10 posts tagged “film”
EASTERN PROMISES, David Cronenberg
Slick, deft, and efficient, but Eastern Promises lacks a heart to propel it through its grimy plot. The emotions are hollow, the motivations perfunctory, and the end product is surprisingly bloodless for such a gory film. Watch it for the gorgeous cinematography and Viggo Mortensen's messianic bone structure.
TRAFFIC (2000). Another Brilliant Lesson in the following. Do not watch The Wire before watching any other film about the war on drugs, the drug industry, or just a straight-up yeyo part-ay because it will make the film seem: (a) pre-chewed, (b) condescending, (c) wickedly and oafishly unsophisticated, (d) heavy-handed and maudlin, and (e) laughable. I watched The Wire.
FINAL JUDGMENT: Not truly terrible, but made all the more worse for the sad, deflated expectations. Catch it on USA and watch between episodes of America's Best Dance Crew.
CLUELESS (1995). THIS WAS FUCKING BRILLIANT. Seriously, why don't they make movies like this anymore? Shines supernovas brighter than Mean Girls (which was funny, but still somewhat sandy and bland) with its tart and sly humor. It's wonderful to find a script that scalds with love and a group of actresses that are totally in on the joke*.
* Trite MTV ending and slightly icky romance aside.
Fargo (1996). Oh, that was pitch-perfect. Absolutely sincere and patient and wonderfully made. In some ways, I prefer it to even No Country. No Country was weighed down by its grim spectres, but Fargo has complete free range and the purity of its plot, its characters, and its dialogue ring through each and every scene. And best of all, everything is so completely seamless, no rude announcements of the effort that went into the production, just the smooth, confident beauty of the finished product.
Also known as the day I realized that I AM ABSOLUTELY SPINELESS.
I Am Legend; Richard Matheson
I Am Legend is a short piece of clockwork terror. The protagonist, Robert Neville, is the last man on earth (or so it says on the back cover). And he is not having a good time of it. Neville is frustrated, crippled, and devastated by wild swings of mood and desperation; he is also our only guide into a terrifying apocalypse. Neville is neither reliable nor very sympathetic, but he is very effective and his foibles are very refreshing.
I Am Legend has none of the hallmarks of a classic horror story. There is no main hero, and there are no real solutions. Neville survives out of doggedness and tenacity but he is essentially a brute with no pretenses of sophistication. The other paltry characters are buffeted about by the whims of the plot. There are no real explanations. Patches of science and a few meager memories dart through the narrative, but more often than not, they're quick glimpses yielding little illumination. When they do appear, they're frequently clouded by frustration and terror. And finally, the terror is a different breed. Slow, strangling, and unrelenting, the tension builds, existential and unabated, through the end of the novel; there are few staccatos of action or gore.
There are a few faults: I suspect that my biology professor has donned a sack cloth and is now bombed out on Listerine, and Matheson's writing belies a sort of nervous, undisciplined energy, punctuated by descents into unrepentant pulp. However, in short, I Am Legend, is a strangely poetic and gimlet-eyed look into a real world with real people plagued by an ancient superstition. A final round of applause for its ending, which is very grim and completely (tragically) inevitable.
No Country for Old Men (2007). Locates your heartstrings with surgical precision, and takes its wicked, wicked time snipping them one by one. No Country is very, very quiet, very, very methodical, and very, very dangerous. It breathes with a terrifying, unstoppable confidence, and thrums with unhurried tension, unbridled by histrionics and glitz.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to buy myself a pacemaker off of eBay.
Resident Evil (2002) For all the jackboot critical snobbery eviscerating its reputation, Resident Evil is surprisingly grim, tense, and excellently executed. Granted, it uses flashbacks like a crutch, makes a mockery of science, and lacks any flights of scriptorial wit, but damn, it's completely effective and masterfully confident. I mean, I don't know about you but I flinched.
MINUTE 24:41: OK SO BASICALLY ALL I EVER WANTED TO SEE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE WAS MILLA JOVOVICH KICKING A DOG THROUGH A PLATE GLASS WINDOW.
CONCLUSIONS:
I. MILLA JOVOVICH IS A STUD.
II.Michelle Rodriguez is Vice Stud.
III. James Purefoy, I saw your wang once in Rome*! Call me!
IV. Eric Mabius, no worries, I think they've got a cream for what you have! Keep up the good work in Ugly Betty, but lay off the hair gel.
V. Red Queen, you're the finest bitch alive.
* Lie, I saw it many times. Nice.
AMERICAN GANGSTER (Ridley Scott)
Bled of its original mean, grimy charm and thoroughly pre-chewed, Ridley Scott's version of Frank Lucas' life is a candy-floss version of Gangster 101. Lucas's story is heavily bruised by its meat-handed Hollywood treatment - a ferocious gangster defanged by a motion-picture neatness, with all the schemes carefully mapped out for what Scott has to consider the most retarded audience in history.
Nevertheless, despite its sometimes unbearable shlock and its stingingly unsophisticated treatment of what could have been a gorgeous gangster epic, American Gangster manages to win and keep your attention with gratuitous acts of violence and Denzel Washington's perfect, Colgate teeth.
Watch The Wire instead.
NOTE: I've gotta say, I love the whole undersaturated, 70's slide-show look of the entire movie. What can I say, I LOVE THE PORNSTACHE. Also - the soundtrack is a wet dream of trumpets and soul.
Mean Creek (2004). Mean kids suck, action is taken, things go awry.
Mean Creek is suprisingly deft at portraying the emotions and lives of its adolescent characters in a rural Oregon town. While the constraints of each character sometime chafe (troubled bad-boy, sensitive Aryan girl, misunderstood bully), the film, for the most part, details with perfect accuracy the discomforts of a child desperately trying to fit in. It roils along, flirting with poignancy at times and buoyed by its beautiful scenery and cinematography. Unfortunately, after its climax (a scene that veers a little too close to parody. YO DADDY'S BRAINS), the film seems to sag under the weight of the plot. It struggles to keep close to reality which is a credible boon, but the execution unfortunately shows the director's relative inexperience. The script blindly feels its way through to a resolution, disoriented by the events, and never really regains its confident portrayal from the previous half.
However, kudos to its (mostly) uncondescending look at adolescence and its excellent, excellent young cast. Hopefully a sign of great things to come.
Solaris (1972).
Gorgeously and meticulously filmed, with careful attention to detail and bulging with a surprising number of petty but horrific visual details. However, fundamentally flawed in that it attempts to plumb the depth of the human soul with a cast of underdeveloped, borderline inhuman automatons of philosophy and metaphyics.
Everything is Illuminated (2005). Jonathon Safran Foer travels to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life during the Holocaust, and Liev Schreiber swerves off the beaten path.
Having read Everything is Illuminated, I expected to recall all the shots and plots. I did not count on the film taking so many... liberties, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. So, I will list my thoughts in bullet form instead!
- Hello Ukraine! Goodbye self-indulgent, dime-store Mexican realism. While Jonathon's search and his translator's spastic, discount Roget's vocabulary was was equal parts hilarious and painful in the good way, Foer's unfortunate forays into the magical fairy-tale of a Ukraine shtel's foundings was slow, self-indulgent, and painful in the bad way. It's nice to see that Liev Schrieber shared my exact sentiments and gave said sections the boot. The most they figure into the movie is through sparkling lights and a Ukranian Enya solo on the soundtrack. Whatever, we can't all escape unscathed.
- Ukraine is beautiful! Lots of pristine sunshine, waving sunflowers, and skulking remains of Communist decline all around. Also, roads smoother than butter and blacker than sin. If Liev is to be believed, the Ukranian highway system is better maintained than the Beltway. Liev also takes pains to frame everything beautifully - beautiful, bright saturated colors, and lots of meticulous framing. Think Wes Anderson in Eastern Europe.
- The... ending? Schreiber takes the easy - and puzzling - way out, making Grandfather into an escapee survivor with a guilt complex instead of a Ukrainian executioner with a guilt complex. I'm not quite sure why since it completely confounds the lead-up, drains his death of any meaning, and completely detracts from the complexity of the odd (and awkward! Very awkward!) tableau.
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing; Melissa Bank
Oh chick-lit. Only you could take an otherwise hard-bitten, verbally snappy, prickly heroine and focus all of her amateurish but refreshing waspish animosity at the timeless art of seduction. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is uneven in tone - a little too brittle to fit in with the breeziness of its Sex and the City progeny, a little too single-minded and derivative to be anything else; it can settle for being a waste of a perfectly decent narrator and a sufficiently soothing Step One of Coming Down from the Emotional Beatings of T.H. White.
The Cat-Nappers; P.G. Wodehouse
Repetitive as all get out, and still dandy for it. Wodehouse has found his well-worn niche in literature, and is determined to remain as securely snug for as long as possible. Nothing unexpected, nothing revolutionary, and everything I needed. Wodehouse is my literary penicillin, and I'd be pretty pissed off if someone started screwing around with the formula for something as stupid as kicks. I need my baby full of Twurp's hijinks.
Gosford Park (2001). When I watched Nashville last semester, I managed to fall asleep four times before I walked out of the movie. Thus my expectations were low, but balls to my expectations! This film took me for an absolute ride. Crammed with everything I love best: a sprawling, exquisitely imagined cast (Altman directs every last detail with a perfectionist's tender, exacting touch. This makes the movie one of the rare delights where constant reanalysis is actually a blessing instead of a curse. Go back and watch over and over again to catch those minute details! Watch over and over again just because you can!), a razor sharp screenplay (And despite all the verbal bullets that go whistling through the air, Maggie Smith's Aunt Constance earns the Olympic gold from me. I still feel brutalised from her perfect "Oh, but none of us will see it" line. Earning the silver, Maggie Smith's tireless nostrils.), and all the wonderful trappings of decadent period drama (Once again, there is not a single throwaway detail. It's the Obsessive Compulsive's Masterpiece Theatre!). All its positives are so overwhelming that I'm completely ready to extend a slap on the ass to the somewhat condescending, pre-digested ending. Pander all you want! Helen Mirren, another round of tears! Mama, call the dean. Balls to Premed, I want to be a British aristocrat.
