig?
Wiig is proving annoying on SNL. Fey wins.
27) Name a stylistically important director and the best film that would have never been made without his/her influence.
Hitchcock. In the Mood for Love.
28) Movie you’d most enjoy seeing remade and transplanted to a different culture (i.e. Yimou Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
29) Link to a picture/frame grab of a movie image that for you best illustrates bliss. Elaborate.
Speak of the devil....
There's a reason you see this so much.
I like to take out Ruffalo and put myself in his place.
30) With a tip of that hat to Glenn Kenny, think of a just-slightly-inadequate alternate title for a famous movie. (Examples from GK: Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People)
I'm no Glenn Kenny, or funny person, but I'll try. In the Mood for Sex. Neighborhood of God. Peeping John.
The END!
1) Classic film you most want to experience that has so far eluded you.
If this is in reference to any classic films I just haven't got around to yet, well, there are just too many to name. Most of Eric Rohmer's filmography, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, many film noir classics. If instead this is to be taken as a classic film loved by critics and audiences that I haven't enjoyed nearly as much, then I'd have to say Stayajit Ray's Pather Panchali. I watched this very recently and enjoyed its humble slice of life India, but I thought the heaviness toward the end of the film was just too much.
2) Greatest Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release ever
Either Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows, because the film is so great and it had some great extras; or their "Eisenstein: The Sound Years", featuring Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 and Alexander Nevsky. 2 of the most visually arresting films ever made from one of the greatest of all directors, all packed into one, cool looking box? It's almost too much
3) The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon?
The Big Sleep is the better novel, but The Maltese Falcon wins the movie battle. Marlowe is funnier than Spade.
4) Jason Bateman or Paul Rudd?
Both are so funny. Both appear in some terrible films. Rudd was in Knocked Up, Clueless, and a surprise guest appearance in "Veronica Mars." The guy knows what's up.
5) Best mother/child (male or female) movie star combo
Ummmm.... Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson. Am I right, or what?
6) Who are the Robert Mitchums and Ida Lupinos among working movie actors? Do modern parallels to such masculine and no-nonsense feminine stars even exist? If not, why not?
I'm not the film historian it takes to explain why, but they definitely do not exist today.
7) Favorite Preston Sturges movie
The Lady Eve. Sullivan's Travels is a close second.
8) Odette Yustman or Mary Elizabeth Winstead?
Winstead is just so darn purdy.
9) Is there a movie that if you found out a partner or love interest loved (or didn't love) would qualify as a Relationship Deal Breaker?
Personally, I believe we're all entitled to our own opinions, and whether someone is a good person or not does not, in any way, hinge on whether or not they like In The Mood for Love or not. Not all of my girlfriends have felt the same way....
10) Favorite DVD commentary
This might be a surprising pick, but I love Joe Wright's thoughts on his own Pride and Prejudice. He openly criticizes his flawed film, acknowledging choices that would have helped the film, and bringing a wonderful sense of humor to the proceedings that makes it incredibly enjoyable.
11) Movies most recently seen on DVD, Blu-ray and theatrically
DVD - Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion; Blu-ray - Friday the 13th; Theatically - Winter's Bone.
12) Dirk Bogarde or Alan Bates?
Bates
13) Favorite DVD extra
Usually anything on a Criterion disc.
14) Brian De Palma’s Scarface— yes or no?
Holy fucking God, no.
15) Best comic moment from a horror film that is not a horror comedy (Young Frankenstein, Love At First Bite, et al.)
Anytime Jackie Earle Hailey says anything in The Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
16) Jane Birkin or Edwige Fenech?
Gotta go with Jane Birkin here. Not an easy decision.
17) Favorite Wong Kar-wai movie
In the Mood for Love. Always.
18) Best horrific moment from a comedy that is not a horror comedy
Anything Jackie Earle Hailey says in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
19) From 2010, a specific example of what movies are doing right…
Mother is the only perfectly told film I've seen this year, so not story. Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World make a case for a new era of visual excellence.
20) Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans?
Chris Evans showed some serious chops in Sunshine, and some crack comic abilities in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
21) Speculate about the future of online film writing. What’s next?
It will continue. It will become increasingly less knowledgeable and grammatically incorrect. Am I the future of film writing?
22) Roger Livesey or David Farrar?
Neither. Sorry.
23) Best father/child (male or female) movie star combo
Kirk and Michael Douglas
24) Favorite Freddie Francis movie (as Director)
25) Bringing Up Baby or The Awful Truth?
Bringing Up Baby
26) Tina Fey or Kristen Wiig?
Wiig is proving annoying on SNL. Fey wins.
27) Name a stylistically important director and the best film that would have never been made without his/her influence.
Hitchcock. In the Mood for Love.
28) Movie you’d most enjoy seeing remade and transplanted to a different culture (i.e. Yimou Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
29) Link to a picture/frame grab of a movie image that for you best illustrates bliss. Elaborate.
Speak of the devil....
There's a reason you see this so much.
I like to take out Ruffalo and put myself in his place.
30) With a tip of that hat to Glenn Kenny, think of a just-slightly-inadequate alternate title for a famous movie. (Examples from GK: Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People)
I'm no Glenn Kenny, or funny person, but I'll try. In the Mood for Sex. Neighborhood of God. Peeping John.
The END!
Friday, September 10, 2010
catch up
Busy!
The Great:
It Rains in My Village (Aleksandar Petrovic, 1968)
City of Pirates (Raul Ruiz, 1983)
Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960, Criterion)
Neighbours (Norman Maclaren, 1952, short)
The Good:
The Devil (Andrzej Zulawski, 1972)
The Seventh Horse of the Sun (Shayam Benegal, 1993)
My Childhood (Bill Douglas, 1972)
Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004)
Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjostrom, 1926)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2010)
L'argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, 1938, Criterion)
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
The Decent:
The Misfits (John Huston, 1961)
From the Clouds to the Resistance (Straub-Huillet, 1979)
Trees Without Leaves (Kaneto Shindo, 1986)
Centurion (Neil Marshall, 2010)
The Dark Wind (Errol Morris, 1991)
The Bad:
Little Monsters (Richard Greenberg, 1989)
Komodo vs. Cobra (Jim Wynorski aka Jay Andrews, 2005)
Next up is the summer television moratorium, along with the fall predictions
The Great:
It Rains in My Village (Aleksandar Petrovic, 1968)
City of Pirates (Raul Ruiz, 1983)
Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960, Criterion)
Neighbours (Norman Maclaren, 1952, short)
The Good:
The Devil (Andrzej Zulawski, 1972)
The Seventh Horse of the Sun (Shayam Benegal, 1993)
My Childhood (Bill Douglas, 1972)
Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004)
Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjostrom, 1926)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2010)
L'argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, 1938, Criterion)
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
The Decent:
The Misfits (John Huston, 1961)
From the Clouds to the Resistance (Straub-Huillet, 1979)
Trees Without Leaves (Kaneto Shindo, 1986)
Centurion (Neil Marshall, 2010)
The Dark Wind (Errol Morris, 1991)
The Bad:
Little Monsters (Richard Greenberg, 1989)
Komodo vs. Cobra (Jim Wynorski aka Jay Andrews, 2005)
Next up is the summer television moratorium, along with the fall predictions
Monday, August 30, 2010
World Cup
Super pretentious and always amazing film website MUBI is currently a Directors' World Cup on its forums. 128 directors representing healthy variety of nations and cultures. And of course, with all those serious film buffs nominating and managing the directors and each of their films used in a round, I haven't seen the majority. I missed all of Round 1 due to all sorts of reasons, not the least of which being the hugely intimidating amount of films I'd need to see to keep up. Round 2 began late Saturday with Terrence Malick's mostly perfect (and future Criterion DVD) The Thin Red Line facing off against Šarūnas Bartas' quiet and frustrating Few of Us. Bartas displays clearly a talent for beautifully composed shots and landscapes. Both films feature mainly internal conflicts, but Malick's use of silence is much more effective. The voting has just a few hours left with the films running neck and neck.
Match #2 features another Criterion film against a frustrating and slow, personal epic. Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 vs. Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun. Varda's film is universally considered a groundbreaking classic, which is why I was so surprised when I found myself defending it against my friends whom found it boring, monotonous, and empty. Silly kids. I found parts purposefully empty, but always giving insight into "Cleo's" tortured mindset. The final twenty minutes work amazingly to provide the viewer with a whole new perspective on the seemingly self-obsessed protagonist. Varda's cinematography is stunning, moving through several different techniques successfully and organically, including handheld and long, smooth tracking shots. The Quince Tree Sun documents a painter working to finish his masterpiece. It's a long and detailed look into the creative process. It would most likely be a cinema formalist's wet dream with all of its long, static shots and apathy towards any sort of plot development. It never worked enough emotionally for me. It looks like Varda has a steady lead currently, but anything can happen in the day or so of voting it has left.
Today's Match #3 is Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law (CRITERION! WTF!) vs. Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Seriously, Criterion. This ends after this match). This is no contest, whatsoever. I love Jarmusch, I hate TAOSWOOE (as I like to call it).
MUBI.com is what's up. I guarantee that you'll at least find out about films and directors you've never heard of before. Outside of the forum's, great critics, such as Glenn Kenny, publish articles there; and I've had the chance to see several films through the site long before they were released in theaters (Revanche, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's A Letter to Uncle Boonmee).
I know that sounds a little too much like a paid endorsement, but I legitimately love the site. And I'll be writing up on a lot of movies that are competing in the Cup. I haven't the time for every film of every match of every round or anything, but I'm trying to get through a bunch.
I also watched two aggresively stupid films: Ken Russel's Tommy and John Stahl's Magnificent Obsession. Tommy was at least fun, and visually stimulating. I wouldn't even call it a bad movie; it's just a stupid one. Magnificent Obsession, on the other hand, was pretty terrible. I mean, if you're going to be the source material for a Douglas Sirk melodrama made 20 years later, couldn't you try a little bit harder to put one single iota of rational or credible emotion into your film? Geez.
It's too early for sinus buildups, but I got 'em anyway. Maybe tomorrow I'll breath comfortably again? If not, it's another day of couching it up, this time with Ingmar Bergman's television cut of Fanny and Alexander. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Match #2 features another Criterion film against a frustrating and slow, personal epic. Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 vs. Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun. Varda's film is universally considered a groundbreaking classic, which is why I was so surprised when I found myself defending it against my friends whom found it boring, monotonous, and empty. Silly kids. I found parts purposefully empty, but always giving insight into "Cleo's" tortured mindset. The final twenty minutes work amazingly to provide the viewer with a whole new perspective on the seemingly self-obsessed protagonist. Varda's cinematography is stunning, moving through several different techniques successfully and organically, including handheld and long, smooth tracking shots. The Quince Tree Sun documents a painter working to finish his masterpiece. It's a long and detailed look into the creative process. It would most likely be a cinema formalist's wet dream with all of its long, static shots and apathy towards any sort of plot development. It never worked enough emotionally for me. It looks like Varda has a steady lead currently, but anything can happen in the day or so of voting it has left.
Today's Match #3 is Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law (CRITERION! WTF!) vs. Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Seriously, Criterion. This ends after this match). This is no contest, whatsoever. I love Jarmusch, I hate TAOSWOOE (as I like to call it).
MUBI.com is what's up. I guarantee that you'll at least find out about films and directors you've never heard of before. Outside of the forum's, great critics, such as Glenn Kenny, publish articles there; and I've had the chance to see several films through the site long before they were released in theaters (Revanche, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's A Letter to Uncle Boonmee).
I know that sounds a little too much like a paid endorsement, but I legitimately love the site. And I'll be writing up on a lot of movies that are competing in the Cup. I haven't the time for every film of every match of every round or anything, but I'm trying to get through a bunch.
I also watched two aggresively stupid films: Ken Russel's Tommy and John Stahl's Magnificent Obsession. Tommy was at least fun, and visually stimulating. I wouldn't even call it a bad movie; it's just a stupid one. Magnificent Obsession, on the other hand, was pretty terrible. I mean, if you're going to be the source material for a Douglas Sirk melodrama made 20 years later, couldn't you try a little bit harder to put one single iota of rational or credible emotion into your film? Geez.
It's too early for sinus buildups, but I got 'em anyway. Maybe tomorrow I'll breath comfortably again? If not, it's another day of couching it up, this time with Ingmar Bergman's television cut of Fanny and Alexander. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Internet woes
My New Orleans apartment has been without internet for the past week. I hate when my movie build-ups are forced upon me. I am the only one who gets to purposefully neglect the promise I made to myself to write about films, gosh darnit!
I'll keep that promise in the most minimal way possible.
2010:
Piranha 3D was a surprising, trashy, gory blast. Adam Scott might be my hero. Seriously, what can't he do? I can, without any reservation, confirm that this is better than Mirrors.
Winter's Bone featured some fantastic performances, and a couple not great ones, along with some superb direction from Debra Granik. It's too bad the tension she builds magnificently mostly dissipates by the end.
Soul Kitchen is Fatih Akin's new comedy. It's broad and conventional, predictable and silly, but damn if it isn't sincere and heartwarming enough to forgive it everything. The joy of life conveyed in this film is pure cinema-magic at its best.
Japan:
Memories, from 1995, features three different stories from three different anime greats (supposedly). Like any omnibous film, the entries are of varying quality, but at least they're all good. The highlight is the first entry, The Magnetic Rose, from Koji Morimoto and a screenplay from the very recently departed Satoshi Kon (Millenium Actress, Paprika). It keeps with Kon's usual themes of memories and dreams to create a haunting story of eternal love, with the help of a beautiful, classical score that ties in wonderfully with the narrative.
Taboo, Nagisa Oshima's latest film (it's been 10 years), is elegant and visually stunning; but it may be a bit too ambiguous for it's own good. The narrative explores ambiguity in a black and white scenario, featuring a character of possibly ambiguous sex. The narrative itself at a certain point becomes quite ambiguous as Oshima really starts to force the viewer to work things out.
Criterion (and affiliates):
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie is the final piece to Criterion's Bergman box-set which includes The Silence, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light. It's a TV documentary series following Bergman through the production process of 1961's Winter Light, beginning with the script stage and ending with viewer reactions following the film's premiere. I don't love Winter Light, and the 5 episodes each run a longer than they need to; but it is informative, at least.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes is on the By Brakhage anthology. I hear the guy made all kinds of films, even pioneered styles. That's great. I don't like autopsies in their full, unblinking eye glory. It's totally silent, really forcing you to feel whatever it is an autopsy makes you feel. I couldn't take it.
Le Jour se Leve is available on Criterion's Essentials line, a cheap bare-bones brand they use to reprint some of their films and release other acclaimed classics they don't have time to release regularly. Marcel Carne's pre-noir, bleak love story is clunky and awkward, but features some fantastic shots and some palpable atmosphere to make it worth your time. I prefer his earlier Port of Shadows and i absolutely adore his post-war Children of Paradise.
Rivette:
Jacques Rivette has to be one of the most challenging directors whose work I've had the pleasure of viewing. In my limited experience, they are very wordy, very long, and extremely strange. The three I've seen have involved some sort of puzzle and each has treated it's own very differently. Hopefully more of his films become available in The U.S. soon. Come on, Criterion, how are you not all over Celine and Julie Go Boating?
The Story of Marie and Julien ( 2003) is by far the strangest of his films I've seen, but also the least successful. It doesn't quite earn its length, but it does maintain an effective eeriness and ambiance that I enjoyed.
Le Pont du Nord (1981) easily became my favorite of Rivette's films. It features a real life mother/daughter duo as a two mysterious characters with a mysterious relationship over the course of four days. It's something of a female Quixotic tale around the Paris underground. It becomes an engrossing urban fantasy. Rivette purposefully and brilliantly leaves elements of his puzzle hanging at the end of the film because he knows it might not really be important anyway. (This isn't on DVD, but it is on youtube. Search for PDN1 to find it.)
Misc. :
Election. 4th time seeing it. I had to for school. Maybe Alexander Payne's best? I struggle with that one.
Vera Cruz features Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster as the two different types of Western heroes (the classy, John Wayne archetype and the Wild Bunch anti-hero, respectively) forced together to transport a Mexican princess hiding gold in the middle of the Mexican Civil War. It's wonderfully violent and sexual for it's time (1954), as well as great vehicle for the aforementioned screen legends.
I'll keep that promise in the most minimal way possible.
2010:
Piranha 3D was a surprising, trashy, gory blast. Adam Scott might be my hero. Seriously, what can't he do? I can, without any reservation, confirm that this is better than Mirrors.
Winter's Bone featured some fantastic performances, and a couple not great ones, along with some superb direction from Debra Granik. It's too bad the tension she builds magnificently mostly dissipates by the end.
Soul Kitchen is Fatih Akin's new comedy. It's broad and conventional, predictable and silly, but damn if it isn't sincere and heartwarming enough to forgive it everything. The joy of life conveyed in this film is pure cinema-magic at its best.
Japan:
Memories, from 1995, features three different stories from three different anime greats (supposedly). Like any omnibous film, the entries are of varying quality, but at least they're all good. The highlight is the first entry, The Magnetic Rose, from Koji Morimoto and a screenplay from the very recently departed Satoshi Kon (Millenium Actress, Paprika). It keeps with Kon's usual themes of memories and dreams to create a haunting story of eternal love, with the help of a beautiful, classical score that ties in wonderfully with the narrative.
Taboo, Nagisa Oshima's latest film (it's been 10 years), is elegant and visually stunning; but it may be a bit too ambiguous for it's own good. The narrative explores ambiguity in a black and white scenario, featuring a character of possibly ambiguous sex. The narrative itself at a certain point becomes quite ambiguous as Oshima really starts to force the viewer to work things out.
Criterion (and affiliates):
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie is the final piece to Criterion's Bergman box-set which includes The Silence, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light. It's a TV documentary series following Bergman through the production process of 1961's Winter Light, beginning with the script stage and ending with viewer reactions following the film's premiere. I don't love Winter Light, and the 5 episodes each run a longer than they need to; but it is informative, at least.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes is on the By Brakhage anthology. I hear the guy made all kinds of films, even pioneered styles. That's great. I don't like autopsies in their full, unblinking eye glory. It's totally silent, really forcing you to feel whatever it is an autopsy makes you feel. I couldn't take it.
Le Jour se Leve is available on Criterion's Essentials line, a cheap bare-bones brand they use to reprint some of their films and release other acclaimed classics they don't have time to release regularly. Marcel Carne's pre-noir, bleak love story is clunky and awkward, but features some fantastic shots and some palpable atmosphere to make it worth your time. I prefer his earlier Port of Shadows and i absolutely adore his post-war Children of Paradise.
Rivette:
Jacques Rivette has to be one of the most challenging directors whose work I've had the pleasure of viewing. In my limited experience, they are very wordy, very long, and extremely strange. The three I've seen have involved some sort of puzzle and each has treated it's own very differently. Hopefully more of his films become available in The U.S. soon. Come on, Criterion, how are you not all over Celine and Julie Go Boating?
The Story of Marie and Julien ( 2003) is by far the strangest of his films I've seen, but also the least successful. It doesn't quite earn its length, but it does maintain an effective eeriness and ambiance that I enjoyed.
Le Pont du Nord (1981) easily became my favorite of Rivette's films. It features a real life mother/daughter duo as a two mysterious characters with a mysterious relationship over the course of four days. It's something of a female Quixotic tale around the Paris underground. It becomes an engrossing urban fantasy. Rivette purposefully and brilliantly leaves elements of his puzzle hanging at the end of the film because he knows it might not really be important anyway. (This isn't on DVD, but it is on youtube. Search for PDN1 to find it.)
Misc. :
Election. 4th time seeing it. I had to for school. Maybe Alexander Payne's best? I struggle with that one.
Vera Cruz features Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster as the two different types of Western heroes (the classy, John Wayne archetype and the Wild Bunch anti-hero, respectively) forced together to transport a Mexican princess hiding gold in the middle of the Mexican Civil War. It's wonderfully violent and sexual for it's time (1954), as well as great vehicle for the aforementioned screen legends.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Horror/Thriller Battle #1
Watching Scott Pilgrim and then going back into Starz's epic Pillars of the Earth miniseries is quite jarring. Alison Pill is frighteningly different in the two of them. Her delivery as the new queen, of "I would like a toy too. 100 pounds from the each of you" was chilling. The series itself is far from perfect, but it boasts several fantastic performances from the likes of Ian McShane and Hayley Atwell (future Captain America love interest). But Pill owns it in her small role that has brilliantly seen her from wronged royalty all the way to power-mad devil; and we still have three hours left.
Today gives us a much closer battle. I'm well aware that horror and thriller are two very different genres, but for the purpose of these battles they're similar enough that they'll have to compete together. The films are written in the order I watched them, not by my preferences or anything else.
Let's begin!
The first film is French skin master Jean-Jacques Beineix's 2001 thriller Mortal Transfer. A psychiatrist treating a sexy, mysterious thief falls asleep during their session and awakes to find her strangled to death. He spends the rest of the film trying to hide then dispose the body, as well as figure out who killed her. Beineix relies on melodramatic blues and dodged camera angles to evoke the sleek urban mood he seems to desperately want, but the narrative falls flat after the initial discovery of the body. The doctor spends 90 minutes running around pointlessly and without any dramatic impact. The last 30 minutes are meant to discount a very visual film as suddenly characters decide to sit down and tell us all the twists in the form of painfully long monologues. It's a terrible decision that finally sinks a mediocre thriller.
This next film made a very surprising showing in the battle. Joe Johnston's The Wolfman is supposed to be an awful film, at least according to the overwhelming majority of critics. The trailers didn't look great, but I didn't think they made the film look bad either. Turns out it's both good and bad. In Devin Faraci's review over at CHUD.com (he likes it a lot more than I do), he likens it to the classic B-movies where you'd have to sit through all the boring crap for those few minutes of great material. Unfortunately we don't live in that era anymore so Johnston's film will probably be remembered as just bad. But I agree more with Devin. Every sequence involving an actual werewolf is exhilarating and scary, and expertly executed. Every other scene in the film is clearly racing to the next werewolf attack, robbing these scenes of any actual worth and really fucking with the pace. Then there's the forced, chemistry-free romance between leads Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt. I know this film went through hell every step of its long road to the theater. It feels cut to hell. Maybe there's a lot of footage that makes these forced elements better? But as it stands, the long action sequences make the film worth a look.
Shutter Island, on the other hand, does not feature any bad anything. I've heard people calling Leonardo DiCaprio's performances here and in Inception very similar, but I'm surprised I haven't really heard anyone noting the similarities between the movies themselves. To go further would be to spoil, but trust me, they're similar. And I'll call Shutter Island the winner. It's a beautiful and frightening walking nightmare. Martin Scorcese has constructed a formalist, visual treat. People complain about the twists, but they seem almost irrelevant to me. Scorcese had no intention of hiding where the story was going. Instead it's a great character examination filled with great, creepy performances. One scene performances from Jackie Earle Hailey, Patricia Clarkson, and Elias Koteas are particularly memorable. We have our front runner, people.
Roman Polanski does his best to make a pretty standard thriller great with The Ghost Writer. He gets close. It often feels more like a drama than a suspense thriller, but it's an effectively cutting condemnation of Tony Blair, and I think to some extent, a man on the run from a shameful past. Shoe seems to fit. Polanski does successfully wring ropes of tension out of some conversations that feel about a few ticks to the left of normal. Ewan McGregor's interview with Tom Wilkinson is probably the example, but Olivia Williams gets the best material overall as Pierce Brosnan's former prime minister's suffering wife/femme fatale. I also enjoyed how not every aspect of this film is about its central mystery. The narrative flows in and out of it so efficiently that by the film's fantastic and subtly exhilarating climax, how the mystery wraps itself up isn't even the most interesting part.
The results:
Shutter Island claims 1st place with an 8.7/10
The Ghost Writer takes 2nd with a 7.9/10
The Wolfman is 3rd with a 6.5/10
Mortal Transfer comes in 4th place with a 5.2/10
Outside of the battle, IFC released a couple of VOD exclusive films in the past couple of weeks. Both were pretty good films from much better directors. Making Plans with Lena is far from Christophe Honore's best, but it is mostly successful as a darker, less sentimental imitation of Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. One of my personal favorites Johnnie To made the decision to have most of his Vengeance dialogue spoken in English. Having everyone stuck in their second language sucks the air out of what would have been some fantastic exchanges. I think he picked the wrong film to scale back on his normally extravagant but mesmerizing action choreography. I know he's got more in him than action (someone please fucking release Sparrow, it's got to be one of the best films of the last decade!), but this film could have used more.
I think I'm about as close to caught up with2010 films as I possibly can be at this point. Hopefully I'll finally get around to Greenberg soon.
Today gives us a much closer battle. I'm well aware that horror and thriller are two very different genres, but for the purpose of these battles they're similar enough that they'll have to compete together. The films are written in the order I watched them, not by my preferences or anything else.
Mortal Transfer
vs.
The Wolfman
vs.
Shutter Island
vs.
The Ghost Writer
vs.
The Wolfman
vs.
Shutter Island
vs.
The Ghost Writer
Let's begin!
The first film is French skin master Jean-Jacques Beineix's 2001 thriller Mortal Transfer. A psychiatrist treating a sexy, mysterious thief falls asleep during their session and awakes to find her strangled to death. He spends the rest of the film trying to hide then dispose the body, as well as figure out who killed her. Beineix relies on melodramatic blues and dodged camera angles to evoke the sleek urban mood he seems to desperately want, but the narrative falls flat after the initial discovery of the body. The doctor spends 90 minutes running around pointlessly and without any dramatic impact. The last 30 minutes are meant to discount a very visual film as suddenly characters decide to sit down and tell us all the twists in the form of painfully long monologues. It's a terrible decision that finally sinks a mediocre thriller.
This next film made a very surprising showing in the battle. Joe Johnston's The Wolfman is supposed to be an awful film, at least according to the overwhelming majority of critics. The trailers didn't look great, but I didn't think they made the film look bad either. Turns out it's both good and bad. In Devin Faraci's review over at CHUD.com (he likes it a lot more than I do), he likens it to the classic B-movies where you'd have to sit through all the boring crap for those few minutes of great material. Unfortunately we don't live in that era anymore so Johnston's film will probably be remembered as just bad. But I agree more with Devin. Every sequence involving an actual werewolf is exhilarating and scary, and expertly executed. Every other scene in the film is clearly racing to the next werewolf attack, robbing these scenes of any actual worth and really fucking with the pace. Then there's the forced, chemistry-free romance between leads Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt. I know this film went through hell every step of its long road to the theater. It feels cut to hell. Maybe there's a lot of footage that makes these forced elements better? But as it stands, the long action sequences make the film worth a look.
Shutter Island, on the other hand, does not feature any bad anything. I've heard people calling Leonardo DiCaprio's performances here and in Inception very similar, but I'm surprised I haven't really heard anyone noting the similarities between the movies themselves. To go further would be to spoil, but trust me, they're similar. And I'll call Shutter Island the winner. It's a beautiful and frightening walking nightmare. Martin Scorcese has constructed a formalist, visual treat. People complain about the twists, but they seem almost irrelevant to me. Scorcese had no intention of hiding where the story was going. Instead it's a great character examination filled with great, creepy performances. One scene performances from Jackie Earle Hailey, Patricia Clarkson, and Elias Koteas are particularly memorable. We have our front runner, people.
Roman Polanski does his best to make a pretty standard thriller great with The Ghost Writer. He gets close. It often feels more like a drama than a suspense thriller, but it's an effectively cutting condemnation of Tony Blair, and I think to some extent, a man on the run from a shameful past. Shoe seems to fit. Polanski does successfully wring ropes of tension out of some conversations that feel about a few ticks to the left of normal. Ewan McGregor's interview with Tom Wilkinson is probably the example, but Olivia Williams gets the best material overall as Pierce Brosnan's former prime minister's suffering wife/femme fatale. I also enjoyed how not every aspect of this film is about its central mystery. The narrative flows in and out of it so efficiently that by the film's fantastic and subtly exhilarating climax, how the mystery wraps itself up isn't even the most interesting part.
The results:
Shutter Island claims 1st place with an 8.7/10
The Ghost Writer takes 2nd with a 7.9/10
The Wolfman is 3rd with a 6.5/10
Mortal Transfer comes in 4th place with a 5.2/10
Outside of the battle, IFC released a couple of VOD exclusive films in the past couple of weeks. Both were pretty good films from much better directors. Making Plans with Lena is far from Christophe Honore's best, but it is mostly successful as a darker, less sentimental imitation of Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. One of my personal favorites Johnnie To made the decision to have most of his Vengeance dialogue spoken in English. Having everyone stuck in their second language sucks the air out of what would have been some fantastic exchanges. I think he picked the wrong film to scale back on his normally extravagant but mesmerizing action choreography. I know he's got more in him than action (someone please fucking release Sparrow, it's got to be one of the best films of the last decade!), but this film could have used more.
I think I'm about as close to caught up with2010 films as I possibly can be at this point. Hopefully I'll finally get around to Greenberg soon.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Criterion #309
Kenji Mizoguchi is a director whose movies you will always see on everybody's best of lists, but he has very few films available on DVD in North America. I'm sick of reading about how great The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums is, I wanna see it, goddamnit! When Criterion finally released one of his films, I immediately got excited and queued it up on Netflix. I soon put it on the backburner when a friend told me it was just "okay". This film was his 1953 ghost story Ugetsu, Criterion #309. I'm now going to call my friend an idiot. Another few months later, Criterion released his 1954 period masterpiece Sansho the Bailiff, which I immediately watched and loved. I was left seriously moved by its beautiful, and somehow realistic-seeming optimism. It's manufactured sentimentality at its greatest, its most sincere and affecting.
I mention Sansho only because the two films seem like they purposefully complement each other. Indeed, only one year separates them. Criterion should have looked into a nice box set release. Both films chronicle the struggles of the peasant class in 17th century Japan. Sansho sees some of the rich take a fall down the economic ladder. Ugetsu sees some of the poor briefly flirting with the top, and is definitely the more somber of the two.
Ugetsu follows two poor men and their families during a destructive civil war. One of the men is a potter who realizes he can make a minor fortune selling his pots in a nearby town because of the war economy. The other man decides to accompany him in the hope that he can become a samurai by apprenticing himself to one traveling through the town. Both men end up finding their selfish success both to different degrees, but both at a large cost to their wives and families.
This is where I would like to discuss how Mizoguchi's work tends to deal heavily with wronged women and how he masterfully aligns the audiences sympathy with them. Of course I know nothing of his large filmography, but this is what people tend to discuss in regards to Mizoguchi. Regardless of whatever he usually did, that is certainly what he ha done to great success here.
I can't give away much more plot without giving away major secrets, but I can repeat that it is a ghost story, however a non-traditional one. Mizoguchi proves to be a master at blending realities seamlessly. A ghost appearance in Ugetsu is not meant to spook or scare, but is such an organic part of the narrative that their presence could even be missed if you weren't paying enough attention.
The film quietly moves to its deeply affecting conclusion, even ending with a little bittersweet hope. But aside from the ending, the film is another near perfect entry into the two movie filmography I've had the pleasure of experiencing.
Ugetsu: 9.3/10
The film disc has a couple of interviews with frequent Mizoguchi crew members. I learned that the director was most definitely a perfectionist. I saw the run-time of the documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director on the second disc and got scared. The film itself looks and sounds beautiful, as most Criterion releases do.
I'll keep from giving the who release since I clearly skipped out on the majority of the special features.
I mention Sansho only because the two films seem like they purposefully complement each other. Indeed, only one year separates them. Criterion should have looked into a nice box set release. Both films chronicle the struggles of the peasant class in 17th century Japan. Sansho sees some of the rich take a fall down the economic ladder. Ugetsu sees some of the poor briefly flirting with the top, and is definitely the more somber of the two.
Ugetsu follows two poor men and their families during a destructive civil war. One of the men is a potter who realizes he can make a minor fortune selling his pots in a nearby town because of the war economy. The other man decides to accompany him in the hope that he can become a samurai by apprenticing himself to one traveling through the town. Both men end up finding their selfish success both to different degrees, but both at a large cost to their wives and families.
This is where I would like to discuss how Mizoguchi's work tends to deal heavily with wronged women and how he masterfully aligns the audiences sympathy with them. Of course I know nothing of his large filmography, but this is what people tend to discuss in regards to Mizoguchi. Regardless of whatever he usually did, that is certainly what he ha done to great success here.
I can't give away much more plot without giving away major secrets, but I can repeat that it is a ghost story, however a non-traditional one. Mizoguchi proves to be a master at blending realities seamlessly. A ghost appearance in Ugetsu is not meant to spook or scare, but is such an organic part of the narrative that their presence could even be missed if you weren't paying enough attention.
The film quietly moves to its deeply affecting conclusion, even ending with a little bittersweet hope. But aside from the ending, the film is another near perfect entry into the two movie filmography I've had the pleasure of experiencing.
Ugetsu: 9.3/10
The film disc has a couple of interviews with frequent Mizoguchi crew members. I learned that the director was most definitely a perfectionist. I saw the run-time of the documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director on the second disc and got scared. The film itself looks and sounds beautiful, as most Criterion releases do.
I'll keep from giving the who release since I clearly skipped out on the majority of the special features.
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