Saturday, September 15, 2007

Day 10

ALEXANDRA (Alexandr Sokurov) - 60
BEFORE I FORGET (Jacques Nolot) - 68
MUTUM (Sandra Kogut) - 71
AND ALONG CAME TOURISTS (Robert Thalmein) - 45
LOU REED'S BERLIN (Julian Schnabel) - 61

[I could have seen this blindfolded and it wouldn't have made a dent in the rating. Schnabel continues the sub-Brakhage noodlings here that he apparently began in DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, which I'm now more content than ever on skipping. At 65, Reed remains a nuanced player and a paragon of understatement in rock, which makes the inclusion of Antony, who is given the opportunity to butcher "Candy Says," all the more puzzling. The contrast is jarring: Reed speak-sings with a mixture of mumbles and big epiphanies, as if words are meant to die shortly after exiting his mouth, whereas Antony seems intent on giving those words a melodramatic eulogy. It's hard to see why the two men even respect each other after hearing them back-to-back.]

Friday, September 14, 2007

Day 9

GLORY TO THE FILMMAKER! (Takeshi Kitano) - 54
I'M NOT THERE (Todd Haynes) - 36
I AM FROM TITOV VELES (Teona Strugar Mitevska) - 55
LES BONS DEBARRAS (Francis Mankiewicz) - 69

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Day 8

PARANOID PARK (Gus Van Sant) - 40
MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (Noah Baumbach) - 42
HELP ME EROS (Lee Kang-sheng) - 63
WOLFSBERGEN (Nanouk Leopold) - 59

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Day 7

CLEANER (Renny Harlin) - W/O

[Not a very Hawksian entry in Harlin's oeuvre, but at least we get to see Sam Jackson imitate Cary Grant. Renny says WKW inspired the visuals; I was thinking more CSI.]

ATONEMENT (Joe Wright) - 65

[Wright, much more flippant and neurotic than you'd expect based on his choices of source material, said something about "life-changing experiences in scuzzy London moviehouses" before this began; I'd wager a few were courtesy of Michael Powell (& Pressburger), judging from a busy comic tone where the "real" conflict is just barely allowed to register. Tries a bit hard near the end, but is moving precisely for dissecting Briony's own excessive guilt earlier on in depicting her fantasy of atonement--she's apologetic to the point of being irritating, while "Robbie" and "Cecilia" are annoyed to the point of being brutal, and each are easy to access in the low-key performances and intelligent editing choices on display.]

CORROBOREE (Ben Hackworth) - [rating withheld 'cuz I'm interning for Shoreline Entertainment]
THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS (Bruce McDonald) - [rating withheld 'cuz I'm interning for Shoreline Entertainment]

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Day 6

SOUS LES TOITS DE PARIS (Hiner Saleem) - 45

[My first encounter with Saleem, and I was usually either mildly amused or mildly puzzled. I imagine that's the reaction, what with the actively confusing compositions. (E.g. Marie Kremer and junkie boyfriend looming over ominously. Is it sex, or some kind of workout?) At other times, the Tati-esque formal gamesmanship lends the film a kind of balance. (If we get to see Kremer take a shower, we must also see Michel Piccoli do same...) Also, half the frame is often left empty, a la Tsai. Also, behavioral intelligence only really occurs when big opportunities for it to occur come along. (Piccoli, on the phone with son, says "It's not serious" when he's obviously quite stressed.) Unique, but not necessarily good.]

SUMMIT CIRCLE (Bernard Emond) - 64

[Nuanced isn't the right word for Emond's way with actors, so it's a bad idea to expect variation within a shot. (I did in LA NEUVAINE and was bored stiff.) Prolonged blank stares abound, actually, but the trick is that they're usually a replacement for something more conventional. When the heroine is on the job, for example, you couldn't intuit any sign of stress from her neutral, dignified way of dealing with customers, but as we can see from the insert recording the data of her work--her last call took 14.1 seconds, it reminds her--the stress is present; she's just good at dealing with it. And though SUMMIT CIRCLE is ostensibly a criticism of the callousness of big business, Emond deploys this sort of strategy across the board. (The protag's boss, announcing a load of lay-offs, is allowed to totally retain her dignity in the midst of jeers from those whose lives she's in the process of ruining.) Unfortunately, also like LA NEUVAINE, Emond also pointlessly mixes up the chronology--he and Guillermo Arriaga should have lunch. (Then breakfast, and then--oh shit!--dinner.) I had mixed feelings until the final scene, which pays off in a big way, though doesn't benefit from the aforementioned screenplay problems.]

WATER LILIES (Celine Sciamma) - 77

[Sciamma, who quite out-Breillat'd Breillat for me at TIFF '07, seems to have attempted a direct assault on every coming-of-age cliche known to man, and mostly succeeds. First in need of mentioning is Louise Blachere, who allows herself to look like an idiot and a sexual object in the name of a great performance: Anne, the chubby friend, is the opposite of benign, here obnoxiously gluttonous and there fetishized in contrast with her bony pal, Marie. Marie herself toes the line between guile and guilelessness, and Sciamma's intuition for letting the "lessons" she learns be both cruel and sensible is almost perfect. (What better motivation to win a new friend over than the loss of an old one?) Floriane is sluttiness under a microscope, a spot-on portrait of when it works and when it doesn't. The sole missteps are also the most feminist-friendly moments in the film. (Would Anne really have done what she did in response to her long-time crush coming clean with his feelings? Seems more like a cheap opportunity for Sciamma to celebrate Female Assertion.) Sure hope Sciamma ditches the girl power stuff and continues digging into thornier territory, because the latter is mighty rewarding.]

Days 4 & 5

LUST, CAUTION (Ang Lee) - 25

[The sort of spy movie where the protag secretly talks to her comrades over the phone in hushed tones, making a serious face, and might as well have ordered a custom t-shirt reading "I Am a Spy, Restaurant Patrons." Not superficially rousing, exactly, but not art; with one or two exceptions amidst a 160-minute running time, A. Lee's second Golden Lion winner in three years is studiously conventional.]

LOVE SONGS (Christophe Honore) - 50

[Didn't even notice the structure lifted directly from Demy's classic, but I did notice that for the second film in a row, Honore planted a reference to a classic shot from BED AND BOARD involving Louis Garrel. Apparently he forgot to cross it off his to-do list, a hasty choice that falls in line well with the rest of this one-off musical, replete with simple 8-bar riffs and uninspiring production values. Not an unpleasant sit, though. Honore can direct a duet as sly exchange of desire, and at least Honore isn't just hung up on Nouvelle Vague: the most obvious bit of plagiarism involves shoehorning Ludivine Sagnier into Spike Lee's signature "floating" tracking shot. And though Garrel's transition into bi-curiosity is not entirely convincing, I admire Honore for not turning it into a statement about the character. I'm hoping Chabrol do to Ludivine what Honore does here, because she's a highlight, her dark crassness a good counterpoint to Garrel's innocent goofiness.]

QUARTET (Nicky Hamlyn) - 28

[Bedroom rhymes, sans movement, like Jim Jennings with no apparent aspirations to formal intensity. Lie down on your bed with a camera, turn to a random angle, shoot for a few seconds, and repeat until you have something vaguely screenable.]

ERZAHLUNG (Hannes Schupbach) [s] - 18

[Comparisons to Nathaniel Dorsky are unearned, on the basis of Dorsky's SONG AND SOLITUDE: Dorsky configures every shot to reflect elements of reality and his own artificial constructions, whereas Schupbach appears to just be chilling out with a sculptor and his posse. Schupbach stated the beginning and end of a shot are important to him, but it doesn't show: while some have little movements (drilling, hosing, looking away), some are inanimate, and no discernible patterns develop.]

GONE (Karoe Goldt) [s] - 24

[R.I.P. Jeremy Blake; Goldt's color-scapes are a simpler variation on Blake's, set to badly recorded music.]

SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas) - 82

[Other than camerawork that boggles the mind, what resonates here from Reygadas' earlier films is a disconnect between physical beauty and the sexual or emotional pleasure we receive from it. (Sample dialogue exchange: "You left my kids with that fatso." "That fatso is a good man.") Not that Johann's mistress is per se ugly, but by conventional standards his wife is at least as attractive--it basically comes down to one's taste for big noses. The casting is crucial, since Reygadas attempts to stare down the great mystery of whether preference in love is sacred or a mere trick of the mind, an even greater mystery when Woman A and Woman B are apples and oranges. If Reygadas had shaved off 20 minutes from the running time, I might be about 10 points higher on the film; the childhood ennui has its moments, but next to the central storyline often feels like so much dead space. But Reygadas has finally conceived material majestic enough to do justice to his formal ambitions.]

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (Andrew Dominik) - 74

[Comparisons to Malick are misguided; Dominik's virtues are a precise control of performances and tone that only wavers when the film's superfluous narration butts in. (You'd think people would at least feel the difference between this film's Ken Burns-style recapitulations of the action and the naive ramblings of a dreamer present in Malick's.) Dominik probably likes dealing with such antagonistic characters to savor the moments in which their antagonism dissolves. Who could forget the moment when Wood and Dick stop fighting and simply look at each other, perhaps waiting for the tension to dissolve, or perhaps a chance to fire the first shot. (Most filmmakers would choose to signal one or the other, as a bluff to the viewer; Dominik's rendering of the moment is exhilarating in its neutrality.) This is the very sort of scene Dominik deserves to protract as long as he pleases--and yet I'm convinced he loses momentum towards the finish-line, as his thesis becomes clear, and Zooey offers too little presence, too late.]

SAD VACATION (Shinji Aoyama) - W/O

[Nice title song; otherwise, WTF? I can't remember a film with a more wildly inconsistent visual plan: elliptical editing here, master shots there, a quite ordinary rural drama for most of its running time. I actually saw about two hours of this, and retained about none of them.]

THE LAST MISTRESS (Catherine Breillat) - 68

[A film, I'm almost sad to report, seemingly created for Breillat to vicariously enjoy the Asia Argento persona. Argento can make impulsively knifing a man look natural because her default facial expression is bemused nastiness. Her Vellini lacks genuine convictions but always effectively replaces them with sadistic glee; she often takes the extra, seemingly unnecessary step, after sympathizing with Ryno, to nonetheless fire one last zinger at him. It makes profound, unspoken sense that she can only fully surrender to him when he's wounded: as atonement for her bitchiness. So why isn't this top-tier Breillat? It feels odd to be leveling this criticism at a filmmaker like Breillat, but the perspective of Vellini, for the most part, registers as too comic, laughing at her cruelty but not yet prepared to feel the weight of it.]

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Day 3

THE BANISHMENT (Andrei Zvyaginstev) - 62

[Cannes reception is inexcusable; minus the last half-hour, I'd be 70+. And that last half-hour isn't so much bad as profoundly superfluous, expanding something easily explained in 30 seconds to, well, 60 times that many. Zvyaginstev is still a master of intergenerational repression--the kids and adults each have vague evidence of each other's lives, and the way they interpret it is fascinating--and deserving Cannes prize-winner Konstantin Lavronenko still expertly limns patriarchy brimming with latent rage. He's genuinely unpredictable, all the moreso for having friends like brother Mark who give terrible, albeit sympathetic advice. Get a new editor, Andrei!]

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT (Amir Bar-lev) - 49

[Jared compared discovering Marla's paintings were the work of a fraud to discovering P.T. Anderson's films were ghost-directed by Guy Ritchie, and whether you like MY KID should, in my opinion, depend on whether that revelation would give you newfound respect for the auteur of SNATCH or an instinctive loathing of BOOGIE NIGHTS, Anderson's superiority to Ritchie being a given. To me it only seems natural to embrace the object, not the maker--since the object should redefine our impression of the maker--even when the maker is a 4-year-old girl, which makes the collectors of Marla's work strike me as nauseatingly naive, and certainly as eager for attention as the Olmsteads. ("Hey, you'll never guess the age of the painter who did that!") This would all be a very interesting subject for investigation, but Bar-lev shies away from it, instead saving all of his contempt for the family. One assumes this is because he doesn't have convictions about art himself, period; this sense damages the film, in that the sequences in which we're meant to analyze the dubiously varied styles of Marla's paintings reek wholly of investigative cynicism, devoid of the joy I instinctively search for in art. The footage of Marla's parents fares better, just because Bar-lev is able to temper his expectations of their honesty.]

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (Cristian Mungiu) - 60

[Mungiu sidesteps formal inventiveness in favor of long master takes, which is wise, because he fumbles most badly when deviating from this formula. (Why the sudden close-up on the abortionist in the hotel upon his searing reproach of the girls?) Mostly notable for a general aversion to sentimentality: Vlad Ivanov is actually quite fine as the abortionist so long as he keeps to matter-of-factly laying out the potential dangers of the operation. He overcomes an undercurrent of sinister motives through sheer intelligence. Laura Vasiliu's Gabita is similar, withholding sympathy for a woman in a bad situation by heightening her own nervous tension to a point where she can merely squeal instead of gesticulate. I'm a little more puzzled by the praise for Anamaria Marinca, a blanker slate of a character who mostly seems to play along with the audience response to the abortionist and Gabita. (She grows more sympathetic towards the former, and more irritated by the latter.) Lacks the dramatic precision of a Puiu, but there's enough here to keep me excited for more work from Mungiu.]

PLOY (Pen-ek Ratanaruang) - 47

[Pen-ek continues to suffuse serious topics with comic nihilism, taking a marriage in discord, effectively sucking any semblance of love from it ("marriage just expires," the husband casually observes), but continuing interest in husband, wife, and the title young girl with a trio of dream sequences. Interesting in theory and deadly to watch, as Pen-ek's signature dissonant synth score hardly makes interest out of mystifying sexual episodes and fights. Don't get why half the frame often looks straight out of a home-furnishing advertisement.]

HAPPINESS (Hur Jin-ho) - 67

[I'd like to have screened this for the protesters often surrounding the Scotiabank, for some end pissed about smoking in cinema. Here's a movie that modestly posits healthy living, and yet is realistic enough in its expectations to watch its cirrhosis-afflicted protagonist revert to booze without a blink. The late-breaking reversal is, I'm guessing, the protag's [SPOILER!] solemn admission to his beloved fellow invalid that he's happier with a carefree slut than her, at once gut-wrenchingly honest and despicable in its brutality. The title is unironic: Hur ruthlessly considers the nature of happiness. Are we better off with companions who perpetually remind us of our failings?]

DIARY OF THE DEAD (George A. Romero) - 73

[Many have made note of the formal restrictions Romero has chosen, and their relation to the YouTube age and New Media. Fair enough, but I was riveted by how a single roving video camera (later augmented to a few) at once gave credence to a bevy of perspectives on the horror conventions at play. Most incisive is the conflict between the project's callousness and its necessity: director Jason firmly believes in the latter, but subsides into neuroses; his tough, intelligent, rather Hawksian girlfriend is usually annoyed by the project but still offers reluctant concessions like "You make a good argument." But the movie has a lot of questions to explore, and answers them satisfactorily, e.g., Q: why do modern horror flicks feature fast zombies?; A: because it's more straightforwardly menacing and ergo easier for the filmmakers to think about. This is a movie that offers 1001 ways to feel guilty and/or exhilarated by mayhem, some of which don't catch on for intriguing reasons: my audience's refusal to applaud the catch-phrase "Don't mess with Texas" says a lot about where its convictions lie.]

Friday, September 7, 2007

Days 1 & 2

Will get around to writing a bunch more the morning of the 9th.

EASTERN PROMISES (David Cronenberg) - 44

[The most distinctively Cronenbergian scene in this sub-par work, a set piece combining two taboos that have never quite been combined before, is still indicative of everything that's wrong with this film, and performance-wise not distinguishable from this in any significant way. His penchant for transgression can be used for subversive good or indulgent bad, and here the abrasive moments messily pile atop each other. The script is quite bad--clunky here's-the-subtext aphorisms abound e.g. "Sometimes birth and death go together"--and Cronenberg does little to salvage it. Performances range from incoherent--wherefore the vague homoerotic intimations, Viggo?--to disastrous. (Cassel needlessly amplifies his villainy before (sigh) weeping for a baby. Sure...)]

PERSEPOLIS (Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi) - W/O

[Fantastic original score by Olivier Bernet, but that wasn't enough to keep my tired ass from bailing. I get the sense Satrapi has reasonable intelligence about how her various childhood epiphanies led her to become an embittered and somewhat indifferent woman, but she fails to trust her audience's, mostly laying out a standard template of nostalgic moments necessarily accessible to everyone. She deviates from this formula a little: I remember liking a moment in which, after learning the sufferings of a relative under the Shah's rule, little Marjane climbs into bed, gasping with half-formed, vicarious joy. But I was pretty sure that kind of nuance was atypical as soon as she and some veiled school buds swooned over random generic dudes, on account of apparently she underwent puberty devoid of even the slightest miscalculation or insecurity.]

LES AMOURS D'ASTREA ET DE CELADON - 75

[Why the 5th century? I'm tempted to think it's Rohmer's (evidently final) affront to the belief that the cinema need be modern or relevant, a widely held position probably responsible in part for his limited popularity. (No wonder I've spotted MASCULIN FEMININ posters at peers' apartments, but no, I dunno, MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S memorabilia.) Theme is reconciliation of the body and soul, exemplified by the fantastic argument scene between Hylus and Celadon's brother. Hylus argues for bodily love, Celadon's brother argues that it lies in the soul, and yet Rohmer makes it as much a competition between each method of persuasion--the former is loud and jolly, the latter quiet and contemptuous--and centered around the underlying sense that each man's nature inevitably gives way to pockets of doubt. Celadon, meanwhile, seems to be trying to reconcile the two within himself, seeing flashes of Astrea's beauty but attributing his love to a sense of obedience towards her. He's at his most romantic when he's also hilariously stubborn; in Rohmer's world, one impeccable virtue is not enough. (See: the druid, who gently encourages the development of many.) This is wonderful stuff, so long as you're attuned to Rohmer's exploration of Nature; obstinate fans of subtle screenwriting, beware.]

THE MOURNING FOREST (Naomi Kawase) - 80

["There are no formal rules," sez an assistant to Machiko, which serves to illustrate the mood Kawase is going for: the camera is everywhere, sometimes too briefly to make an impression, carefree even when it's cutting deep, but usually striking. SHARA didn't strike me as too expressive, but perhaps I responded so well to her latest because she's working with such a lean narrative this time around. Machiko and Shigeki's relationship has such potential to sink into trite cliche--young caretaker treks with senile geezer, only to learn from the experience--but Kawase keeps the film grounded in the experience of the characters: he's sensitive to inner yearnings, she to nature. This is why it's so moving when e.g. she freaks out while trying to talk him out of crossing a tempestuous river: her prudent nature, ostensibly a pragmatic force in calming Shigeki's madness, crosses over into the territory of unsympathetic hysteria.]

LE VOYAGE DE BALLON ROUGE (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 57

[I blame critics like J-Ro for steering not only Kiarostami but Hou off the deep end: both directors seem more concerned with refining themes than the depth of their art. The opening footage of the balloon itself is the highlight, as Hou is the perfect director to deny it any magic from the get-go: it seems to concede to the whims of the boy but then floats free, like any of Hou's characters, only simply obeying the laws of physics rather than psychology. But the movie is plotless to a fault, contrasting Binoche's neuroses and attempts to reconnect to her childhood with deliberate laziness. Most disappointingly, the balloon transforms from simply being a balloon to a symbol of sorts, there to evoke innocence rather than rubber and helium. (I was especially bummed out because Hou had already so skilfully undermined any artifice in his use of the balloon by showing green-screen dude walking around with it.)

Final note: I assume the lecture given to the kids in the museum is a quasi-reenactment of Hou's own childhood introduction to aesthetics. (One kid observes of a painting, "It's a little happy and a little sad.") Fair enough, but just as often as kids can be unusually intelligent, they can be cruel or stupid. Hou's kindness makes the power of his art suffer.]

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (Fatih Akin) - 61

[... and then we have Akin, who surely has even less trust in the kindness of strangers than yours truly. I was put off by the sensibility in HEAD-ON, but this is the rare film that confirms bristling with contempt is not necessarily a drawback. It may encourage dislike of the sleazy dad, but still thoroughly lets us feel how old, pathetic, etc. he is. I enjoyed the first two chapters more than the second, which seems to exist because Akin was ashamed of his previously unabashed fatalism. (Fassbinder never was, and it didn't hurt...) To say even more of Akin's general intelligence and less for his taste in CRASH-esque structures, the one overtly crude moment in the film that I can remember--cutting to a sleeping student in the middle of a lecture to indicate just how rough a professor has it--is justified only by plot, much later in the film.]

SECRET SUNSHINE (Lee Chang-dong) - 63

[What a sloppy, bold film, by turns maddening and invigorating. I kept being reminded of Rivette's THE NUN, where any criticism of the church is inextricable from the ecstasy the protagonist finds in it. Lee is never broadly contemptuous, but the religious characters are so open to ridicule I wish he would've worked overtime to avoid it. But for every scene that didn't quite work for me, there was another altogether jaw-dropping in its psychological insight. (The standout is the confession scene, in which a reaction is so unexpected yet plausible as to provoke utter bafflement and acceptance at the same time. Skandie points, anyone else?) I have a feeling Lee plants devices early on so he can deploy them in a big way late in the game, but is less rigorous about using them throughout. (E.g. Song Kang-ho's character, who works quite brilliantly in something like 5% of his screen time but is otherwise unneeded comic relief.)]