Tuesday to end 2009

Alright, the last movie post of 2009. Meaning the book is closed on movie viewings for this year and the top 10 list can be made!

THE VISITOR (2007)

The OCD movie viewing process begins, as I make an attempt to watch a critic's complete top 10 list from 2008, with Metacritic as my source. It was really fun to do that last year, as I watched some movies (like Joshua and Exiled) that were really under the radar and were interesting.

BUT, The Visitor fits into a category of 'performance' movies that kind of bother me. Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar for his lead role here, which was kind of unique since he isn't really well known, but has had character actor parts over the years that make his presence ubiquitous. (In Burn After Reading he was the quiet manager of the Hard Bodies gym). But as absolutely great a performance could be, it doesn't mean a whole lot if everything surrounding that character, including the plot and other people and dialogue, is mediocre to bland. This didn't gel for me, in the same way that performance movies like As Good As It Gets and Hotel Rwanda disappoint.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007)

Heart-pounding, suspensful, and awesome, but the only shortcoming is completely my fault. Ever since I started playing high quality cinematic video games on my PS3, I get distracted when I watch action movies... because (this is so pathetic) I miss the interactivity of the gaming experience! So when there was this roof top chase scene that was such a great action piece, I started recalling a recent game I picked up where you're chased over the rooftops of an ancient Middle Eastern City! Only a slight problem, but still it took me out of the movie. As easily distracted as I am, it's something worth mentioning.

Week the Was: Back to 2008 WIFF

Yep, I decided to theme my movie binge with movies on my Instant Q that were all screened at the Wisconsin Film Fest in 2008... my first film fest experience.

These aren't movies I saw way back when... but I kept the program and I was overwhelmed with the variety and the quality that I vowed to at least aspire to watch as much of the films in the WIFF as I can!

CHOP SHOP (2007)

I couldn't think of the term for this kind of movie... then a snotty film critic (or a Wikipedia author) called it an example of "neo-realism". I think it's the kind of film festival movie you expect... understated... compelling... but with many moments that lets your mind wander because of the lack of urgent pacing. So distant from any commercial fare.

CONSTANTINE'S SWORD (2007)

A documentary that unfortunately is the second one I've seen this year to feature the creepy and now disgraced Ted Haggard as an interview subject. Jesus Camp was the first time I saw him and his Church in Colorado Springs. The topic is historic Anti-Semitism in the Church. But the pieces and scenes are a little loosely connected and don't come together as well as other documentaries.

ALEXANDRA (2007)

This one is pretty hypnotic if you don't expect anything extreme or direct. Following an elderly Russian grandmother as she visits her grandson on the war front in Chechnya.


Probably will watch a few more 2009 films before I can make my top 10 of the year.

Report

ROLE MODELS (2008)

An example of the convoluted way I decide which movies are worth my time. Looked like a pretty conventional plot to me until I found out that the guys from The State are behind it. THEN it became intruiging, not because of the actors, story, or my like for comedies. The presence of McLovin didn't hurt.

Funny, but I still don't get how I laugh out loud more at comedy television than even the best movie comedies.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

An even better example of the my convoluted movie tastes. Not a fan of Nick Cage movies, but am a fan of Werner Herzog. IF this movie was Nicholas Cage playing a cop gone bad.... yawn. But a bad cop movie done by the same guy that did Grizzly Man and the Enigma of Kasper Hauer? Something very unique. The result is strange to say the least... but when I told my friends at a party in Chicago what I saw, I was thankful they didn't ask me to elaborate on why I wanted to see it, because it isn't simply a film, but an homage to bad filmmaking, crazy acting, and a bunch of other things that need to be explained by film geeks before viewing.

MORE TUESDAY MOVIES

I'd better right this up before I forget!

PUSHER III

And i wrap up a very interesting film trilogy... very good, invigorating experience. Each movie went in unpredictable directions, the first of them being the characters each movie decides to focus on. I would say #2 has the slight edge over the 3.

RED CLIFF I and RED CLIFF II

This is an unprecedented treat. My friend was on a summer teaching trip to China and brought back this two-part movie epic back to the States in pirated form (shhhhhhhhhh). It's just been given a limited release here. And it's pretty incredible. An epic movie with exciting battle scenes, morally complex characters, and a sequencing of events that never has you tapping your foot, waiting for the exciting parts, whether they be quiet character development or intricate ware strategies being played out before your eyes.

REDBELT

The latest slick talking Mamet experience. I love listening to these well crated words, especially if it serves a sharp story.

WATER LILIES

It will be a futile task, but I will try to see as many films that were screened at the last two Wisconsin Film Festivals as I can... and thanks to the Netflix Instant Watching capability through my PS3, it's all the easier, time and commitment being my only enemy. This is an understated French film exploring female adolescence and sexuality. Unique and modern, a real film festival film in that it's an interesting exercise to expose yourself to, but nothing too earth-shattering.

Movie check

Now it's been three weeks... time to check in...

A SERIOUS MAN (2009)

How very exciting to have a film experience that merges Coen Brothers weirdness with inside jokes about Jewish traditions! I always feel a little special when I use Yiddish based words to move a conservation along, and watching this made me feel like I was part of a cult with the unique background to get all the detailed observations. Only replace "cult" with the implications that Judaism is some kind of fanboy thing and consider my appreciation for this movie coming from a unique spiritual heritage. Definitely a effective film.... at times difficult, but one of my favorites of the year.

PUSHER II (2004)

Continuing through this cult trilogy that's available on Comcast On Demand in HD. It has the same awesome opening as #1, and continues a very immediate and intimate focus on characters that are absolutely in the dumps. So far these two movies have turned the cliched "fall from grace" storyline into sometime far more depressing... characters that start so low that their fall into depravity is so natural.

DONKEY PUNCH (2008)

Ringing in a new era of movie watching... Netflix sent me a disc that lets me play all of my instant movies through my PS3 on my big TV! Hundreds of films at my fingertips! Of all my choices I jumped the gun and chose this one based on Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool recommendation that this was one very disturbing thriller.

And yes it is... and only a few minor times did the characters seem a little unbelievable to the point where I was reminded this is a genre film that follows the pattern of an initial tragic incident turning everyone against eachother. But it works... there are no monsters, or supernatural forces causing violence, just fragile people stuck in a hopeless situation.

Movie update

THEY LIVE (1988)

Another New Cult Canon movie nicely available on Comcast On Demand. Pretty good.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009)

Now this one might be significant because I've probably followed the online buzz on this movie as long as any movie... and now it finally arrived seven years after Spike Jonze's last film Adaption. Heard lots of news that Jonze was getting this just right, and the results were pretty fantastic. When I keep getting annoyed at its limited scale, I have to remind myself that the movie was operating under the parameters of a children's book. In that sense, this was great.

I don't like the rate at which I've been watching movies. Oh well... the miserable winter will keep me indoors soon enough.

MONTHLY (!!) movie report

Yes, it was almost a month since I watched some films, but I'm making up for it I swear! Some traveling and a commitment to watch a good chunk of the third season of How I Met Your Mother on my vacation visiting New Mexico restricted my cinema time. But...

PUSHER (1996)

The first installment of the latest entry to The AV Club's New Cult Canon shows up for free in HD on Comcast On Demand! It's part of a Danish trilogy about drug dealers, with the second part released 6-7 years later, and man does the ending leave you wanting more.

JAPON (2002)

The debut film by the director Carlos Reygadas, who really intrigued me with his hypnotic and appropriately slow-paced movie about Mexican Mennonites, Silent Light. Same patient beautiful shots of nature that I liked so much, a little more abstract narrative that fits in with a large amount of difficult indie films. I'm really liking this filmmaker though.

Report

TIMECRIMES (2007)

This is really good. There's another low-budget sci-fi movie dealing with time travel called Primer that is ambitious but incredibly confusing. This is another movie in that style but the blend of Hitchcockian suspense, ambiance, and just enough screwy plot points (goes with the whole time-travel territory) make it nearly perfect.

Tuesday

EL TOPO (1970)

Known as the first "midnight movie" this is probably enjoyed best while on acid. However, if you're not a recreational drug user, an unstructured trippy movie should at least hit you with constantly bizarre images that are all the more wild because you have no past cinematic context to understand them, and this movie has those in spades. David Lynch marvels at that too, but this nightmare of a movie disturbs in different ways.

DIRTY WORK (1998)

Talking about the succesfull delivery of mediocre to irritating comic material, I don't think any single comedian cracks me up just by being present and saying stuff than Norm MacDonald, possibly because his presence on the pop culture landscape in not very ubiquitous. So I didn't see his major full length until now, when it popped up on Comcast Demand, and its hilarity is the sole result of him being in this movie. Directed by Bob Saget, oddly enough. So many dead hookers!

EXTRACT (2009)

Finally, I see a Mike Judge film when it is first released! For the record, when I first rented Idiocracy I was so fascinated that I watched it for the second time the very next day, something I NEVER do. This is very calm, no major social commentaries or really deep satire, but still full of eccentric characters and Jason Bateman to just perfectly play it straight. I wish there were more weirdos like in Office Space, but the nosy neighbor played by David Koetchner nearly makes up for any limitations in the movie.

Tuesday Time

JESUS CAMP (2006)

A multi-layered reaction to this documentary, mostly only the lines of my views on faith, conformity, and politics. Viewing this in Bush America might have been one one upsetting experience, seeing this worship of leaders in Obama Nation is another. How many people in this movie respect, let alone look up to, Obama as a man of faith? And the cameo by closet drug-addict / homosexual Ted Haggard is another sick element.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN (2008)

This could inspire as much thoughts as the above movie! But mostly it's a textbook example of why I consider myself a film snob. I did laugh at this, but there were so many clumsy moments, dragged out disgusting scenes, and just idiocy, that the only venue for watching this would be late night and/or drunk. Having to pay for this and watch it a theater would be absolutely horrible. It would be a cinematic prison, sitting in a dark multiplex while having extremely dumb images and words forced on me with no escape, while smart and intellectual things were going on around the globe without me.

What made this redeemable however, and it's something very important, is that if you're going to make something this insipid, hire good actors. Adam Sandler always has his moments, and if you cast John Turtorro as the main villian, you at least have lines that are delivered enthusiastically. There were points that I was chuckling BEFORE the punchline, just because the delivery was so much more important than any point any jokes in this film were supposed to make.

Anyway, more on this some other time.

Movie log

I was very concerned that in the waning days of summer, a Quentin Tarantino AND a Mike Judge movie would be opening weekend, keeping me out of the fresh air. Fortunately I got the dates wrong and Extract will be released a few weeks later.

MILK (2008)

AND... WAIT FOR IT...

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) !!!!

A Theater and a Netflix

FUNNY PEOPLE (2009)

DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE (2004)
I'll just say Michael Moore's movies might less irritating to those not part of the choir he is preaching to if done this way. Absolutely with no heavy-handed narration, just a depiction of an awful, awful, situation in an impoverished country. I had heard about this movie for a while, and knew that I would be upset if I saw it. Puts a lot of problems into perspective.

Movies

I still remember sneaking in a free HD on demand movie on a Thursday night. I must try weeknight movie watching a little more, especially when my work weeks aren't going well.

By Friday night I was all movied out! Watched two great 70s movies.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Absolutely no padding in this movie. Like all classic action flicks, there's the set up, the crisis, a little dusting of characterization, and the good guys winning. But it's been a while since I've seen something so cut and dry as this movie. And what an ending!

Nashville (1975)

I had to split up this 2.5 hour epic over one night and one morning, but it's still great. Screw myself for browsing through a '100 greatest movie moments' book at Border's that might have ruined the movie. A small fortune is that I misread which character has the thing happen to them that was so pivotal, so a little surprise. Pure movie watching experiences can't happen for 30+ year movies I guess. It made me want to watch Robert Altman movies, especially rewatching Gosford Park, which I saw a long time ago and couldn't follow.

ENTRY SIX

BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

When movies are appreciated, I would think there are many levels of appreciation to take into account. The Dark Knight, for example (my second favorite movie of last year) could be an “awesome movie”, an “intelligent blockbuster”, or an complex allegorical study using comic book character tropes to examine society on the brink of anarchy due to unpredictable forces that follow their own rules. But one level of appreciation for universally loved movies can’t be based on the idea that you, the movie consumer, are appreciating this movie uniquely, that your tastes are somehow more eccentric and iconoclastic because you generally enjoyed The Dark Knight. Mainstream popularity of any cultural product is a blessing and a curse. For the studios and filmmakers that churn out movie products that are marketed well regardless of quality, the benefits of popular cinema are simple: money and the ability to make more movie products. Occasionally, and fortunately a lot more often in recent years, a movie can be popular AND intelligent, removing cynicism from jaded film snobs for several weeks at a time, as the local non-art house multiplex offers not one, but maybe 2 or more tolerable movies to choose from on a given weekend. However, when a film like the Dark Knight succeeds on all levels it’s a level of satisfaction that is almost mundane. For myself, it’s life affirming that mainstream movies deliver the goods, but what’s so unique about enjoying a quality movie? I could only wish that every movie entering the multiplex is well-made, well-written, and terrifically acted, and when a good movie that is intelligent (with just the most palatable hint of nuance) is enjoyed by everyone, I’m conflicted. Of course, the part of me that enjoys the comraderie of a group movie watching experience is having a blast… but the positive experience at some level amounts to mere escapism, mere entertainment, rather than the viewing of a challenging dynamic art form, something that encourages me to question not only what I’m seeing, but the deeper context of why I’m seeing it .

This will be the ultimate film snob rant (even I kind of cringe myself while typing it), but I have nurtured very customized movie tastes, where the enjoyment and entertainment of a film is only one basic piece of the puzzle. To reach a higher plane of unique movie appreciation, young Grasshopper, one has to enjoy movies in an almost iconoclastic way. Some movies aren’t perfect or even made with very high quality, but they aren’t a waste of time because they have a bold vision. They might involve concepts or characters so bizarre that imagining what these film elements might thereotically do off the screen is half the fun. They also might be tightly bounded by the limitations of a specific genre, where the inventiveness comes from the filmmaker’s expectations of what a particular audience comes to their films to see. Or they could have developed an audience long after their initial release periods, as geeks or weirdos with enough social connections and communication channels build up a following for forgotten movies and make these films their own strict measuring stick of appropriate cultural tastes.

There is plenty of room for these film fans in popular movies, but you almost have to leave your bizarre personality and unique tastes at the door when viewing a perfect crowd-pleaser. The only remaining group that could lay claim to being uniquely qualified to offer respectful but critical praise of The Dark Knight are likely to be the hardcore contingent of comic book obsessives who have their own unique quirks and understandings of the source material, and who will be the first to point that something doesn’t feel right in the cinematic versions of these characters. For this gang of movie watchers, there’s a standard to judge a movie in a singular straightforward way (for example, whether it was fun to watch), but there is also a multitude of judgments based on the alternative background of this group, or cult, of comic book aficionados that come to these popcorn movies with particular contexts to base their opinions on what they watch.

Which brings me to a discussion of cult movies. Cult movies are by definition never mainstream successes. What I think defines the blurry category of cult movies for me the most is how the overarching concept of the film, as well as the mysterious motivations of the filmmakers, dominate over the varying levels of quality of the film’s execution. Cinematic inventiveness, due to budget restrictions or director eccentricities, can come from the bizarre creativity seen on the screen during a cult movie showing, but also from comprehending the background that might have led to the movie being made in the first place.

One director that I’m sure has opened up myself and a whole generation of filmwatchers to cult movies is Quentin Tarantino. Of course his movies are so well-written and exciting on their own, but he also throws in so many references to the cool cult movies he watched growing up that you need a background manual of film history (and dozens of film reviews) to understand exactly what he’s trying to do on screen, and what could possibly be the point of his eccentricities. One minor example is in Kill Bill, where until the end of the second part of the saga, Uma Thurman’s main character’s name is bleeped out whenever it is spoken out loud. Either before or after I saw these movies, I read somewhere that the particular quirk of bleeping out the character’s name was something used in a single art-house movie from the 60s or 70s. It’s not used enough to be a distraction, but it’s also something that might not be necessary, especially to a film audience that wouldn’t understand why the director did that and wouldn’t know where to find out why he decided to use that device. Some film critics didn’t understand this aspect of Kill Bill either, as I remember a reviewer, declaring Kill Bill Vol. 2 the worst movie of the year as the work of a ‘self-masturbatory’ filmmaker. It was definitely a crude phrase when it comes to trashing a director, bringing to mind a view that this was something self-centered and disgusting, that served only the pleasure of the creator, and wasn’t worth watching.

I’m not sure Kill Bill is a cult movie, in the sense that Tarantino-esque self-referential style is becoming more of a common trope in a lot of pop culture. But his style came from that cult movie fan environment that helped define his tastes and the way he wanted to tell a story. By throwing in an artful but in many respects unnecessary reference in the form of that bleeped name, he provided a knowing wink to the small group that knew what he was referencing as a way to give them something to enjoy that all those strangers, those ‘other’ movie-goers, in the rows in front and behind them wouldn’t understand.

And there’s always a little bit of arrogance in liking these bizarre and obscure movies. Why do I have the open-mindedness to enjoy a cult movie even though it does not feel like perfectly good but ‘normal’ movie, I could ask myself, and why do the bizarre aspects of the characters and plot feel acceptable in this movie, but not another movie more accepted by the general public? And finally, what’s wrong (or right) about a movie-going public that would relegate this movie to success only through a cult following?

Battle Royale was a movie discovery aided by a very modern method. In fact, thanks to the ability to access tons of cultural products online (or at least being able to know about their availability), the whole concept of a cult movie is possibly changing, as word can spread about an obscure cinematic treasure across the globe, while Netflix can give you access to any DVD officially released in the U.S. I was made aware of Battle Royale through the ongoing film review series on Onion’s AV Club called the New Cult Canon. Every movie discussed in this section looks pretty fascinating, and it’s discussed in the context of identifying a new generation of movies that have the right ingredients to be identified as cult, even if the B-movie theaters that screened cult films have mostly shuttered.

Battle Royale is a Japanese movie taking place in a dystopian future where a class of ninth-graders are randomly selected each year to be kidnapped and imprisoned on a remote island. The class must fight eachother to the death until one remaining class member is alive. In order to ensure that one person remains alive, each student is equipped with a remote-controlled collar that will explode after a period of a few days, if there are any more students that are still alive. The administrator of the island Battle, a former teacher of this class, is also allowed to designate 'Danger Zones' every few hours, where the collars will automatically explode if any of the students remain in these areas. This is meant to keep the teenagers moving throughout the island. Each student is then given a ‘survival pack’ consisting of some provisions and maps of the zones, along with a single ‘weapon’ ranging from a pot lid to a machine gun to a GPS thingie showing the location of each classmate. So that’s the set-up, a convoluted system of rules designed for a tragic and brutal conclusion, and I was hooked. How could this NOT be incredibly entertaining? Just explaining it gives me thrills. Never has an original concept so much had me hooked. In addition, while it’s easily available now through Netflix, the limited distribution of this foreign movie for many years added to its legendary cult status. I can’t imagine the cult movie fan, reading about this movie like I have, and then being only able to see it several years later or through very limited screenings. Obscure movie access definitely has changed.

But I don’t think my excitement for this movie occurred in a complete vacuum. In fact, cult movies, like comic book movies, generate some excitement because they are derived from other cultural sources. Battle Royale itself was derived from a Japanese comic book, and I expected a lot of excitement in viewing a violent live-action Anime movie with the bizarre spectacle of actual young actors blowing eachother away. Combine that with the knowledge of the weird Asian horror cinema that has emerged in recent years to expect even more dark but artistic elements. Finally, my approach also came from the respect to glorified violence exemplified by Tarantino in some of the defining movies of my generation. Particularly in Kill Bill, but in his other movies as well, there is a very rigid structure and rules set for the characters’ escapades, it’s just through the bending of time and narrative where we don’t know exactly how the violent path of retribution will conclude. Battle Royale takes these rules and lack of apprehension about movie violence to the top tier. We know the brutal rules of the game and the consequences for not following them, we know whose involved and the character’s general motiviations, now how will the film proceed? Of course, I think Tarantino had all these influences in mind, because he cast one of the Battle Royale actresses as the young Japanese teenage assassin GoGo in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (where she wielded a scary ball and chain weapon which my Dad told me was another obscure reference to a specific classic kung-fu movie).

So with the above screed aside, how was the movie when I finally had a chance to see it? I believe its status as a forbidden fruit of cinema might have made me anticipate a incredibly ultra-violent mind-blowing experience, unlike anything I’ve seen before. And once it arrived through Netflix, I had to pop it in out of curiosity, even though I didn’t have time to watch the whole thing on a weeknight. It took every muscle of will-power to turn it off after the opening credits, because the movie began with an epic title sequence set to one of those classic opera choruses (not Carmina Burana, but something I’ve heard in movies before). From frame one, it was not being subtle about the dark twisted menace behind the movie’s concept, and seeing that and the one opening scene showing last year’s champion escorted in a van grinning madly whetted my appetite even more.

When I finally sat down and watched it, it delivered incredibly well, but it also had some unexpected setbacks. The society that imposed this game is explained in the opening credits but not much additional background is given on how this society emerges to have the need for the Battle really make sense. There also weren’t as many epic fights as I thought there would be between many different characters, and more character studies and flashbacks than I had anticipated. I also expected more of the restrictions and rules of this game to be explored, and exploited for the sake of luscious movie violence. For example, the exploding collar device only fully operates in one bloody scene, even though the collars are a pretty central element to the movement of the movie, and a complicated condition to place on the students to ensure survival. You’ve made them remote controlled and set up these zone systems, why not have the collars beep or explode even more? Given the expectations for what the film would be (but having no idea how it could conclude effectively, the key to a suspenseful treat) the ending was also a little anti-climatic. But that could be attributed to the odd moral complexities that pop up in most of Asian cinema, a topic for another time.

Otherwise this movie was brutal, beautiful, bizarre, and creatively executed. It had the odd feeling of a dramatized gameshow, and while the social satire and commentary might be too foreign for me to completely internalize, I did feel a wide emotional reaction to these incredibly human kids, and the dilemma they faced. I think something universal about this completely surreal experience is the heightened emotional baggage of teenagers under the pressure of adolescence. I think even the most stable teenagers that were bit of outcasts were prone to some violent fantasies when their fragile emotions reacted to the world around them. This giddy movie displays how that actual violence might be carried out, and it's horrifying and fascinating to watch.

The Onion AV Club's review also talked about the corners cut regarding filming budget and a few other faults, but they clearly set those aside and appreciated the overall spirit of the movie. For cult movies, the invention of the idea behind the film is paramount. Criticizing this movie as trashy or flawed because of its weaknesses isn't appropriate because the filmmaker's primary service to the cinematic world was to make this in the first place. A Japanese filmmaker decided to make a movie where young teenagers are forced to fight each other to the death on a remote island. The movie’s concept broke several taboos and expectations I had for cult cinema and reached a certain invigorating edge that made it so Battle Royale, in my eyes couldn’t fail, unless the filmmaker actively wanted to make an awful movie. The bar is set higher, in terms of film quality and tight plot construction, for a general action movie or goofball comedy that is catering to the expectations of the casual film audience. Those movies operate in a system that does not necessarily reward creativity or intelligence, although having those attributes definitely doesn’t hurt the film’s reputation. Cult movies already start from a challenging context, either through the financial restrictions placed on the producers and/or the iconoclastic vision of the filmmakers, so they can be forgiven if some of the frivolous details don’t come across smoothly.

Battle Royale is endearing to me, because it tapped into my inner psyche for something incredibly overblown yet familiar, fed through a decade or so of artistically violent and derivative cinematic experiences. Half the fun in talking about movies like this is not only describing their qualities, but imagining how you would describe why you like them to others. The concept of Battle Royale as a movie serves as a conversation starter and an opportunity for self-reflection on one’s own warped yet creative tastes before the play button is even pressed. The fact the movie went in unexpected directions isn’t a drawback. The movie had me at “teenagers fight to the death”, and the rest was just details. Fortunately, most of the details were perfect, or piqued my curiosity for this kind of cinema even more.

Two Weeks

Delays, delays.

I promise an eloquent film reflection soon. Think of me as approaching a Kubrickian style to my film reviews. I will not reveal to you my visions until I decide it's appropriate.

I seem to managing a one movie a week routine, which won't break down my 500-disc strong Netflix Queue anytime soon.

AWAY WE GO (2009)

and

PAPRIKA (2006)

Tuesday

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Kelly Reichardt, who directed Old Joy, which I wrote an essay about, continued with a more focused but still naturalistic story. Very sad, the helplessness of the main character gives you a pit in your stomach the whole film.

Iron Man (2008)

Solid and entertaining.

A Movie

STUCK (2007)

I could have seen this film at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival, but decided an 11PM screening would be too past my bedtime. I also received a free ticket for a botched screening of an earlier movie, so I saw the same amount of movies, just not the selection I had originally chosen.

Anyway, finally I get to watch this, and a Blu-Ray version! But this is a great film in the tradition of B-movies, that would be even more suitable if they still released movies in used bargain bin VHS form.

It's not sleazy or cheap, just perfectly limited, with an incredibly compelling conflict that has natural tension. Some definite cringe-worthy moments from your grossest horror movie with some human moments from your best understated indie dramas.

ERASERHEAD (1977)

Interesting movie watching experience on this one. On Friday night I went out to some bars with some co-workers. Fun time and all, but the downside is that the most ideal block of movie-watching time was gone for the night. I got back about midnight and I thought I'd try Eraserhead, available in HD for free On Demand, because from its reputation it sounded like a great midnight movie. Well, an 8:00-5:00pm work schedule caught up with me and I had to go to bed. Then I got up earlier than expected on Saturday because I was hungry, and watched a little more of Eraserhead. My hunger subsiding, I then decided to catch up on more sleep, then finally finished up David Lynch's debut later in the morning.

Fortunately, being unconcious between the duration of the film is oddly appropriate for film that presents itself, without any restraint, as a complete terrifying nightmare. I would not recommend this movie as a group-watching experience, especially with a signficant other, unless you have seen at least 20 movies together and completely understand and appreciate your movie-watching partner's tastes. This movie, while completely innovative and mesmerizing, is also only appreciated by those that don't necessarily want to be entertained by a movie, but want to view something completely unique. It would be a "Film Snob Series" entry for sure if I had seen it sooner, but I wouldn't have been able to categorize it into anything broad as I have done my entires to this point. Other than David Lynch's other work (which looks SO much more inviting compared to this, with the possible exception of Twin Peaks' Black Lodge), there isn't a familiar context in which to describe this movie. Watch at your own risk.

Never Forgotten Tuesday Report

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)

A handful of genuine laugh-out moments, and all together amusing but not legendary comedy. For free on Comcast on-demand HD, definitely not a waste.

The Lives of Others (2006)

Incredible.

Tuesday II; The Return

Continuing the saga...

I watched a Blu-Ray of

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004)

A movie I watched (Tuesday night report)

Was on vacation in beautiful Southern Arizona, where the outdoors was often more exciting than many movies.

I had watched Star Trek in Madison the previous weekend. Probably significant since this was my first popular movie viewed in the IMAX format. Now that I've got a home Blu-Ray HDTV setup, it's appropriate that I have been introduced to a cinema format that cannot possibly be duplicated in a home theater setting.

TUESDAY

I watched

SERENITY (2005)

Sigh... the Firefly universe could have been an incredible show for many years. It seems like it's an absolute fluke if a show of total quality actually succeeds.

No other movies this week... of course I want to watch more, but the weather has been wonderful.

There will be a site redesign soon! Hooray!

ENTRY FIVE

WINSLOW BOY (1999)


As I was finalizing my final list of 10 (11) movies for the Film Snob series, this was the last minute dark horse entry, which I hope doesn’t demean it in any way. I was reminded of Winslow Boy, oddly enough, as I watched the DVD of the third season of the FX drama The Shield, a pretty brutal L.A. police drama that apparently ended it’s final season ever last fall on a very high quality note (and I’m hoping and praying that as I slog my way through the show’s DVDs that nothing is spoiled for me from outside sources).

Guest starring for a few episodes as a housewife ignorant of her husband’s possible brutal crimes was Rebecca Pidgeon, a very versatile and articulate actress who has starred in nearly every David Mamet movie since the mid-1990s including 1999’s Winslow Boy. When I saw her performance in The Shield, I was reminded of how her appearance in these films made everything more snappy and sophisticated. As I recall, the main performances I’ve seen of hers were in the Mamet movies The Spanish Prisoner, Winslow Boy, and State and Main. Through a psychological thriller, a English period piece, and an ensemble comedy, she remained such a professional acting presence, but what really tied her performances together was the critically respected dialogue and direction of her husband, David Mamet.

David Mamet was a playwright before a director, which is why among the crème de la crème of film criticism he is considered a master of film dialogue. Translating a craft that requires engaging words to be spoken in a static setting for 1-3 acts into a moving picture is exciting if done well. The rhythm and pacing of a script is the invisible glue that makes a tolerable film a good film and a beautifully shot film a masterpiece. Can you imagine how epic the Star Wars saga could have been if George Lucas delegated his script writing duties a little bit to have Luke and Solo’s words sound intelligent, with turns of phrases and pacing that would match the rhythms of the light saber duels? Instead the focus was on the epic flashy effects and space worlds, while the characters, as good a quality as some of the actors were, butchered the English language and turned the spoken word as a tool for clunky placeholders between explosions.

Now David Mamet, who also directed the excellent Spartan and supervised the TV Show The Unit, has shown how action plus perfectly crafted dialogue can equal intense action filmmaking. But Winslow Boy is a particular interesting case because of how Mamet manages to filter anger, condescension, and other strong emotions through a restrictive filter, as the film is set among upper class Britons at the beginning of the 20th century, where the most emotional expressions are understated and controlled. I remember a review of this film saying that it was compelling because it was Mamet-style adaptation of a play “as British as a teacup”. This play, which was written in 1946, was about a family trying to clear their name after a son, a cadet in a military youth academy, was expelled after being wrongfully accused of stealing a postal order. By all means, a description of the play immediately brings to mind those prim, proper, and seemingly dull (at first glance) Masterpiece Theater specials that usually air on Sundays, when I'm contemplating the work week that will soon begin and what to avoid anything dated and dingy. As a Mamet adaptation of this play, however, a fascinating cinematic experiment was set up, as a playwright known for creating brilliant variations of many modern curse words had to give the same contemporary energy to this material.

Perhaps Winslow Boy would seem ordinary without that context, but this film sparkles in ways that films using modern colorful language can’t. I’m having trouble finding source quotes from the movie, but there are so many moments of familial tension and interaction that come up through subtle accents on syllables and words. In turn, these intricately crafted lines are so well-performed by the cast, that they serve as the verbal equivalent of the punch in a face and a devastating substitute for the modern curse-laden screeds of today. With contemporary physical confrontation and saucy language tremendously out of step in the society of this movie, these scenes have a unique power.

A few highlights (spoilers limited):

When the father looks into the accussed son’s eyes and explains how a “lie between you and me can never be told”, before asking directly, with conviction, twice, if he performed this crime.

When the daughter and her fiancé (who is a military officer and takes the side against the family in the case against the military academy for the expulsion) discusses the pursuance of the case. .. The fiancé’s military family wants them to drop their efforts, while the daughter (played by Pidgeon) doesn’t think that it should effect their matrimonial plans, hoping that their love cannot be overturned by this conflict. It the final exchange we see between them, the fiancé asked for her to encourage her father to drop the case, and in a beautifully constructed line, Pidgeon doesn’t directly say yes…

“I love you John… I want to be your wife.”
To which the fiancé says “Then it’s settled then.”

There’s also some riveting scenes with the older son as he is cut off by his father from his expensive academic studies and encouraged to join his father’s banking profession. There is no emotional eruption in this scene… just a matter-of-factness that portrays the emotions on the son’s face. At a scene to wrap up this subplot much later, you can tell just by the contemptuousness on the son’s face that he has gone through a great deal of emotional turmoil as a stage of his life where he was guaranteed both financial support and career freedom has ended.

Finally, there’s a scene that was apparently added by Mamet for this movie, a brutal, meticulously crafted interrogation of the family’s advocate towards the ‘Winslow Boy’ that convinces the lawyer of the boy’s innocence by making him appear guilty. In fact, this one scene could be the textbook example of the absolute power of words, and the genius of using them to reveal hidden truths.


Describing this dialogue obviously doesn’t do it justice. But from a standpoint of appreciating the layers of filmmaking one must at least be cognizant of to be a Film Snob, Winslow Boy is a great example. An entertaining film adaptation of a play set in upper-class Edwardian England in 1908 is one thing to appreciate, but it's a whole other thing to find fascination in the vision of a filmmaker funneling his contemporary rhythms of script-writing and language into a completely different world. The medium between the material of the Winslow Boy play and Mamet's other works, represented spot-on by the actors, is exciting to behold. But I think my personal appreciation for The Winslow Boy is because of my understanding this larger creative context in which it was made. No filmmaker, unless there are the most opportunistic hacks in the business, make a movie in isolation of their other output. Watching other Mamet material before this one would really help you appreciate the depature this film takes, and makes the dry archaic setting much more resonant in the process.

Tuesday

JOSHUA (2007)

This movie completes the other movie critic top ten of 2007 that I decided to complete... this time I watched the whole list of The Onion AV Club's Scott Tobias. Good for me!

And I was a little disappointed that I had to see this, because it looked like another demon kid movie. However, the cliches of those kind of movies were barely there. This was actually really good and creepy. And when a child actor pulls off an incredible all-knowing performance, it's amazing.

Wisconsin Film Fest Part 5

WINGS OF DEFEAT

Wrapping up my abridged film-festival experience (not a darn drop of rain or snow after I left early!) was a really great documentary profiling Japanese soldiers trained as kamikaze pilots in the final days of World War II. Of the many documentaries to choose from, all I had to do was read the topic of this film to make it one of my essential viewings that weekend. The filmmaker does have a connection to this story as a Japanese-American whose late uncle was trained as a kamikaze pilot, but that personal connection is not entirely relevant as the film allows for these complex yet likeable people to tell their personal stories. In a contemporary setting, this movie is very powerful in the light of a worldview after 9-11 that has reinforced the view of the 'other' as a monolithic evil entity. While I can understand the difficulty in finding sympathy for the modern version of suicide warfare based on terrorism and fanaticism, the human perspective of the Japanese side makes you understand their motivations, and allows you to sympathize even more with the individuals trained (some would say brainwashed) to die for their country as they were caught up in the war machine. The riveting scenarios that allow these men to fail their missions and live to tell their tales are powerful, vulnerable tales. I’m trying not to generalize here, but I think the suicide bombers of today are led to believe in a threat to their livelihood that is almost entirely existential. In the case of these Japanese soldiers preparing for a homeland invasion by the Allied powers, it’s incredibly difficult to label these people as evil fanatics, and more easy to them serving a hopeless patriotic cause through desperate measures. If you believe in the viability of moral gray areas in history, this is a very good documentary. It actually reminds of the film experiment of Flags of Our Father / Letters From Iwo Jima (I've only seen the latter), as far as it claims both sides had a noble reason to fight.

BON COP, BAD COP (supplemental entry)

And finally, we get to the Netflix online viewing I watched that same weekend to make up for the weather-induced early departure that allowed me to miss two interesting films from South Korea and Denmark, probably my two favorite foreign-film countries. This movie was in the 2008 Wisconsin film fest program.

This “foreign film” is from Canada but feels a little odd because it’s a bilingual film that takes place in the francophone and Anglophone parts of the country. Very odd that our neighbors to the North live in places that look and feel like America, but with French being spoken occasionally! This is pretty much an amusing buddy cop movie where a Montreal cop and an Ontario cop team up to solve a killing spree, but it’s understated and off-kilter in perhaps a uniquely Canadian way. I recommended this to my friends that lived in Burlington, Vermont for several years, since Montreal was the closest major city to them.

Once again, I’m very happy I went to this festival, and love the atmosphere and venues. I thought my freaky weather turnarounds would be over by April in Wisconsin, but I learned my lesson. I really want to have mini-film festivals using the movies from the programs for the past 2 years that I have access to on Netflix Instant.

For now it’s back to normally scheduled entries, including a masterpiece of a film essay on the 1999 movie Winslow Boy shortly, as part of the Film Snob series that just might be completed by the time of Obama’s reelection.

Wisconsin Film Fest Part 4

SHORT FILMS

After Silent Light there was another screening of 4 short films in the same theater. These were all great little slices of interesting fun, under the umbrella of the very broad theme of relationship. Film-makers of two of the short films were there to answer questions after the screenings.

Audience Award Winner –

Great for two reasons, it captures the odd dynamic between urban couples my age, and the subset among those couples that’s characterized by the smoking hot lady and the rather dishelved, unshaven, but assuredly awesome long-haired guy. It’s also filmed all around Wicker Park in Chicago, including actual intersections I’ve walked on many times! My big regret is that I was too shy to ask the filmmakers during the Q+A about what theater the final scene was filmed in. I would have sounded so urban and hip among the Madison crowd if I asked that question.

A Song Without a Name –

A calm simple film with improvised dialogue, that takes place over an overnight camping trip / first date. It’s deceptively straightforward as you smile at the warm-hearted innocence of the scenes, all the while as you toss ideas in the back of your head about how these two have anything possible in common to make something long-term work.

Una Y Otra Vez –

The least interesting of the four films, kind of a standard relationship drama, abridged for the short film format. Set among the Mexican immigrant community, though, it does have some unique cultural and structural twists.

The Last Page –

Of the many shorts programs offered, I chose this one because of the kudos in the festival guide that this final film was one of the most hilarious short film offerings of the festival. Definitely a huge crowd-pleaser, as a character fighting writer’s block runs into a bunch of slapstick mishaps, before his understanding girlfriend rescues him.

The most enlightening thing about this screening is it planted a small seed in my mind that filmmaking was actually accessible to a wide range of people. I doubt that making these movies is something affordable that doesn't require financial sacrifice and commitments of oodles of time beyond a required full-time job, but all of these movies take simple ideas and add some unique twists and produce accessible bite-sized art. I doubt that the believability of these characters could be sustained over a full-length movie, but 15-20 minutes works really well to capture a little authenticity in the human experience.

Tuesday Again

OBSERVE AND REPORT (2009)

Now this is how I like my comedy. Crazy, dark, hilarious, and willing to go off on unexpected tangents in order to mine some actual laugh-out-loud moments. Everyone's funny in this.

EXILED (2007)

With the viewing of this interesting Catonese crime thriller I am proud to announce the completion of a long-term project to watch ALL of the movies on a single critics top ten list from 2007. The lucky film critic is Mike Russell of the Portland Oregonian, and I accessed his top ten list here. I didn't pick him because I like Portland or guys named Mike. I just went to Metacritic's top ten list summary site and found critics who had lists I had over 50% viewed. I've got to start somewhere to watch the ton of movies I have access to. His list is really good. Not a dud among the 10.

Wisconsin Film Fest Part 3

SILENT LIGHT

The film fest guide’s description gave warning enough. At the absolute basic core of this movie is a conventional well-worn plot about the moral complexities that come with an extramarital affair. I wouldn’t blame anyone for looking for another movie to see. But Silent Light was one of the few movies in the schedule that I had heard of… in the case of a review from The Onion’s A.V. Club, which gave it a very rare grade of ‘A’. Later on the Chicago Reader gave it an average rating, but the reviewers at that paper tend to be the ultimate film aficionados (snobs, being the word I use for myself, is too good for them). They criticize the cream of the crop of obscure indie movies, while putting old movies unavailable to home cinema viewers that maybe screened a single time in Chicago over the past 12 months on their top 10 of the year lists. I can’t rely on one critic to guide my film-watching, but The Onion has been fairly reliable (although giving an A- to Adventureland calls everything into question).

Anyway, the story of this amazing movie tells place on a Mexican Mennonite colony and the dialogue is in Plautdietsch. First of all, it was very intriguing that there were Mennonite communities in Mexico, and I had never heard of the Plautdietsch language, so the movie served as one of those cultural vignette films that plop me in a completely foreign situation that I have no context to understand.

Beautifully shots of this rural environment are patiently framed, and if there is one fault in this it is that it does allow you mind wander if you’re not prepared for how this movie will tell its story. After viewing Afterschool, however, I was in the zone that allowed me to appreciate visuals over substance. But while the dialogue in this movie is minimal relative to the way the director wants to focus on scenery, the universe Silent Light occupies is extremely compelling, with the slowly illuminating countryside being important to the overall environment these characters operate in.

The jealousy and bitterness that arise from this love triangle situation could cripple many families and relationships, but the spirituality of the landscape shape the moral compasses of these devout characters in unexpected ways. As the main character explains how he loves both his wife and lover, there was a little chuckle in the audience, but while we might have contempt for a typical male character talking in this way about his ‘burden’, in the context of this film you completely sympathize for him not because his betrayal his justifiable, but in every emotional line portrayed by the movie you understand that this culture seems to reflect on these moral weaknesses much more unique or deeply that you or I could imagine.

No film in recent memory has portrayed the countryside and nature as a calming influence so perfectly. The director’s sensitivity to this environment is incredible. Silent Light is meditative and magical, and the payoff for losing yourself in the mysticism of the movie comes in the amazing climax. The best part of my (abridged) film festival experience by far.

Wednesday (Not Tuesday) Report

Trying to cover movies you've seen before others you've seen creates confusion. That and a night meeting last night made me forget the important Tuesday statement of movies I've seen. Wisconsin Film Fest reviews will continue soon after.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED (2007)

You know I don't wish anything bad to happen to anyone, especially creative film directors, but I kind of hope something artistically dark happens to director Wes Anderson, because his style so fondly recalls Kubrick that I wonder what his take on a non-whimsical subject matter would be.

ADVENTURELAND (2009)

Begin Sarcasm...

So the totally unique thing about this completely innovative comedy is that this goofy guy meets this strange girl and they have a fling. But then this girl gets a little TOO weird and has a big bad secret and they have a fight. Then this goofy insecure guy, after a period of separation with this strange girl, realizes how awesome this girl really is and wants to get back together. Only, wait a darn second, the girl and guy are now in two different cities because their long-term life plans took them in different directions. But WHAT IF the guy changes his life plans in order to be closer to her? If the movie ended with their unexpected reunion wouldn't that totally not be cliche or yawn-inducing, let alone totally believable. And HEY, it's cool that it's in 1987, because the eighties had quirky music and clothes.

End Sarcasm

Sorry about that. There is no problem with a tried and true young teenage romance movie formula. But beyond that boring core, there has to be laughs. Superbad, which this director also made, had lots of laughs. This substitutes abstract seriousness and 80s nostalgia for jokes. Pretty big dissapointment. But if you have it on the background on a Sunday afternoon it wouldn't be too bad.

Wisconsin Film Fest Part 2

Afterschool

I talked in my post about L'Avventura about the value of appreciating filmmaking style as a way to express wordless character development, and this film is an example of how understanding that fact about cinema helps me internalize movies a lot deeper. This film said a lot with very little human expression, and the style made it compelling when the main plot seemed too distracting to the bigger issues of the movie.

The subject matter in the film fest guide description of Afterschool definitely intrigued me... all I needed to know was that the film explored the detachment that comes with an adolescence raised totally on Internet culture. This is a pretty raw movie especially if you spent any amount of excessive time looking at YouTube clips, however funny and innocent, of total strangers doing things. Layer the emotional fragility of high school teenagers and place the main character away from the comforts of home at a boarding school, and you create an environment that allows for the computer and other electronic portals to provide a total distance from real human interaction. When the protagonist is compelled to say anything, it's barely a mumble of emotional expression and it's offered borrowed verbatim from something he just watched online. The film gets darker with this setup, and it definitely makes you uncomfortable. It's a borderline candidate for one of those movies you SHOULDN'T screen for a group of friends just looking for a interesting thing to watch (a friend told me Deliverance is the ideal example of those kinds of movies).

Personally I'm oddly accepting and fearful of the multitudes of access points to knowledge and entertainment that in prehistoric times (pre-Internet) might have required an organized physical gathering of people. Online shopping, dating, online book clubs, film review blogs (heh) and cyber-everythings have made global socializing and discussions convenient but it's also a curse. Afterschool tries to tap into the tattered emotional tapestry that might exist if many of our strong desires and interests are filtered through a passive observation of a computer screen.

This was the director's first film and he really tackled this movie in a riveting way. Mixing the amateur YouTube style video with traditional indie filmmaking and interesting framing, he really creates a interesting relationship between the characters, as they view violence and reality through their own cameras, and the audience, as they watch or are obscured from viewing voyeuristic subject matter. I am excited to see how this director handles other themes.

Wisconsin Film Fest Part 1

Jumate/Jumate

My first screening was two medium short nonfiction films. This first one was about a dwarf Romanian Gypsy that makes money as a street performer in Barcelona, with the help of a full-grown daughter. It's always interesting to hear a unique life story, but this served as a little vignette, nothing more. The details of her story were a bit hard to follow.

Dolls: A Woman From Damascus

This was a little bit more compelling because it tied an individual woman's plight with greater issues in Iranian society. However, the limitation of its message is due to the film focusing on this one woman's particular story. The 50 or so minute film juxtaposes two stories. First, is a vignette about a young conservative Iranian woman raising two small kids and putting professional ambition aside to be a good housewife. Scenes from her life are alternated with commercials for Fulla, an Iranian Barbie doll, and interviews with the marketers of the popular product reveal the changes made in the clothing and types of Fulla products based on objections from the religious Iranian community.

It's an interesting duality, and if the film had more time to explore more people and parts of Iran, I'm sure I could make a better connection between both subject matters. What I told my friend though, is that these nonfiction and fictional snapshots of societies that are supposed to be so foreign and occasionally 'evil', as in the Axis of.., are illuminating in how human their struggles are and how normal their households seem. I don't need convincing that we all share more commonalities than differences in the world, but it seems like if more of this films reached the mainstream consciousness, there would be no room in our discourse for threatening aggressive military action towards nation's led by belligerent political actors.

Report from the Wisconsin Film Festival Prologue

My first film festival experience was last year up in Madison, and the experience was so satisfying that my ultimate regret was not getting more tickets for even more movies. I especially enjoyed it because of the realization that ‘film festival’ films, regardless of whether they are released in home cinema format later on (many of which aren’t and are still currently unavailable a year after the 2008 Wisconsin Fest), have a whole different vibe to them, especially when viewed with a bunch of like-minded film fans in a theater that isn’t in a multiplex, in a place where movies might not even be shown on a regular basis. So this year I eagerly anticipated the release of the multi-page 2009 film festival schedule and actually planned to take precious personal time hours from work to get up to Madison just to be able to see one more early evening screening that I would have been unable to see on a normal work schedule.

Planning a film festival experience that will allow you to find a decent seat and have meals in between takes some precision. Unfortunately, the notoriously unpredictable Upper Midwest winter/spring interim period of weather messed up a lot of my plans. Very ominous looking snow clouds appeared on the radar and warnings from my Madison friends convinced me to beat the sleet and drive home before viewing my final two movies I had scheduled… both from very interesting film-making countries, Korea and Denmark. Since last winter, when I was stuck driving slowly and under extreme duress on many icy highways between Madison and Chicago, I’ve become a weather wimp. It turns out that not a single flake or raindrop fell down after I left. Better safe than sorry, I guess, but geez louise, why do I even have to make bad weather traveling decisions in April!!

So because my saturated film-going experience was cut short, I immediately tried to administer remedies. First, since I got home much earlier than expected, I watched a selection from last year’s film festival that I didn’t see in Madison that was available to my on my Netflix instant online viewing service! Then I began to frantically search for other film festivals in the region to consider going to ASAP. That’s when I realized that however much I liked these kind of movies, there’s something unique about this film festival that makes it more attractive then fests in other places. First of all, when you buy in bulk, the price for a single screening comes down to only 6 bucks a show. Even taking out the two movies that I missed, I ended up paying $9.20 per screening, which is pretty much the going rate for any ordinary movie in Chicago and Rockford, let alone a one-time show of a rare movie that might never be accessible in the near future. Second, this film festival really helps you appreciate the design and beauty of the UW-Madison campus. Moving from venue to venue takes you across the stores and restaurants on State Street and through various plazas and campus architecture, and it’s also pretty amazing how many comfortable screening venues are located a close distance from one another. With a big research University comes access to a large handful of lecture halls and theaters that don't have the best soundsystems in the world, but nonetheless do offer a little variety and excitement. This year I happened to view all my movies in completely different venues that I had been in last year, and there are still two or three more screening spaces I still haven’t experienced. Other film festivals are essentially special screenings in existing theaters, with higher ticket costs to boot. The upcoming Latino Film Festival in Chicago is screening everything at the Landmark Century Theater, for example. But the conversion of these academic and stage spaces to a gathering point for students and film fans is fun, and it gives you many opportunities to take a break between shows and explore. Last year the weather was absolutely perfect for pre-film strolling, this year definitely not as much. I’m convinced that without this particular atmosphere for film viewing (not discounting the group viewing experience at any theater), I might as well have my own little film festivals combining Netflix streaming, Cable On Demand, and rented hard copy DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Minus the 2 full-length movies I missed (sob) I saw 2 narratives, 1 documentary, and 6 interesting short films this past weekend. I should also count my Sunday evening entry in my ongoing ‘supplemental’ film festival, which will include selections from the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival that I now have access to with Netflix. So a one-film deficit for the weekend isn’t that devastating.

Brief reports on all my viewings shortly. I'm really satisfied with what I saw.

Bound for the Home of Artsy Films and Cheese

What could possibly define proud film snobbery more than writing self-indulgent essays about difficult films?

Well, attending the Wisconsin Film Festival is a start.

I have avoided films for close to the past 2 weeks so I wouldn't be tired after watching 5 movies and 2 short film showcases within 3 days. I hope for a special report on my massive film injection when I come back.

FOURTH ENTRY

FOURTH ENTRY: L'AVVENTURA (1960)

[For information on this 10-part list see here]

Michelangelo Antonini is one of the those directors whose films define the film snob in all of us. Foreign, avant-garde, and lacking conventional pacing or plotting, I bet with the glances of a few frames of his movies you can immediately imagine a bunch of film school students smoking, in berets, discussing the merits of his movies in independently-owned coffee houses in college towns or bohemian urban districts.

The first film I saw of his was Blowup, and it was probably one of the first movies, anything by Stanley Kubrick aside, where camera movement and vivid imagery seemed to be more captivating than characters or story. I saw this maybe when I was 19 or 20, and I felt after the film concluded that my movie-watching leisure time was irreversibly stolen away by a film that went off on tangents and wrapped up inconclusively. It had a lot of visual flash but no substance, which is how I would describe a brain-dead multiplex blockbuster, but in this sense Blow-Up had the appeal of an art gallery exhibit, containing incredible images but not enough narrative movement to be appropriate for the film medium.

Go years into the future and into my Netflix era. I had already spent a summer in D.C. and a year or two in Chicago and through the accompanying access to high-quality and diverse independent art movies, I had already internalized an expectation for an adventurous spirit in filmmaking, regardless of how non-narrative or unstructured the core plot might be. If I could leave the theater challenged, moved, or compelled by the cinematic medium, not necessarily in equal combinations, than the movie was worth watching.

I don’t know why L'avventura came up to the top of my Netflix ‘Q’ but I was watching it prepared for the uncertain film-going experience I had from watching Blow-Up. For some reason, as I began my habit of looking up as much non-spoiler movie information before I had time to watch it, I saw a review of the DVD release of L'avventura that claimed the commentary track on the movie to be “the best commentary track ever”. More on that in a little bit.

L'avventura, on the surface, is incredibly easy to summarize. Two incredibly attractive Italian female friends go on a boating trip with a bunch of other eccentric friends, one of whom is the lover of one of the girls, a real smug fellow. The boating trip is to this isolated rocky island off the Italian coast. While they patiently explore the rock, the girl attached to the smug guy disappears. The mystery of the missing girl dissolves from the plot of the movie as the remaining girl and the guy start a romantic relationship while they travel. I'll leave it that so the conclusion won't be spoiled.

After the rather anti-climatic ending to this movie, I felt a similar frustration just like after I watched Blow-Up, in that I was wondering if that really was all I was going to get from this movie. At over 2 hours, it seemed to take a long time to get to a barely significant plot resolution. However, I had another block of time to play the commentary track over the movie as I watched it in full for a second time. My philosophy on commentary tracks is there are way too many movies of all stripes out there, and if I’m going to commit my leisure time to be a moderate film buff, I simply can’t bother with a bunch of extra comments beyond the pure work of film itself, unless the movie is tremendously compelling, revolutionary, or so unique that I have to know the artistic motivation behind it. L'avventura didn’t really meet these criteria, but “best commentary track ever” and a lazy Sunday was motivation enough to give the film another whirl.

The commentary was not a celebrity or director but a film scholar discussing the innovative film-making style L’Avventura displayed. While I was impatiently moving from meandering and philandering scene during the first watch, the director was actually using a compelling new film language, what the scholar called ‘metonymic’ film-making. As with abstract philosophy or anything based on denying what you see and comprehend, ‘metonymic’ film-making is hard to describe but I took it to mean a representation of the visual environment, through film, that serves as a commentary on what the film is trying to express. It’s best illustrated through examples the scholar discusses on the commentary track. At the beginning of L'avventura, the main female character’s father argues with her in an open field with buildings in the background: on the father’s side is an old Church, and on the daughter’s side is an apartment building in construction, representing old relics and new ideas on the landscape, respectively. As the two girls and smug guy go through a tunnel on the way to their journey, it serves as an actual passageway from one character’s situation to another. Finally, as the group on the yacht trip explore the empty, rocky island where the girl disappears, the emptiness and desolation of the environment reflects the shallow interactions of the characters, while intricately engineered shots have the younger explorers appear in the distant background of the older characters, as if they were thought balloons, or younger versions of these older couples. Without training in this film language, all of this is not obvious, but once the commentary track informed me, I felt like I had just stumbled onto a secret cinema code that might be able to explain a lot of other visually or narratively confusing films, especially those by Antonini. An essential point on the commentary track was the scholar's views on why the director used this technique. The inner emotional battles going on under the surface of the characters could just not be naturally expressed in dialogue, and so the filmmaker decided to use objects, angles, and the placement of film elements to offer a hint at these character's feelings in a poetic, uniquely cinematic way. So what I thought was an all style and no substance story was almost the entire point... I just didn't bother to notice the true star of the movie, the director, offering explanation and exposition in every subtle frame.

I can’t tell you how annoying and alienating it is in mediocare to moderate quality TV, literature, or movies to have to tolerate the clumsy exposition scene. What might seem natural or almost believable in a work of fiction completely gets shattered by a character explaining how they feel, or revealing a plot mystery in a way that no human being would ever actually speak. I understand that there has to be some suspension of disbelief that these are actual real characters and some forgiveness, especially in an episodic TV format, of plot plausibility in order to have a drama wrap up nicely in 45 minutes to make room for another wacky adventure next week. But snobbery aside, why waste time and lose authenticity to have a character describe how they feel when you can make the situation so natural and universal that you don’t need to be told what a character is thinking. In the 'metonymic' style of L'avventura, images are provided as a way for the viewer to use their own abstract emotional experiences and personal past to empathize with the characters. One of the great things about the one-season long Freaks and Geeks is that on the surface the plots are mundane and typical of many high school youth dramas, but the outright honesty of the characters and the completely believable dialogue places your adolescent experiences right with the freaks or geeks at their respective corner tables at the lunch-hall cafeteria, with the occasional well-placed rock anthem adding an exclamation point to teenage angst by tapping into musical memories as well. What L'avventura (and it turns out a lot of other movies that I adore) argues is that it’s much more natural to use imagery rather than dialogue to convey emotions that can never be adequately articulated. In fact, representing emotions this way makes them more stronger. A technique that the film scholar mentions is that Antonnini goes a step further than Freaks and Geeks and many other movies by eliminating almost any background music. There’s no swelling of strings to let you know it’s time to cry and no shrieky violins to tell you to be scared (with apologies to Bernard Hermann and Alfred Hitchcock). Rather you are just supposed to look and listen to the environment and gradually take in the filmmaker's perspective as he angles his shots and provides deliberate fade-in and fade-outs to tap into your own subconscious processing of these character’s motivations.

Needless to say I was very excited to pick up a DVD of La Notte, Antoninni's follow-up to L'avventura . I had a sense that I would be viewing it in a uniquely intense way that I have never watched a movie before. It was a compelling viewing experience too (with no commentary track to set me straight), but I'm sure his style evolved and there were new ways he was representing the unstated in that film. There's also a danger in looking for symbolism and metonyms too much. Unless I know beforehand that a filmmaker was deliberately composing every frame in this style, I'd rather pay attention to everything more urgent in a new movie that I see, like plot, characters, acting, etc. That aside, L'avventura sparked a new understanding of film that I can't shake off. If I am confused or upset by a film that isn't straightforward, I'm no longer going to dismiss it as over my head. Rather, like the best visual art, these films are going to require focused study and repeated viewings in order to unravel the enigmatic expressions truly creative filmmakers present.

TUESDAY REPORT

THE DESCENT (2005)

On Demand Free HD Horror movie... excellent deal.

PERSEPOLIS (2007)

I think I appreciated this a lot more after the past few years of fully absorbing the narrative structure and pacing of graphic novels. It makes me really want to see Charles' Burns Black Hole or David B.'s Epileptic brought to life.

THE FILM SNOB SERIES: REMAINING ENTRIES

I have been changing my remaining list of "Film Snob" movies... see intro here.... so many times as I decide day in and day out not to devote time and mental energy to write a long-form essay on a movie. But with the season change comes new commitments. I can't say I'll ever seriously get to writing 7 more entries to round out the list... but I want to lock in my remaining entries so I can daydream how I will praise them to my devoted readers...

So queue these up in Netflix or something... and await for my thoughts.

FOUR: L' Avventura (1960)

FIVE: Winslow Boy (1999)

SIX: Battle Royale (2000)

SEVEN: Topsy Turvy (1999) and La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

EIGHT: Freaked (1993)

NINE: Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

TEN: Palindromes (2004)

One Movie in the past 2 weeks.

CORALINE (2009)

Notable because it's my first full-length movie viewed in 3D. Incredible experience, like a giant pop-up book.

I still remember how cool it was that I saw Nightmare Before Christmas in theaters on Halloween night!

TUESDAY

Film seen in the past 7 days

CHRISTMAS ON MARS (2008)

ONCE (2006)

THE SHOOTING (1967)

Tuesday again.

Film essays will be forthcoming (how's that for open-ended)...

Saw 2 films...

Eight Men Out (1988)

For all those who can't get past the appreciation for the glory of sports because of all the strings that keep professional athletes from exemplifying the essence of pure competition, this movie drips with the appropriate cynicism.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Even though this isn't a mind-blowing movie, I almost feel like giving it a 5-star rating on Netflix (the highest possible) just because it was an action movie that didn't pander and was devoid of cliches and padding.

Oh, the Oscars were Sunday night, and I officially have seen one of the five nominees, Slumdog Millionaire. Of the remaining 4 movies, I feel most compelled to see Milk, probably Frost/Nixon, and am somewhat uneasy about Benjamin Button (which I heard apes Forrest Gump and is very long) and The Reader (because seeing more movies on the Holocaust are not on the top of my list).

TUESDAY REPORT

3-day weekend means movie-watching!

Hellboy (2004)

Lake of Fire (2006)

Long and brutal documentary on the abortion debate. Tough to watch but incredibly well made. It's not so much against or for abortion than passionately against dogma.

Ratatouille (2007)

Pixar movies are absolutely gorgeous on Blu-Ray.

FAVORITE FILM OF 2008!

WALL-E

Well, the Oscars have been announced and most everyone is moving on from the annual year-end wrap up that every normal human being, and pop cultural critic, goes through. But the countdown must be finished, regardless of how irrelevant another glorious praise of Wall-E will be.

The PIXAR movies are being rightfully praised for operating on a peak level of quality at nearly every level, from the technical standpoint of the lush computer animation to the screenwriting and, to the enormous appreciation of parents everywhere, making a movie with appeal to kids and adults simultaneously. And it’s not just thinly veiled momentary winks to parents and grownups with a mature cultural reference. With Finding Nemo and even moreso with the Incredibles (and those are two of the three total Pixars I’ve seen) there seemed to be a throwback to a variety of classic film genres and a subtle commentary on the mythology of heroism and its representation in cartoon character form. So for film snobs that weren’t past looking at pretty images and cute characters, there was something in every pixel to enjoy.

Wall-E was enormously satisfying because it used the Pixar template of smart, crowd-friendly animation, and executed with perfect pitch a combination of my favorite cultural sub-genres.

At first, it’s a wonderful science fiction story. One of my favorite movies is 2001: A Space Oddysey, and Wall-E's space imagery as well as the absolute immersion in a posited future brought back memories of that film. The HAL-9000 lookalike helped as well.

Second, it’s a darkly satirical movie. While there’s romance and action, Wall-E would not exist if it wasn’t for the society devastated by blind and massive consumption. Of course, some people might be offended by this set-up, thinking it too preachy, but this isn’t an anti Wall-Mart documentary. An Earth so overhwhelmed by trash that it’s population had to leave the planet serves as the primary setup to the robot characters’ conflicts. In this sense, the movie goes back to my love for science fiction, particularly the bleak landscapes of Phillip K. Dick stories. The literature I have read of his is incredibly action-driven (which is probably why so many of his books have been made into movies) but they also paint a portrait, inspired by fifties consumer culture, of a world that is hardly enlightened and is altered into a new quasi-alien landscape not because of an invasion or technological advances, but because of the most base human instincts running rampant into either abandoning or constraining anything of beauty. More recently, the engaging satire Idiocracy by Mike Judge tapped into an interesting update of this satire, adding the glorification of stupidity and laziness in the Bush years into an even more frightening future if those qualities were encouraged in leadership and authority.

With a budget, potential audience and studio backing that Idiocracy never had, Wall-E is able to fully imagine this type of dystopian universe. I was captivated in turn by how the film, in a introductory period with no dialogue except Wall-E’s beeps and blurps, was allowed to have an almost dark indie-film character (28 Days Later, Blade Runner, come to mind) as the lonely environment that has been wrought by humanity dominates over the little robot until he gains a personality in order to cope. But as dystopian literature would likely create imagery taking you deeper into the darker corners of this world, Wall-E takes a different track because of the necessary Disneyfication and lets the little robot persevere and go about his curious tasks all the while becoming more human and develop a desire for companionship.

I can’t say that I can completely remove my cynicism circuit and enjoy “kids” movies, especially when weaker elements of the plot are presented to move the story along to its happily ever after conclusion. But Wall-E is wonderful because its innocence and cuteness shines through a fully realized bleak landscape. Romance between artificial intelligence in spite of toxic surroundings is the type of movie lovey dovey stuff I can cheer on.

Tuesday Report

NO NEW MOVIES...

or old movies that matter, for this week.

But that doesn't mean you should stop visiting!

Tuesday Report

I saw two movies in the past week...

The Last House on the Left (1972)

which I saw for free via my cable On Demand

and

The Wrestler (2008)

which I saw at Piper's Alley theater in Chicago. The latter was pretty darn good. I have an idea for a new list... 10 Movies that (Almost) Make Guys Cry. That's got to be one of them.

MOVIE WITHDRAWL !! WARNING

Other things came up this week, so I didn't watch a single movie.

As far as cinematic experiences go, I did finish The Sopranos, probably the very first show I have ever followed from beginning to end, starting when I was wrapping up high school in an HBO home, and wrapping up the last couple seasons through Netflix, a year and a half after the infamous ending of the show. Fortunately, even though I knew how the series was going to end, watching it for myself I feel like it was still done in a very subtle but shocking way.

For me, the Sopranos was like The Beatles of TV (wait, follow me through here). Just as the Beatles were given complete artistic freedom to take their music to creative heights totally beyond what anyone expected of the recorded music medium, the censorless HBO combined with the critical and commercial support of the Sopranos allowed for it to tell the story in as patient or violent as necessary. I never felt for a second that the show was limiting itself. It's only by the last season where I seemed to think they were dragging some of the conflicts out, but I don't think fans wanted it to end any time soon, so that's forgiven. What a treat to be able to follow the whole thing. Now, I've heard good things about the Wire...

#2 Movie of 2008

2. THE DARK KNIGHT

A critical and commercial success, there is so much 'movie' in this movie it was exhausting to sit through. But it had to be this way, in order to explain and define two new villians in ways that aren't clean cut, and to introduce tragedy and conflict in ways where you have no idea what to expect next from any character on the screen

While the 1989 Batman scared me when I was younger, the punches The Dark Knight refuses to pull were so much harsher. I'm also glad that the movie moved so quickly, because otherwise younger more innocent minds might linger too much of their thoughts on the 'pencil', the 'smile', and the giant pile of burning money. And there isn't any lingering aspect of the violence... it just happens with a rawness in this film, hoping, without much success, that we're too desensitized by blind brutality to notice.

As for that breakneck pacing and fast editing that made something like Armageddon so awful, there's no way that some of it, even in this movie, can't be a little irritating. So I give it a very small demotion because the movie could have slowed down for me to absorb some of the subplots.

But regardless, what makes this movie even greater than a perfect 'comic-book' movie is how it reflects, in a rather pessimistic way, the underlying mood of all us in times of great insecurity like we're living in today (although a little bit less as of Inauguration Day) . As the Joker explains his anarchic philosophy and acts on it, it all comes strikingly home, not just because you can recognize the great City of Chicago in many exterior shots. No, the Joker's mayhem plays into something deep, because he values stoking rabid fear and paranoia as gleefully as brutally cutting up someone's face. The terrified Gothaminians are the all-too-vulnerable ends to the Joker's means. In the opening scene before he first appears, as his bank robbery cohorts rapidly off one another, the message to crooks and citizens alike is... "Don't trust anyone, and be loyal to nobody." Batman and Two-Face are variations on this ultimate screen villian's modus operandi, where the swelled up emotions of a terrified populace legitimize an authority's strength, whether costumed or legitimate.

TUESDAY REPORT

GO (1999)
THE HOST (2006)
SLEEPER (1973)

What could my two favorite movies of last year possibly be?!? Stay tuned!

Tuesday Report

Greetings!

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007)

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

THIRD ENTRY: OLD JOY (2006)

[Partial interruption of my 2008 movie countdown to add another entry to my "10 Films that Make Me a Casual Film Snob" series]

I have revealed to a few close confidants that my most hated movie of all time is Armageddon. That movie had the temerity to mix scenes of absolute devastation, edited at a breakneck speed, with the most contrived emotional scenes. Every frame of that movie gives you context for the standards by which I judge cinema. I want my movies to trust my sense of art and patience. Let moments of tragedy and cruelty linger as long or as short as necessary to make the most effective emotional impact. And, pretty please, if you’re going to make a big explosive cartoon of a movie, make the characters fantastic or unreal to fit the style. On the flipside, if you want real human beings to express themselves on the screen, whether in a lonely woods or in a spaceship in outerspace, make the movie’s pacing and style fit your desire for the audience to identify with these characters.

Old Joy is a unique movie because it follows this standard on which I decided I should judge films, and dares me to keep that standard on a type of movie that is the polar opposite of anything remotely like the big obnoxious blockbuster. It’s a movie that barely exists, but what is shown is appropriate to the situation. It moves like a slow stream, and in fact the only brash element in this movie is the blaring of right-wing talk radio as the only two main characters in the movie (and a dog) head into the wilderness.

The movie involves two old friends in their late twenties, one married and one kind of a loner, who go on an overnight hiking trip to a secluded freshwater spring. And that’s about it. The movie quietly follows this trip they take, and no dialogue or interaction is wasted in any way that doesn’t make you question the authenticity of these people. You’re mostly left to guess about their past, and it seems like most of the larger battles that come with the development of any deep friendship have already occurred. It’s only at one hinting moment, which in the broadest of interpretations could be the “climax” of the film, that opens up interesting questions. Or it just as easily could be nothing major or revelatory.

From the previews I watched online, Old Joy looked quite unspectacular, but I didn’t expect its urgency to barely rise above the level of a cricket chirp or a bubbling spring. But I still enjoyed it because of the ability of the filmmaker to think small and keep everything understated. I’ve had difficulty coming to terms with other low-budget low-key movies like this, that seem to putter around and offer interesting images but no mood or setting to shape your expectations and interpretations. But this film works because it settles into a natural pace so effortlessly, and is compelling in how it flows as normally as life would unfold on your most mundane of days. With attention to background noise and mood as much as dialogue, the film reminds me of the clarity of mind that comes with the belief that most of life is background noise, with the occasional pivotal moment bubbling up to the surface. Movies have trouble with this understatement since there’s always a need for them to say something and be very in-your-face about it. Old Joy allows me to appreciate a whole set of films where there is nothing obvious to conclude or even remember once the credits roll. In fact, that open inconclusiveness is entirely the point.

More 2008 favorites!

No new movies were watched as 2008 made it to 2009. I was out visiting my family at my brother's place in Florida. Sometimes we watch movies when we're together, but often we're too excited about eachother's company to sit still for very long.

Let's continue with my movie countdown...

5. Quantum of Solace - A satisfying, stylish continuation of the cliffhanger ending of Casino Royale, this is a Bond movie that has characters that are approachable in spite of all the usual fantastical bond elements, which in my view are exotic locales, beautiful women, sharp expository dialogue, and the main character's collected demeanor. Only a little lower on the list because it feels like an intermediate chapter in a larger saga. After viewing some of the tangents the older Bond movies went on, it's nice to see something this direct and entertaining.

4. Happy-Go-Lucky - This was the movie that I shamefully omitted as I finalized my first version of this countdown. Maybe it, like other Mike Leigh movies, just felt so natural and honest that it was folded into my memory as something other than fictional cinema. One of my friends called Roberto Benigni's character in Life is Beautiful one of the most likeable characters he has ever seen, but I think Poppy, the main character in this movie, is incredibly loveable and infectious. Very few movies have characters that provide a personality mold on how to live your own life, but after watching this, I deeply felt that all my problems could be solved by facing every dire situation and difficult personalities with a smile and a relentless positive attitude. Sounds super-corny I know, but watch the movie and you'll know what I mean. Excessive happiness leads to so many benefits.

Honorable mention must also go to my original #4, Forgetting Sarah Marshall... a comedy that doesn't have the indie-cred or natural style of Happy-Go-Lucky, but is comparable in its innocence and sympathetic main character, and the joy of watching two gorgeous female characters by themselves or together in nearly every scene. A little shallow of a factor in movie-viewing, yes, but harmless in a cute and hilarious comedy such as this one.

3. Speed Racer

The reviews for this were extremely mixed, with some people really, really hating this movie. The status of it as a box office bomb doesn't help it's reputation, but this movie is the purest example of why I will still go see movies in theaters. A stunning visually-innovative spectacle, with homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey light shows and just about any bright and shiny thing that served as eye candy to me from age 1 to the present, this was so fun to watch on a huge screen. Maybe upon a second viewing I will see how stupid this movie's plot, dialogue, or message is. But I've seen stupid spectacles before, and this movie as a whole is so mesmerizing that its giddy pace and colors distract you from thinking too much. Like an art gallery where every blank space and door is covered in neon paints and bright colors, Speed Racer leaves no room for anything but the suspension of reality. For a overserious and rationalizing person like myself, that cinematic effect deserves respect.