CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)

Blu-Ray

Another installment from Ruth and Jay's collection.  A really good action movie.




THE AVENGERS (2012)

Regal Fiesta Theater - San Antonio

In some way I'm so glad I was lazy and dismissed those other superhero movies when they were in theaters.  Watching Thor and then Captain America in the course of two weeks and then watching this was like watching some kind of huge big-budget miniseries.  This movie really feels like a culmination of lesser comic book movie parts (that all had redeemable qualities).  With this and Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon is on a roll and is providing me with the best subversive and straightforward cinematic entertainment this year.

LE BONHEUR (1965)

Criterion #420

via Hulu Plus

Back to the artsy stuff after a long absence. A stylistic lush permeates this film, and you can see the influences in filmmakers of modern times that establish a tone just by letting characters or groups of characters move within an expansive enviornment.  It's a completely satisfying but cryptic expression of man's pursuit of happiness through women.  Like the best of these older foreign movies, it has a coherent structure, but leaves you with a very unique emotion at the end.  Those are the "dated" movies that make an impact, the ones the dig up a new sense of feeling that you didn't know what existed.  What was this old French filmmaker (a woman, significant for the directors working at the time) trying to say?  What were her motivations?  Le Bonheur intrigues you into finding an answer.

Film Report

Films over the past month

and blogger.com is reformatted?  Hmm...

CABIN IN THE WOODS (2012)

Absolutely wonderful.  I was giddy about writing a long post about this movie at the time, but I'm a little weary of making a whole diatribe now that time has passed.

Basically this movie attacks you on so many levels.  It's not a profound story that is filmed, which is one set of quality cinema.  Rather it is all knowing wink to any film geek that 'gets' satire, genre films, and subversive attitudes towards movies.  It is definitely one of the most nasty movies to spoil... I honestly felt that even the previews ruined some things for me.  But you can't just go to a horror movie... you need a context, and horror movies need a context to be entertaining and relevant.

I'm sorry... too vague... but basically there is a moment in this movie that is nearly the perfect listhmus test for everything I look for in complicated odd cinema.  During that moment if you don an all knowing grin or display a sense of giddiness, then you are one of my kind.  However, if you were confused, or frustrated that the moment wasn't "scary", or if you started actively disliking the film after that point... well then we better find other common interests because you are not going to movies for the same reason as me.

BRIDESMAIDS (2011)

Oscar Count
 - Best Supporting Actress - 1/5
- Best Original Screenplay - 1/5
There is one key argument left for going to the actual movie theaters.  When you are stuck there, it's considered impolite and distracting to take out your cell phone and check e-mail, etc.  When watching a movie at home I find myself shocked and a little appalled that I can't focus for a long time on what should be a complete cinematic story without fiddling with my smartphone.  BUT, could it be reflective of the quality of the movie I'm watching that I'm reaching for that phone when a movie slows down?  It should really be attention grabbing from start to finish to be timeless, no?

Bridesmaids was on my radar because of its critical acclaim, and there were some truly funny moments and performances.  But like most hyped comedies there were character-building scenes in between those funny moments and it got into a boring pattern that couldn't rivet me.

THOR (2011)

I've got to catch up comic book movies... especially because The Avengers is supposed to be real good and it came out last weekend!  And this movie was in my Netflix 'Q'... it just happened that my Texas Aunt Ruth came to visit me with some spare Blu-Rays from my Uncle's collection.  So be prepared for some more popcorn as I make my way through them (and downgrade to a cheaper Netflix plan in the process).

So I'll have to say that on average it was watchable.  The set designs of Norse God world were pretty stunning.  But it was juxtaposed with some very irritating Natalie Portman stuff where she talked in nervous girl cliches and smart allecky quips in the presence of the big towering stud that are superhero represented.  Ain't it Cool thought her scenes were believable and I just thought they were shallow and dishonest and distracting from a big flashy movie.  Some of the action pieces on Earth seemed a little cheap looking as well.

Despite that I have to say... it's fun to see a character from Iron Man 2 pop up and just tie together a saga that is likely to go through multiple films of mostly good quality.  Captain America will be next!

Film Log

BROADCAST NEWS (1987)

Criterion #552

OSCARS 1987

BEST PICTURE (1/5)
BEST ACTOR (1/5)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (1/5)
BEST ACTRESS (1/5)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (2/5)

Getting my 1987 film credentials up to par with this one, when I original had only Woody Allen's Radio Days and Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket in the docket as the Oscar-nominated films from that year.

Despite my general annoyance with As Good As It Gets, I knew that James L. Brooks was known for sharp honest dialogue and this is an incredible movie full of characters whose depth and complicated personalities don't belong in the eighties. Holly Hunter was in Raising Arizona the same year and her sweetness takes on a whole new shine in Broadcast News. You are in awe of her aggressive newsroom personality in once scene and you just collapse when the career mode is taken away and she becomes an emotional wreck. The tension is great because the love triangle takes place in parallel to the battle over journalistic integrity, strengthening both conflicts.

All I've got for now.

A huge film update

Greetings from San Antonio Texas!

Lots of transition time... and a pretty light movie watching schedule. The top 10 films of 2011 will have to be continued at another point.

There have been some adjustments to my entertainment budget and multimedia setup...

1) No longer have cable. Comcast OnDemand movies are no longer an option for me.
2) Continue to be a Hulu Plus subscriber... in fact with the lousy bunny ears I have on my TV, broadcast TV is a lousy option
3) CinemaNow is a pay per view service through my PS3 that will provide cinema options
4) With the money saved I have now upgraded to the 2-BluRays a month Netflix plan!

Enough semantics... got to catch up.

BAMAKO (2006)

This movie travelled from Rockford to Texas with me in a Netflix envelope. It was the first new movie I watched upon my big move and transition. I'm ashamed to say I dozed off multiple times and had to watch it in 20-30 minute spurts. I was probably pretty exhausted from my move, but it isn't exactly the most engaging cinema. The movie's device is a mock trial of the World Bank with various testimonials from Malian citizens. It's interspersed with a personal narrative (and a cameo by Danny Glover)... it's difficult and definitely one of those alternative films to dabble in occasionally.

BE LIKE OTHERS (2008)

WIFF 2008 selection - watched via Hulu Plus

This documentary is centered on how people deal with such a warped religious doctorine regarding transexuality... but I also had a undercurring feeling that when it comes to the Iran regime, their doctinairre is barely less brutal than what is the operation philosophy in most American conservative circles. In Iran, you see, homosexuality is a sin punishable by death. Sex change operations, however, are condoned, as way for people to fix their bodies to fit their desires. So homosexuals can only follow their desires without getting completely harassed by undergoing incredibly invasive surgical procedures. It's a brutal emotional and physical situation these people are put in, and it's riveting from start to finish.

ABDUCTION (2011)

Watched via CinemaNow

I should definitely explain. One of the Comedy Podcasts I've been listening to is How Did This Get Made? where a few cool comedians tear apart (or giddily praise) a bizarre/crazy/so-bad-its-good movie. It's a very satisfying update of the whole mst3k formula... usually covering mainstream movies that were really really terrible. It's the only way I ever want to "watch" Smurfs or the Twilight Movies for example. There's a preview episode every other week, and these podcasters were having so much fun that I really wanted to see one of these movies for myself before the main episode. So there's this movie with the Wolf from Twilight, which I watched late one night. The tricky thing is.. for a few moments I was compelled by this movie, which I think defeats the purpose of watching a movie because it's "terrible". Fortunately the podcasters really tore apart the stupid parts of the movie, and it was a very satisfying experience. I'm ready to see one of these really awful movies though... this one was a little bit too good for this podcast.

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)

Watched at Quarry Theater - San Antonio

Yes, after 5 years I am living in an incredibly exciting City in a really interesting job, so there's no reason whatsoever to spend my time indoors in a movie theater. But this movie's marketing campaign could not let me out of its talons, and I absolutely had to see it. It was actually really solid, but I knew that the PG-13 going in would mean that this brutal event wouldn't be depicted with the blood and violence that it might have deserved. And the "rules" of the game seemed a little more tighter than the one depicted in the Japanese movie Battle Royale (which I had discussed). I think the characters carried the movie through it's weak points, and I might have to read the books to see where the whole saga goes from here.

Whew... all new movies covered (might as well let you know I watched my Blu-Ray of A Clockwork Orange and a Netflix Blu-Ray of Where the Wild Things Are in the interim). Talk more soon!

BEST FILMS OF 2011 - NUMBER 8

RED CHAPEL

You will probably never find a movie, especially a documentary, where it is so much fun to describe the incredibly complicated premise.

This selection I saw at the Wisconsin Film Festival of 2011 is a very rare look into North Korea. In order to get permission to film this country as candidly as possible, the Danish filmmaker proposed a cultural exchange program. Two Danes of Korean descent offer to perform as a comedy duo for a select North Korean audience. The reasons why the North Koreans accept are a little hard to fathom, but it boils down to using these visitors for propaganda purposes. Through their record performance they can both show their openness to their Westernized Korean brothers and to show how ridiculous the non-Communist world is through the absurd and ridiculous antics of this comedy duo's performance.

BUT WAIT, there's more, and it adds an even more dark and weird turn to this film. One of the Korean-Danes actually is a spastic (his words that he uses for himself, which I hope isn't offensive). He has a speech impediment and uses a wheelchair. His presence serves two purposes for both the propogandists and the sneaky Dane filmmaker. He is used as a propaganda tool because of the suspicion by many human rights activists that North Korea has actually executed many disabled people over the years. This is a way for them to counter some of those suspicions. From a more immediate standpoint, the disabled Dane's speech impediment makes it very hard for the North Korean "handlers", already challenged by the Korean-to-Danish translation, to decide whether what is being filmed and what is being said will undermine the regime if the footage is allowed to leave the country. So you get a few incredible moments where this guy says how ridiculous everyone in North Korea is to their faces, and this footage actually makes it out of the country intact for our American eyes to see!

What a premise! And it's honestly a hard one to sustain, especially through interesting but unfocused sidetracks where the disabled Korean begins to feel sympathy for their North Korean tour guides and resists chances to humiliate them. Even the filmmaker himself questions whether he is abusing his authority and exploiting these two Danish-Koreans for less-than-noble purposes. All this introspection takes a little away from the satire the film tries to accomplish but it does offer another level to the documentary.

It's hard to believe there isn't any other way to get this kind of access to North Korean society, but despite the films flaws, whatever this filmmaker did to find this window into an incredibly disturbing world was worth it. The whole convoluted setup to get this kind of openness from an oppressive regime actually makes it a fitting portrayal of a crude and iconoclastic country so dedicated to using lies, delusion, and overinflated egos to ignore reality.

WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGOO?

WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGOO? (1966)

via Hulu Plus

2/3 Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein

Eclipse is a special edition of Criterion Collection Films that are in the form of box sets of one director's work or sometime a cinematic theme. Most of the Eclipse collections are now on Hulu Plus and it's another way to sample a substantial palette of a certain director's style and to feel like a completist by watching a complete set of available films.

Quite a while ago, I decided to get started trying out the Eclipse set with Mr. Freedom (1969), directed by William Klein, who was a famous 50s and 60s fashion photographer who mostly made documentaries and was an American expatriate in France. Mr. Freedom was fairly narratively incoherent, but contained a lot of unique editing and bizarre imagery to sustain a viewing. It was also referred to as the most anti-American movie ever made by one critic, but it was so crazy it was hard to pick up the social commentary.

The earlier film in the collection (and I have one more film to complete this Eclipse set after this) provides pretty much the same kind of visual punch, although having it take place in the world of Paris fashion makes it a little more grounded. The ending is weird and definitely in inconclusive in the style of many art house films... but it definitely isn't boring and provides a very exciting visual snapshot of the sixties and revolutionary-style filmmaking.

BEST FILMS OF 2011 - NUMBER 9

ANOTHER YEAR

I have talked in length on multiple occasions about the amazing talent of Mike Leigh and the actors that work with him. Just a reminder... in all of his movies, he doesn't create scripts in the strict sense. Rather, he creates characters with a select group of trusted actors and then sets them loose in situations and encounters he develops that the actors haven't specifically rehearsed for. It's dramatic improvisation perfected. I can't understand the mystery of that kind of process, but the excitement that everything you see in his movies is being made up on the spot, that the actors are reacting as people AND as their characters, is incredible to behold. The fact that it stays so coherent and engaging is a credit to the direction and the performances.

Mike Leigh's last film, Happy-Go-Lucky (a top 10 favorite of mine for that year), had its momentum on the unrelenting optimism of the main character, a kindergarden teacher who remained young at heart and reacted with smiles and cheerfulness to all adversity. It was an inspiring performance which I at least hoped at the time would actually impact how I view the world. Yeah, it moved me a little bit.

Another Year gives us a calming and content middle-aged couple (Jim Broadbent, of Moulin Rougue fame, and Ruth Deen) that are less boisterous than the young lady in Happy-Go-Lucky but no less infectious in their warmth. What they have to contend with are some lonely and desperate people in their circle of family and friends. The style of the film makes it inherently slow and patient, but the realistic character moments make it very rewarding. The couple serves as the steady anchor of the movie, and I could find very little flaws in them other than the human quirks that are easily countered by the compromise and happiness that a successful marriage symbolizes.

The characters that rotate around them create such a sharp contrast, and they are definitely the dynamic force that drives the movie's tension, especially in the excellent performance of Lesley Manville as an aging flirtatious assistant in the Manville character's social worker office.

You can see the amazing power of people that find their soul mate early and have figured a major part of their lives out, and with that stability comes an amazing ability to be good friends to other people. But eventually as the film goes into a darker direction, the tolerant nature of the happy characters gives in to just a hint of annoyance at the people that cling to them expecting help in figuring out the major disappointments in their own lives. There's a limit to what even the kindest people can do for others, and you feel for the others that are going to have to eat some humble pie and find a different kind of peace than what this central couple has.

This is the kind of movie that I think impacts people in different ways. For anyone with someone special in their lives, it will for sure make them appreciate what they have. For others that don't, it provides a subtle suggestion that perpetual loneliness is mostly a state of mind, and you can always question your evolving standards of companionship without considering it "settling".

But I honestly have troubling nailing down a universal theme for Another Year which is why it is a little bit low on this list. It really is just another amazing unique movie by Mike Leigh.