September 30, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Documentaries
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Trouble the Water
2008 (USA)
Directors: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
Viewed: September 28, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have achieved a triumph in documentary film-making with Trouble the Water, a phenomenal, searing portrait of American survival and spirit. The directors deserve a bow for offering veterans such as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog stiff competition for the best documentary feature of 2008. However, the soul and vision of Trouble the Water’s protagonist, one Kimberly Rivers Roberts, so suffuses–one might say possesses–the film, that any fair assessment must regard it as her film, at least in part. Indeed, Trouble the Water recalls Herzog’s own Grizzly Man in its near-surrender of its form and content to the sizzling force of its fascinating subject. Admittedly, Lessin and Deal’s stance towards Roberts is far warmer, more admiring, and more credulous than that of the German master towards Timothy Treadwell. There is a temptation to regard Trouble the Waters at least partly as “found art,” given that Roberts’ own amateur footage of the Lower Ninth Ward under Katrina’s lash serves as the film’s foundation. However, from this small seed springs a work so undeniably powerful that one can only praise the directors for revealing Trouble the Water’s glittering treasures for all the world to see.
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September 24, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Foreign, Comedies
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I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval Jsem Anglického Krále)
2006 (Czech Republic / Slovakia)
Director: Jirí Menzel
Viewed: September 23, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
Jirí Menzel’s I Served the King of England boasts an undeniably mischievous, gloriously giddy tone. Flashes of the grotesque and wearisome melodrama lurk in its corners, but on the whole it is a winsome film, and eagerly so. Its genre-tripping acrobatic feats–twists and twirls of fable, slapstick, satire, tragedy, and World War II epic–certainly set it apart from any other film I’ve seen this year. What elevates Served above an amusing novelty for its own sake is Menzel’s ambition to craft both an engaging character study of lingering adolescence and a penetrating allegory about twentieth-century Europe (and you don’t need to be a critic or a historian to discern how these are related.) This ambition lurks just beneath the film’s pleasurable, often schizophrenic surface, defying the instinct to dismiss Served as a quirky diversion. To be sure, the film holds shortcomings that cannot be dismissed, particularly the trite, manipulative turns in the story and some woefully dull patches in a work otherwise so filled with motion and delight. However, these are small potatoes alongside the film’s sensual joys, its unexpected thoughtfulness, and the lead performance by Ivan Barnev, who guides us on a rapturous and insightful comic journey.
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September 21, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew
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2007 (France / Lebanon)
Director: Nadine Labaki
Viewed: September 21, 2008
Format: DVD - Lionsgate (2008)
September 17, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Comedies
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Burn After Reading
2008 (USA / UK / France)
Directors: Ethan and Joel Coen
Viewed: September 15, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
Ethan and Joel Coen are likely the most self-consciously clever of American auteurs, although rarely insufferably so, and certainly the most disposed to genre-hopping. Given that No Country For Old Men was last year’s unqualified triumph in English-language cinema, it’s perhaps inevitable then that their next feature would prove to be a lesser film, if only by deliberate design. “Give us an Oscar will you, Hollywood Establishment? This’ll show ‘em.” That’s not to say that Burn After Reading is a bad film, or even a mediocre one. It is pure Coen, and therefore a rich cinematic meal to savor and absorb, rife with cartoon heartbreak and bleak absurdism. It also may be the darkest, cruelest film the brothers have ever made, and considering that they gave us Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There, that’s saying something. Contra the film’s promotion, Burn After Reading is not, strictly speaking, a satire of the spy thriller genre. There are spies in it, sure, but the film is essentially a tragic farce about how venal, deceitful, and just plain stupid humanity can be. It therefore may not qualify as everyone’s idea of “entertainment.”
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September 17, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby
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2008 (USA)
Directors: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Viewed: September 16, 2008
Format: Blu-ray - Warner Brothers (2008)
September 17, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby
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2001 (France)
Director: Christophe Gans
Viewed: September 14, 2008
Format: DVD - Universal (2002)
