natebell

June Reviews

natebell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:00:50 -0700

Trying to keep up with yesterday's news:

Once upon the early ‘70s, Italian director Dario Argento excelled at fashioning elegant, sinister, psychologically unsettling horror mysteries (“giallo” films, as they were often called), but a steady decline into sadism drove him underground and out of critical esteem. Three decades later, he’s still up to his old tricks, only now the violence has escalated to new extremes while his filmmaking has atrophied, perhaps even taken a few steps backward. Mother of Tears (the ostensible final entry in a series of three, following Suspiria and Inferno) feels obsessively depraved, even for an Argento film, with plenty of eviscerations and exposed brains to offend the eye. It’s unquestionably degrading (for audience and filmmaker alike), but also unexpectedly hokey—a coven of punk rock witches inspires more sniggers than shivers, and Mater Lachrymarum herself is nothing more than a lascivious model in a skanky tee shirt. It seems very unlikely that the trilogy will become a tetralogy.

Kung Fu Panda is a lively, likable Dreamworks animation that satisfies itself with the tired theme of following your dreams and fulfilling your destiny. A perfectly suitable message for kids, but can’t we be a little more creative? The scenes of stealth and attack, aided by the kind of slow motion that only computers can accommodate, are playfully amusing, as are some of the facial expressions (including that of a dentureless old turtle), but Panda’s sudden prowess in the martial arts field is cheaply earned. Dustin Hoffman’s subdued voice performance as a masterly raccoon remains the best reason to see it.

Despite a breathtakingly stupid scenario (plants release deadly toxins causing humans to self-destruct), The Happening is a mildly creepy botanical horror film that takes an apocalyptic scenario and shrinks the scale down to a small group of bewildered characters. The lack of any visible menace allows for some unusual suspense scenes, and although the domestic subplot is insufficiently fleshed out, the basic humanizing message is lumberingly, insistently pedaled. M. Night Shyamalan is a director in search of a screenplay; his words may fail him, but his visual sense never errs.

The Incredible Hulk is more of a do-over than a sequel, effectively sweeping Ang Lee’s bizarre 2003 attempt at comic book mythmaking under the rug. Graciously dispensing with gratuitous exposition, the film still skimps on characterization, possibly the result of a compromised screenplay co-authored by star Edward Norton. The chase-fight-flee, chase-fight-flee redundancies of the narrative grow tedious quickly, although an early steeplechase through a crowded Brazilian shantytown succeeds in quickening the pulse. Though played by a sympathetic Norton, Bruce Banner seems like one of the more problematic of recent superheroes—the filmmakers are unable to make his virtuous self-control interesting.

Encounters at the End of the World is a Werner Herzog documentary shot in Antarctica, and the German director continues to amaze with his ability to find eccentric characters wherever he goes. (Or do they find him?) Among the many arresting sights are a live volcano, a multitude of octopi living under the ice, and a lone penguin inexplicably hurtling toward the horizon (and certain death). As much as there is to occupy the eye, Herzog revisits old thesis statements about the futility of existence a little too frequently, though as is often the case with the director, his camera makes the most eloquent argument.

Driven by a voluptuously probing camera and an insistent, strings-based Ennio Morricone score, The Unkown Woman dives into its complex narrative headlong, barely pausing to catch its breath. The story is an unusually seedy thriller involving a prostitution ring presided over by a bald tyrant (a terrifying Michele Placido), but director Giuseppe Tornatore (the sentimental Italian who brought us Cinema Paradiso) provides just enough human interest to engage the heart. His secret weapon is Kseniya Rappoport, who plays the shady nanny whose designs on an affluent middle class family aren’t clear until the very end. Displaying both quivering vulnerability and steely determination, hers is the kind of performance that critics like to call “fearless,” and one of the few that actually earns that distinction.

The Pride of Pixar

natebell — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The folks at Pixar have created a filmmaker’s utopia. Working almost entirely without obstruction, they’ve established a work ethic in which artistic integrity is of primary importance, and where a personal vision is given room to flourish. It is an auteur’s paradise—never before has a studio placed so much faith in individual imagination. Each new film has a different feel compliant with the quirks of its director. (Hence, The Incredibles, though clearly the handiwork of many talented craftsmen, is distinctly Brad Birdian both for its aggressive nostalgia and its emphasis on the nuclear family.)

Pixar’s latest project also bears the unmistakable stamp of individuality. The writer-director is Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), and he’s fashioned an entirely worthy hero-cum-artistic-foil in WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a lonesome robot with binoculars for eyes and the soul of a romantic. To see him is to love him.

Along with a resilient cockroach, WALL·E is the sole inhabitant of a parched Planet Earth some 800 years in the future. Completely inundated with trash, the human populace has retreated into deep space aboard massive luxury ships while a mechanical maintenance crew (of which WALL·E represents the last) labors to tidy the mess. An acceptable apocalyptic scenario, and a teasingly plausible one.

When he’s not compacting mounds of garbage into small, rectangular cubes, WALL·E is building up his collection of discarded knickknacks and reviewing a battered copy of Hello, Dolly! (apparently the only movie he could dredge up, poor guy). When another robotic visitor, EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), descends from the heavens looking for signs of life, WALL·E is entranced. He’s a shopworn PC, all rusty hinges and boxlike limbs, and she, with her smooth alabaster body and sky-blue eyes, resembles nothing so much as a sexy Mac. Together they embark on a corny romance that takes them out of earth’s orbit and into a less interesting movie.

The first 40 minutes or so are an example of what some critics might lazily refer to as “pure cinema.” To wit, a reliance on intrinsically filmic devices (framing, editing, etc.) rather than expositional dialogue to push the story forward. (Only a cameo by a live-action Fred Willard, as a Bush-like world leader, constitutes a cheat.) And the diamond-hard, lustrous, obsessively detailed visuals are equal to Pixar’s impossible high standards. Taken as distinct from the rest of the movie, this enthralling opener ranks with the best work they’ve ever done.

But it’s not to last. The second half reveals the film’s biggest secret—the human race has regressed into a tribe of corpulent, terminally lazy couch potatoes, forever glued to their recliners (which prompts the question of how they manage to procreate). The consumerist nature of their lifestyle (the spaceship is monopolized by a Wal-Mart-ish corporation called Buy n Large) allows for several broad swipes at contemporary society, like one of those Twilight Zone episodes that finds Rod Serling in a preachy mood.

And so WALL·E loses a little something in impact. As satire, it’s not pointed enough to pierce the conscience, and as sentiment, it falls back on the old cliché of having the nonhuman characters more charitable than the human ones. The film is not calculatedly condescending, yet, in attempting to “show the way,” one fears the Pixar people have become a tad didactic.

That said, I still recommend the film highly. From beginning to end, WALL·E runs along with the smoothness of a well-oiled assembly line. There isn’t a single lazy or poorly rendered frame to be found. One only hopes that in the future, the filmmakers would resist the urge point a bony finger in the direction of the audience.

It’s also worth noting that WALL·E is preceded by another fine Pixar short, Presto, about an arrogant magician and his neglected pet rabbit, who exacts vengeance on opening night. Exuberantly violent, it resembles Tex Avery’s cartoon Magical Maestro in both premise and execution.

More List-Making

natebell — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I’ve got a review of Wall*E in the pipeline, but for now, here’s the remainder of my all-time top twenty, which seems to reveal a liking for gloomy thrillers. Strange, I don’t feel gloomy…

Knife in the Water—A master of sophisticated unease, Roman Polanski specializes in macabre, moody thrillers (often with an occult theme) of a peculiarly personal strain. A thorough understanding of his idiosyncratic filmography begins with this stripped-down drama. Set almost exclusively aboard a tiny yacht and featuring a cast of three characters (a husband, his wife, and a hitchhiker they pick up), it’s a meticulous study in triangular tension, and perhaps Polanski’s finest, subtlest work.

Le Boucher—Claude Chabrol has often been called the French Hitchcock, but that title doesn’t really do justice to this neglected member of France’s New Wave. Chabrol’s thrillers are more relationship-oriented, and less emphatic in their suspense devices. This might be his most perfectly realized film, a deceptively serene chiller about a schoolteacher and the lonely town butcher, who may be a murderer. It builds to a climax that invites and repays close scrutiny.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp—You don’t have to be English to enjoy this most eccentric of English films, but a healthy sense of Anglophilic admiration certainly helps. A fantastical biopic of a fictional WWII hero, the film (directed by the Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger team) seems to transcend every genre that can be applied to it, while simultaneously satisfying on those levels. Finally, it’s the depiction of a world of emotion concealed by perfect English manners that makes this so fascinating to me, and so moving.

The Crowd—King Vidor’s silent film about a newlywed couple struggling to make it by in the big city is so steeped in realistic detail that it almost hurts to watch (though it makes the happy ending doubly rewarding). It would make a great companion to Murnau’s Sunrise—another silent classic about the struggles of ordinary people.

Odd Man Out—Between this, The Fallen Idol, and The Third Man, Carol Reed has distinguished himself as a great postwar English director, although his self-consciously stylish camerawork is frowned upon in certain circles. Detailing the final hours of a wounded Irish revolutionary (superbly played by James Mason) as he staggers across a brilliantly lit Belfast at night, the film is a plea for charity—each person he encounters wants to use him for various reasons, until there’s nowhere left for him to turn. A thriller with more on its mind than thrills, it makes powerful use of the scripture verse: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

The Servant—Another British masterpiece (noticing a patternhere?), this time from the poisoned pen of Harold Pinter, about a servant with sinister designs on his new master. Under Joseph Losey’s skilled hand, this becomes a psychological duel with weighty moral implications—yet none of it seems forced.

The Music Box—I think Laurel and Hardy are the bee’s knees, and this 1932 short seems like a perfect distillation of their particular brand of injurious comedy. The two childlike protagonists (here playing hapless deliverymen) engage in an epic struggle to haul a grand piano up an impossibly steep flight of stairs, and somehow, it seems to stand as a metaphor for life. Full of big laughs and pleasing digressions (including a delightful impromptu dance), it never ceases to put a smile on my face.

Our Mother’s House—Here’s one I’ve been preaching for a while: a hearty helping of English gothic about a family of seven children who try to carry on as normal when their invalid mother dies. Simultaneously touching and creepy, harrowing and beautiful, it has a completely unique resonance. Jack Clayton (who’s responsible for another personal favorite, The Innocents) is the director, and he does so many things with the rich storyline it’s hard to know where to begin. A horror film in the tradition of Lord of the Flies, it’s also a poignant tale of childhood, and the inevitable passage from innocence to experience.

Mulholland Dr.—Perhaps the finest film on the subject of Hollywood (its powerful allure, its hidden evils, its broken promises), David Lynch’s one-of-a-kind “mystery” is so carefully worked out in terms of sound, color, and theme, it demands to be watched more than once. But, like a vivid dream, even if it can’t be immediately understood, it can be grasped on a level of profound intuition. It may be too potent and dark for most audiences, but I find it fascinating, and even funny.

Faces of Children—A last-minute substitution. (I had previously put down The Swimmer in my #20 slot, but I promise to get to that one later.) A silent film from the nearly forgotten Jacques Feyder, this is an easy masterpiece that cries out for rediscovery. It tells the story of a sensitive boy (played by the French child actor Jean Forest) whose mother’s death leads him to down the path of despair, only to have redemption seek him out in the end. Filmed as though the weight of eternity hangs on every decision, it’s a particularly virtuous (and perhaps profoundly Christian) piece of work.

May Reviews

natebell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Making my rounds…

Iron Man, another superhero franchise kick-off from the Marvel stable, has the privilege of being the first in line at the summer box office. It sets the bar high. Helmed by Jon Favreau and starring a buffed-up Robert Downey, Jr., the film is strong where most other blockbusterly films are weak: in its pacing, wit, and character development. The storyline and moral questioning are comic-book simple, yet the film craftily manages to critique America’s penchant for slaughter without succumbing to liberal piety. And the action is genuinely thrilling—the benefit of patient characterization.

David Mamet’s Redbelt functions as a rebuke to the traditional Hollywood martial arts picture, taking the well-trod theme of the moral hero tested by corrupt influences and finding fresh meaning in it. The film is full of the pleasures of Mamet—his rhythmic, precise dialogue, honed to near-perfection and spoken confidently by a well-appointed cast; his patient, temperate, invisibly intelligent direction which rarely (if ever) calls attention to itself; his ability to take clichés and make them seem as new. If all of this seems to indicate an action film for snobs, that’s because it is. But it also provides a lot in the way of fun. The buildup to the final confrontation, and the wordless, final ten minutes, are as satisfying as anything found in Rocky and The Karate Kid.

From Lewis to Lucas

natebell — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Two anticlimactic reviews, to be filed under “T” for tardy.

What was I saying about the Narnia movies? Oh yes. By now audiences have had ample time to accept that Walden’s contributions to the fantasy genre will be homogenized, sanitized, and above all commercialized versions of C.S. Lewis’s fragile children’s books. But once that important step is taken, one can begin to enjoy them for what they are: buttered popcorn. Fractionally less involving than its predecessor, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is still a high-class family film, though languidly paced and lacking a villain on the order of Tilda Swinton’s white witch Jadis (the very mention of which sends an appreciative quiver up the spine).

Among its virtues is a graspable depiction of a faithless Narnia in which Aslan is nowhere to be seen, a situation that lends itself to explorations of faith—specifically Christian faith—in a seemingly wicked world. The film lacks the medieval literacy of Lewis’s prose, but director Andrew Adamson occasionally stages a scene that outdoes its source in excitement. The emergence of a wolfish assassin (“I am hunger, I am thirst.”) is shudderingly effective, and the scene leading up to Aslan’s first appearance (in which the very trees fall into line in allegiance) is dreamily atmospheric.

The deeply emotional undercurrents of the story tend to get lost in a haze of overblown battle sequences, but even the most stoical of viewers are likely to feel a surge of emotion when a minotaur props up a castle gate and withstands a barrage of enemy arrows while his comrades escape. Such moments remind you of the rich thread of sacrifice woven into the Narnia narrative, a thread that will hopefully not be broken in future installments.

As prep work for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in about ten years, and still found it exciting, although not in the places I expected. Perhaps it’s due to a shift in cinematic values, but I thrilled less to the sprawling action scenes than the ones of understated exposition (Indy explaining the function of the ark of the covenant to a couple of government suits) and of steadily growing discovery (Indy aligning his staff with the falling sunbeams to reveal a clandestine map; a gaggle of frightened diggers dusting the door to the Well of Souls).

This new movie has a few scenes like those, including a search for a magnetized coffin in an immense warehouse. What dread secret does the coffin hold? The answer to that question is less interesting than I would have wished for, although it involves interdimensional beings and buried city guarded by undead natives.

Despite bravura displays of technical razzle-dazzle, Spielberg can’t seem to get a good rhythm going. The film has a bored, dutiful feel to it, as if his heart weren’t really in it. (After all, it’s been nearly 20 years and three Academy Awards since he’s attempted this sort of thing, and he has every right to be a bit rusty.) Most of it appears so polished, airbrushed, and green-screened, there’s hardly any warmth left, let alone a warm flesh tone.

A nuclear bomb blast that leaves our hero (who ducks for cover in a lead-lined refrigerator) virtually unscathed marks the exact moment when the rough-and-tumble archaeologist becomes a cartoon. And the Indy I grew up with is not a cartoon.

Some Thoughts on the Narnia Movies

natebell — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There is a tendency within Christian circles to disrespect Walden Media’s first C.S. Lewis adaptation, and with the second one coming up fast, I thought it might be useful to scribble down a few ideas before the reviews come cascading in.

First of all, let me say that an astute piece of Lewis scholarship has forced me to reassess my view of Lewis’s books, which I enjoyed as a grade-schooler but never recognized as the product of a great intellect. Thanks to Michael Ward’s erudition, I am now beginning to appreciate them as works of profound subtlety and ambition.

While the two Narnia movies don’t even begin to address the complexity of the books, I still find them underrated, and believe they compare favorably with the Lord of the Rings movies and the Harry Potter movies, to name a few comparable examples.

I think far too much is demanded of them, especially among Lewis fans (of which there are legion) where an earnest love for the books and their theological underpinnings puts unreasonably high expectations on what are essentially intended as “light entertainments.”

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the Narnia films is their awkward placement in film history. Had they been released eight years ago, they would no doubt have been hailed as classics. But Peter Jackson’s trilogy, so accomplished as they were, spoiled us all. They appropriated all the good lines, laid claim to the grammar of “epic” moviemaking, and basically inspired enough movie-envy to last for decades.

It’s true to a certain extent that the Narnia movies themselves are guilty of Rings-envy (so many shots scream déjà vu), but from a structural perspective, their chances for success have always been better. Each one can be isolated as its own complete story, rather than an installment in a continuing serial. Each has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. This does wonders for the storytelling and helps bring about an aura of consummation at the conclusion of each film, as opposed to that exasperating, “See you next year, folks!” exit employed in Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, et al.

Now, I love The Fellowship of the Ring and found it an instant classic and all that, but my opinion of the trilogy as a whole dropped considerably after watching them back-to-back-to-back, marathon-style, a couple of years ago. For me, this ill-advised spree emphasized the thudding repetitions inherent in the story and called attention to Jackson’s limitations as a filmmaker. Primarily his narrow emotional range. What remains so impressive about the Rings films is its staggering meticulousness in every aspect of production, which has an utterly transporting effect almost unique in the history of cinema.

I think the Harry Potter films are pretty entertaining, too, but in my opinion only The Prisoner of Azkaban can be considered a work of independent imagination. That is, it’s the only film that suggests a creative force other than that of J.K. Rowling. I’m told by fans of the books that Cuaron’s film contains several glaring omissions, but these are no doubt justified since they contribute to a more streamlined narrative. When forced to choose between a good adaptation and a good movie, I’ll always choose the latter.

As for the various infidelities to Lewis’s books, the skepticism found among faith-based communities is well grounded and well argued. In fact, it’s a pleasure to see so many people standing up for Lewis and demanding more from Walden. On the other hand, I think there is such a thing as too much scrutiny, and it often kills good film criticism…

…which is what I hope won’t happen when I review The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian next week.

April Reviews

natebell — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Some more reporting from the land of the moving image:

Leatherheads is a colorless comedy (literally—the sepia-toned photography turns 1920s America into a perpetual autumn of burnt leaves, mud, and crabgrass), although not without a few brightspots. Directed by and starring George Clooney, it offers a glimpse of the early tumultuous days of professional football, when the players had to compete with the more popular college market. The film is rudderless and a trifle boring, although a few of the visual gags (a human shape emerging from a slough; a grazing cow taking notice of a scrimmage game) are well executed. With Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce.

My Blueberry Nights is Wong Kar-wai’s first film to use the English language, though it makes rather better use of his favorite language of all—the language of love. Except for the unusually coarse image, the film has a seductive surface—everything seems to be lit by neon lights, traffic lights, candlelight. It’s a film to get lost in. Lawrence Block collaborated on the screenplay, and it resembles a good short story—lightly plotted, but rich in detail. Wong’s game plan is to cast a moody spell based entirely on shared experience. If you’ve ever been kicked in the groin by love, you will empathize with these characters. With Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachelle Weisz, David Strathairn, and, in a particularly arresting cameo, Cat Power.

Shine a Light is Martin Scorsese’s transcription of a Rolling Stones benefit concert, shot over the course of two nights at New York City’s Beacon Theatre. Well-covered from a multitude of angles by a cadre of celebrated cameramen (among them Albert Maysles of Salesman and Grey Gardens fame), the film nevertheless feels a bit too smoothly tooled, edited for efficiency rather than style. In fact, it isn’t really apparent until the final tracking shot that we are watching a Scorsese film. Still, the movie is a gilded gift to Stones fans, and there are charming, off-the-cuff moments, as when Charlie Watts, visibly exhausted after an intense drum solo, looks straight into the camera and issues forth a sigh of relief.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a low-budget video documentary that highlights the tension between Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Theory in the college classroom, makes no apologies for siding with the underdog (in this case, I.D.). For the first half of its running time, it launches a withering attack against Big Science for dogmatically cutting off certain areas of scientific inquiry. Supplemented by illustrative cartoons and hijacked newsreel clips, and hosted by a dryly poker-faced Ben Stein, the movie resembles one of Michael Moore’s combustible essay films, although it lacks Moore’s scope and organizational skills. (Though Stein proves himself a more thorough arguer than Moore.) The film scores points here and there, but it attempts to cover too much in too short a span, and winds up slightly wide of the mark. Still, as right-wing agitation, it serves a definite purpose. The issue is once again on the table.

Man Is the List-Making Animal

natebell — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I’m biding my time until my review of Expelled hits the ‘net. Until then, here’s something to break the silence.

I recently discovered a website called YMDb (your movie database), which appears to be nothing more than a massive collection of favorite movie lists from users around the world. Anybody can join, so I quickly logged my top twenty. It’s fun, and it’s free!

Choosing favorites can be as painful as passing a kidney stone, but it’s also a healthful exercise in decision-making, and sometimes you discover things about yourself in the process. Here are my current choices, culled mostly from memory and subject to change at a moment’s notice.

12 Angry Men—It would be hard to conceive of my life without this film. It’s gotten to the point where it no longer matters whether it’s any good or not (although few will contest its reputation as a paragon of ‘50s American filmmaking). It’s my favorite, and I’m stuck with it. Sidney Lumet’s film is basically an advanced sociology experiment: put twelve people with disparate personalities and backgrounds in a confined space for two hours and watch them unglue. I’ve seen it ten or eleven times, and I’m still finding new things I love about it.

The General—My list wouldn’t be worth its salt without a Buster Keaton comedy, and this one seems to me his masterpiece among masterpieces. More exciting than funny, it uses the locomotive to sustain an environment of constant movement—the ultimate action film.

High Noon—It’s really a shame this film is so popular, since its high repute has encouraged a wave of undeserved (and largely reactionary) teardowns from the critical elite. This is really a minor western that became a classic merely because every element coalesces brilliantly. The themes of masculine identity and individual moral integrity are clearly and beautifully delineated, and Tex Ritter’s title ballad gives it all a haunting resonance.

The Lady Eve—It’s a toss up between this and Hail the Conquering Hero. I chose this one simply because I saw it most recently. Preston Sturges takes a classic screwball setup and inexplicably turns it into a treatise on how men and women relate to each other.

Louisiana Story—Some call it sentimental, but Robert Flaherty’s documentary about the Old America colliding with the New always seemed to me one of the most beautiful expressions of the national character ever produced. The scenes of the Acadian boy floating down the bayou set to Virgil Thomson’s soaring music (one of the five greatest film scores ever written) are a perfect marriage of picture and sound.

The Passion of Joan of Arc—No wide shots, just a succession of some of the most extraordinary faces ever filmed by a camera, including that of Maria Falconetti, silent and beautiful, as the most famous of Christian martyrs.

Rope—During a revival of Hitchcock’s work at the American Cinemateque last year, I was shocked to discover I actually enjoyed this more than my usual favorite, Rear Window. (Hopefully I’ll return to my senses.) Like most of the Master’s work, this is a study in human evil, and the heavy hypothesizing is justified by the presence of Jimmy Stewart’s college professor, who teaches Nietzschean philosophy in the classroom and is appalled when two of his students carry out its implications.

A Man Escaped—It’s very difficult to choose a single Bresson, but this one seems like the logical choice given my fondness for optimistic endings. And rarely has an optimistic ending been so richly deserved. A spiritual thriller, Bresson’s film depicts a prisoner’s flight from a Gestapo prison, guided by a providential force that can only be called divine.

F for Fake—Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight are in constant rotation as my favorite Orson Welles—but today it’s F for Fake. Now that it’s finally available on DVD, Welles’s playful “essay film” is enjoying a resurgence of interest. Years ahead of its time, it employs sophisticated editing techniques to weave a dizzying web of lies, illusion, and cinematic trickery, all in service of some Quixotic quest for the meaning of art, and eventually, life itself.

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday—Playtime is actually the greater achievement, but Jacques Tati’s first outing as Mr. Hulot never ceases to make me laugh. Essentially a story about a seaside vacation gone awry, Tati uses this simple premise to promote an incomparable view of humanity, gentle, jolly, and generous (and French, always French).

The bottom half of my Top 20 will be coming along shortly. This is where the list really gets interesting…

So what are your favorite films? I’d love to hear from anybody out there reading. Maybe it’s time to consider opening an account at YMDb…

March Reviews

natebell — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Gus Van Sant continues his odyssey through the inner landscapes of wayward youths with Paranoid Park,a film of ambitious formal invention and negligible impact. In tellingthe story of a skater kid (Gabe Nevins) trying to cope with hisinvolvement in a horrible tragedy, Van Sant once again turns toexpressive slow motion to isolate and extend moments of great emotionalturbulence. All of this is very lyrical, some of it strikingly so (theace cinematographer is Christopher Doyle), but for all the time spentwith this uncomprehending lad, the film never reaches beyond theobvious.

Snow Angels marks another step in the devolution of David Gordon Green, the promising young director of George Washington, who with each successive film seems to shed the qualities that made him interesting in the first place. His scenario, a small town gripped with grief over a recent tragedy, promises much, delivers much less. We also get something we haven’t yet seen from Green—mild condescension toward his characters (though they are sensitively acted by all). The ill-judged ending, in which a character does an extremely desperate deed, doesn’t come across as honest. The trick is to make the final moments seem both excessive and unavoidable. In Green’s hands it only seems like a filmmaker’s conceit.

Set in Arkansas, Shotgun Stories is a leisurely character studyabout a feud between two families of half-brothers that inevitablyturns violent. Michael Shannon, so memorable in Bug and World Trade Center,plays the head of one household with typically smoldering intensity.Directed by first-timer Jeff Nichols, the film is agreeably paced anddetail-rich, although it saunters when it should sprint and fizzleswhen it seems ready to explode. Still recommended for its willingnessto adopt the rhythms of its characters, who live and breath as realpeople. David Gordon Green was one of the producers.

February Reviews

natebell — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In Bruges is a smart-alecky dramedy that finds two hitmen hiding out in the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium, a pretty little tourist town peppered with chocolate shops. As if the idea of trash-talking killers weren’t already run into the ground (thank you Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Troy Duffy), writer-director Martin McDonagh seizes every opportunity for snarky sadism and casual violence, then tries to switch gears and get profound in the last third. Nevertheless there are a few clever snatches and funny jokes, and Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell have fun playing up their conflicting personalities (Gleeson wants to go sightseeing, Farrell feels like he’s entered the ninth circle of hell). For a while, McDonagh manages to sustain a delicate balance of drama and comedy, but the task proves too daunting. When the mob boss (a snarling Cockney Ralph Fiennes) turns up to sort things out, the film self-destructs in an orgy of blood, sweat, and snow.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a modest children’s fantasy with an immodest price tag ($100 million, at least), albeit an uncommonly good-looking one (cinematography by Caleb Deschanel). Freddie Highmore plays a pair of identical twins harassed by a cadre of heavy-breathing ogres seeking a valuable book, Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. The creatures are well realized, the action occasionally rousing, and the obligatory message (something about the importance loyalty to family, I think) hushed to the point of innocuity. Highmore fights a losing battle with a fluctuating American accent and a resemblance to Henry Thomas, circa E.T.

Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero’s fifth zombie movie (in order: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead) is a stinging piece of self-reflexive cinema when it’s not piling on the gore. Which frankly isn’t often. Romero revels too hedonistically in a procession of imaginative deaths, including a death-by-scythe that has to be seen to be disbelieved. But this director was never one to take zombies at face value, and they are deployed once more as pawns in a wildly pessimistic endgame. The question is not, “Will man be saved?” but “Is man worth saving?”

The Counterfeiters is a compelling WWII survival story that follows Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), an infamous Jewish forger, through a series of morally compromising situations. Captured by Nazis and put to work in a Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he and a handful of select inmates are ordered, in exchange for soft beds and square meals, to manufacture English bank notes for the purpose of flooding and destabilizing the British economy. Based on actual events (the plan was known as Operation Bernhard), the film succeeds in rattling the emotions with relatively few wartime clichés. The fidgety handheld camerawork employed by director Stefan Ruzowitzky is a mixed blessing, sometimes zeroing in on key moments, sometimes distracting with its impatient zooms. Markovics, sleepy-eyed and crooked-nosed, is an unusual and arresting protagonist, and Devid Striesow, as the supervising Nazi, is frigidly, smilingly believable.

City of Men, a late-in-the-day follow-up to the critically lauded City of God, repeats the mixture of show-offy technique and ripped-from-the-headlines plotting set by Fernando Meirelles in the original. But this time the freshness is gone, and the movie suffers from a tendency to sensationalize its subject matter, succumbing to Tarantino-esque attacks of aestheticized bloodshed.