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Metropolitan

2010-12-09T19:59:00.004-05:00

Set during the rollicking and monotonous deb ball season in New York’s Upper East Side, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan does for the Sally Fowler Rat Pack what The Last Days of Disco did for a couple of beautiful junior editors and their orbit. As in Last Days, Stillman’s most preferred trait is earnestness, and it’s pretty obvious to spot those who lack it. (Get a haircut, Baron Von Slonecker.)

While at first glance, it seems like Tom Townsend, he of the far less posh Upper West Side, would be our eyes and ears inside this decadent and exclusive world, but he is much more annoying than any one of his upper class adopters. He is aloof and dismissive and prefers reading literary criticism instead of the novels themselves (Oh! sweet Audrey, what do you see in this guy?) A far better conduit is Nick Smith, played by Stillman doppelganger and perpetual scene stealer, Chris Eigeman. Nick has the mark of a true Stillman hero - self-awareness. He understands the absurdity of these hoity-toity rituals, yet still loves them.

Blue Velvet

2010-12-02T14:07:00.002-05:00

There's no need to litigate the genius of David Lynch. Any man who wrote this exchange deserves to go to the head of the class:

Frank: What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor?
Jeffrey: Heineken.
Frank: Heineken?! Fuck that shit. Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!

But despite Blue Velvet being one of the most inventive and brutal of attacks on small town American suburbia, I just can't hang with it. I blame the late Dennis Hopper, who's so great he's terrifying. Every time his Frank Booth inhales a deep breath of helium, I'm ripped out of the movie and thrown into the corner of my living room, where there's nothing to do but cower and hope that the nightmare will end soon.

The Last Days of Disco

2010-11-30T20:58:00.009-05:00

Early in Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco, Josh, the manic depressive assistant district attorney, describes the Studio 54-esque disco club, with wide-eyed amazement, as the epicenter of intellectual discourse and idea exchange, a sort of modern day Platonic Academy. Although the propulsive disco soundtrack might suggest otherwise, he’s not far off. It is here that the young elite, fresh from a stint at the Ivy League, can meet and discuss pressing issues like the anti-feminism in Lady and the Tramp or the sex appeal of Scrooge McDuck.

And, oh, the contempt that must have metastasized just outside the club, where crowds were left out in the cold, denied entry by Van and his velvet rope and left to wonder why their views on the Tortoise and the Hare were not wanted. While it’s tempting to side with this group and dismiss the new age aristocrats on account of their faux-intellectual musings, one of Stillman’s greatest strengths is to make sympathetic the privileged upper crust.

Disco has all the makings of a comedy of manners, but refuses the high-society takedown that characterized The Rules of the Game or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The intention of Renoir and Bunuel's irreverent classics was the dismantling of bourgeois customs. Stillman, meanwhile, concedes the inevitable existence of these bizarre rituals (i.e., discussing Lady and the Tramp while a topless man splattered with gold glitter shuffles by) and forgives these recent grads for adhering to them. The club's appeal is universal - just look at that cynic, Departmental Dan, perk up at the first glimpse of its bright lights - so no apologies are needed for striving to yuppiedom. The only characters not deserving of our sympathies, Bernie and his ponytail and Charlotte, are those who take their social stature too seriously.

The film does not pardon the entire disco movement, with drugs, STDs and pricks like Bernie the most prominent buzzkills to an all-night dance party. But when the music does stop, Stillman does not let disco die with the destructive revelry of Disco Demolition Night, instead he offers one last dance, to "Love Train," for Josh and Alice to ride off into the sunset.

Alice in Wonderland

2010-11-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

Terrible.

The Darjeeling Limited

2010-11-14T10:11:00.003-05:00

The brothers' Whitman - Francis, Peter and Jack - speak to another with declarative confessional statements. They're aware they have baggage, and despite fractured relationships all around, they only have each other to turn to. Telegraphing emotional hangups, however, proves as therapeutic as Indian medications and a spiritual journey known for its rigid itinerary. But like so many of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited ends with the Whitmans beginning to learn how to deal.

Anderson's visual style once again takes center stage but, for the first time, is an extension of the film's plot and thematic intentions. Previously, compositions and design elements established a controlled, artificial and theatrical world for which to juxtapose with a character's very human emotion. In Darjeeling, Anderson's distinctive visuals invade actual Indian landscapes, providing a manicured cocoon protecting the Whitmans from having to do more than just paying lip-service to their problems.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

2010-11-11T23:24:00.006-05:00

A late effort of the short-lived British New Wave, Tony Richardson’s tale of a young thief made aware of his prodigious talent for cross country running while at reform school has much in common with the trials of young Antoine Doinel. For many, there were too many similarities, and critics attributed whatever worked in Runner to Richardson’s liberal cribbing of Truffaut, and whatever didn’t to Richardson’s failed experiments. While the plot certainly brings The 400 Blows to mind, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, thematically, is more reminiscent of late 60s Godard films, and might compare favorably for those who find Godard’s militant Marxism over the top. Yes, this is an anti-capitalist film, but one the ends with a shoulder shrug instead of a rallying cry.

Our champion runner in Colin Smith. When his father dies, Colin claims the household breadwinner mantle, yet shows nothing but contempt for traditional methods of wage earning. He just wants to thieve enough to take his bird to Skeggie on the weekends. He’s not some Maoist revolutionary, but a nihilist with high endurance. His lonely runs outside the reform school gates provide the only time for Colin to escape what for him seems to be constant capitalistic entrapment.

But back to this notion of Richardson as a Truffaut knock-off. There’s too much in Runner to applaud on its own merits which should prevent any confusion of it as a derivative and lesser work: Tom Courtenay’s performance, the Skegness sequence and Walter Lassally’s photography (particularly the beautiful shot of Smith’s run at dawn), to name a few. Not every shot and sequence works – Richardson has a curious affinity for speeding up the film and the flashback intercuts during the final race are a little over bearing – but on the whole Runner is a standout, not just of the Britain’s Free Cinema movement, but of all European new wave films.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2010-11-07T16:44:00.006-05:00

I first saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during my junior year of high school. At the time, and for a few years later, I thought it was a made-for-TV movie. You might ask "didn't the presence of Jack Nicholson in the lead tip you off that it wasn't a movie of the week?" No it didn't. I do distinctly remember thinking landing Jack for Randell P. McMurphy was quite a get. I think I thought this because, considering I watched it in English class, we would have never watched a movie that wasn't made for TV and if we did and it was one of the world's great films, my teacher would have mentioned as much. In my defense, I thought it was one of the best made-for-TV movies I'd ever seen, perhaps even lamenting "well they just don't make em like they use to."

Not versed in the stripped down gritty style of American New Wave films, I couldn't appreciate Forman's utilitarian approach. But watching now, I understand the genius in his silent hand. With one of the world's great novels as source material, an Oscar-winning screenplay and a top-of-the-line cast*, the best thing for Forman to do was get out of the way, and nail the pacing and the tone (which he does).

* It's Jack's movie and he does his Jack Nicholson thing, but Louise Fletcher steals the show. Her stillness is infuriating, like someone subtly poking you throughout the entire movie, so that by the end just the sound of her voice makes your skin crawl.

12:08 East of Bucharest

2010-11-06T08:10:00.002-05:00

Set in a drab little Romanian town with a serious firecracker problem 16 years after Nicolae Ceausescu relinquished power ending Communist rule in Romania, Corneliu Porumboiu's debut feature depicts the production of a local talk news program that reminisces on Romania's violent revolution. The self-righteous host, Jderescu, learns the morning of the show that his prestigious panelists have canceled, forcing him on a desperate search for replacements. The pickins are slim, and Jderescu is forced to settle on Manescu, an alcoholic English professor indebted to most of the town, and Piscoci, a retiree who only stops his search for a suitable Santa Claus suit to battle a group of young pranksters terrorizing the locals with pyrotechnics.

In the movie's second half, we see the filming of the program (unnecessary zooms and poor framings highlight the deliberately haphazard quality), which is concerned with determining whether the town was part of the revolution or just a celebrant in its aftermath. Manescu comes down on the side of revolution, claiming he and his friends were in the town square prior to 12:08, the official time of Ceausescu's downfall, but several people call in to refute his claims. While the show's non-existent production values outs the Jderesecu as a hack, he keeps up the appearance of a serious journalist, spending an entire segment repeatedly asking Manescu if he's lying. Fortunately, Piscoci, who up to this point had busied himself with the construction of a paper boat, saves the program from being a completely worthless exercise by remarking that real revolution comes from within. Still dogged by the events of 16 years ago, Jderescu misses the point. Whether a revolution happened in their town is superfluous. Their lives still suck.

Mean Streets

2010-10-29T19:30:00.012-05:00

After seeing Boxcar Bertha and labeling it a piece of shit, John Cassavetes charged his friend and soon-to-be greatest American director, Martin Scorsese, to go off and make something personal. He responded with Mean Streets, essentially an arthouse home movie.

Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, a conflicted gangster that’s got an in through his uncle to rise the mafia ranks, but hemight rather get straight and settle down with his girlfriend, Theresa. Theresa’s cousin, Johnny Boy*, would love the life Charlie is hesitant to take, but he’s a perpetual fuck-up, who can’t get out of his own way. Michael is a striver, dressing the part as the up-and-coming hood but not respected as one. Johnny Boy won’t pay off his debts to Michael, Charlie has to intervene and we have our conflict.

But the conflict is mostly background noise, with the plot kept loose to allow for vignettes of Scorsese’s experiences growing up in Little Italy to pop-in with little disruption. These diversions tell us more about our characters than the story does. The central plot is a performance, a bunch of kids playing mobsters because gang life is all around them and it passes the time**.

* Sit down Travis Bickle, Johnny Boy is De Niro’s highlight performance. I think he's more compelling when he’s completely out there than when he’s on the verge of being completely out there. Also, sit down Harry Lime, there’s not a better character introduction than Johnny Boy strutting in slow motion into a bar with a girl on each arm to Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

** Those late night bar scenes look dreadful. There’s an excellent scene to show how this crew cuts the boredom: Michael scams a couple kids looking to buy firecrackers out of $20 and, adorably, takes his friends to the movies. (Presumably, the rest of the money went to some Ronettes concert tickets.)

The Dark Knight

2010-10-26T17:50:00.003-05:00

A casualty of Chris Nolan’s graduation from intimate psychological thrillers to blockbuster-scale filmmaking has been his deft handling of narrative. I’ve seen The Dark Knight three times, yet would struggle to describe the plot in ways that weren’t broad and obvious (i.e. Batman fights Joker). For instance, the necessity of those random political assassinations is cloudy, and, anyway, aren’t those anonymous killings small potatoes for a villain with a bent for theatricality.

These narrative deficiencies, however, are compensated for by Knight’s spectacle. The battle for Gotham’s soul is epic, worthy of city wide chase scenes with Batman in his tank and the Joker riding an 18-wheeler armed with a rocket launcher. But it’s not spectacle for spectacle’s sake. As the second chapter in Nolan’s trilogy on the decay and rise of the post-industrial city (one that just happens to be inhabited by super-heroes/villains), The Dark Knight, with these grand themes at play, deserves a different kind of action sequence.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2010-10-20T17:39:00.000-05:00

A case more curious than reverse aging: why would David Fincher waste his talents on such a vapid, saccharine script?

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

2010-10-18T16:53:00.006-05:00

With its black and white photography and cramped studio sets, Liberty Valance strikes an elegiac tone from its first scene. There are no stagecoach chases with a Monument Valley backdrop or shootouts through a wide open town square. We do get a lot of conversations about statehood and law and order and a lop-sided gunfight, which is relieved of any tension by the film’s title. It’s an exercise in not paying off the audience, with John Ford withholding from Valance the splendor of his earlier westerns.

But Valance is far from a dud (I’ll gladly trade another tired action set piece for a few more scenes of Dutton Peabody and Liberty Valance ambling around Shinbone) and is particularly compelling when viewed as the final chapter in John Ford’s western oeuvre.

As a genre predominantly concerned with myth/hero-making, the western seemed to predict and celebrate America's ascension as a global superpower during the 50s. But that decade of great progress was also marked by McCarthyism, nuclear bomb paranoia and an underlying weariness towards scientific discovery. Valance reflects Ford's growing pessimism with modernity, which is more complex and nuanced than his earlier westerns suggested.

Crumb

2010-10-14T22:53:00.005-05:00

Terry Zwigoff’s years-in-the-making documentary on Robert Crumb begins with the titular cartoonist admitting that he is suicidal when he doesn’t draw, which he follows by admitting he’s suicidal when he does draw. More nuggets detailing Crumb’s neuroses are divulged over the film’s two-hour runtime – each one met with an uncomfortable chuckle from the artist.

The doc plays like a recorded therapy session, with Crumb casually admitting to his own sexual deviance and misogyny and his parent’s drug addiction and violent outbursts. Another doc subject might fear such candidness would irrevocably damage their reputation. To Crumb, celebrity is an outgrowth of our crass commercial culture and only beneficial to his sex life, so he is willing to let it all hang out, without much thought to the effect on his legacy. Zwigoff plays the part of the silent, nonjudgmental shrink, and, as a long-time friend of Crumb’s, isn’t interested in any gotcha moments. The combination of Crumb’s remarkable candor and Zwigoff’s objectivity creates about as honest a document as you're gonna get about an artist’s deepest darkest afflictions and their influence on his work.

Boogie Nights

2010-10-07T21:32:00.008-05:00

I’ve seen Boogie Nights too many times to count. My back-of-the-hand knowledge of the film, along with its energy and length, made it a frequent accompaniment for a late night study session. Having recently watched the film again, I was struck for the first time by how bizarre it is. That’s not a knock. The film is still the brash and exuberant masterpiece I always thought it was.

Within five minutes of the DVD commentary track, PT Anderson names Scorsese, Demme, Ophuls and Truffaut as influences. These are on top of the stories from the porn world, the San Fernando Valley and the life of John Holmes, which Anderson borrows as source material. These various texts are injected with disco-era kitsch and repackaged into a string of setups loosely connected by Anderson’s frenetic camerawork and a shared comic sensibility. Anderson truly ODs on the spoof-worthy 70s, creating an exaggerated San Fernando Valley, which grows more insane at the turn of the decade. The 80s was the decade of “You’ve Got the Touch” and Todd Parker and Cosmo.

However, this commitment to portraying the Valley from 1977-1983 as the funniest time and place in history does not even begin to limit the film’s emotional resonance. Triumphantly, through this thick filter of 70s pastiche, Anderson is able to brew a deeply moving tale about the necessity of families and support structures.

I'm Not There

2010-10-06T16:13:00.004-05:00

Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There was released hot on the heels of Ray and Walk the Line. Essentially the same flick, the Charles and Cash biopics are humanizing portraits of music legends, propped up by expert lead performances. Focusing on Charles’ drug addiction and Cash’s family problem, the films played like an in-depth celebrities are just like us column.

I’m Not There takes a different approach. Haynes portrays Dylan as one-of-a-kind – a complex genius not easily relatable, explained or understood. I’m Not There was critically divisive and less accessible than Ray and Walk the Line, but by presenting Dylan as exceptional because he was the exception, it’s far more interesting than its predecessors. It's not a perfect film, but it's preferable to perfectly bland ones.

The Town

2010-09-28T23:52:00.002-05:00

Affleck directs the hell out of those action scenes, with the minivan car chase and the Fenway Park shootout rising to wicked awesome levels.

But 10 minutes after leaving the theater, you can dissect and make silly almost every motivation that drove Affleck and his paramour over the last hour. Unfortunately, Affleck the actor let's down Affleck the director. To make believable such a tricky relationship, you need more range than that pensive puppy dog look.

But I'm splitting hairs here. Affleck is now two for two for directing entertaining crime flicks that are a little more thought-provoking than the standard. And since I'm guessing he has enough sense to pick projects he knows he can handle until he gets more seasoning, there's no reason to doubt he won't be five for five. Let's just hope that when he does decide on his next gig, he has enough sense to cast his brother in the lead.

Easy Rider

2010-09-24T21:18:00.009-05:00

Imagine you're a studio exec listening to tales from the production of your $500,000 biker picture: "Why would Dennis challenge Rip Torn to a knife fight?"; "So we have to buck up and get Pete a bodyguard because he's scared of Dennis."; "Why did he threaten bodily harm on Crosby, Stills and Nash? Well, why did he fire them?"; "Yea, I've seen his cut. Four-and-a-half fucking hours....Send him on vacation, we'll cut a shorter version when he's gone....Like 90....I agree, he's the worst editor that's ever been."

Now imagine this clusterfuck yielding a return 40 times your investment, winning an award at Cannes and defining an era. Easy Rider is the opposite of timeless - its roots so deep in the time that it was made - but its strengths then are its strengths now. It's like a time capsule of a generation's growing disillusionment and, for at least a few years, was more American than warm apple pie.

The American

2010-09-20T21:53:00.007-05:00

Shooting in the Italian countryside, with widescreen shots of hillside villages and gorgeous mountain ranges, is kind of a booster seat for Anton Corbijn's existential assassin movie. But what elevates The American beyond travel show with high production values to near masterpiece worthy of the Le Samourai comparisons is Corbijn's commitment to the film's snail's pace.

It's a pensive thriller that doesn't sacrifice any tension, as danger is foreshadowed around any corner of the villages maze-like streets. And when the action comes, the scenes pop, but are short enough to not disrupt that pacing.

Marie Antoinette

2010-09-19T12:06:00.002-05:00

Marie Antoinette is little more than a history video about the bizarre, decadent rituals of the French aristocracy with a hip soundtrack that left me repeating over and over "come on, chop her bloody head off already."

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

2010-09-15T22:34:00.010-05:00

In Powell & Pressburger’s World War II era potshot at British military traditionalism, Clive Candy, the soldier we follow from the Boer War through WWII, gets fatter, grows a bushier mustache and, perhaps most damning, becomes useless in the face of a new enemy that refuses to play by the rules in its quest for world domination. Colonel Blimp take up 40 years time, but is almost entirely told during wartime (Blimp features one of the cleverest passage of time techniques I’ve seen: quick cuts of the stuffed heads of animals Candy has bagged in his hunting trips, with the year the kill was made, leading up to the next war). Miraculously, this walrus-looking general, seen at the beginning of the film lounging in a sauna never turns unsympathetic, even as he begins to puff his words instead of speaking them.

While Candy and his mustache are the film’s star, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, a German officer who befriends Candy when they wind up in the same hospital after a duel they fought, is its heart. When we first meet Theo in that hospital, he can only say “very much” and “not very much” in English, 20 years later as a defeated officer returning to Germany after World War I, he is disgusted and emboldened by the Brits naivete, and 20 years after that, he’s an unemployed widower seeking to escape Hitler’s Germany and immigrate to England. During his application, he gives a devastating and emotional speech about losing his sons to Hitlerism and his wish to settle in Britain as a way to feel closer to his dead wife, who was born there.

Many at the time looked at the film as near blasphemous, and Churchill banned it from playing outside the country. But looking back, it’s hard to see Colonel Blimp as anything but a declaration of love for a country made by two filmmakers who were afraid they might lose it.

Brick

2010-08-29T10:04:00.001-05:00

Tomato Rating - 80%

* A popcorn flick for the indie soul
* A number of films have been tagged Tarantinoesque while not deserving the praise. But not since Reservior Dogs has a film oozed this much style while completely reinventing a classic genre.
* Although Johnson has fun recreating the dialogue of his favorite noir novellas, the audience will be grating their teeth at this gimmicky and substanceless farce.
* Many will criticize this film for being style over substance but Brick is the best example of a movie pointing out that whether it's asking out some girl in your science class or a heroin bust gone horribly wrong there is nothing more important to a high schooler than what's on their mind.
* A tremendously entertaining who-dun-it that plants director Rian Johnson atop the short list of up and coming directors.
* Johnson's greatest accomplishment is taking the dorky president's son from Mars Attacks and the geek from Ten Things I Hate About You and convincing the audience that they are a drug kingpin and a Sam Spadesque private detective.
* Johnson creates an absolute first. A film that thinks it's too cute and takes itself too seriously at the same time.
* While it seems at times Brick might start to drift off towards self-parody, Johnson is always capable of ratcheting up the suspense so the ridiculous dialogue and unfathomable storyline never seems that out of place.
* Film Noir Lives! But takes place in a Sunny California High School instead of a dark back alley and has a floppy haired glasses wearing wisecracker battling wits with a caped teenaged drug pin who lives with his mother.
* You will absolutely love this movie. One of the years best films!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2010-08-28T10:12:00.000-05:00

When you're a filmmaker of some stature and you're considering whether to direct a movie or not, you should ask yourself "why do I want to tell this story?" When the only thing you can come up with is to show Johnny Depp slitting throats, you should probably pass.

Apocalypse Now vs. Apocalypse Now Redux

2010-08-27T16:52:00.017-05:00

Apocalypse Now is an unimpeachable war film, an epic that pardons its notoriously troubled production. The film follows special ops officer Captain Willard on his dissent down the Nung River into Cambodia where he has been tasked with killing the off-the-rails Colonel Kurtz. As Willard inches closer to Kurtz, the movie progresses from darkly comic to near nihilistic, portraying the harrowing effects war has on its participants.

Francis Coppola felt he went through his own insanity-inducing war. When talking about his movie at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, Coppola famously quipped “my film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.” The quote suggests specificity, but Apocalypse’s message is universal. Coppola was comparing his boondoggle with the US military's.

But in 2001, when Coppola released Apocalypse Now Redux, a 200-minute version which includes two scenes excised from the original - the French plantation scene and a follow-up to the USO playmate scene - his quote might have became too literal. The original cut’s tone and pacing was pitch-perfect, so it’s hard to imagine how any addition would be beneficial. In particular, the French plantation scene, a 25-minute exploration of French and American colonialism, interferes with the rest of the film’s downward spiral vibe. Going back to Coppola’s quote, a movie couldn’t be the Vietnam War without a discussion of colonialism, so this odd-duck scene is inserted right when things really start to get depraved; not the time for an opium break. The additional scenes also underscore the flaws with the river as a plot moving device, making the movie seem more like an interactive website on Vietnam organized by stops along a river (click here to read about Colonel Kilgore and his merry band of surfers, click here for information on the Do Long Bridge Outpost).

The movie’s strong enough to overcome the needless additions, but stick with the original.

Greenberg

2010-08-25T16:59:00.004-05:00

Roger Greenberg is one of the least likable on-screen persons we’ve had to tolerate in recent years. His competition for that honor, Rachel Getting Married’s Kym and Margot at the Wedding’s titular character, were at least surrounded by a group that was as equally repulsed by their behavior as we were. It didn’t make the movies any better, but strength in numbers is a nice consolation prize.

However, Greenberg - that selfish, petulant twit - is saddled with two doting sidekicks: Ivan, his best friend who continues to hang out despite Greenberg’s best efforts to throw him off the wagon, and Florence, his brother’s sweet personal assistant. It’s the latter relationship that dooms the movie. How can you pay attention to the movie’s embrace the life you have meme when you can’t stop wondering why the pretty young Florence would bed this jerk.

At least there’s an outdated Korn reference, which might be Baumbach’s way to suggest that his LA is a fantasy land, where coked out college kids still listen to Korn and Greenberg’s behavior is a turn on.