Films Seen January 2012
(For films seen at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, go here.)Pariah (2011, Dee Rees) 
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1995. If Weekend feels like
at least a bit of a step forward for mainstream queer cinema, this
well-meaning inspirational clunkfest represents two steps back; I knew it
was hopeless almost immediately, when a minute-long sequence of the
protagonist staring pensively out a bus window was accompanied by some
horrible acoustic folk-blues number with the lyrical refrain "Got to keep
doin' my thing / I got to keep doin' my thing." Do you now. Performances
all seem solid enough (though the bratty younger sister's a bit much),
but it's tough to create an indelible character when every scene has
exactly one unmistakable, dogmatic function, leaving zero room for grace
notes or sidelong observations. And here's precisely the sort of boorish,
in-your-face bigotry that Weekend so deftly avoided; I'm sure
there really are still assholes out there accosting slightly butch women
with hateful remarks about how they're too ugly to attract a man, but they
don't make the most effective dramatic antagonists. Why am I about to
leave for Sundance again...?
Modern Romance (1981, Albert
Brooks) 
Switch the Quaaludes to soju and have Robert pursue a
different-but-similar woman in the second half and this could be a Hong
Sang-soo picture, though its depiction of masculine anxiety is much more
overtly comedic. It also uncannily prefigures the Onion's classic story
"Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested," except that Brooks
understands how sheer relentlessness can in fact create a folie
à deux that ensnares otherwise sensible women; the movie's
greatest triumph is the sheer horror inspired by what would constitute a
traditional, clichéd happy ending in a Hollywood romcom. (I do wish
he'd omitted the closing title crawl, which is funny enough but detracts
from the perverse power of that final "romantic" crane shot.) Significant
(vis-à-vis Hong again) that Brooks makes his alter ego an editor
rather than a writer or director -- not only are the post-production
hijinks endlessly hilarious, they reflect Robert's ability to "cut"
obvious but discomfiting truths from his mental narrative of the
relationship, or to imagine that everything can somehow be "saved" by an
inconsequential gesture (new footsteps, stuffed giraffe). That Robert
recognizes professionally what he can't grasp in his personal life is just
one small aspect of this film's unyieldingly painful honesty, and the
real glory is that most of the time you're laughing too hard to even
process that bleak worldview. Shame that Brooks doesn't really know what
to do with the camera, but at least his primitivism errs on the side of
long takes, stasis and "dead air," which is wholly appropriate.
Utterly tragic, full stop, that the other Brooks, James L., has never
acted since. I have never not lost it when he mouths "little weasels."
The Searchers (1956, John
Ford) 
Time to bite the bullet and admit -- as much to myself as to you fine
people -- that I just don't love The Greatest Western. Easiest way to
rationalize this heresy is to pick a fight with the ending, which has
always felt baldly contrived; I've read heroic interpretations of Ethan's
sudden decision to cradle Debbie in his arms, but never a sensible word
regarding Debbie's equally sudden (and patently ludicrous) about-face
when Martin comes for her. Truthfully, though, the film's disregard for
the harrowing reality of an assimilated captive's ordeal is only one of
many speedbumps. Martin and Laurie's frustrated romance, for example,
while often entertaining for its own sake, doesn't really work as a
counterpoint to Ethan's quest, even though Martin being part-Injun would
seem to suggest numerous fruitful avenues. And a number of light-hearted
interludes are just embarrassing, viz. Martin's inadvertent purchase of
"Look" or anything involving the simpleminded Mose. There's more than
enough greatness -- in Wayne's unforgiving performance; in Ford's canny
use of interiors and exteriors (despite my grousing above, it is
significant that Debbie acquiesces inside a tepee); in touches as
magnificent as the death of Lucy's fiancé Brad, revealed solely
by implication via Max Steiner's score -- to compensate for these lapses,
but I can no longer bring myself to pretend that they don't exist, or
that they don't hamstring the movie to a sizable degree. Even if that
perfect final shot still makes me want to try.
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996,
Renny Harlin) 
Kind of amazing to discover that this film's utterly disposable,
who-even-cares? villain plot conforms precisely to the paranoid fantasies
of the 9/11 Truth movement, even throwing in a quick reference to the '93
World Trade Center bombing (which is unrelated to the actual diabolical
Muslim-fall-guy scheme). Ironic, too, since even Big Dumb Hollywood Action
Movies are rarely so giddily unconcerned with real-world plausibility.
Harlin's relish for fervid excess meshes beautifully with Shane Black's
then-developing knack for the pungent one-liner; Samuel L. Jackson
commenting on his own dialogue ("I would have been here sooner, but I was
thinkin' up that ham on rye line") is just the verbal equivalent of Geena
Davis taking out a squadron of hit men using a gun still lodged in
somebody else's pocket. (Speaking of which, that's twice Black has used
the gun-hidden-next-to-my-dick bit. Arguably once too many.) Enormous fun,
but more so when the action is rising than when it starts falling --
partly because the premise suggests a piercing melodramatic dilemma in
which this goofy film is almost wholly uninterested (Samantha's husband
just vanishes until the coda, and her daughter is Generic Moppet #406),
but mostly because Davis can dance the White Swan but isn't terribly
convincing as the Black Swan. A short frosted-blonde haircut and heavy
eyeliner only do so much. (Sad observation: She turned 40 the year this
film came out, and has not played a leading role in a feature film since.)
If for no other reason, I'll always treasure The Long Kiss
Goodnight for revealing that I'm not the only one who always heard
that line as "I'm not talkin' 'bout the linen." Faulty meter, England Dan
and/or John Ford Coley.
Belle Epine (2010, Rebecca
Zlotowski)
Léa Seydoux's lack of affect served her well as an icy assassin in
Ghost Protocol, but I've had trouble with her in other contexts;
anchoring a delicate character study seems well beyond her sullen, pouty
means at present. Which is particularly problematic since Zlotowski is
admirably determined to avoid emotional signposting, opening the film
in medias res with the protagonist's acting out (actually with
the consequences for same, so one step further removed) and only
gradually revealing the fairly banal reasons for it. Another case of
just-never-grabbed-me...and it's only 80 minutes long, so I watched fully
half of it before throwing in the towel. Note to self, though: This
director is heavily into casual female nudity.
Menace II Society (1993, The
Hughes Brothers) 
Never did understand the hoopla surrounding these guys -- Menace II
Society premiered in Director's Fortnight, if you've forgotten, while
Dead Presidents was in NYFF -- and I gotta say I feel like I've
been entirely vindicated by posterity. Extensive use of retrospective
voiceover here deliberately recalls GoodFellas, but Henry Hill
didn't spend the entire movie being prodded to better himself; despite the
absence of a didactic role model à la Laurence Fishburne (though
Charles S. Dutton turns up briefly to serve a similar function), this is
arguably even preachier than Boyz n the Hood, continually offering
Caine escape routes from The Life even as it sets up the dominoes that'll
take him out. In theory, I can get behind the tale of a sensitive young
kid whose potentially bright future gets destroyed by the hopeless corner
of the world into which he was born, but not when that's constantly being
highlighted and underlined, to the exclusion of not just a gripping
narrative but any real sociological interest or even just memorable
texture. Everything's subordinate to the message/moral, with which no
rational viewer could possibly disagree, so there's nothing to do except
await the inevitable. (That Jada Pinkett Notyetsmith's innocent kid
doesn't wind up getting killed in the crossfire afforded me one less
opportunity to roll my eyes, it's true, but a good movie wouldn't appear
to be setting that moment up in the first place.) Alternately bland and
preposterous (they don't even think to wipe the Korean liquor store of
fingerprints?), with only the occasional fluid tracking shot and some
decent performances to recommend it. The Book of Eli seems roughly
where they've always belonged.
Bambi (1942, David D. Hand) 
I'm as surprised as you probably are (although the film's Wikipedia entry
claims that contemporaneous reviews were mixed to negative). No question
that it's beautiful, but it doubles down on all the most cloying,
simpering aspects of the early Disney house style, from aw-shucks vocal
characterizations to that heavenly-choir effect in every damn song. People
always talk about being traumatized by the death of Bambi's mother, but
nobody ever mentions (or seems to remember) that the film immediately
fades to black and then fades up a year later on a bunch of birds
twittering gaily about how swell springtime is (RT @robinredbreast oh yeh
i'm horny as hell LOL); the loss is no sooner felt than completely
forgotten. And that moment occurs about 40 minutes into a movie that's
only 70 minutes long, preceded by nonstop bashful-wobbly adorableness and
followed by a delusional primer on romance that no doubt warped an entire
generation. Only the climactic fire suggests a film intended to elicit a
more vital reaction than "Aww!" -- it's significant that "man" (as opposed
to just "hunters") plays the unseen heavy, depicted as the spoiler of
everything that's good...though of course even this pointed stance ignores
the inherent cruelty of nature itself, as a deer is far more likely to be
killed by a cougar or jaguar than by a bullet or a man-made inferno. You
may feel that I'm being unduly critical of a movie made for children, but
I'll be enormously surprised if I feel this way about Dumbo or
Pinocchio, both of which find room for personality, humor, and
complicated (if not complex) emotions en route to their preordained happy
endings. Bambi is aptly named; it's the Barbie of talking-animal
cartoons.
Black Orpheus (1959, Marcel
Camus) 
Startled to discover that this was adapted from a play, because it's much
more documentary than narrative -- a swirling, colorful portrait of Rio de
Janeiro during Carnaval, onto which a skeletal reimagining of the
Orpheus-Eurydice myth has been grafted. Seen from today's perspective, it
skews pretty tourist-y, as if Camus' primary goal was simply to share
this vibrant culture with an international audience. Look at 'em dance!
And the two lead actors seem to have been chosen strictly for their
hot-cha-cha quotient, which makes their literally undying love seem like
something out of a Corman beach movie. Still, it's not as if being a
tourist is all bad, and Black Orpheus does have energy to spare;
there's a captivating unruliness on the fringes, some of which extends to
the supporting cast (particularly Léa Garcia, as Eurydice's cousin
Serafina, who seems to be auditioning for Bridesmaids 50 years
early). Maybe if Cocteau's Orpheus didn't exist, I wouldn't feel so
disappointed by the skimpiness of this film's "underworld" -- the only
moment that's remotely arresting (but non-festive) is Orfeu's visit to the
Missing Persons office, where the janitor insists that there's nothing to
be found but endless paperwork. And even that mild dig at bureaucracy
seems to come out of nowhere and then go right back where it came from.
I'm no fan of Hiroshima, Mon Amour (as of my last look, which was a
while ago), but that would surely have been a more deserving Palme d'Or
winner. To say nothing of The Four Hundred Blows or (my oddball
personal choice from that year's Competition lineup) Compulsion.
City of Life and Death (2009,
Lu Chuan) 
Worried at first that this would just be a grueling never-forget
testament to the Rape of Nanking, with no real purpose other than to
remind us that these atrocities happened. Thankfully, Lu isn't hell-bent
on shoving our faces into the horror...but that's mostly because he's
working so hard to valorize the Chinese. Final straw for me was when the
sadistic Ida orders Rabe's secretary to be executed by firing squad, then
turns his back on the scene in a way that implies he's secretly sorrowful
after having witnessed the man's dignity and courage. But even the
filmmaking itself frequently slips into sub-Spielberg mawkishness. Is it
not moving enough that women volunteer to "comfort" Japanese soldiers so
that others can eat? Must we have solemn strings and a montage of hands
being raised skyward in slow motion as dust motes fall? Ostensibly, the
choice of an inexperienced Japanese soldier as the closest thing to an
identification figure complicates matters, but he's so unfailingly noble
and sensitive -- never tempted to take part in the abuse, yearning to
marry the (Japanese) hooker who deflowers him -- that he's essentially an
honorary Chinaman. (I believe that is the preferred nomenclature, Walter.
Shut the fuck up, Donnie, you're out of your element.) And I am the only
one who finds the ending kind of grotesque? Not in terms of who dies
(which is just the culmination of my complaint above), but regarding the
instantaneous elation of the two survivors, who run giggling into the
future. Even the last freaking Harry Potter movie managed more
ambivalence than that.
Miss Bala (2011, Gerardo
Naranjo) 
Previously addressed at Cannes,
where I somewhat exaggerated, I see now, its potential commercial appeal
-- Naranjo's expertly choreographed sequence-shot "action" setpieces do
thrill, but in the rarefied manner of e.g. Jancsó's The Red
and the White, not à la M. Mann or even De Palma. Sticking to
my guns on the feminist reading, though, which reaches its apotheosis at
the moment when Laura's shoved onto the pageant stage (minutes after
surviving a bloody shootout) and is asked by the unctuous host which she
desires more: wealth or fame? Some have complained that she lacks agency,
but there's an important distinction between being powerless and being a
victim; Naranjo repeatedly provides her with choices that aren't really
choices at all, deftly skirting didacticism while laying bare the
self-defeating trap society lays for young women. "Does this building
have another exit?" she asks desperately early on, and we root for her to
escape, which she does...to the nearest boutique, trying on expensive
dresses with the wad of cash Lino gave her. Likewise, Lino never
technically rapes her, though he easily could -- instead, he sets her
free on the beach, telling her she'll reach civilization in a couple
hours' walk, but also insisting that she'll have to abandon her father
and younger brother (whose college education, the pageant host
breathlessly informs us, she hopes to fund with her winnings). Any wonder
that she turns around and gets in the car to take it doggy-style? Even the
final shot is very deliberately open-ended, not for ambiguity's sake but
by way of suggesting that subsequent "choices," too, will be hers to make.
Hard for me to see how anybody could think this infinitely sorrowful
movie is about the drug war after seeing Laura stare at her crown in the
mirror as she prepares to bed the General; its meaningless closing title
card (and Naranjo and Sigman's corresponding remarks in interviews) must
be some kind of sop to a funding source or government agency.
Pleasantville (1998, Gary
Ross) 
A leading contender for the title of Most Thematically Incoherent Movie
Ever Made -- it's abundantly clear that Ross thought up the high concept
first ("modern teens trapped in Leave It to Beaver") and then
struggled to construct a meaningful allegory around it, in the hope that
it might carry a little more weight than, say, The Brady Bunch
Movie. Trouble is, he seems to think that '50s TV sitcoms were an
accurate reflection of how people behaved back then, or at least that
there's some version of real-world America, past or present, that the
passionless, terminally square town of Pleasantville might plausibly
represent. Tobey Maguire's David, disenchanted with his broken home and
in thrall to an idealized golden age, ought to be the prototype for
Midnight in Paris' Gil, yet never for a moment seems to relish his
incarnation as Bud -- the story isn't about his personal transformation
but about how he and his sister (Witherspoon gets one delicious moment,
spying Paul Walker as the school dreamboat and asking, with a predatory
twang, "Does he like me?") liberate everybody else from the shackles
of...what, exactly? Ancient sitcom tropes? Are we seriously meant to
conflate the anti-resonant idea of people with no concept of sex, art,
failure or (for fuck's sake) rain with the civil rights movement (NO
COLOREDS)? I just have zero idea what Ross thinks he's saying here, and I
really don't think he does either, deep down, apart from some vague
notion of "repression" vs. "freedom." This somehow squeaked into the
Skandies top 20 that year (hence the second look); hopefully the voters
responsible are the folks who've been weeded out since then.
Nostalgia for the Light (2010,
Patricio Guzmán) 
Bailed on this at Toronto 2010, mostly because I was disappointed that
the initial rush of gorgeous imagery accompanied by solemn voiceover
was supplanted by conventional talking-head interviews. But I see now why
that was necessary: Had Guzmán not encouraged the astronomers to
indulge his specious equivalence, the movie would have risked coming
across as implicitly hostile to science, which was clearly not his
intention. At the risk of seeming callous, I gotta say I'm not
terribly...well, no, I am sympathetic toward the relatives (mostly
women) who've dedicated their lives to finding the remains of the
disappeared, but that doesn't mean I don't think them misguided, or see a
(quasi-literal) world of difference between their quest and that of the
folks manning the Atacama telescopes. Gazing into the unimaginably
distant past yields answers to fundamental questions about why we're here
(and the likelihood that we're alone); excavating the recent past in
this particular way is really just personal catharsis and ritual, as
finding the bodies tells the forlorn nothing they didn't already know
(except for essentially meaningless details like "he was shot twice in
the head"). Seeking information about the origin of the universe and
seeking closure about the death of a loved one are not the same process
-- not even poetically or metaphorically speaking. They're antonymical.
That the film gets an above-average rating, even though I reject its
entire thesis, is a testament to how beautifully it's constructed in
every way save for the philosophical.
Au revoir les enfants (1987,
Louis Malle) 
Respectable in every way, which is kind of the problem. Perhaps because
of his lingering guilty conscience, Malle inadvertently makes his alter
ego far more interesting than Bonnet/Kippelstein, who's presented as a
simple martyr: hyper-intelligent, musically gifted, and utterly
neurosis-free despite his circumstances. Apart from being secretly
Jewish, he doesn't do a damn thing for the entire movie. (And if the real
kid was dumb enough to light candles and don a yarmulke and talk Hebrew
to Yahweh in the middle of the boys' dormitory at night, he was gonna get
caught eventually regardless of where little Louis glanced.) There's
little sense of these kids as individuals with lives that transcend the
Occupation; everything builds inexorably toward the moment of inadvertent
betrayal, which is nicely understated in itself but not really worthy of
constructing an entire movie around -- at least not if you're gonna end
on it. Probably didn't help that I happened to rewatch if.... not
long beforehand, as that film strikes a better balance between the iconic
and the prosaic (and has a riveting presence in Malcolm McDowell).
Mostly, though, Au revoir just lacks...juice, for lack of a better
word. Its most noteworthy characteristics are politeness and restraint,
making it an ideal foreign-language Oscar nominee (though it somehow lost
the actual prize that year to the even less vital Babette's Feast).
My guess is that Malle was just too close to this material -- too
determined to be truthful to serve the arguably more noble cause of
dramatic truth. He made an impressive, tasteful monument of a movie.
The Adventures of Tintin (2011,
Steven Spielberg) 
Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit. Then again, maybe Spielberg has forgotten how to modulate high-octane action so that it breathes a little. Or, most likely, he's chosen to adapt something that works fine on the page (like most Americans, I've never read any of the "albums," as they're apparently called for some reason) but inevitably, given dogged faithfulness to the source, comes across as threadbare onscreen, thereby necessitating a constant swirl of activity as camouflage. With all due respect to Hergé -- I'm perfectly willing to believe his work has value I'm not seeing here -- it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between Tintin and, say, Bazooka Joe; his habit of holding expository conversations with himself (TOTALLY INVENTED EXAMPLE BECAUSE I CAN'T REMEMBER THE ACTUAL DIALOGUE, BUT TRUST ME CLOSE ENOUGH: "The one-legged orthopedist said as he was dying that the key to a woman's heart can be found at the bottom of Lake Crankshaft. What could he have meant by that, Snowy?") was a little charming at first but got exasperating in a hurry. There's just nothing to this save for a juvenile-adventure plot that's no stronger (or weaker) than the ones I used to read in Hardy Boys novels* (probably the closest American-prose equivalent), so you have to really groove on constant frenetic movement for its own sake -- as if Raiders of the Lost Ark went from the opening throw-me-the-idol-I-throw-you-the-rope bit straight into the search for Marion among the baskets and then straight into the truck chase and then that was the entire movie. Exhausting. At least they're getting closer with the mo-cap -- I wasn't able to readily imagine every character as the scariest element of a doll-based horror film.
*I'm being kind; in many respects it is weaker. Like, Tintin spots the Unicorn model at some street fair, decides on impulse to buy it, and instantly not one but two other interested parties show up seeking it. Where were both of them just five minutes earlier, when either could have snatched it right up with no trouble? It's not as if it had just been recovered from the ocean floor or something. Might seem a petty complaint given that it's a kid's story, but even pre-adolescents can have their intelligence insulted.