Star rating out of 4*:
"Kung Fu Panda" - lightweight, better than expected CGI martial arts comedy; ***
"The Band's Visit" - beautfully quiet, gentle meditation on human interaction; *** 1/2
"Rescue Dawn" - very accessible Werner Herzog film based on true Vietnam escape story; ***
"Vantage Point" - moderately interesting action pic that plays with perspective; ** 1/2
"Taken" - Liam Neeson is a good, one-dimensional action hero in an indistinghuished film; **
"Get Smart" - better than expected spy spoof gets moderate laugh ratio; ** 1/2
"Horton Hears a Who" - mediocre animated adaptation of Dr Seuss, lacks a story; **
"Tropic Thunder" - comic blockbuster featuring top-notch Tom Cruise; ***
"Pineapple Express" - supremely entertaining hash-comedy with an award-worthy performance by James Franco; ***
Friday, April 24, 2009
Classics debunked: Bastard in the ring
It is generally understood and acknowledged that Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver”, “Mean Streets”, “The Aviator”, “The Departed”) is America’s greatest living director. Some critics feel a strong emotional with the director and his film, his Italian-American Catholic upbringing often featuring in his films and often resonating with his fans. In 1981, not long after “Rocky” ran up the stairs to cheesy success, Scorsese made “Raging Bull” featuring Robert de Niro in a now legendary performance as boxer Jake la Motta, a role for which De Niro eventually picked up 60 pounds. That’s not an acting achievement, it’s madness, no matter how you try to frame it as “noble” or “for the craft”.
The film, shot in black and white, isn’t easy viewing (it did make me wish that more filmmakers were brave enough to shoot in stunning b&w). La Motta is a despicable character with next to no redeeming factors. For most of the film, De Niro plays him like a bulldozer. At least there’s his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), who isn’t all that likeable herself, and Jake’s brother Joey (Joe Pesci). Here Pesci upstages De Niro for the first time; he would do so again in the 1990s gangster classic “Goodfellas”, a much more accomplished film than this one. "Raging Bull" is worth a watch but not the hype.
The film, shot in black and white, isn’t easy viewing (it did make me wish that more filmmakers were brave enough to shoot in stunning b&w). La Motta is a despicable character with next to no redeeming factors. For most of the film, De Niro plays him like a bulldozer. At least there’s his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), who isn’t all that likeable herself, and Jake’s brother Joey (Joe Pesci). Here Pesci upstages De Niro for the first time; he would do so again in the 1990s gangster classic “Goodfellas”, a much more accomplished film than this one. "Raging Bull" is worth a watch but not the hype.
Classics Debunked: Popeye’s Great Chase
In this first entry in the new “Classic Debunked” section, I will now and again take in an established movie classic and judge its worth as a superlative piece of cinema. Nothing is sacred, and if a film has dated badly or is just plain confounding (in the worst way possible), I will say so. (One day I will have the time to articulate my attack on that holiest of silver screen romances, “Casablanca”.) If a so-called classic holds up, it won’t even appear under the “Classics Debunked” heading and get its own formal review. Let the demystification begin.
In 1971, William Friedkin’s police thriller “The French Connection”, with Gene Hackman in the role of detective Popeye Doyle, won numerous Academy Awards including Best Actor for Hackman and Best Picture and Director (note that its main competition among the nominees was “A Clockwork Orange”). Supporting actor Roy Scheider was also nominated. Today, I find it difficult to see what audiences (the film was a box-office smash) and critics (Roger Ebert gives the film ****, his top rating) saw in and liked about the film. Apparently, the film is one of the “Ones that Started It All” movies. According to which side you’re on, “The French Connection” has been cited as the ur-inspiration for “24”, the “Bourne” movies and a host of other titles mostly all better than the film itself. This establishes only that the film may have historical value, but says very little about the film itself. Just because “I Spit on Your Grave” started the female vengeance horror subgenre doesn’t mean the film itself was any good.
In 1971, William Friedkin’s police thriller “The French Connection”, with Gene Hackman in the role of detective Popeye Doyle, won numerous Academy Awards including Best Actor for Hackman and Best Picture and Director (note that its main competition among the nominees was “A Clockwork Orange”). Supporting actor Roy Scheider was also nominated. Today, I find it difficult to see what audiences (the film was a box-office smash) and critics (Roger Ebert gives the film ****, his top rating) saw in and liked about the film. Apparently, the film is one of the “Ones that Started It All” movies. According to which side you’re on, “The French Connection” has been cited as the ur-inspiration for “24”, the “Bourne” movies and a host of other titles mostly all better than the film itself. This establishes only that the film may have historical value, but says very little about the film itself. Just because “I Spit on Your Grave” started the female vengeance horror subgenre doesn’t mean the film itself was any good.
The ‘I’ inside
Having missed its cinematic run and ignoring it on the shelf for many months, I finally bought “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Julian Schnabel and, at a whim on a rare quiet day, sat down and watched it. The term tour de force is often over used, and is very applicable here, not to Mathieu Almaric’s performance as Jean-Dominique Bauby (as good as it is), but to Schnabel’s courageous directing and the superlative camerawork by Janusz Kaminski. I will see this film many more times in the future.
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is based on the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a stroke at the height of his career as editor of “Elle” in France and ended up able to move only his one eye. With that one eye, he managed to write the book which details his experience as someone suffering from “locked-in syndrome”. His mind remains sharp, his thoughts clear, tragically trapped in a cage of redundant flesh. In a daring move, Schnabel forces us to see the world as Bauby does as the film begins. For some time, we struggle to focus; see only fragments of an object; we tear up; light blazes into our vision. Then, as Bauby narrates from within his mind, we get to know him as well as his family, mistress, father, and the medical professionals who help him.
Anyone who’s familiar with Bauby’s story knows how this will end; however, the film evokes expectant hope, not blunt sympathy. Schnabel and Kaminski open up Bauby’s mental world via flashbacks and flights of the imagination, often powerfully contrasting those strong images with his crumpled, ineffective body. Furthermore, Schnabel’s choice of music – often so annoying and distracting in a film – is as perfect as his choice of image. The film is a testament to the power of the medium.
Emmanuelle Seigner plays the wife who plays second fiddle to the mistress, and has a wrenching scene in this regard. Max von Sydow, now at very advanced age, gives a performance of astonishing sensitivity in two scenes with his son. The emotional potency of those scenes is elevated as one depicts Bauby in top shape, while in the second he’s near motionless and wheelchair bound. It’s remarkable how well Almaric and Sydow engage in this second scene, even considering that it was edited together during postproduction.
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is based on the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a stroke at the height of his career as editor of “Elle” in France and ended up able to move only his one eye. With that one eye, he managed to write the book which details his experience as someone suffering from “locked-in syndrome”. His mind remains sharp, his thoughts clear, tragically trapped in a cage of redundant flesh. In a daring move, Schnabel forces us to see the world as Bauby does as the film begins. For some time, we struggle to focus; see only fragments of an object; we tear up; light blazes into our vision. Then, as Bauby narrates from within his mind, we get to know him as well as his family, mistress, father, and the medical professionals who help him.
Anyone who’s familiar with Bauby’s story knows how this will end; however, the film evokes expectant hope, not blunt sympathy. Schnabel and Kaminski open up Bauby’s mental world via flashbacks and flights of the imagination, often powerfully contrasting those strong images with his crumpled, ineffective body. Furthermore, Schnabel’s choice of music – often so annoying and distracting in a film – is as perfect as his choice of image. The film is a testament to the power of the medium.
Emmanuelle Seigner plays the wife who plays second fiddle to the mistress, and has a wrenching scene in this regard. Max von Sydow, now at very advanced age, gives a performance of astonishing sensitivity in two scenes with his son. The emotional potency of those scenes is elevated as one depicts Bauby in top shape, while in the second he’s near motionless and wheelchair bound. It’s remarkable how well Almaric and Sydow engage in this second scene, even considering that it was edited together during postproduction.
On virginity and blood
Catherine Hardwicke’s “Twilight”, adapted from the first novel in Stephanie Meyer’s highly successful teen lit franchise, plays like an overlong TV movie about teenage illiteracy, conservatism, abstinence and embarrassingly bad make-up. The characters in this movie unleash very bad dialogue unto the cinema screen I’m sure none of them have ever cracked open a book. They say things like “You’re my drug, my heroin” (paraphrased) while looking like buffed-up, metro extras not allowed on the set of “30 Days of Night”. Robert Pattinson may be the hottest, hunkiest teen heartthrob to hit the screen in years (judging by the response of the bizarrely salivating female fan base of the books and now the film) but his character, Edward Cullen, is also one of the lamest, most castrated vampires cinema has seen to date. Danny Huston would have him for an appetiser.
See, “Twilight” is two movies in one. On the one hand, it’s a familiar girl-meets-boy story. (The girl is Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, putting in a game performance and taking everything seriously.) Both are outsiders to a great extent. She wears little make-up; he wears lipstick and SPF 100. On the other hand, it’s a vampire movie, seeing as Edward belongs to a family of vampires. Since they like humans, the family feed only on animals; Edward refers to his dad as calling themselves “vegetarians”. Naturally, having an opening scene with a vampire hunting down a carrot instead of a deer would be less than exciting.
Now, I can handle a vampire movie that’s more romantic than gothic if it’s well told. “Twilight” isn’t. We see in one early scene Edward’s reaction to Bella as she enters the classroom; there’s slow-motion, flowing hair, and what looks to be a gag reflex. To the audience, it’s laughable. The film has severe structural and pacing problems. The film is far too indulging of the natural beauty of the setting and the unnatural beauty of its characters, who gaze into each other’s eyes in the school hallway, grassy meadows, in a treetop… After all, she is his “personal brand of heroin”.
The film wants us to align ourselves with the people-friendly vampires. However, during a crucial scene where there’s finally some potential for conflict, their actions fly in the face of logic and preservation. Being politically correct, human-loving creatures of the night is evidently higher on the agenda than making rational decisions.
I mentioned earlier that “Twilight” is also about sexual abstinence. There’s lots of looking, sighing, longing, fluttering and heart-beating, but as Edward tells Bella, “Once I start I won’t be able to stop” (he’s talking about sucking her blood but, you know, not). How I wished he would simply hold her and instead say: “Drink from me and live forever”. Not this guy. He’d rather climb a tree with her on his back, scaling the biggest tree (tree=phallus) in the forest to give her pleasure than do anything really dangerous, like touch her bum.
There’s more to deride still. I don’t mind films undermining established mythology, but I cannot take a vampire that glimmers as if coated with angel dust upon being struck by sunlight seriously. Especially when he bemoans his condition: “This is the skin of a killer!” Yes, well, or a fairy. Also consider the bad special effects (including 1990s wirework) that look like they’ve crossed over from an old “Star Trek” episode.
And then the make-up. Does no-one notice that the Cullens, with their bad hair and arctic complexion, look like the living dead? Probably not, since most secondary characters here behave and talk like they’re on “Seventh Heaven”. And speaking of low-rent, tired television, “Twilight” is really no better than a mediocre “Smallville” episode.
See, “Twilight” is two movies in one. On the one hand, it’s a familiar girl-meets-boy story. (The girl is Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, putting in a game performance and taking everything seriously.) Both are outsiders to a great extent. She wears little make-up; he wears lipstick and SPF 100. On the other hand, it’s a vampire movie, seeing as Edward belongs to a family of vampires. Since they like humans, the family feed only on animals; Edward refers to his dad as calling themselves “vegetarians”. Naturally, having an opening scene with a vampire hunting down a carrot instead of a deer would be less than exciting.
Now, I can handle a vampire movie that’s more romantic than gothic if it’s well told. “Twilight” isn’t. We see in one early scene Edward’s reaction to Bella as she enters the classroom; there’s slow-motion, flowing hair, and what looks to be a gag reflex. To the audience, it’s laughable. The film has severe structural and pacing problems. The film is far too indulging of the natural beauty of the setting and the unnatural beauty of its characters, who gaze into each other’s eyes in the school hallway, grassy meadows, in a treetop… After all, she is his “personal brand of heroin”.
The film wants us to align ourselves with the people-friendly vampires. However, during a crucial scene where there’s finally some potential for conflict, their actions fly in the face of logic and preservation. Being politically correct, human-loving creatures of the night is evidently higher on the agenda than making rational decisions.
I mentioned earlier that “Twilight” is also about sexual abstinence. There’s lots of looking, sighing, longing, fluttering and heart-beating, but as Edward tells Bella, “Once I start I won’t be able to stop” (he’s talking about sucking her blood but, you know, not). How I wished he would simply hold her and instead say: “Drink from me and live forever”. Not this guy. He’d rather climb a tree with her on his back, scaling the biggest tree (tree=phallus) in the forest to give her pleasure than do anything really dangerous, like touch her bum.
There’s more to deride still. I don’t mind films undermining established mythology, but I cannot take a vampire that glimmers as if coated with angel dust upon being struck by sunlight seriously. Especially when he bemoans his condition: “This is the skin of a killer!” Yes, well, or a fairy. Also consider the bad special effects (including 1990s wirework) that look like they’ve crossed over from an old “Star Trek” episode.
And then the make-up. Does no-one notice that the Cullens, with their bad hair and arctic complexion, look like the living dead? Probably not, since most secondary characters here behave and talk like they’re on “Seventh Heaven”. And speaking of low-rent, tired television, “Twilight” is really no better than a mediocre “Smallville” episode.
A day in the life of
It’s one of the hottest days of the year and in Brooklyn, New York City. We meet the characters: Sal, owner of Sal’s Famous Pizza; his tow sons; Mookie, his delivery boy; the local drunk gentleman; the elderly lady taking in all the scenes from her window; Radio Raheem with his loud music emanating from his early 1990s boombox; numerous others. We understand that their roads will intersect, as they must, by the end of the day. Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” was an Important Movie when it came out in 1990, and, having seen it now after 18 years of just not wanting to watch it, the film still works. Its closest contemporary kin is probably “Crash”, though Lee’s film has a harder yet still human edge.
“Do the Right Thing” somehow lead to Lee’s “Angry Young Man” label. But Lee isn’t angry; this film has pathos and regret and racism and futility, possible altogether mistaken for anger. If “Do the Right Thing” proves anything it’s not that Lee’s angry, but that he’s hopeful, and that he understands many of the complexities underlying racial and ethnic disharmony. The film manages to tie events together in a way that is both expected and unexpected; we know what will come, but what roles will which parties play? Can we predict social alignment so strongly just on the basis of the biology of race? With Obama in the US presidency, I’m not so sure that Lee’s film can still be described as “asking tough questions”, but it manages to present rounded characters – even if we only spend time with them for a short while, the dialogue is often rich and textured – engaging in convincing racial stereotyping and anti-stereotyping.
Stylistically, one can spot the cuts and shots that would later mark his work, specifically “The 25th Hour”. Lee’s choice of music is fitting and powerful, sometimes rising to the occasion and at other times simply underscoring the emotional tone of a scene. His recent verbal bout with Clint Eastwood left him with egg on his face, but Lee remains a director of interest. It says something that his early work in “Do the Right Thing” (it is never made clear what the right thing to do is, or who should be doing it, or how you’d know what it is to begin with) is more mature and informed than the work of many new post-2000 directors.
“Do the Right Thing” somehow lead to Lee’s “Angry Young Man” label. But Lee isn’t angry; this film has pathos and regret and racism and futility, possible altogether mistaken for anger. If “Do the Right Thing” proves anything it’s not that Lee’s angry, but that he’s hopeful, and that he understands many of the complexities underlying racial and ethnic disharmony. The film manages to tie events together in a way that is both expected and unexpected; we know what will come, but what roles will which parties play? Can we predict social alignment so strongly just on the basis of the biology of race? With Obama in the US presidency, I’m not so sure that Lee’s film can still be described as “asking tough questions”, but it manages to present rounded characters – even if we only spend time with them for a short while, the dialogue is often rich and textured – engaging in convincing racial stereotyping and anti-stereotyping.
Stylistically, one can spot the cuts and shots that would later mark his work, specifically “The 25th Hour”. Lee’s choice of music is fitting and powerful, sometimes rising to the occasion and at other times simply underscoring the emotional tone of a scene. His recent verbal bout with Clint Eastwood left him with egg on his face, but Lee remains a director of interest. It says something that his early work in “Do the Right Thing” (it is never made clear what the right thing to do is, or who should be doing it, or how you’d know what it is to begin with) is more mature and informed than the work of many new post-2000 directors.
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