Gateway Cinephiles

Turtles All the Way Down

November 13, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas, Comedies No Comments

Synecdoche, New York
2008 (USA)
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Viewed: November 9, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, the maddening, devastating Synecdoche, New York, wanders in the twilight world usually reserved for the bleakest of existential novels. It reflects a disquieting comfort with the folding of reality and mind within the dark whorls of creative frenzy, as well as a gluttony for morbidity that borders on the obscene. This is a film that has no use for reason. However, its nightmarish illogic is so powerfully rendered and so robustly intuitive that it demands our attention, devours it even. With Synecdoche, Kaufman has created his densest and most sublime film to date, striking a dizzying balance between conventional romantic tragedy and unabashedly grave philosophical conundrums. This film has perplexed me, but I cannot stop marveling at it. Much like Tarsem Singh’s phantasmagorical hymn to storytelling, The Fall, Synecdoche hums with the electricity of a novel form of cinematic life, a grand work teetering on folly. It must be seen to be believed.

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Manic Pixie Dream-Girl

November 13, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas, Foreign, Comedies No Comments

2008 (UK)
Director: Mike Leigh
Viewed: November 11, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky is a slippery little film, a work that appears–at first glance–to rest on the spritely shoulders of one Poppy Cross, as portrayed with rabbit-punch wit and astonishing texture by Sally Hawkins. Indeed, Hawkins is undeniably the blazing celestial orb of positivity of this slice-of-life dramatic comedy. Making Sally Hawkins charming is an amateur’s trick, demanding nothing more than attiring her in “crazy” outfits and letting her goggle and guffaw through a flurry of sitcom scenarios. (Driving lessons! Visiting her sister! Flamenco class!) However, Leigh’s magic lies in the way he shifts our attention from Poppy to the world around her, never mind how enchanting a heroine she might be. Quite improbably–and in spite of her saccharine eccentricities–Poppy emerges as a rounded character, one who permits us a bit of projection for our own everyday tribulations. Shock of shocks, before long we realize that Happy-Go-Lucky is not merely touting the power of optimism, but calling our attention to the ley-lines of misery that flow between annoyances, social ugliness, and outright tragedies.

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Service With Distraction

September 24, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Foreign, Comedies 3 Comments

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 bemused 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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Intelligence Failures

September 17, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Comedies No Comments

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 tragic farce about how venal, deceitful, cowardly, and just plain stupid humanity can be. It therefore may not qualify as everyone’s idea of “entertainment.”

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I Don’t See Any Method At All

September 15, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Comedies 1 Comment

Tropic Thunder
2008 (USA / Germany)
Director: Ben Stiller
Viewed: September 12, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Hollywood is a tempting target for satire. The angles of attack are multitude: the self-importance, the artificiality, the artlessness, the clueless insularity, the inhuman ruthlessness. Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder tackles them all. It pounces with slavering gusto on every opportunity for vicious mockery, strafing Tinseltown with both barrels. It’s definitely funny, but not the sort of comedy that had me laughing beginning to end. Instead it inspired a state of disbelief, gaping amusement, and squirming embarrassment. In its best moments, Thunder calls to mind the lunatic highs of Mel Brook’s oeuvre. That said, the film is far too conventional in some respects, and too sublimely bizarre in others to be mistaken for any kind of comic masterwork. Yet despite some misfires in the performances and script, the sheer chutzpah of the enterprise and Stiller’s unexpected flashes of comic madness render it a thing to behold. Neither mercy nor tact are in its arsenal, and thank God for that.

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3-Minute Intro: The Cannonball Run

September 2, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies, Action No Comments

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - HBO (2001)
Selected By: Grant

When Korean War veteran Hal Needham came to Hollywood in the 1950s to work as a stuntman, he had no intention of transforming action filmmaking. Needham quickly developed a strong reputation for his stunt work in television Westerns, parlaying his success into film. Eventually progressing to stunt coordination and second unit direction, Needham was regarded as one of the industry’s chief innovators by 1976, when he approached friend Burt Reynolds with a script called Smokey and the Bandit. The film was an enormous hit for both the director and star, a feat they replicated in 1981 with The Cannonball Run, a camp ensemble comedy celebration of auto racing and Hollywood excess.

Back in 1976, there had been two films—the action feature Cannonball! and the comedy The Gumball Rally—based on a real-life outlaw cross-country auto race, the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Run five times between 1971 and 1979, the Dash was legendary in Needham’s racing and stunt circles for having no rules save the specified starting and end point. With The Cannonball Run, the director undeniably created the race’s most widespread cultural legacy, going so far as to integrate notorious events from past Dashes into the film’s plot.

Cannonball was a part of Reynolds’ unparalleled 1978-1982 domination of the American box office, although his collaborations with Needham and other B-movie fare had by 1981 somewhat diminished his reputation in the eyes of audiences and directors. However, dismissing Cannonball, or any Needham film, as shallow misses the point. The director always intended his films to be joyful tributes to his heroes and the things he loved, particularly fast cars. Despite its broad, engaging cast of comedy fixtures, rising stars, and Hollywood has-beens—including Roger Moore parodying his contemporary James Bond role—Needham’s focus is on the vehicles, which he films with the devoted attention that only an enthusiast can bring. Ultimately, the film’s frisky character ensures The Cannonball Run’s status, not merely as a 1981 cultural artifact, but also one of the great Hollywood chase films. It’s a character embodied in its roguish disdain for law enforcement and its enthusiasm for a competition where nothing is at stake but bragging rights.

Spanish Fly

August 28, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas, Comedies, Romance No Comments

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2008 (USA / Spain)
Director: Woody Allen
Viewed: August 26, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

I’ve kept my distance from Woody Allen’s output since Mighty Aphrodite, never successfully seduced by the rare acclaimed feature (Match Point), nor by the notorious belly-flops (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion). Therefore I can’t comment from an informed place on the praise that Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems to have reaped as some kind of return to form for the venerable Manhattanite. Certainly, VCB is steeped in wistful adoration for the Spanish locale of its title, echoing the lovestruck regard Allen’s earlier films evidence for New York City. The new film is self-consciously a Spanish travelogue, stuffed to the gills with breathtaking sights, rarefied culture, and delectable food and drink. If the Condé Nast slideshow feels a touch ludicrous, it also seems a natural fit for the film’s amorous story. VCB is unabashedly sexy, in a way that few American films ever manage, and without so much as a glimpse of Scarlett Johannson’s assets, or Javier Bardem’s for that matter. Allen employs the appeal of sun-dappled locales and the arousal of gorgeous people in the throes of temptation to tug VCB towards a destination that proves oddly ambiguous. The film underlines its themes with relentless desperation in places, favors contemplative melancholy in others, and far too often clunks along on contrivance and wincing dialog. At its most successful, it’s a kind of cinematic holiday: an exotic getaway for pleasure and perspective, ephemeral in essence and bittersweet in its conclusion.