Hiatus Over

Sorry to have vanished again briefly. The last few weeks turned out to be totally killer for me between having various people visiting me, going on my own vacation, working, being boring etc. etc. Hopefully, I can get back started again now though. I have seen so many movies that I need to update on, including:

Hell is a City

Bright Star

Capitalism: A Love Story

Dead Again

Odd Man Out

Ponyo

Inglourious Basterds (I can barely stand to write out this title with its bad spelling omg)

Julie and Julia

District 9

Maybe I’ll do a series of short takes just to plow through them.

An Angel at My Table

With my recent discovery of another sprawling, chaotic video store to haunt, I finally tracked down a scratchy VHS copy of An Angel at My Table by Jane Campion, which has been surprisingly difficult for me to find considering that it was recently released by Criterion Collection. As usual, I’m sure the fact that it was directed by a woman and is about a woman writer has NOTHING to do with being unable to find it anywhere.

Anyway, the film is a biopic about New Zealand-born writer, Janet Frame, which starts with her working class childhood, extends through her adolescence, and on into her early adulthood with three separate actors for each phase. I really liked the movie, although I do have a couple complaints. For one thing, I did not have the benefit of closed captioning/subtitles while watching it, which caused me to miss a fair chunk of the dialogue between the thick accents and the poor quality of the VHS copy I watched. I would definitely recommend trying to get the DVD version if you can because I imagine subtitles will make it much easier to follow.

Secondly (and no doubt relatedly), the scene changes in the film are often pretty abrupt and several times I got confused about what was happening and who different characters were. There is no direct narration in the film so you have to pick information up as it moves along.

There is no direct narration in the film so you have to pick information up as it moves along. The edges become a little blurry in terms of how much time is actually passing from scene to scene, what the relationships between different characters are, etc. At a certain point, you kind of just have to let go of understanding a lot of the background particulars.

With that said, it was impossible for me not to identify with the main character and to feel compelled by her life story. As a card-carrying introvert, I always really appreciate movies that focus on people who are painfully shy, even if they make me cringe intensely. This movie is an intense, sensitive portrayal of the character that manages to pull her inner life out through a lot of subtle details in the landscape, the framing of the shots, the narrative choices, and last, but definitely not least, absolutely fantastic acting. I think Campion must have left a lot of blanks in the movie in terms of the story, not only for practical reasons, but also because this style forces the audience to watch the movie in the hyper-observant way that Janet Frame lived her whole life. By the end, you feel like you’ve really been inside her world, with all its beauty and pain. Much recommended.

moon

Here is another quickie review today. I was a latecomer to Moon because I suspected it was going to be one of those anxiety-filled, Kafka-esque sci-fi movies that make me even more nervous than I am on my own and I was right to a certain extent. It is definitely very tense for most of the film. Yet, somehow it was tense in a way that didn’t wear on the psyche and it was very absorbing to watch.

There are some interesting plot twists along the way (that I won’t ruin for once) which wake the audience up a little bit and there are a couple scenes out on the moonscape which actually does a lot to relieve the audience’s claustrophobia. I also think there’s something about the muted vacuum of the space station setting which oddly mellows the emotions in this movie out, which is kind of the opposite of a few other sci-fi movies I can think of. Generally, there are definitely echoes of some of these other films, Dark Star, Solaris (the American remake version, as opposed to Tarkovsky’s heavier endeavor), and even the other recent, fabulously executed sci-fi movie, Sunshine. But the charm of the movie isn’t really so much from it being particularly groundbreaking or even all that philosophically deep.

Mainly the movie’s charisma is thanks to Sam Rockwell’s amazing, bravura performance and a carefully written script. So much of the believability and pathos of the film rests squarely on Rockwell’s shoulders and I thought he did a spectacular job during what must have been a lot of green screen time. It’s a little indie gem that’s worth checking out even if you aren’t particularly big on the genre. I can at least say that I felt like it was worth addling my nerves a bit to see it.

Yes Madam, Sir

The IFC Center is hosting Docuweeks in NYC this month, which is a festival of documentary films from all over the world which are screened here and in Los Angeles to put them in the running for the Oscars. This weekend I went to see Yes Madam, Sir, profile of Kiran Bedi, India’s first female police officer. After refusing time and time again to compromise with a corrupt, networking/politically-based system, Bedi is dumped in numerous unwanted, nightmare positions and manages to make some powerful reforms in a notoriously ill-run prison she oversees and at a police academy which has been allowed to be lax in its discipline and training regimen before her arrival. It is a very interesting portrait of a strong, passionate woman who has always pursued what she felt was best. While there are obviously some very meaningful feminist components to the film, I appreciated the fact that the movie does not hit you over the head with them and that it realistically portrayed the difficult choices many ambitious, principled women must make as they seek success in a patriarchal world.

While watching the film I couldn’t help making comparisons between Kiran Bedi’s life and my mother’s. She is a similarly strong-willed, ambitious woman who started out (at least during my lifetime) as an LDS housewife and went on to go to a prestigious law school and fulfillment in her career. I think one thing that struck me during the movie was how, beyond the nobility of relentlessly sticking to her moral code, there are deeper reasons why Bedi’s opinions had to be so firm and her assertiveness so unbreakable. For many women, particularly women who are trying to make progress in a very male-dominated field, compromise is not an option. While certain compromises might soften you in the eyes of some, they will ultimately be unforgivable to those who judge women much more harshly and will use any opportunity to undermine their authority and strength.

A significant subplot in the film revolves around Bedi’s relationship with her daughter and other members of her family. As is common for so many strong women, it seems like Bedi has been forced to neglect her family as she pursued a larger agenda for the betterment of her country. Toward the end, you can see very clearly both how painful it’s been for her daughter to grow up without having her mother as much as she wanted, but also how much respect she has for her mother and how she would not have wanted her to back down from the numerous fights she found herself in. I feel the same way about my mom. Whatever sacrifices my dad and I made to move with her to law school were very much worth it to see my mom succeed where others said she would fail. I’ve learned so much from what my mom went through and it makes me want to pursue my career with the same drive and also, just be myself in a way I don’t know I would have the courage to otherwise. It is great to see such a fascinating woman portrayed with real depth and insight into what she faced along the way and I hope this film will have a chance for wider distribution in the near future.

The General

Just a quickie review today. I saw The General yesterday and it is, of course, fantastic. It’s kind of amazing to watch Buster Keaton act, since he actually has a really dour, long face, huge, soulful eyes, and he naturally wears a rather serious expression. Check him out in this close-up for example:

He looks more like a poet than a virtuosic, daredevil comedian. But when I really think about it,  I guess this deadpan is actually part of what makes him funny. The true magic of The General comes from the way Buster Keaton floats through the obstacles around him half-unaware, half-blase. Just like his other famed contemporary, Charlie Chaplin, the real dynamite quality of his performance is how effortless he makes pretty unbelievable stunts look. His odd, sullen face sets this off all the more. The other thing I like about The General is how it is a perfect marriage between action and comedy and, as I’d already mentioned in an earlier review, these genres come together all too rarely these days. This one is definitely worth checking out. Particularly, if you are lucky enough to live in a city with an amazing silent movie house with a real working organ like I used to.

The Double Life of Veronique

Yesterday, I watched The Double Life of Veronique, which is actually the first movie I’ve seen by much-lauded director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. It is a really interesting movie which is a hybrid of several different genres, in addition to experimenting with character, narrative, and cinematography. It’s probably the most difficult movie to write about that I’ve reviewed so far because it is constructed almost like a poem, with so many of the images in the film bearing a lot of intuitive and emotional weight. This movie is one of those rare films where the director handles everything delicately enough, with enough grace, that the images take on a life of their own for the individual viewer. A wide range of shadings and interpretations can be taken from each one, an effect he apparently created deliberately since he tinkered with many different versions of the film before the final cut.

Kieslowski uses a filter over the lens for most of the film and the color palette of the scenes alternates between warm, autumnal tones and an eerie, absinthe green tint which also contributes to a certain unsettled quality, as well as an overall magical realism to the world around the main characters. When the movie begins, it feels unmistakably like a horror movie. The overpowering charm and naive sensuality of the heroine, Polish Weronika, puts us on guard because her joy feels so open, a loose and vulnerable thing. Whenever the camera lingers too long over perfection, it is a cue to the audience that something is wrong underneath the beautiful scene on the screen. As the movie shifts to focus on French Veronique, however, it turns into a romantic mystery of sorts (the kind which Amelie is surely greatly indebted to, not to mention the striking likeness between Irene Jacob and Audrey Tatou). Yet, even though there is much less tension around Veronique’s narrative, we are haunted by her supernatural similarities to Weronika.

As flowery as it may sound, the movie gradually insinuates itself into your consciousness like curls of smoke and stirs the place where the most-difficult-to-describe feelings dwell. It draws out a kind of spiritual deja vu, which you might feel in an unexpected moment of startling coincidence or the sudden recognition a pattern in the unfolding of events. Moments like this can make the world around you suddenly seem alive and all too conscious in a way that is both exciting and scary. The movie genuinely evokes that tension to very dramatic effect, causing the viewer to have an emotional response to concepts that would be fairly abstract and intellectual when broken down on a philosophical level. It is very much a magical movie in that sense and one that I would definitely recommend to anyone who has not seen it yet.

I will mention though, the feminist in me was a little disturbed by how the characters Weronika/Veronique are portrayed. They are very innocent, almost to the point of having a certain child-like quality, yet they are still intensely eroticised as well. It is hard to imagine a film heroine who is more beautiful, delicate, and alluring, almost wholly without flaw. While her character is well-developed, with a close attention to the little details of personality which make a character feel like a real person, she is also clearly a poeticized fantasy-object, an objectified muse, kept apart from the flesh-and-blood realm the rest of us live in. Because of the mystical, fairy tale quality to the entire movie, this doesn’t feel as out of place as it might in a more realistic picture. And also, I’m sure certain blanks are left in the character in order to intrigue the viewer to watch the events unfold all that more closely and further build the mystery around her.

She does seem like a sort of cypher though in some moments, or an elaborate metaphor, in a way that made me a touch uncomfortable. I felt like she was this close to being revealed as a constructed, cyborg manifestation of the director’s vision in a way which makes the viewer feel like a voyeur. Indeed, toward the end of the picture an explicit reference is made as the lead male crafts a puppet version of Weronika/Veronique and begins to craft a narrative for his upcoming novel. It definitely provokes a bit of a creepy, paternalistic feeling that troubled me, especially since it also places the viewer in such a voyeuristic position with the most intimate pieces of Weronika/Veronique’s lives exposed to our scrutiny.

There is too much reliance on traditional gendered dynamics between masculine director:feminine muse, masculine audience:feminine lead actress, subject:object. Making the same film with a male main character would almost be unfathomable, since so much of the tone of the film turns on the audience being drawn in by the romantic and sexual desirability and very feminine fragility of Weronika/Veronique. This, in turn, makes me feel unsure about what subtle, built-in undertones we are ultimately meant to take away, at least in terms of what gendered implications the movie allows.

Cold Fever

I randomly picked Cold Fever up at the video store a few days ago. It is about a Japanese man who ends up traveling deep into the wilds of Iceland after his parents’ accidental deaths there. The blurb on the back compares it to Mystery Train by Jim Jarmusch and it definitely does have a lot in common with that film in terms of tone and subject matter, but I’m not sure it’s quite as successful.

The movie really emphasizes the atmosphere of the place, which is portrayed as a surreal, icy landscape populated almost entirely by eccentrics and the occasional mystical elf. While it definitely has its moments of humor and beauty, there were some holes in the structure of the film that bothered me a little. For one thing, it is never really fully explained what his parents were doing living in Iceland and when you realize how far out into the wilderness they were, it becomes difficult not to see it as a fairly elaborate plot gimmick. Considering that his parents’ deaths are the whole impetus for this epic journey in the first place, it seemed odd not to understand the circumstances or really the full background of their relationship.

Secondly, a major running plot device is built around the rickety frozen car the main character randomly buys to help him get to his remote destination. I don’t really understand though how he wouldn’t realize in advance how far out he would need to travel and why he wouldn’t have rented a decent car in the first place. He also ends up getting lost trying to get to Reykjavik in the beginning, boarding some kind of tourist bus by accident when he arrives in the airport. It seems somewhat unbelievable that a successful Japanese executive, even one has young as him, would not have at least made a few preliminary arrangements before arriving in a foreign country. Of course, the movie is really intended to be much more about mood and atmosphere and there’s a nice rhythm to the narrative, but it was hard for me not to get tangled up with these little inconsistencies in the plot.

Bound

Continuing in the cult movie vein, I saw Bound for the first time a few days ago after meaning to get around to seeing it for years. For as long as there are video stores, this is one movie you’ll always be able to find for the infamous sex appeal between Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. Their relationship has become a classic in some lesbian circles and no doubt a favorite amongst legions of straight men. With that said, there has also been a fair amount of controversy about whether the film is a feminist-leaning subversion of traditional gender roles and heteronormativity or whether it is just another male-fantasy, lesbian-exploitation film with some clever twists on the noir genre. Honestly, I feel some ambivalence about it.

One of the things that first made me like cult movies was how much more playful they can often be about gender, race, and sexual orientation, with a deeper interest in subverting categories and spoofing Hollywood conventions than most mainstream popular films. This is a characteristic of cult films that has clearly followed through from the older, pulp classics of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s and straight through Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. This is very much present in Bound too. I am, in fact, a big fan of Jackie Brown in particular, where Pam Grier does such a great job of bringing her refreshingly three-dimensional character to life. The characters in Bound are definitely not as sensitively developed here and are more like something out of a pulp novel, like old-time lesbian classic Beebo Brinker, or a B-movie noir.

Jennifer Tilly’s Violet is a sort of Mae West, gun moll type and Gina Gershon’s Corky (ahem, I really almost couldn’t get past how ridiculous her name is) is James Dean by way of K.D. Lang. Is it over the top? Undoubtedly. Does their first sexual encounter seem pretty stilted/tawdry? Definitely. Is it still super entertaining? Pretty much. The best thing about the movie and the reason that it deserves to haunt video stores from coast to coast is that it’s a pretty cleverly written little noir, where nothing goes as planned, but the main characters still somehow manage to keep on going. In comparison to the mega-overblown scripting of the Wachowski’s next series of films, (The Matrix series), it is nice to see the little indie film they started with which wraps up so neatly and has a lot of similar lovable touches to it that have always made the Coen brothers films such masterpieces.

For another thing, SPOILER ALERT, it is really nice to see a movie where the lesbian leads get a happy ending for once, in comparison to so many of the other lesbian-themed films out there (typically the ones written by honest-to-God lesbians) which are crushingly depressing. For all its cheesiness, this movie is really fun to watch and is good for what ails you if ye olde patriarchal hegemony is getting you down.

Constantine & The Prophecy

I was excited to catch Constantine on TV a few days ago since I remembered it getting decent reviews when it originally came out and, contrary to how it may seem based on the movies I have reviewed on this blog so far, Horror and Cult movies are really my first love. Fair warning, I’ve never read the comic book for this one so I have no idea how much of the film was built around the source material and I realize some allowances must be made when a film is trying to do justice to a pre-existing work. I will say, from the Google imagesearch I did of the Hellblazer comics, the drawn Constantine looks a lot more like a noir-ified version of Kiefer Sutherland’s character from Lost Boys than a Matrixified Keanu Reeves and I’m sure the fans were less than thrilled with the casting here. Like many of the lead characters in the Vertigo pantheon, it seems like Constantine is intended to be more of a dark anti-hero with a troubled past, which doesn’t fit with what we see of his character in the film.

This movie was definitely overstuffed with plot and I feel like it lacked a lot of background exposition which could have made some of the plot progression less confusing. The audience does not have a clear sense of Constantine’s abilities/personality or the rules governing the world of the movie until fairly deep in. While some of the visuals were cool, I also thought the action in the film was too heavily emphasized over the horror aspects. Lastly, it was a touch disappointing to see Rachel Weisz’s character be little more than a pretty, useless tag-along for most of the film, despite supposedly being a tough, city detective. I think if her relationship with Constantine was more balanced out, more akin to an amped-up Scully/Mulder dynamic, it could have brought a lot more charm and interest to the movie. In general I think one of the biggest deficits in some recent action movies, Constantine included, is that they lack the sense of humor which has made other action films like Die Hard, so much more fun to watch. More of a tongue-in-cheek attitude works much better, especially if what you’re expecting the audience to follow and buy into is really over-the-top like in this movie.

In terms of the positives, I will say I was pleasantly surprised to see Tilda Swinton playing Gabriel, who of course steals all the scenes she’s in and I wished there had been more of her throughout the movie. Her level of acting ability and charisma in comparison to Keanu’s weak lead is kind of ridiculous. Even Pruitt Taylor Vince, who is a great character actor and plays a minor side role, has more life to him than Reeves. As an aside, Gavin Rossdale is also in the movie (making his acting debut here as one of the villains) which I found kind of bizarre and random. Anyway, overall the movie was pretty bad and made me have an intense craving to watch cult classic, The Prophecy again, which is a similar concept with a much stronger execution.

I always think of The Prophecy as being like Christopher Walken’s Silence of the Lambs. Even though he is the villain of the series, he really captivates you every time he’s onscreen with some great lines and a kind of jokey, crackling menace that is wonderful. There is actually a lot of good acting in the film though, with Eric Stoltz, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Hytner, and Adam Goldberg all doing a good job in their supporting roles and only the two leads coming off a little wooden.

In contrast to Constantine, there are some genuinely tense parts in The Prophecy, in addition to some dynamite action sequences and the script is well-written enough to keep you engaged. The movie offers enough background about the characters and the main conflict for you to basically understand what’s going on, without giving away the plot twists that keep the movie hurtling forward. There are also a lot of nice, unexpected details to the script, such as how Gabriel stalls begrudging, unfortunate souls from crossing over so they can operate as his servants to great comedic effect. And there is interesting playfulness with Christian mythology in the kernel of the story, which raises the idea that angels might be jealous of humans for their souls and for being God’s best loved creation. It’s definitely a cult movie worth picking up at your local video store if you’re in the mood for a horror/action movie with some off-beat touches or just for Christopher Walken being awesome.

In A Lonely Place

This weekend I also saw In a Lonely Place, directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, which is a classic noir about a reclusive screenwriter with an anger management problem and a potential murder rap haunting him. It’s an interesting bit of IMDB trivia to learn that Ray was married to Grahame at the time and they ultimately broke up during the filming of the movie. Apparently the producer was worried enough about the situation to force Gloria Grahame to sign a contract stating “my husband shall be entitled to direct, control, advise, instruct and even command my actions during the hours from 9 AM to 6 PM, every day except Sunday…I acknowledge that in every conceivable situation his will and judgment shall be considered superior to mine and shall prevail.” Grahame was also forbidden to “nag, cajole, tease or in any other feminine fashion seek to distract or influence him.” One has to wonder how much the tension between Ray and Grahame may have contributed to the tension in the film as Grahame’s character, Laurel Gray, grows more and more uneasy about her boyfriend’s violent temperament.

The script is packed full of wry, lightning-quick dialogue and there is well-balanced chemistry between Bogey and Grahame, who is more droll and less va va voom than Bacall would have been in the role. In comparison to the protagonists in so many modern movies, there is a crackling intellect about both leads here that is very enjoyable to watch. Like any noir though, the movie takes a much darker turn and does so fairly abruptly.

Although I enjoyed the movie and I do recommend it, I thought a few things might have enhanced it’s underlying themes. For one thing, I found it curious that as Bogart begins to lean toward the Mr. Hyde half of his personality, we become more distanced from his character and it is left ambiguous whether he really recognizes how inappropriate his behavior is and how scary he must be to the people around him, despite his supposed genius-level intelligence. In fact, the movie gradually shifts from following Bogart’s character to following Grahame’s character in a somewhat awkward dodge, meant to ramp up the doubts of the audience. After Bogart wounds his agent and oldest friend he only hesitantly, barely apologizes to him and he is unwilling to directly address how his erratic behavior is effecting Grahame after another major episode. I wonder how different the film would be if the narrative stuck with Bogart instead and his character more directly engaged with this demon inside himself. I was half-expecting something like this to come through in a closer view of the script Bogart is working on in the movie, but nothing like that ever actually materializes.

SPOILERS AHEAD. Apparently, in the movie’s original ending Bogart actually kills Grahame instead of almost killing her, but Ray felt that ending made the picture too bleak and Bogart’s character too monstrous. I wish that it had ended as it was originally intended because it would have brought out the full dramatic irony of Bogart’s former innocence and it would also have made more of a statement about how violence can lead to more violence and what kind of atrocities we may be capable of against our better natures depending on the circumstances.

Instead, the parting message of the film is murkier, with the ironic weight being placed on the relationship’s seemingly unnecessary demise. After seeing what happens when Bogart loses his temper, it’s hard to be satisfied by that ending. Whether or not Grahame suspected he could be capable of murder, his character did in fact seriously injure a former girlfriend and it seems inevitable that she was bound to become afraid of him when something else she did set him off later on. The audience is supposed to see this ending, where the two lovers are torn asunder, as unhappy and we’re given the oil tanker of a parting line: “I was born when he kissed me, I died when he left me, and I lived in a few weeks while he loved me.” In reality though, this ending is only truly unhappy if your sympathies rest primarily with Bogart. It actually seems like fairly good fortune to me that Grahame ultimately gets out of the relationship with her life and her freedom.

When looked at in this sense, the movie is almost a time capsule of societal attitudes of domestic violence at the time, with a subtle implication that if Grahame could have just trusted Bogart and stood by her man, things wouldn’t have escalated into the messy violent breakdown of the climax. Instead, Bogart is provoked again and again by the white lies she makes while she tries to extricate herself from the powder keg she finds herself in. From a modern perspective, it’s hard to really go along with the reading the film draws the audience into since it is so clear that most of the problems in their relationship are not about the unsolved murder hanging over their heads, but about Bogart’s inability to express his emotions in healthier ways and Grahame’s inability to talk openly with him out of fear for her own safety and her traditional feminine position in the relationship. Considering that Ray also directed several movies which perhaps more effectively questioned gender roles and sexuality like Rebel Without A Cause and Johnny Guitar, it’s interesting that Ray did not more directly question the crisis of masculinity that Bogart’s character somewhat embodies in In A Lonely Place.