Friday 29 May 2009

Silence of Lorna
[Lorna’s Silence]
(2008)

80%

Yet, again Les Frères Dardenne present us with another dazzling morality tale: As spare, as haunting, as emotionally restrained as their work usually is. Despite the narrative contrivance, this packs a psychological wallop that cannot be beaten. Their sparse and cerebral style allows this slow drama to work its magic on you in unexpected ways until the inevitable climax.

This one is about a paper marriage to gain Belgian citizenship that takes an unexpected emotional toll on those involved – especially Lorna. As can happen, the moment you connect with another human being on an emotional level, it becomes harder to think of them simply in terms of a financial transaction. The thriller elements never overwhelm the human drama; allowing the actors to shine and to give of their very best.

Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Thursday 28 May 2009

Jubilee
(1978)

60%

Modish posturing with little substantive to say while director Derek Jarman learns his craft, practices his esthetic and indulges his penchant for skin & bone White boys. It is in the latter arena that this film becomes quite an impressive ode to the polymorphous perversity of its maker – as well as that of his audience. This is emphasized with a style that is often super 8 amateur porn yet sometimes quite beautiful.

Infused with a solid punk sensibility, this is a fairly neat apology for the so called Blank Generation – those without ambition, culture or purpose. Its anti establishment, no future attitudes, however, become wearying too soon and yet the film is essentially true in its take on the esthetic limitations of a philistine nation like the United Kingdom and of its most virulent critic: Punk Rock itself. 'As long as the music's loud, we won't hear the world falling apart'. (And punk was nothing if not loud.)

Despite regular flashes of artistic brilliance, this is best approached as a work by a great director in the making. Much of the attitudinizing expressed within it can only lead to destruction of the kind that regularly threatens to sink the film itself. However, this state of the nation melodrama still possesses the power to shock with its metaphorical relevance to the voter ennui of the contemporary political scene.

Reds
(1981)

60%

Rather flaccid and loose limbed historical epic that refuses to be either a traditional epic or even much of a conventional biopic. This is understandable given that the movie is about a radical and a revolutionary who, like the film's director, screenwriter and star, is himself concerned with leftwing politics. Shooting in 35- rather than super 35mm allows the central characters' tempestuous love affair to seem not so grandiose despite being set against revolutionary times. This prevents the times from getting in the way of the human drama.

The biographical aspect of the picture is divided between dramatized scenes from the lives of those concerned, interspersed with filmed recollections from people - there at the time – who actually knew the principals. These weather-beaten faces actually begin the movie and successfully lead us into the drama documentary that will unfold over the next 3 plus hours.

However, the film is really too long to sustain what is a really an intimate tale of a love affair hampered by the radical politics of the people involved. They just could not decide what was most important to them: The so called historical logic and inevitability of dialectical materialism - or their love lives. This leads them to the ideological correctness of assuming sexual fidelity was a bourgeois conceit rather than a loving necessity. Louise Bryant and John Reed are shown here as colleagues trying to be something more – lovers; leading to an on/off, free love affair.

Like all so called political intellectuals down the ages – including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – neither Bryant nor Reed really understands the manual working man nor how they could ever possibly relate them to their own birth privileges. So they compensate by indulging in a bourgeois fantasy of a workers' revolution led by themselves that does not really involve the workers that much.

Warren Beatty is not much of an actor and cannot bring his character to life. He sensibly, therefore, leaves the acting honors to those much better actors with which he surrounds himself – particularly Diane KEATON and Jack NICHOLSON. By their responses to his character, we gain an insight into the man John Reed was - as well as the man BEATTY thinks he was. In addition, the direction is rather unimaginative in a way that David LEAN would have found rather tiresome. BEATTY cannot find the right images for the story he wants to tell and this makes the movie look more like tv fare than a cinematic experience.

Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
(1987)

100%

Clever comedy about the everyday work frustrations of modern, Western life where everything that could go wrong does go wrong – and then some! The tension piles up in short order until an explosive climax in that rare thing: An anglophone comedy that is actually funny because it is grounded in a recognizable reality.

Steve Martin and John Candy make uneasy bedfellows. Their fundamental incompatibility and forced male bonding here is exquisitely absurd as the plot contrives to always keep the pair together - no matter what; their inevitable abrasion providing most of the laughs. Martin, diffident and repressed; Candy, an irritating life and soul of the party type. Eventually they come to realize that they are not very different from one another; they just have different methods of achieving the same goals. Candy enjoys life so takes life's inevitable failings in his stride; Martin exhibits highly amusing rages because his character is too controlled, ordinarily; resulting in him taking out his frustrations on others.

This movie comes from the long lost days when Steve Martin was hilarious and before John Candy ever got a chance to be anything else – may he rest in peace.

This movie is also a curiously backhanded celebration of American values through the festival known – ultimately and appropriately, here - as thanksgiving. This neatly emphasizes the underlying theme of absence making the heart grow fonder in one of the very best comedies ever made.

Rab ne Bana di Jodi
(2008)

60%

A married man wants his wife to love him (as he loves her) - although he married her knowing she did not – so he pretends to be the type of movie hero she prefers. The result, however, is that she ends up loving the stereotype he presents rather than the man he actually is inside.

This tale of unrequited love about a man who, essentially, wants an affair with his wife gives Shahrukh Khan the opportunity to play two roles. A challenge he rises to with some deft touches of humor and his usual energy; displaying his versatility as both an actor and as a star. His wife, played by Anushka Sharma, is a great actress in the making who should, hopefully, get better work than this. The characters remain essentially two dimensional because the screenplay does not offer enough for the two performers to do.

The other main problem with this film is that its views on love are flawed and naïve: 'There is no pain in true love'. The plotline meanders to fill out the formulaic content and length - it is funny but not nearly as philosophically profound as it would like to think it is. In its own mediocre way, this movie is about being the person you are as well as not hiding your light under a bushel. Yet, the central metaphor of dance representing the essence of sexual unions is not used as effectively as it could have been to express the very idea that marriage is a partnership. Given that this is a tired and over used metaphor, perhaps this is not very surprising.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
[Aguirre, the Wrath of God]
(1972)

80%

Here, White colonisers travel to South America in search of El Dorado only to find the moral abyss inside themselves. Their dark psyches are fully exposed to the camera's unwavering gaze: Their desire for unearned wealth, lack of ethical integrity, parasitism, superstition & self hatred. Theirs is a moral darkness excused in the name of bringing militarised Christian Light to the South American, so called, Savages they literally enslave. This behaviour is excused by the pragmatic realisation that political Church power can only come from military power and not from any spiritual force nor from any claimed genetic superiority.

This is an exceptional movie of ideas; in this case illustrating the folly of forcing your culture onto other peoples and of fighting nature, itself, in the process. That the colonisers feel the need to force themselves onto others proves a lack of substance in the very culture they seek to so aggressively espouse. As the empty souls here desperately look for meaning and self validation through destroying others they can then claim as weak and, by implication, then label themselves as strong.

The allegedly superior Whites here end up fighting among themselves as the incredible and lovingly filmed hardships of the journey through the jungle takes their inevitable toll. It is not the geography nor the people they fail to understand but their own mad motivation to become gods among men. They are the typical product of empty, outward looking empires; drifting upriver to face the eventual mercy of nature and natives.

The elliptical plotting style leaves much to the imagination – except the idea that to believe one is god is to become mad; stripping down this film to its very core. Like that other great work about greed for gold, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the recent (2008) selling of sub prime mortgages in the United States, these men are destroyed by their own greed rather than enriched by it.

Joseph Conrad would have loved this brilliantly-acted movie.

Rebel Without a Cause
(1955)

80%

A superb movie about the nature of White, Western teenagers. It shows middle class delinquents who are the inevitable result of a lack of positive role models and poor parenting. The teenage angst, the growing pains and the narcissistic masochism are brilliantly articulated and expressed by James Dean. (Although he only completed three films, he was surely the best, the most intuitive and the most instinctive actor of any movie generation.)

Here, desperate attempts to fit in socially are detailed along with looking for kicks to overcome the ennui of much of Western culture. Many of the girls here are attracted to bad boys – Natalie Wood, in particular – yet are not bad themselves, only bored and directionless. The boys possess macho status symbols like flick knives, yet their outer toughness masks inner emotional softness and, in their own eyes, personal weakness. That you come to like many of the characters stands testament to the quality of the acting, script and direction. The makers never forgot – as we are prone to doing today – that these are people with the same existential problems as ourselves, albeit with different ways of resolving them.

On the parents' side, James Dean's father does not wear the trousers in his own home and wants to be his son's friend rather than his father – an improper role for him to occupy. Natalie Wood's father feels threatened by his daughter's burgeoning sexuality and desperately seeks to deny the fact that she arouses him by attacking her for wearing makeup – attacking her for the very fact of being a woman.

Apart from James Dean, all the other performances are equally impressive and it would be invidious to pick out ones for special mention but Natalie Wood as his girlfriend and Aldo Ray as his hero worshipping best friend stand out. They both seem pulled along in the star's magnetic slipstream; forcing them to up their game and pull out all the stops to provide the best performances they can. They also well express the ennui of bored teens who are not being listened to because the adults around them never fully navigated puberty themselves; leading to parents treating their kids like emotional footballs.

The ending is a bit of a copout in suggesting that a solution to the particular problems shown here is possible with little more than good faith. Nevertheless, this is an impressive analysis of a particular and peculiar problem of Western culture.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Orfanato
[Orphanage]
(2007)

80%

Essentially a film about bereavement, grief and personal loss, this life affirming tragedy about death and coming to terms with life makes the important point that we should not live in the past but neither should we forget.

However, this movie’s plot holes are matched by an inconsistent tone in the horror often being used to trump narrative logic. Why would a social worker give the mother a confidential file about an orphan that contains information the mother was already perfectly well aware of? Why would the mother go out into the garden to investigate a mysterious banging - on her own, without a torch and in the middle of the night? Why is a hidden part of the house unknown to the couple here even though they have architects’ drawings of the house? Why don’t brakes screech (or horns blare) before someone is knocked over – was the driver blind? Yet, the movie is completely emotionally plausible despite these, often pointless, horror movie cliches.

These dramaturgical problems are exacerbated by infrequently gratuitous gore that serves no dramatic purpose and reveals a commercially conscious fear that audiences will be bored with “mere” psychological horror despite the above average and somewhat original story. This prior insult to this film’s potential audience reveals a lack of self confidence in the strong storyline. It also demonstrates a conflict at the heart of the movie between making the audience feel fear and actually fearing the audience themselves. And a ghost that fears the living ain’t gonna scare no one!

Ultimately, this film defines motherhood as believing is seeing (active participation in the growing child) rather than seeing is believing (viewing your child from an emotional distance) and waiting – like a neutral and objective scientist - to see how it turns out.

The excellent Belén Rueda is utterly convincing as the mother who sees no true distinction between being a natural or an adoptive parent in her leonine desire to protect her “cub”. She faces every fear – even the triteness of scared, physically vulnerable women walking along darkened corridors in old Victorian mansions. Without her presence and performance, this movie would fall flat on its somewhat hackneyed face.

Jungle Book
(1967)

80%

The well-known story about an orphaned boy’s adventures with jungle animals in search of his true self - after being raised by wolves. It is, after all, unnatural to try to be what you are not and he must eventually accept his humanity despite his love (& ours) for the instinctual life of animals. This movie is the real thing when it comes to animation that computers cannot touch: Raw character animation power. The inability of computers to think also limits their ability to reproduce subtle movement and in depth characterization. The characters move here as if they had genuine weight to them; while their movements eloquently reveal emotions. The animation fits the personalities of the actors; bringing their characterizations to full life. This feature length cartoon comes from the days when true character animation was important to the Disney studios. Presently, we witness the doldrums, where famous names (who cannot necessarily invest their characters with life through their voices) and bland computer animation reign mostly supreme. Mowgli is a technical tour de force of observational animation while Baloo the Bear reveals his rich emotional life (& feeble intellect) through the way he moves. The songs are actually memorable - for a Disney musical - and do not hold up the plot; they are actually part and parcel of, and integral to, the story. The only false note is the dated Beatles’ reference – a necessary scene that should have been rethought to more closely fit the style of the rest of the movie. The barbershop quartet style of the four northern English vultures (one of whom sounds remarkably like George Harrison) should have been more profitably rendered as a Beach Boys’ take off as that is more the latter’s style. This is a very funny example of the very best of the many truly great family friendly animations that Walt Disney ever made.

OSS-117
(2006)

80%

Highly-effective satire on White racist imperialism - via a 007 parody - with specific regard to the so called Suez Crisis of the 1950s.

The Western political oppression shown here requires much macho posturing to foment in the minds of those whose skin is not as white as their own the belief that Whites are invincible. This is satirized here as crypto homosexuality as the male secret agents exaggerate their posture and walking styles to a ludicrous degree while their liking for heterosexuality is undercut by their absurdly tactile male bonding

The aim of the government agents here is to 'make the Middle East safe'. Yet, their complete disdain for other people's culture simply sows the seeds of the resentment that has precisely the opposite effect. After all: The problem with Arabic is 'it's so hard to read'. Like all racists, Agent Cent Dix Sept is somewhat slow witted and assumes that only White French can speak fluent French and that those one dominates need ones help because they are faithfully masochistic.

Jean DUJARDIN is a perfect cross between Peter SELLERS and Sean Connery, yet the women here are largely impressed – except the lone masochistic nymphomaniac. This is like Austin Powers, only a sight funnier since it is actually about something in the real world rather than merely a pastiche of filmic conventions and cliches. It actually satirizes the racism and sexism inherent in Bond films (not just their form) and, as such, is crammed full of enough ideas to populate at least three movies.

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Guta-yubalja-deul
[Bloody Aria]
(2006)

40%

Oddly meandering movie about power games; concluding that those with the greatest political influence are those best able to get both ends of the political spectrum to play against the middle. Yet power shifts depending on whether or not you can get your enemies to fear you: Not whether or not you are actually powerful. Your power is thus largely in their minds only and can only be sustained by vain attempts to control their thoughts.

However, this is a study of bullying (& its corollary: Revenge) that lacks much insight. All it has to offer is the fact that sadists are really all masochists; needing to keep their victims alive for them to have someone to beat – and for someone to beat them, too. All this is expressed via a Theatre of Cruelty and a Grand Guignol sensibility that fails to properly engage such dramatic antecedents, primarily by merely playing at psychological cruelty and being afraid to present much gore.

None of this is helped by the fact that the characters are mere archetypes – albeit played with as much conviction as any decent actor could play them.

Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte
[Flower of the Arabian Nights;
Arabian Nights]
(1974)

80%

The final part of Pier Paolo PASOLINI’s Trilogy of Life and easily the best.

Again, the faces of mostly non-professional actors used to express his attempt to make films with no ideological axe to grind. This is only partly successful because there is clearly ideology in his choice of demotic faces - this time mixed in with the most attractive.

Again, the joyous laughter at human folly and the passions that can lead us to them. While demonstrating great affection for the people who remind us so acutely of who we ourselves are, albeit in an Edenic, spontaneous and romanticized state of being.

The dreamlike quality of this narrative drives it and it can become a little confusing to know what is real and what is someone’s dream. But, strangely, this matters little as the whole movie is structured as a reverie with more emotional plausibility than rational. Yet, these dreams quietly and effectively complement one another.

For once carnality is presented as joyful expression rather than guilt ridden secret and the sound of young girl’s laughter rings through one’s mind after seeing it. In PASOLINI’s unforced sense of childlike wonder at people and an appreciation of the human body and of the places he chooses to record with his camera, this film becomes a visually sumptuous and exotic take on fate and magic.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
(1971)

80%

Absorbing character study as well as a satire on the guilt ridden White bourgeoisie: The middle class who thinks they are not bourgeois. These are lonely and alienated people who think anything is better than nothing – especially in sexual relationships – who struggle vainly to make something out of that nothing. All of this leads to nothing more than the sexual promiscuity on offer here, not integral, fulfilling interpersonal relations.

If you are happy to laugh at the White English, there is a lot of fun to be had here. Especially as regard the lack of an intuitive base to a culture that lacks a clearly defined social life because Western culture is subject to so much technological change that it is hard to keep abreast of such changes. This explains the confusion on the faces of most of the performers. Reflecting the fact that the world changes are something they can never hope to keep up with until and unless they start reconnecting with their real emotions rather than the false emoting of the self conscious, Hampstead liberals parodied here. Mores change as science changes but our ability to keep up with them is slower that the apparently relentless pace of technology. In fact, the more we try to keep up the more old fashioned we seem.

Without this strong satirical edge, this drama could easily become all too depressing as it accurately depicts those who did not have a normal childhood because their parents refused to grow up. Moreover, it proves the inherent evil of Political Correctness (PC) in its desire to silence all criticism of PC as reactionary.

All of the relationships on show here lack any true substance and are based on need rather than love. The movie is about the poor communication skills of those who spend inordinate amounts of time with their mouths wide open and their ears firmly shut. Spending more time on the telephone than in company. This very good observational movie contains too little analysis of what it observes. It is resolutely stuck in the worldview of the characters it observes.

The cast is fantastic and is a veritable Who's Who of then (1971) British acting talent.

Cool Hand Luke
(1967)

80%

The best method actor of them all – Paul NEWMAN – heads a truly ensemble cast of Actor's Studio alumni in this Sisyphean classic. The ensemble works because NEWMAN is not so much a star as a good looking character actor. This is classic, anti hero stuff in the context of a prison that, like one flew over the cuckoo's nest, is about an existential loner against the system whose personal ennui and malaise matches that system.

Not having much to do – inside or outside of the chain gang – the smallest things assume the greatest importance. This inability to find a personal raison d'être means Lucas Jackson is affectively committing slow suicide beating against authority to force it to destroy him. This vainly alleviates him any personal responsibility for his own actions. Here, intolerance of the more pointless rules of a society – rules invented merely to provide their enforcers with something to enforce – reveals the intolerance such rule makers.

One admires Mr Jackson because he never gives up even in the face of insuperable odds. Yet, he has no goal other than kicking out against anyone. Others parasite off his courage – as if supporting him made them brave – but fail to realize that he often lacks any real common sense. A cool hand is an empty one: It is a bluff. If we are honest, this reminds us of many of the people we have met; including often ourselves.

One of the best ever prison pictures; putting rubbish like the Shawshank Redemption firmly in its place. Each other characters are clearly defined and well presented by highly competent actors and the theme of the futility of much of modern life takes us resolutely forward toward the inevitably tragic conclusion. The kind of prison picture Shakespeare would have written if he had been a Hollywood screenwriter.

W.
(2008)

60%

Perhaps it was too soon to make this well cast movie about that president of the United States who made Mrs Malaprop seem like she had the greatest command of the English language in her ludicrous misuse of language. The insights are thin and suggest a lot of guessing along the lines of Freudian psychoanalysis was going on rather than anyone telling the screenwriters what really happened behind the closed doors of the Beltway.

The non chronological editing format makes emotional involvement problematic despite the story's clear attempt to make the story of a man living in his father's shadow empathetic. He fails to find a way to stand on his own two feet through his own unaided achievements and thus almost becomes a Shakespearean tragic hero brought down by his own character flaws. However, director Oliver Stone is not Shakespeare and cannot really bring this off. All he has is the tail wagging the dog so common to politicians of a man who wanted to be a war president but could not find or invent a worthwhile war.

Despite easily being the worst US president of them all, you do however manage to feel some sorrow for him because of the clever playing of Josh Brolin who manages to inject some three-dimensionality into the otherwise somewhat flaccid screenplay. He paints a picture of a lost soul hiding this behind his alleged born again Christianity. While Stone, himself, is content for his movie to be nothing more than an earnest critique of Pyrrhic nature of current US foreign policy. The two are not quite working on the same team, dramatically.

The casting is good and Richard Dreyfuss and Thandie Newton, in particular, are clearly having a lot of fun impersonation Richard Cheney and Condoleeza Rice, respectively.

Thomas Crown Affair
(1968)

60%

A slick and modish thriller that never fully escapes its genre roots because the love affair at the heart of the story fails to convince. Partly this is because Steve McQueen is not a good enough actor to pull off such a demanding role. And partly because the script has no real idea how to present its theme of a materially successful man and his inability to find inner happiness. The characters are too thin and the movie thus ends up being as spiritually empty as many of its characters because it posits no other environment than the 'funny, dirty little world' they all inhabit. What should have been an elegant and stylish ménage à trois falls somewhat flat.

Faye Dunaway does not disgrace herself here and makes the most of her leading yet meager role by doing a kind of Diana Rigg impersonation. Each scene features her in a different, modish and fetching outfit that keeps viewer interest running along just nicely. But the final emotional climax does not live up to its self important musical scoring because the two stars simply lacked sexual chemistry over and above the merely erotic. This movie is fun so long as you do not take it too seriously and, in the final analysis, let us hope the leads were paid enough money to make it all worth their while.

Kwaidan
[Ghost Stories]
(1964)

80%

A strange collection of ghost stories that are more spooky morality tales than anything else; enhancing their emotional effect since the meaning of each tale is thus clearer to see without the unnecessary distractions of standard horror film shocks or chills.

Here we have an ordered, essentially tribal world threatened – as always – by the vagaries of human desire. Its lack of technology is an expression of the fact that social order is more important here than technological progress since the latter always results in a continual overthrowing of old customs – to be replaced by new ones. These stories deal with that fear that such rapid change always produces in their depiction of a rigid culture populated by the anarchic ghosts of the imagination that haunt all repressed peoples.

This lavish and beautifully-stylized production must have cost a pretty penny with its lovely images and stately pacing and it all rather overwhelms you with its sheer cinematic grace. The characters never rise above the level of mere archetypes because the ideas expressed are more important than a detailed depiction of human nature.

Accattone
[The Procurer;
The Scrounger]
(1961)

100%

A film of rare brilliance that fully deserves the high reputation it always had.

One is alternately horrified and fascinated by the depravity of the main characters here since such fascination is the only real way to keep on watching. They do not engage ones emotions empathetically and one finds oneself simply admiring their sheer chutzpah and their manifold amoral means of survival that do not involve actually doing an honest days work. They even laugh among themselves that they rob from the blind and steal from little children. The central character played by Franco CITTI is not called accattone for nothing, he simply leeches from all and sundry with no thought for whom he hurts or exploits.

Here the pure amorality of those who claim the poor cannot afford morality is laid bare. To say that only the bourgeoisie can afford to be moral is nothing more than saying the poor are allowed to be immoral because their poverty excuses them and that – worse – they never have to learn morality. This attitude explains why the poor shown here never rise above their poverty because theirs is essentially a poverty of spirit not of material goods.

This is a work from someone who knows what he is talking about since the poor here are never sentimentalized as being worthy of help or care. They are simply shown as they are – warts and all. The photography is also excellent and the compositions successfully mimic the style of the renaissance painters Italy is steeped in. A film to treasure for the ages.

Touch of Evil
(1958)

80%

Orson WELLES delivers a performance of Shakespearean stature and grandeur in a trite tale of a corrupt cop. His gross physical size expertly embodies the living incarnation of evil (& racism) that WELLES obviously intended it to.

The real problem with this film is that the performances are far better than the actual material and WELLES does not completely succeed in making all the elements cohere into a great Elizabethan style morality tale. Nevertheless, technically, the usual WELLES' style is prominent: Deep focus, crooked & low camera angles and two planes of action.

That said, there is much to enjoy here. A superb cast who seem absolutely determined to impress WELLES with their performances and sense that being in one of his films means being in the presence of greatness. (They are not far wrong.) Janet LEIGH is particularly fine; managing to convey the fear of her character in the presence of thugs plus her steely determination not to give in to them – as well as her deep love for her husband. Her incarceration in a lonely motel off the highway with a gynophobic hotel manager (a brilliant Dennis WEAVER) is an eerie presaging of what was to come for her in Hitchcock's Psycho. They manage to turn a mediocre novel into a superb film. This proves, once again, how difficult it can be to turn great books - that work as books - into movies, while average work can often seem so much better on the silver screen than it was on the page. This was also a time when Hollywood performers had oomph and personality that burst out of the screen at you.

WELLES fully explores the paradox of a mendacious cop who frames people for crimes that they actually did commit because he is determined to ensure that the guilty are punished – with little concern for actual justice. One alternately loathes and empathizes with the man for this view; making him seem oddly lovable.

I’m Not There
(2007)

40%

This movie breaks many of the naturalistic rules of visual storytelling to replace them with its own. But this rarely rises above an expensive in joke for the cognoscenti since those who know little of Bob Dylan’s life are not catered to here – neither are the film buff references of any interest or value, except to geeks.

Little more than a complex home movie, the style of this film makes complete and logical sense in its emotional plausibility. The artist seeks role models and must constantly re-invent himself to stay relevant. Thus, having six actors play Bob Dylan throughout most of his life gets this idea across well. However, this dramatic gimmick never rises to the giddy heights of dramatic device in truly elucidating character since Dylan remains the enigma at the film's end he was at the beginning. This makes the title the most perfect ever coined for a motion picture: I’m Not There – he sure ain’t.

Little Women
(1994)

80%

Fine proto-feminist rendering of the novel marred only by some mediocre performances – especially from Christian Bale, Claire Danes and - ostensible star - Winona Ryder. However, Trini Alvarado and Kirsten Dunst steal the show (& save the day) with their respective roles as the sensible, conformist marrying kind and the precocious schoolgirl.

Despite this, the quality of the production values and of the writing carry the day in a plot that would probably have benefited from being longer and feeling less like a Readers' Digest version of the book. Nevertheless, this is filmmaking of a high order that respects both the source novel and the maturity & intelligence of its audience. A clever riposte to those who believe women are nothing without a man: These women do quite well without the absent father off fighting the American Civil War.

13B
(2008)

60%

A good example of a great premise not as well executed as it could have been.

The film is too long for a horror movie and dissipates what could have been a great deal more tension and suspense in the process. Yet, in the last half-hour, it comes good on its terror promise and actually does have you on the edge of your seat. The expected ending does not materialize and you suddenly realize that the plot twists and red herrings put the extended family shown here under great threat from an unexpected source. The film also captures well the essence of bad dreams as being those referring to unresolved, misunderstood and inescapable personal issues.

Another issue arises in that this film could be seen as a satire on the negative affects of tv on the Family, especially as regards the largely feminine addiction to soap operas. It does this by conflating both the movies Videodrome and Poltergeist in the idea of the gogglebox being the enemy within every household that owns one.

The other good thing about this movie is that the characters are well drawn, particularly the soap obsessed distaff side of the family. Additionally, too, as regards the male side working long and hard to keep their women in comfort – and being very happy to do so. These people actually relate to one another as male & female and understand their sex roles without irony or pretence.

Ghost Town
(2008)

60%

Clearly, Ricky Gervais is not a comic actor of any stature as he keeps stepping out of character in this movie – as if he does not really take the filmmaking process very seriously. Nevertheless, he is still pretty funny.

This one is about the unfinished emotional business between the living and the dead and those who leave us because we are obnoxious. Here, the living lack the courage to free themselves of their life denying attachment to their dead; the dead find it just as hard to free themselves of the living (partly because the living can't actually see them). Neither feels able to move on psychologically hence their mutual emotional constipation.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from the same constipation as the characters in its being rather emotionally superficial. Here, there is a profound lack of understanding about what makes people tick generally and about why they become so attached to each other - often in spite their best efforts not to do so. The movie lacks any real pathos so consequently lacks any really deeply ingrained humor.

This film is more of a student screenwriting project that rips off Ghost and Sixth Sense without adding anything to this particular sub genre. Not as funny to watch as to make and not even as good as Blithe Spirit.

Visitor
(2008)

80%

An interesting cinematic response to current (2008) cultural globalization. The dead from the neck up old world meets the new and discovers a great deal about itself in the process. That migrants (& illegal ones at that) could teach natives a thing or two about humanity and spontaneity is the driver of this simple tale of cultures colliding. All of this is mediated through the universal language of music as well as through understated humor.

Although the phenotypical bonding is inherently contrived, this is to good effect. It allows for a drama that explores the pointlessness of immigration controls – especially when compared with the lack of similar curbs on the free movement of goods and capital – and their origin in White notions of cultural preservation from imagined external threats.

The acting is particularly fine and draws one in deeply to the drama of people looking either for something materially better or for something emotional they have lost and, perhaps, never had.

Saturday 23 May 2009

War Requiem
(1988)

80%

Although the attempt to find suitable images for the world's greatest music is always doomed to failure - despite the claim that a picture is worth a thousand words - this movie does a far better job of this impossible task than Walt Disney's risible Fantasia. It treats its subject matter with the seriousness it deserves; while never trying to overshadow the music with the clever use of images that merely serve to prove how hopeless such an undertaking truly is.

Despite the fact that there is a clear struggle to find and shoot appropriate images in the quieter sections of the oratorio, this movie packs the required emotional punch when necessary by not trying too hard. This is a movie suffused with the sense of loss: Of lives, of potential and of the carefree days of childhood. The use of handheld super eight film has become an anachronistic cliché for childhood yet is used effectively – because used without apology - here.

If you happen to like both direct Derek Jarman and composer Benjamin Britten then you are doubly blessed and in for a considerable treat.

Kan shang qu hen mei
[Little Red Flowers]
(2005)

60%

Interesting but rather weak political allegory about the individual’s relationship to the collective. The most telling aspect of this whole affair is the relentlessly-anal character of the institutional schooling shown here. While this anality is fundamental to any understanding of collectivism, it lacks breadth and depth since endless shots of identically dressed children being poorly toilet-trained soon become tiresome.

Where this movie scores highly is in the high cuteness factor of the children involved and their complete naturalness in front of the camera. It gets children just right as to how they are and reminds us how surreal young minds can be in their thought processes. The sad-faced rebel - unable and unwilling to obey school rules – is a template for the political rebellions of adulthood. But his character fails to make this the If… or the Zero de Conduite it could so easily have been, because the rebellion here is rather more formalistic than truly meaningful. Moreover, the adults here come across as much more uniform than individual.

Thursday 21 May 2009

Revolver
(2005)

(Rating: 80%)

(http://reviewtm.com)

Know Thyself

Good film about an ex-convict coming to terms with his fears and self-willed delusions and making his life better through the hard work necessary to overcome them.

Unless we come to terms with our fears others, to enslave us, will use them against us. They will also be exploited by ourselves to run away from whom we are and as an excuse for seeking the approval of others to solace our self disapproval. To escape full consciousness of this, we often seek power over others; explaining why so many are willing to violently protect their fears if one has nothing better to replace them with.

(http://reviewtm.com)

The convoluted and deliberately obscure style makes it a difficult film to follow, but it’s still worth hanging in there for the denouement. The casting is excellent and it contains all the necessary gangster movie thrills – albeit still managing to be somewhat pretentious.

Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Pollock
(2000)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(cabinarmadio.style.it)

Human Wrongs

Abstract expressionism makes me feel somewhat like a National Socialist since it is clearly a degenerate art form in being wholly solipsistic, quintessentially self-indulgent and utterly-fraudulent. It is nursery stuff people can say almost anything about to claim its value; while never admitting it is nothing more than Western Art’s version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It is expression - as such - with nothing specific to express except the neuroses of the so called artist: Art created by adult children.

One expresses either oneself (or what it is to be human): If the expressor is a nothing then his self expression will be nothing. If unconscious art is unmediated by prior thought and, thus, entirely spontaneous, it is hard to see the difference between it and, say, the art therapy daubings of a serial killer. Or, simply saying the first thing that comes into ones head.

Having said all that, this is a very good film about what constitutes modern Western art in its containing deeply committed performances from all concerned. The movie captures the artistic temperament (talented or not) perfectly, along with an apparently empty culture that has little to express other than the concept of the work itself (& any associated ideas) being more important than the execution. Nevertheless, if one has little to say, it is inevitable that the form will become more important than the content.

For a male artist, apparently, esthetic creation is as psychologically painful to him as birth is physically painful to women. But, is Jackson Pollock just a prolix alcoholic able to create great art or is he just a screwed up dipsomaniac able to manipulate words to suggest underlying ability? This film strongly allies itself with the former view.

The best epitaph for artist known as Jackson Pollock would be that no matter how abstract the artworks, the signatures are always realistic. For the film, it would be that for an exploration of the psyche of an abstract expressionist, it is strangely impressionistic.

Luck by Chance
(2009)

60%

A rather diffuse and unfocused plot masks a clever story, loaded with enough thematic content for a shorter, more tightly edited film. The characters are thinly sketched and so have problems engaging the audience's emotions.

Replete with film star cameos that do not convince that this is what the Bollywood film industry is really like since the likes of Shahrukh Khan, for example, merely seem to be acting another kind of role. The film is, thus, as synthetic as the world it aims to lampoon with the exception of the professional jealousy common to all working life as the career of one side of a sexual relationship progresses while the other flounders. Moreover, as the title implies, some success is not so much the product of hard work and tenacity but also of being in the right place at the right time – and of accepting yourself for what you truly are.

The great saving grace of this film is that it does not have the kind of cop out ending a Hollywood movie would almost certainly have: The sort of real world Feminism that can only make one cheer for the heroine.

Nordwand
[North Face]
(2008)

80%

Although very much a slow-starter, this film inevitably builds to a profoundly satisfying climax that packs a genuine emotional wallop.

The movie compares and contrasts the Nazi attitude to physical culture with those who are athletic because it lies in their nature. The mountaineering yearnings of the young are exploited by Nazi propagandists concerning the alleged superiority of Aryan youth while the racists also deal with being dismayed at the best mountaineers having little or no interest in politics. Instead, they do it for love: The story eventually reaches mythopoeic proportions as the woman whose lover scales the mountain attempts his rescue.

The performances are underplayed and so you really empathize with the solidly drawn characters in their extreme plight – albeit that they got themselves into it by choice. Moreover, the tension and the suspense will have you on the edge of your seat to the end with its nail biting conclusion suspended over the North Face of the Eiger.

Saturday 16 May 2009

Force of Evil
(1948)

60%

A clever film noir but really rather gris since everyone is morally compromised here. Yet the ethical argument is weak while the script is taut and to the point.

This movie is ultimately an overrated misuse of some very fine actors – most notably John GARFIELD and Beatrice PEARSON. It is very easy to see why this should have influenced Martin SCORSESE (given the verbal complexity), but director Abraham Polonsky lacks the former's style. He relies too much on dialogue rather than on having a rich visual storytelling sense.

Decameron
(1970)

60%

The first part of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (Decameron, Canterbury Tales & Arabian Nights), this is filled with a bawdy, earthy spirit, this is a romanticization of medieval life that practically worships the lower classes for their lack of superciliousness. A tale of sex and death: Randy nuns, cuckolded husbands, murdered lovers and grave robbers. Here the director not only tries to show human beings as archetypes but also presents them in a prelapsarian, pre industrial past. Because Pasolini is not a naturalist, this does not represent the real past but are analogies to - and criticisms of - the present day. These are tales of basic human passions with no ideological axes to grind.

The usual (proto Christian) psychological conflict in Pasolini's work between the strictures of Roman Catholicism and the apparent liberation of Marxism; made flesh by the film's conclusion about fornication: "It's not a sin!" The director's basic view is that one should accept life as a joy rather than a burden to be borne. Character is polarized between the passivity of the dupes and life deniers and the comic vitality of the pleasure seekers and the opportunists. The favored characters are escaping the moral inertia of the self righteous in a film that finds comedy and beauty in all facets of human life.

His close-ups on the faces of his largely non-professional cast exemplify Pasolini's obsession with the poor – as usual. Their physiognomy is both often quite repellent yet oddly fascinating. And here the true problem of this and most other Pasolini movies comes to the fore: Most of his performers cannot act and so fail to bring many of his themes fully to life.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Jab We Met
(2007)

80%

Extremely funny romantic comedy with a serious core. A panegyric to marrying for love as opposed to marrying by arrangement that suggests the latter can represent an unloving environment within which to raise children.

Nevertheless, as usual, the path of true love does not run smoothly especially as the girl's family wants her to be a traditional Sikh while she hungers after passion and adventure. Moreover, the movie shows there must be a balance between emotion and common sense. An Austenesque sense and sensibility which the two leading characters eventually come to realise as they get to know each other on their literal train journey and their spiritual travels. Trains here symbolise the paths of life everyone takes.

Kareena KAPOOR is fantastic as the headstrong young girl whom you can refuse nothing. She has a real gift for comedy, as her timing is impeccable.

Vie en Rose
[Mome]
(2007)

60%

Although not a great movie, the supernatural acting genius of Marion Cotillard must be seen to be fully believed and appreciated. She looks nothing like Edith Piaf but has a powerful voice and, as Piaf grabbed her audience's attention and emotions, Cotillard's mannered performance perfectly captures her character's anger for living – expressed in song. Piaf loves the stage because it is her only source of adoration – yet it does not provide a fulfilling passion.

Cotillion doesn't dominate the film - she is the film – as it perfectly showcases her considerable talent at playing a single character at different ages in her life. When she is young, she talks, moves and behaves as a young person; when old, likewise – her body language subtly evoking the emotions of the character at any given moment. Cotillard approaches her work as a child - without guile or inhibition. This is fortunate, since the movie lacks psychological depth – especially about Piaf's heroin habit – and we can only guess at what made Edith Piaf tick. Her classic existential, to be or not to be, problem is never resolved as she descends into spoiled star arrogance and hysterical prima donnaism to compensate for the fact she finds little reason to live fully.

Not just a film for Edith Piaf fans since it is impressionistic rather than lengthily detailing her entire life. Shot as you remember your own life – in snatches of here and there – it jumps in place and time as Piaf thinks back on her good and bad memories. That it does this without confusing its audience is quite a neat trick. Although not a great talent, director Olivier Dahan's genius is in getting great performances from everyone concerned in order to achieve a musical unity without the false notes of a poor performance spoiling the entire composition. His true talent lies in employing those more talented than himself to achieve his vision of an emotional portrait rather than a strictly biographical one – and all the better for it. We get down to brass tacks in this form of hagiography with the tabloid details elided to avoid it being little more than a parade of lookalike actors impersonating celebrities – particularly Jean Cocteau, Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour.

Goldeneye
(1995)

Rating: 80%

(http://www.theaceblackblog.com)

Also Known As:: Unknown
Version:
Review Format:: DVD
Year:: 1995
Countries:
Predominant Genre:: Action
Director:
Outstanding Performances:
Premiss:: James Bond teams up with the lone survivor of a destroyed research center to stop the hijacking of a nuclear space weapon by a fellow agent believed to be dead.
Themes:: Alienation; Compassion; Courage; Curative; Destiny; Emotional repression; Empathy; Genocide; Guilt; Identity; Individualism; Loneliness; Materialism; Narcissism; Personal; Political; Political Correctness; Republicanism; Sadomasochism; Schizophrenia; Sex; Solipsism; White culture; White supremacy
Similar to:: Living Daylights

Perestroika for 007

Summary: Above-average Bond-movie.

Best thing about this above-average 007 adventure is Izabella SCORUPCO as a spunky heroine with genuine acting talent, personality & sexual charisma. Famke JANSSEN also does well as the villainess in the underwritten role of a murderess sexually-aroused by the murders she commits - she even outperforms the unconvincing principal villain.

The trademark Carry On sexual humor is well in evidence, but the plot is trite and rather silly – still, the action is first-rate. Nevertheless, the story flounders in post-glasnost territory. It desperately seeks suitable baddies in a post-Cold War world that, ironically, agents of decadent capitalist-imperialism - such as James Bond - helped bring about: Talk about being a victim of your own political success! The movie-makers recognize this in the symbolic graveyard-of-Soviet-Communism scene.

Führerprinzip:

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.

(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)

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Friday 29 May 2009

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Tuesday 26 May 2009

Saturday 23 May 2009

Thursday 21 May 2009

Sunday 17 May 2009

Human Wrongs

Saturday 16 May 2009

Thursday 14 May 2009

Perestroika for 007

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