In this review I'll refrain from saying anything bad about the film.
- Gong Li is quite easy on the eyes. This cannot be overstated.
- Certain parts of China photograph beautifully.
- Shots of fast moving trains tickle my inner child.
2/5
16 November 2004
Garden State (Zach Braff, 2004)
I hate how many movies today are about the emptimess and plasticity of contemporary life. I hate that, in contemporary American indie cinema, 'quirky' has replaced intellligent and well made. I hate movies where, because the director can't illustrate a mood with dialogue, montage, or mise en scene, he does so by relying on a blaring soundtrack. I hate good actors who are wasted with bad scripts.And I hated Zach Braff's Garden State.
This was, in almost every possible way I can consider, just an awful, terrible movie. The sets were bad. The dialogue was terrible. The lighting and photography were sub par. Really, just about the only thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack, and I enjoyed that begrudgingly, because the (admittedly good) music was used so, so badly...
Andrew Largeman (writer/director/star Zach Braff) is an out of work TV actor waiting tables in a Vietnamese restaurant in LA. The single scene of the restaurant is our sole look at Southern California, from which we can assume that LA is populated primarily by Ketel One and Red Bull drinking assholes. Andrew gets a call from his father telling him his mother has died, and his presence at the funeral is requested. So, 'Large', as he's known by his friends back home, travels unwillingly back to New Jersey, where the rest of the movie takes place.
You could probably write the rest of the movie by yourself, and do at least as good a job as Braff. At the funeral we see how empty and fake his relatives lives are, and how disassociated Andrew is from his past. He runs into some friends, and goes to a party, where we learn much backstory. Then, of course, he meets a girl. Since this is a current American indie/romantic/comedy, the girl is cute, intelligent, yet somehow flawed. Played by Natalie Portman, Sam's flaw is nothing that actually gets in the way of the story, unlike Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Through Sam, Andrew learns some major life lessons, falls in love, and has his life changed forever.
There were a couple of nice moments in Garden State, but they were few and far between. One scene in an implausibly placed quarry was generally wonderful, and the scene wehere Andrew and Sam meet (at a barren and oddly decrepit Neurologist's office) was also fairly nice. That was pretty much it.
2/5
I hate how many movies today are about the emptimess and plasticity of contemporary life. I hate that, in contemporary American indie cinema, 'quirky' has replaced intellligent and well made. I hate movies where, because the director can't illustrate a mood with dialogue, montage, or mise en scene, he does so by relying on a blaring soundtrack. I hate good actors who are wasted with bad scripts.And I hated Zach Braff's Garden State.
This was, in almost every possible way I can consider, just an awful, terrible movie. The sets were bad. The dialogue was terrible. The lighting and photography were sub par. Really, just about the only thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack, and I enjoyed that begrudgingly, because the (admittedly good) music was used so, so badly...
Andrew Largeman (writer/director/star Zach Braff) is an out of work TV actor waiting tables in a Vietnamese restaurant in LA. The single scene of the restaurant is our sole look at Southern California, from which we can assume that LA is populated primarily by Ketel One and Red Bull drinking assholes. Andrew gets a call from his father telling him his mother has died, and his presence at the funeral is requested. So, 'Large', as he's known by his friends back home, travels unwillingly back to New Jersey, where the rest of the movie takes place.
You could probably write the rest of the movie by yourself, and do at least as good a job as Braff. At the funeral we see how empty and fake his relatives lives are, and how disassociated Andrew is from his past. He runs into some friends, and goes to a party, where we learn much backstory. Then, of course, he meets a girl. Since this is a current American indie/romantic/comedy, the girl is cute, intelligent, yet somehow flawed. Played by Natalie Portman, Sam's flaw is nothing that actually gets in the way of the story, unlike Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Through Sam, Andrew learns some major life lessons, falls in love, and has his life changed forever.
There were a couple of nice moments in Garden State, but they were few and far between. One scene in an implausibly placed quarry was generally wonderful, and the scene wehere Andrew and Sam meet (at a barren and oddly decrepit Neurologist's office) was also fairly nice. That was pretty much it.
2/5
15 November 2004
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1947)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a slightly unusual movie, as it's genre could best be described as "romantic horror". The main problem with this is that, at least for this viewer, the horror element was merely a put-on. At no time did I feel that any "genuine" horror was coming. So, basically this film is a slightly odd romance, where the protagonists are a recently widowed woman (Tierney), and the ghost of a former sea captain (Harrison), into whose house Tierney's character moves.
Most of the plot is a contrivance to get these two characters into some wonderful scenes. Essentially, in order to afford living in the house, Mrs. Muir ghostwrites (heh heh) the life story of the caption, as he dictates it to her. The book is a success, and in the course of events, Mrs. Muir meets and becomes involved with another writer, played with gleeful caddishness by George Sanders, who is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. Thankfully, the good widow eventually sees through his duplicity (he's married with children, you know), and retreats back into the solitude of her sea shore home. The ending is somewhat predictable, but honestly, no other ending would probably have worked. All in all, quite an enjoyable film. I though the script was a bit weak, and the accents the actors employed (some were English, some, like Tierney, from the USA) ranged from silly to bizarre.
My man problem with the film is that, good as it was, it simply could not withstand the fact that two things overshadow everything else about it. The first is, well, Gene Tierney is a total babe. Maybe I've got a thing for overbites, but I think she has to be one of the half-dozen hottest actresses of all time. Even in the costumes of turn-of the-(last)century England, you could tell, as her captain put it, she has a "fine figure". The other thing that overshadows the film is Bernard Hermann's score. This is one of his finest, ranking up there with the scores he did for Hitchcock's films like Vertigo and Psycho. Hermann's menacing score, along with some very expressionistic lighting and camerawork, give the film, especially in the first half hour or so, a feeling of dread that is nicely juxtaposed by the burgeoning romance between the two leads.
I heartily recommend The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is available in an excellent release as part of the Fox Studio Classics series.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a slightly unusual movie, as it's genre could best be described as "romantic horror". The main problem with this is that, at least for this viewer, the horror element was merely a put-on. At no time did I feel that any "genuine" horror was coming. So, basically this film is a slightly odd romance, where the protagonists are a recently widowed woman (Tierney), and the ghost of a former sea captain (Harrison), into whose house Tierney's character moves.
Most of the plot is a contrivance to get these two characters into some wonderful scenes. Essentially, in order to afford living in the house, Mrs. Muir ghostwrites (heh heh) the life story of the caption, as he dictates it to her. The book is a success, and in the course of events, Mrs. Muir meets and becomes involved with another writer, played with gleeful caddishness by George Sanders, who is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. Thankfully, the good widow eventually sees through his duplicity (he's married with children, you know), and retreats back into the solitude of her sea shore home. The ending is somewhat predictable, but honestly, no other ending would probably have worked. All in all, quite an enjoyable film. I though the script was a bit weak, and the accents the actors employed (some were English, some, like Tierney, from the USA) ranged from silly to bizarre.
My man problem with the film is that, good as it was, it simply could not withstand the fact that two things overshadow everything else about it. The first is, well, Gene Tierney is a total babe. Maybe I've got a thing for overbites, but I think she has to be one of the half-dozen hottest actresses of all time. Even in the costumes of turn-of the-(last)century England, you could tell, as her captain put it, she has a "fine figure". The other thing that overshadows the film is Bernard Hermann's score. This is one of his finest, ranking up there with the scores he did for Hitchcock's films like Vertigo and Psycho. Hermann's menacing score, along with some very expressionistic lighting and camerawork, give the film, especially in the first half hour or so, a feeling of dread that is nicely juxtaposed by the burgeoning romance between the two leads.
I heartily recommend The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is available in an excellent release as part of the Fox Studio Classics series.
Since Otar Left (Julie Bertuccelli, 2003)
The basic plot of Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left is quite ordinary and formulaic – three Georgian women, an elderly grandmother (Eka), a middle-aged mother (Marina), and a twentyish daughter (Ada) all live together in a large flat in Tbilisi. Missing is Otar, the matron’s only son, who has gone off to seek his fortune in Paris (the family is universally both Francophilic and Francophonic), and his absence is conspicuous at all times. Naturally, word comes of his death through a work accident, and the mother and daughter decide to spare the elderly grandmother this horrible news, and continue to keep up Otar’s correspondence with his mother. Complications set in when Eka decides to pawn off all of the family’s French language books in order to buy the three women tickets to visit Otar in France.
Obviously, nothing I’ve told you about Since Otar Left makes it in any way special. What does make it special are the performances of the actresses in the three leading roles, especially Esther Gorintin, who played Eka. Particularly impressive since Gorintin didn’t even begin her acting career until age 85.
However for me, the most impressive thing about Since Otar Left was the way it dealt with, albeit subtly, the generational differences between the three women, especially as it pertains to Georgia’s status as a former Soviet Republic, and most particularly, their attitudes towards Josef Stalin. Eka remains a devoted Stalinist (“This wouldn’t happen if Stalin were in charge”, she says during a power outage), Marina hated Stalin, and Ada can’t understand why the two women are still arguing about a guy who’s been dead for decades. There was one moment in the film, when Marina was talking to her long-suffering man friend Tenguiz, that I realized that theirs was the generation that lost the Cold War. This collective knowledge weighs on and liberates their generation equally, causing a sort of resigned, anarchic cynicism that informs all their words and actions.
While I cannot state that Since Otar Left is a great film, it was two hours well spent, and marks a fairly auspicious feature film debut for Julie Bertuccelli.
3/5
The basic plot of Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left is quite ordinary and formulaic – three Georgian women, an elderly grandmother (Eka), a middle-aged mother (Marina), and a twentyish daughter (Ada) all live together in a large flat in Tbilisi. Missing is Otar, the matron’s only son, who has gone off to seek his fortune in Paris (the family is universally both Francophilic and Francophonic), and his absence is conspicuous at all times. Naturally, word comes of his death through a work accident, and the mother and daughter decide to spare the elderly grandmother this horrible news, and continue to keep up Otar’s correspondence with his mother. Complications set in when Eka decides to pawn off all of the family’s French language books in order to buy the three women tickets to visit Otar in France.
Obviously, nothing I’ve told you about Since Otar Left makes it in any way special. What does make it special are the performances of the actresses in the three leading roles, especially Esther Gorintin, who played Eka. Particularly impressive since Gorintin didn’t even begin her acting career until age 85.
However for me, the most impressive thing about Since Otar Left was the way it dealt with, albeit subtly, the generational differences between the three women, especially as it pertains to Georgia’s status as a former Soviet Republic, and most particularly, their attitudes towards Josef Stalin. Eka remains a devoted Stalinist (“This wouldn’t happen if Stalin were in charge”, she says during a power outage), Marina hated Stalin, and Ada can’t understand why the two women are still arguing about a guy who’s been dead for decades. There was one moment in the film, when Marina was talking to her long-suffering man friend Tenguiz, that I realized that theirs was the generation that lost the Cold War. This collective knowledge weighs on and liberates their generation equally, causing a sort of resigned, anarchic cynicism that informs all their words and actions.
While I cannot state that Since Otar Left is a great film, it was two hours well spent, and marks a fairly auspicious feature film debut for Julie Bertuccelli.
3/5
07 September 2004
I've been trying to catch up with some of the mainstream Hollywood releases of the past few years, either on video or in the theater. Recently I've seen:
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004)
A really sweet-natured overcoming adversity comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. I didn't think it was particularly funny, although I loved the cameo by Lance Armstrong. Still, it hardly offended me at all, and that's saying quite a bit. The misfit cast was well selected, and, while it dragged during the first half, the film built to a solid, if predictable conclusion.
2/5
School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003)
For as long as he lives, Jack Black will probably never get a better role than this. I'm not a big Linklater fan, but he managed to keep his hands off this film for the most part, and let the cast do its bit. It was weird seeing Joan Cusack in a film not starring her brother, and I still don't know what all the fuss is about concerning Sarah Silverman, who seems to have no onscreen presence at all.
4/5
Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001)
In a lot of ways, this film reminded me of Fat Man and Little Boy - a notable European director wants to make a big statement about America and war, and falls flat on his face, due to an overly ambitious production and poor casting. Josh Hartnett was fine, I guess, but there was no real center in this film, with half of the actors (for all their talents, Ewan MacGregor and Orlando Bloom are not believable as US Army Rangers) looking like they're moonlighting from a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the other half, notably Sam Shepard and Tom Sizemore, seemed like they were acting in a WWII film directed by Samuel Fuller... I'm really not sure what Scott was trying to say here, beyond post-Cold War war is a messy business. Was the film an indictment of American involvement in Somalia, or an indictment of the Somali people? Some of the photography was quite beautiful, but in comparison with Claire Denis' Beau Travail, Scott's vision of Western military involvement in coastal East Africa is dull and lifeless.
2/5
The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002)
I was wary going in, having read the novel (the only one by Ludlum I like) more than two decades ago and still retaining fond memories of the miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. Still, I'm a sucker for anything with Matt Damon in it, and Chris Cooper and Brian Cox are always enjoyable. In this film, you get exactly what you expected - a high tech Euro-spy thriller with lots of famous sites, car chases, and cool accents. Franke Potente (Lola Rennt) plays the female lead opposite Damon, and she still can't act. However, this film isn't about acting, it's about gizmos, explosions, and plot twists. It delivers on all three, but it certainly doesn't even try to transcend its genre and go for anything more.
3/5
I also tried to watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World but I just couldn't bear it for more than 15 minutes.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004)
A really sweet-natured overcoming adversity comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. I didn't think it was particularly funny, although I loved the cameo by Lance Armstrong. Still, it hardly offended me at all, and that's saying quite a bit. The misfit cast was well selected, and, while it dragged during the first half, the film built to a solid, if predictable conclusion.
2/5
School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003)
For as long as he lives, Jack Black will probably never get a better role than this. I'm not a big Linklater fan, but he managed to keep his hands off this film for the most part, and let the cast do its bit. It was weird seeing Joan Cusack in a film not starring her brother, and I still don't know what all the fuss is about concerning Sarah Silverman, who seems to have no onscreen presence at all.
4/5
Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001)
In a lot of ways, this film reminded me of Fat Man and Little Boy - a notable European director wants to make a big statement about America and war, and falls flat on his face, due to an overly ambitious production and poor casting. Josh Hartnett was fine, I guess, but there was no real center in this film, with half of the actors (for all their talents, Ewan MacGregor and Orlando Bloom are not believable as US Army Rangers) looking like they're moonlighting from a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the other half, notably Sam Shepard and Tom Sizemore, seemed like they were acting in a WWII film directed by Samuel Fuller... I'm really not sure what Scott was trying to say here, beyond post-Cold War war is a messy business. Was the film an indictment of American involvement in Somalia, or an indictment of the Somali people? Some of the photography was quite beautiful, but in comparison with Claire Denis' Beau Travail, Scott's vision of Western military involvement in coastal East Africa is dull and lifeless.
2/5
The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002)
I was wary going in, having read the novel (the only one by Ludlum I like) more than two decades ago and still retaining fond memories of the miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. Still, I'm a sucker for anything with Matt Damon in it, and Chris Cooper and Brian Cox are always enjoyable. In this film, you get exactly what you expected - a high tech Euro-spy thriller with lots of famous sites, car chases, and cool accents. Franke Potente (Lola Rennt) plays the female lead opposite Damon, and she still can't act. However, this film isn't about acting, it's about gizmos, explosions, and plot twists. It delivers on all three, but it certainly doesn't even try to transcend its genre and go for anything more.
3/5
I also tried to watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World but I just couldn't bear it for more than 15 minutes.
12 May 2004
OK, here's the deal - I'm probably gonna post a lot about Cannes for a while, so just accept it.
I watched most of the opening ceremony when I was home at lunch. Some French model or actress was the hostess and introduced everybody. The camera cut away every few seconds to either Pedro Almodovar (inexplicably, or so I thought) or Laetitia Casta, which is perfectly understandable. Then she introduced Jury President and all-round annoying guy Quentin Tarantino, who proceeded to scream "Viva la cinema!" a few times, and then talked about what an honor it was to be the head of the jury. (Just make sure Wong gets the Palme, and you can make all the shitty movies you want, QT).
Then the hostess and QT introduced the rest of the jury, which included a bunch of people you haven't heard of, and also Tilda Swinton, Kathleen Turner, and Emmanuel Beart.
Here's a picture of Ms. Beart:
Then, five actresses known for working with Pedro Almodovar were introduced, and then the Spanish maestro himself came up, and officially opened the Festival.
Linky:
Here's a conspiracy theory of someone, convinced Tarantino has rigged the festival. I thought that's what jury presidents were supposed to do...:
30 March 2004
La Femme infidèle (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
The Unfaithful Wife is in many ways, a prototypical Chabrol film. It's a suspense thriller, starring Chabrol's then wife, Stephane Audran, set amongst the French bourgeoisie. Like all of Chabrol's films of the period, it is very stylish, with gorgeous photography by Jean Rabier, and a wonderfully atmospheric score by Pierre Jansen, both frequent Chabrol collaborators.
The plot (with spoilers)
Charles and Helene have it all. They live in a beautiful home in the Paris suburbs. They have a 10 year old son, who is engaging and precocious, and who would rather study French history than watch television. Charles (presumably) runs his own business. We never find out exactly what he does; he seems to spend most of his work time drinking whiskey with his associates, while ogling the legs of his young secretary - "They keep getting shorter and shorter", he says one time, referring to her skirts. His career success allows Helene to bide her time reading, napping, going to the salon, and to the cinema, and, as Charles finds out, to take a lover, a man named Victor Pegala.
When Charles finds out about the existence of Victor, he does what any well-bred Frenchman would do - he visits his wife's lover, to tell him that he knows (and approves) of the affair. Yet, once he sees the "bed of infidelity" in person, he reacts in a more violent, yet more "normal" way - he kills his competitor, then cleans up the mess and disposes of the body by dumping it in an algae-filled pond.
Soon, the police come calling, investigating the disappearance af Mr. Pegala. Yes, Helene knows him, but only casually. No, she has no idea why her name and address appeared in the missing man's address book. Perhaps he fancied her without revealing his feelings? No, Charles has never met him, and doesn't recognize his photo. The police sense something is up, but have no proof. Besides, how could such a perfect couple be involved in such a sordid business? Shortly afterward, Helene discovers my accident that her husband was aware of her affair, and knew the address of her lover, along with being in the possession of a photo of the dead man. She instantly figures out the rest of the story, and, being a Chabrol film, destoys all the evidence incrimnating her husband. Now, the family can be "perfect" yet again...
My thoughts
I'm not going to call La Femme infidèle a masterpiece. There is nothing particularly extraordinary about it, except perhaps the face and body of Miss Audran. Instead, the film is "merely" a great thriller, just like every other film Chabrol and Audran were to collaborate on in that period. Surely no director, not even Chabrol's hero, Alfred Hitchcock, was able to sustain such a high level of quality in the thriller genre, across so many films. Perhaps it's because Chabrol was so consistent in turning out these great films, year after year (and sometimes more than one a year), that it's easy to discount them a little. At any rate, La Femme infidèle is a wonderful film, which I heartily recommend.
The Unfaithful Wife is in many ways, a prototypical Chabrol film. It's a suspense thriller, starring Chabrol's then wife, Stephane Audran, set amongst the French bourgeoisie. Like all of Chabrol's films of the period, it is very stylish, with gorgeous photography by Jean Rabier, and a wonderfully atmospheric score by Pierre Jansen, both frequent Chabrol collaborators.
The plot (with spoilers)
Charles and Helene have it all. They live in a beautiful home in the Paris suburbs. They have a 10 year old son, who is engaging and precocious, and who would rather study French history than watch television. Charles (presumably) runs his own business. We never find out exactly what he does; he seems to spend most of his work time drinking whiskey with his associates, while ogling the legs of his young secretary - "They keep getting shorter and shorter", he says one time, referring to her skirts. His career success allows Helene to bide her time reading, napping, going to the salon, and to the cinema, and, as Charles finds out, to take a lover, a man named Victor Pegala.
When Charles finds out about the existence of Victor, he does what any well-bred Frenchman would do - he visits his wife's lover, to tell him that he knows (and approves) of the affair. Yet, once he sees the "bed of infidelity" in person, he reacts in a more violent, yet more "normal" way - he kills his competitor, then cleans up the mess and disposes of the body by dumping it in an algae-filled pond.
Soon, the police come calling, investigating the disappearance af Mr. Pegala. Yes, Helene knows him, but only casually. No, she has no idea why her name and address appeared in the missing man's address book. Perhaps he fancied her without revealing his feelings? No, Charles has never met him, and doesn't recognize his photo. The police sense something is up, but have no proof. Besides, how could such a perfect couple be involved in such a sordid business? Shortly afterward, Helene discovers my accident that her husband was aware of her affair, and knew the address of her lover, along with being in the possession of a photo of the dead man. She instantly figures out the rest of the story, and, being a Chabrol film, destoys all the evidence incrimnating her husband. Now, the family can be "perfect" yet again...
My thoughts
I'm not going to call La Femme infidèle a masterpiece. There is nothing particularly extraordinary about it, except perhaps the face and body of Miss Audran. Instead, the film is "merely" a great thriller, just like every other film Chabrol and Audran were to collaborate on in that period. Surely no director, not even Chabrol's hero, Alfred Hitchcock, was able to sustain such a high level of quality in the thriller genre, across so many films. Perhaps it's because Chabrol was so consistent in turning out these great films, year after year (and sometimes more than one a year), that it's easy to discount them a little. At any rate, La Femme infidèle is a wonderful film, which I heartily recommend.
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