Archive for June, 2010

Quick Review: Winter’s Bone

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

2010 (USA)
Director: Debra Granik
Viewed: June 28, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac)

The chilly Ozark landscape of Winter’s Bone is a skuzzy nightmare version of backwoods Middle America, where every family is linked through tangled blood relations and everyone cooks crystal meth.  This city boy can’t attest to the authenticity of the rural Missouri portrayed in Debra Granik’s film, but the tone of her direction is such that realism takes a back seat to the mythic resonance of seventeen-year-old Ree’s (Jennifer Lawrence) journey.  The film’s depiction of Ree’s materially urgent yet emotionally ambivalent search for her bail-bond-skipping father owes much to noir conventions and the chthonic forays of Greek legend.  In this tale, however, the Hero wanders in despairing circles, and her dragons are an empty fridge, a corrupt sheriff, and rotten-toothed relations who value secrecy more than kinship.  Lawrence shines, and the estimable John Hawkes’ turn as Ree’s reckless uncle provides jolts of wiry menace and righteous wrath.  The script is both frank and admirably subtle, and Granick’s bracingly confident hand relies on expressive touches that lend this regional melodrama the feel of real cinema.  Certainly, the ending is garish and absurdly tidy, but there is also unease there, as well as a quiet lamentation for a fallen world.

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This Is the End, Beautiful Friend

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Toy Story 3
2010 (USA)
Director: Lee Unkrich
Viewed: June 21, 2010
Format: 3D Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli)

I’ve previously observed that the most gleefully gratifying aspect of Pixar’s triumph over the realms of American feature animation has been the burgeoning thematic sophistication of its films, which have evolved from wholesome entertainments into nimble and sensitive works of art.  However, I’ve also long held the perhaps heretical view among Pixar aficionados that Toy Story and Toy Story 2, despite their charming qualities and seminal status in animated cinema, seem, shall we say, slighter than the later-model Pixar efforts.  The first two chapters in the saga of Woody and Buzz Lightyear are unambiguously lesser films when held alongside subsequent films.  Little in the first two Toy Story films compares to Ratatouille’s virtuoso storytelling, WALL•E’s sweeping sci-fi explorations, or Up’s adroit blending of giddy thrills and profound sorrow. For this reason, there is a rich sense of fulfillment to be had in Toy Story 3, quite apart from its inherent sensory and emotional pleasures.  Director Lee Unkrich—here taking solo helming duties for the first time—expands the scope of the studio’s most familiar franchise to encompass delicate matters such as emotional abuse, the sting of betrayal, class-based tyranny, and the specter of mortality.  Yet Toy Story 3 never loses sight of the fundamental appeal of pint-sized adventure in the perilous wilderness of suburbia, nor of the essential pathos of growing up, here handled (as always) with the utmost care.  The third chapter in the Disney / Pixar behemoth reveals itself to be the best: gorgeous, intricate, a little frightening, and shamelessly touching.

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Quick Review: Sweetgrass

Monday, June 21st, 2010

USA (2009)
Directors: Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Viewed: June 18, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (Webster University Moore Auditorium)

[Sweetgrass is being featured in a limited engagement from June 18-24, 2010 at the Webster University Film Series.]

Raw and curiously engrossing, Sweetgrass is unwavering in its sparing, hard-edged appraisal of a vanishing way of life.  While Barbash and Castaing-Taylor are palpably fascinated by the Allestad sheep ranch, where men on horseback still graze their herds in the high country of Montana, the film aims for something far more lyrical than a mere anthropological treatise on the West.  Spiritually urgent and yet possessing a bittersweet lassitude, Sweetgrass bears witness to uncommonly cruel pastoral patterns that once characterized America’s proud self-conception, but are now forgotten, withered, and nearly vanished.  Nocturnal visits from hungry grizzlies and other daunting challenges lend the story a dose of drama, but the film-makers are more assured when they are simply observing the sensory character of herding life with reverent diligence.  The enduring sights and sounds are sustained, pensive, and faintly abstract, whether the dirty-white blur of hundreds of sheep picking their way through a stream, or the uncanny hush of men who are comfortable sitting in silence.  Sweetgrass might be an essentially American portrait, but the film’s closest kin might be Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze, as both share a quiet attentiveness borne of equal parts absorption and gentle sorrow.

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Late to the Game: The Wolfman

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

2010 (UK / USA)
Director: Joe Johnston
Viewed: June 14, 2010
Format: DVD - Universal (2010) (Unrated Director’s Cut)

[SPOILERS] I have to give screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self a point for hewing to the essential elements for an old-fashioned werewolf feature, particularly the now-slightly-subversive notion that the luckless protagonist must perish by the time the credits roll. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand entirely too early with respect to the progenitor lycanthrope, and as a result the whole enterprise runs out of steam long before the clunky, climactic werewolf-on-werewolf brawl.  The Victorian-gothic production design is admittedly luscious, even downright bewitching at times, but this only contributes to The Wolfman’s disjointed tone.  When the titular monster is nowhere to be seen, it’s an atmospheric B-movie, stuffed with faux-gravitas and lent a dollop of menace by Anthony Hopkins’ glowering, lip-licking presence.   When the werewolf attacks, meanwhile, the film veers off into slasher-flick camp, clashing dreadfully with the chilly tone that dominates elsewhere.  The film’s R rating is utterly unnecessary, other than to provide the beast with license to rend limbs, slash bowels, and devour a victim’s liver.  The crowning disappointment is that while the film-makers capitalize on the evocative power of the classic Universal feature, they disregard the screamingly obvious role of the werewolf myth as a metaphor for the unrestrained id.

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Film Diary: Orphan

Monday, June 14th, 2010

2009 (USA)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Viewed: June 13, 2010
Format: Blu-ray – Warner Brothers (2009)

[SPOILERS] Steadfastly ridiculous from its opening moments to its unnecessarily prolonged conclusion, and yet still a rather fun, ghastly ride, Jaume Collet-Serra’s odd little thriller gets lots of mileage out of the Evil Kid archetype.  We know from the outset that Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther–all chestnut curls, lacey ribbon, and icepick glares—is Bad News (even if her dimwit adopted father doesn’t), but the exact nature of her schemes is a revelation left for the final scenes.  Evil Kid thrillers have long been a favorite haunt for creaky nature-versus-nurture questions, going all the way back to Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed.  If Orphan were merely a weary retread of such paths, it would be entirely forgettable.  However, this murderous nine-year-old girl is, in fact, a murderous 33-year-old Estonian dwarf.  That changes things, no?  On the one hand, this twist turns Orphan into just another Homicidal Maniac film, robbing it of the Evil Kid sub-sub-genre’s unsettling appeal.  On the other hand, Esther’s adulthood spikes the film with Freudian voodoo, giving Collet-Serra space to engage with twisted themes that most horror films can’t tackle, especially the notion of child as spousal replacement.  Orphan has its spatters of brutally graphic violence (I’ll never look at a workbench vice the same way again), but its most memorable moments are those the revel in their emotional and visual perversity.  Chief among these is Esther’s vampish seduction of her adopted father, which is, frankly, about nine levels of Fucked Up.  Nonetheless, an audacious high concept can’t entirely atone for over two hours of ludicrous implausibles, foolish character behavior, and dreary narrative predictability.

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Film Diary: Shutter Island

Monday, June 14th, 2010

2010 (USA)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Viewed: June 11, 2010
Format: Blu-ray - Paramount (2010)

[SPOILERS] Grading on a curve is a tricky and sometimes ill-advised endeavor, but now that I find myself at the halfway point in an apparently dismal year for cinema, Martin Scorsese’s relentlessly moody labyrinth seems to merit a bit more affection than I afforded it back in February.  Granted, the flaws that were in evidence on a first viewing are still present: the dearth of gratifying horror rhythms; the relative aimlessness of the middle act; the fragility of Dr. Crawley’s outlandish scheme.  However, the whiff of disposability that emanates from any film reliant on a concluding twist proves to be phantasmal here, for a second visit to Shutter Island provides bountiful avenues for engagement.  Foreknowledge of “Teddy’s” situation reveals a marvelously scrupulous aspect to the film’s assembly, especially vis-à-vis its performances.  One could dedicate a screening solely to observing Mark Ruffalo or Ben Kingsley, each of whom delivers a stunningly modulated portrayal that operates on two planes simultaneously.  Even the reaction shots from the bit players offer a peculiar kind of amusement, with each actor discovering their own way to convey, “I can’t believe we’re going along with this…”  In the end, however, the film succeeds on the strength of DiCaprio’s throbbing performance, unquestionably his best in years, which arrives brimming with sweaty, anxious hostility and descends to place where oblivion seems a sweet release.  What might have been a garish carnival hoax is synthesized into a searing portrait of a man hollowed-out by unsettled guilt and rage.  While the film’s ruminations on aggression are of a piece with Scorsese’s absorption with “men of violence,” as Dr. Naehring describes Andrew, the film is far more compelling (and vigorous) when it is occupied with memory’s double-edged sword.  In this, Andrew shares with Lost Highway’s Fred Madison a preference for “remembering things in his own way,” as opposed to confronting the horrors that he has witnessed and wrought.

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Film Diary: Pararnomal Activity

Monday, June 14th, 2010

2007 (USA)
Director: Oren Peli
Viewed: June 13, 2010
Format: Blu-ray – Paramount (2009)

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Film Diary: Bright Star

Monday, June 14th, 2010

2009 (UK / Australia / France)
Director: Jane Campion
Viewed: June 12, 2010
Format: Netflix Instant Queue (via Playstation 3)

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This American Life

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

October Country
2009 (USA)
Directors: Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher
Viewed: June 5, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (Webster University Moore Auditorium)

[October Country is being featured in a limited engagement from June 4-10, 2010 at the Webster University Film Series.]

On its weather-beaten surface, October Country is a straightforward documentary in the “anthropological study” vein.  Surprisingly deft and arresting, the film profiles a blue-collar family living in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York, and marks co-directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher as emergent talents in documentary film-making.   Emulating Errol Morris’ signature approach—restive, slightly distanced, and ever-conscious of their medium’s artificiality—the directors chronicle a year in the life of Donal’s extended family, observing their tumble-down surroundings and listening to their stories with sorrowful attentiveness.  Undeniably, the Moshers’ tale is a bleak one, characterized by wartime ghosts, criminal betrayal, domestic violence, cruel estrangement, foolish decisions, and perennial economic hardship.  What’s remarkable about October Country is how Palmieri and Mosher elevate the story beyond voyeuristic goggling at misfortune to achieve something far more intricate.  In its finest moments, the film serves as a bitter rumination on the cyclical quality of family history, as well as a cinematic séance, not only with the Mosher clan’s particular demons, but with the Puritan shades that still haunt the American experience.

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