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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Quick Review: I’ve Loved You So Long

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

I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime)
2008 (France)
Director: Philippe Claudel
Viewed: November 11, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Kristin Scott Thomas is the skin, flesh, and bone of I’ve Loved You So Long. Director Philippe Claudel, in his first feature film, is keenly aware of how central his lead actress is to the potency of this studious, intimate drama of forgiveness, forgetting, and starting over. Thomas’ presence hovers over every moment of the film. Claudel spends long minutes waiting with a cinematic exhale caught in his throat, savoring the way Thomas glances, sighs, smokes, and stands. The entire story–of a woman’s entry into her younger sister’s family life following a prison sentence—seems to lie in the veteran actress’ eyes, so dense, luminous, and haloed with middle-aged wear and beauty. Never mind the hackneyed bits and dramatic missteps. (Wine-lubricated confession at a French dinner party? Check! Tear-smudged, slightly underwhelming revelation? Check!) Marvelous to watch, are Laurent Grévill and Frédéric Pierrot, who charm Thomas’ Juliette in scenes scripted with distinctly Gallic confidence and deep currents of hope. I’ve Loved You So Long just might be the film of Thomas’ career. It succeeds despite an unsatisfying final act and too much narrative thumb-twiddling. It succeeds because Thomas is just that damn good, and Claudel bottles every spark she generates.

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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Motherhood, Interrupted

November 9, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas 1 Comment

Changeling
2008 (USA)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Viewed: November 5, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

The most rote film that Clint Eastwood has directed in at least a decade, Changeling is a grim, sprawling, fairly unremarkable period drama. It’s not a bad film by any means: gloriously detailed, solidly acted, and shot with a cool, painterly eye. It’s also maddeningly predictable to the point of tedium, and at least forty-five minutes too long given the absence of any narrative shakeups. Is is really possible that the man behind the Olympian deconstruction of Unforgiven and the bleak soul-searching of Million Dollar Baby could create a film bloated on such uninspired to-and-fro? The term “well-made” as backhanded compliment never seemed more appropriate: Changeling is a film that cues its required quota of approving nods and gasps of outrage, an archetypal Serious Adult Drama. Again, not a bad film by any means, but I can’t shake the impression that it’s a step backwards for the veteran American un-auteur.

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Can’t Get Fooled Again

November 6, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas No Comments

W.
2008 (USA)
Director: Oliver Stone
Viewed: November 4, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

A schizophrenic, lumbering cartoon, Oliver Stone’s W. is not the biopic George W. Bush deserves. Regardless of how much I might loathe the (now lame duck) President and everything he stands for, a figure of such geopolitical and cultural significance begs for evaluation and synthesis. Ideally, a comprehensive and articulate cinematic examination of Dubya will one day emerge. Sadly, what Stone delivers, in the twilight of Bush’s presidency, is an aimless, tone-deaf, patchwork greatest-hits compilation with virtually no insight save the most facile. (Did you know Dubya hates his Poppy?) There’s a sense of sheepish playfulness in Josh Brolin’s lead performance, but it’s consciously a part of the performance, and never a facet of the Dubya that Stone aims to present. Brolin’s most engaging scenes are little more than party tricks, and surrounding him are two shapeless, pointless hours, eight years of bad dreams squashed into a Play-Doh blob.

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To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn

November 3, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas, Foreign, Action No Comments

Ashes of Time Redux (Dung Che Sai Duk Redux)
2008 (Hong Kong / China)
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Viewed: November 2, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

(Sad to say, Hong Kong film-maker Wong Kar-wai is not a director with whom I have any previous experience. I have not seen the original edit of his 1994 feature, Ashes of Time. Accordingly, I will be reviewing the new edit of that film, Ashes of Time Redux, without reference to the original.)

Excess suffuses Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux, but not the bombastic sort one might expect in a film that owes most of its narrative elements and a slice of style to the wuxia tradition. No, Ashes is an elliptical meditation first and foremost, a serious-minded discourse on love and loss, replete with swelling strings (just in case you forget for a moment how serious). Wong puts a glowing burnish on this tangled tale of swordsmanship and longing set against impossibly bright desert sands, relying on a lyrical four-part structure that admittedly gets its talons into you. The director’s preference for lingering shots and meandering dialogue, while not objectionable on its face, lends Ashes a musty odor of pretension, if only because it highlights the unevenness of his storytelling technique. One wonders at Wong’s choices: on the one hand he offers several minutes of a woman caressing a horse–an exquisitely poetic sequence–while elsewhere his transitions are so ambiguous and edits so jarring that the story becomes baffling.

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You Are Cordially Invited

October 29, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas 2 Comments

Rachel Getting Married
2008 (USA)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Viewed: October 28, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Part comfortable soap opera, part deliciously nasty glimpse of upper class twittery, and above all a sneaky, naturalistic celebration of music and milestones, Johnathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married is a work as far from the director’s The Silence of the Lambs as one could envision. Roiling with familial angst and earnest realism, it’s not a concoction that will appeal to everyone. Rachel juggles both ridiculous scenes of ugly misbehavior and helplessly sweet (and often equally ridiculous) sequences of distilled joy. That both of these elements can comfortably coexist in the same film reflects the central theme of Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet (yes, daughter of that Lumet): that families are both fundamentally miserable institutions and also refuges of grace and happiness. Often, as in Rachel Getting Married, in the same weekend.

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Dirty Pretty Thing

October 14, 2008 admin Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Dramas, Foreign 5 Comments

A Girl Cut in Two (La Fille Coupée en Deux)
2007 (Germany / France)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Viewed: October 13, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

A Girl Cut in Two is a film that can only loosely be termed entertainment, unless you delight in the sight of self-absorbed twits driving one another to ruin. Admittedly, there is a certain fascination inherent in such a thing, and veteran French director Claude Chabrol manages to at least render his characters as engaging trifles. They are little more than wind-up figurines that jostle one another while bumbling through their crippling neuroses, and yet one can’t help but smirk a little at the tragic silliness of it. A Girl Cut in Two could have been an ugly, joyless film about ugly, joyless people, and it’s to Chabrol’s modest credit that it finds the space to provoke and ponder. The film’s character-poles—Charles the arrogant, graying, libertine intellectual and Paul the demented, anxious, foppish playboy—are deeply rotten men. Between these two cads ricochets Gabrielle, a gorgeous weather girl whose place in the film’s moral order is perpetually uncertain. Is she naïve or cunning? An ambitious manipulator or a pitiable victim? A liberated modern woman or a childish dimwit? The film’s sweeping ambiguity with respect to Gabrielle contrasts with its one certainty: she is the least loathsome vertex of the love triangle, and therefore our window into the dire and ludicrous events that unfold.

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3-Minute Intro: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

October 13, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas No Comments

Screened: October 12, 2008
Format: Blu-ray - Paramount (2008)
Selected By: Andrew

For better or worse, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 crime epic, The Godfather, has become the iconic American gangster film, if not the iconic American film, of the post-New Hollywood era. Both the original, and its equally acclaimed 1974 sequel, The Godfather Part II, have fixed themselves in the American cinematic landscape, saturating our shared pop cultural traditions and even the Mafia’s perceptions of itself. Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel, The Godfather has attained a universally legendary status that few films can claim. It was a box-office smash in its day; winner of the Best Picture Oscar; critically lauded from almost every corner; and still remembered and adored by cinematic aficionados and casual audiences alike a generation later.

In 1972, Coppola was a relative unknown, a risky choice to direct a big-budget Mafia epic in the mold of New Hollywood successes such as Bonnie & Clyde and The French Connection. The director’s domineering style frequently clashed with Paramount Pictures’ demands, particularly with respect to the film’s casting and its depiction of violence. As if Coppola’s casting of the notoriously intractable Marlon Brando was not enough, the director insisted on an obscure thirty-two year old actor named Al Pacino for his lead. Coppola was determined to craft an unusually sympathetic portrayal of an Italian-American crime family, one that explicitly approached its subject as a metaphor for American capitalism. In this The Godfather and its sequel can be seen as unparalleled successes, establishing the prestige of both the crime picture generally and the Mafia picture specifically. This effect has outlasted the New Hollywood era itself, lending stature to films as diverse as Scarface, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, Heat, and City of God.

After screening The Godfather Part II, George Lucas is said to have commented to Coppola that the two films are actually one, best appreciated as a single work of art. The Godfather presents us with a man who reluctantly and then ruthlessly assumes the commanding heights of power within his narrow, enclosed world. Part II illustrates how wickedness and paranoia eventually isolate that man, destroying all that loves save for the power itself.

Northeast Passage

September 4, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas No Comments

Frozen River
2008 (USA)
Director: Courtney Hunt
Screened: September 2, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Frozen River is a tale of dreams, or at least what passes for dreams in the bitter winters of far-upstate New York. The film presents us with two women, each a quintessential American survivor in their way. Ray (Melissa Leo) is a white, middle-aged single mom, scraping together a life for her two boys in a cramped manufactured home. Lila (Misty Upham) is a younger Mohawk woman, and also a mother, although her infant son has been wrested from her with the tacit consent of her tribe. When fate brings these two women together, their antagonism seethes, but eventually they embark on a perilous criminal collaboration. First-time director Courtney Hunt’s naturalistic story of slush-and-mud desperation on the margins of the American dream is an affecting and uncommonly sensitive depiction of foolish risks taken for all the right reasons.

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Gateway Cinephiles

Turtles All the Way Down

Quick Review: I’ve Loved You So Long

Manic Pixie Dream-Girl

Motherhood, Interrupted

Can’t Get Fooled Again

To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn

You Are Cordially Invited

Dirty Pretty Thing

3-Minute Intro: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

Northeast Passage

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