2007 (France)
Directors: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire
Viewed: May 28, 2009
Format: DVD - IFC (2009)
2008 (USA)
Director: David Gordon Green
Viewed: May 24, 2009
Format: DVD - Sony (2009)
2008 (Germany / USA)
Director: Rob Cohen
Viewed: May 24, 2009
Format: DVD - Universal (2008)
2007 (USA)
Director: Wed Anderson
Viewed: May 24, 2009
Format: DVD - 20th Century Fox (2008)
2007 (USA)
Director: Wes Anderson
Viewed: May 24, 2009
Format: DVD - 20th Century Fox (2008)
1973 (Italy / France)
Director: Federico Fellini
Viewed: May 22, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
Goodbye Solo
2008 (USA)
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Viewed: May 21, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
With the plaintive, graceful Goodbye Solo, director Ramin Bahrani offers his take on the hoary trope of two outsiders connecting under unusual circumstances, here in the form of Senegalese-American cab driver Solo (Soleymane Sy Savane) and his elderly white passenger, William (Red West). It’s an odd choice for Bahrani, given that the filmmaker’s two previous feature films—Man Push Cart and Chop Shop—are regarded as masterpieces of contemporary neo-realism, eschewing traditional narrative for immersion in the routines and everyday joys and tragedies of their characters. Solo takes a less oblique approach, urging us forward through a story engineered for melodramatic sparks. The dour William slides into the back of Solo’s cab one night on the grubby streets of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and offers the cabbie $1,000 if, two weeks hence, he will drive him to Blowing Rock, a mountain peak famed for its devilish updrafts. From the germ of this odd transaction, which makes the garrulous Solo uneasy, a lively, troubled relationship sprouts over the course of the following days. Through most of its running time, Goodbye Solo is genuinely engaging in a way that has nothing to do with its plot, which flirts with triteness in places and appears unfortunately shapeless in others. What mesmerizes is the way that Bahrani tells the story, with breathtaking subtlety and a serene astonishment for the particulars of character and place. Despite Solo’s ceaseless, probing patter, the film discovers its finest moments in its silences, and in the long, wordless gazes its two protagonists share.
Anvil!: The Story of Anvil
2008 (USA)
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Viewed: May 13, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
Much of the charm that vibrates in the bones of Sacha Gervasi’s amused, melancholy documentary, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, is premised on the oddly ambiguous definition of success in the rock world. Sure, the eponymous Canadian metal group, now twenty-odd years past its peak in popularity, might be a failure by any yardstick one might select. Financially, they are a broke. Artistically, they’re stuck on the cutting edge of 1982. Culturally, their name evokes the response, “Who?” (Though not from metal luminaries such as Slash and Lars Ulrich, who in the film’s introduction hold forth on Anvil’s key role during the early days of the genre.) Listen carefully, however, to lead guitarist and vocalist Steve “Lips” Kudlow’s rambling, armchair philosophical assessment of the setbacks that have bedeviled the band. Simultaneously painfully self-aware and laughably oblivious, Kudlow is relentlessly optimistic about Anvil’s success, even though he lacks a coherent conception of what that success might look like. Depending on the moment and his mood, “success” might mean cultural relevance, uncompromised integrity, a packed house, or an honest living. Regardless, one gets the sense that he will know it when he sees it. Despite first-time director Gervasi’s gawking at the band’s fundamentally kitschy character and its sad predicament, the thematic heart of Anvil! is humane stuff: success is a slippery thing, and the dogged pursuit of such an ineffable goal is rife with dizzying highs and miserable lows.
2007 (Russia)
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Viewed: May 3, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
Director Nikita Mikhalkov has tackled a “re-imagining” of the archetypal Serious American Drama with verve, slashing up the most conspicuous aspects of Twelve Angry Men, particularly its claustrophobic narrative and staging under Sidney Lumet. While Mikhalkov’s 12 is far too graceless to stand at the same podium as Reginald Rose’s seminal legal fable, the new film is provocative in its use of expansive flashbacks and long, personal monologues from the jurors. Notably, 12 swaps Henry Fonda’s rational, persuasive Juror No. 8 for an anxious second-guesser, whose own experiences prohibit a rash decision about the defendant’s fate. One senses that Mikhalkov is both paying tribute to and riffing on Lumet’s palatable moralizing, not to mention the American judicial system so routinely fetishized in fiction. While the film takes its facile swipes at apathy and racism, it also poses more probing questions about the limits of speculation, culpability, and civic obligation. For these reasons, 12 is a worthy Russian response film to an iconic work of American drama, despite its often clumsy gestures towards humanizing grit. Never mind his silly flourishes and narrative dead-ends; Mikhalkov deserves praise for reconfiguring a lionized story within a new milieu, adding curiosities and complexity.
2009 (USA)
Director: J.J. Abrams
Viewed: May 10, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
