Reviews
Tim's Vermeer (2013)
Lovely obsession
Ah, to have the wherewithal to fly your Lear to England to consult with Hockney and have a half hour viewing of the Queen's Vermeer. And the skill to turn a furniture leg on a lathe you modified without any training either in lathe modification or working wood as well as learning lense grinding, stained glass window making, and mixing paints in the Vermeerian manner, and on and on. Staggering, actually. Tim shows the comfort and confidence of the very rich but none of the noblesse oblige. Rare. The film nicely tells the story of the task fulfilled, details of which you know from the descriptions above as well as from the trailer. More on learning to actually mix and apply the paint, as well as the technical aspects involved in manufacturing the paints would gave made this a more valuable document. Still fun and full of charm.
Le passé (2013)
A good too long film
Goodness knows anyone reading here knows the story, so I will not further burden anyone by regurgitating. The drabness of the nearby banlieu is well portrayed as is life lived over the store of an ordinary shop owner. Good if not inspired photography, good acting, if not a monotonal quality in that of the returning husband (my complaint about the role in Separation) with the kids being particularly convincing. But like some pops program classical music, too many false endings and prolongations. I named the film "arret" as these false third acts were interrupted again and again with stop or come back or I will go...but do not go. For the first time in a while I felt myself thinking, when will it end.
Tu seras mon fils (2011)
Trop facile
The lead is a distinctive actor with all the subtlety of the script in this role. The poor beleaguered son is so unsure of his place in the world that his masochism in remaining in his father's universe is barely believable...though his behavior begs for more beatings of a psychological kind. The loyal wife of the junior loves him for reasons unknown to the viewer; under the sheets, perhaps? The once (1960-70) disco scene is resurrected here to hardly any purpose. The manager of the vineyard, dying of cancer, gets the best draw of script which he fulfills with professionalism and dignity, and his practical and loyal wife plays her role beautifully. As to the prodigal would be son, an insensitive cad and gainer well played here. The logic of the script is minimal and the resolution more abrupt and fevered than what precedes it logically allows. Beautiful shots of the vineyard. All in all, this vintage is pas mal but no chapeau.
Stories We Tell (2012)
Touching brilliance
From the first piano key to the last tune the music editing of this brilliant and touching film subtly underline the story Sarah Polley tells on film through numerous witnesses. The technique employed to recreate perhaps 60% of the past is extraordinarily smooth and beautifully integrated. "The Story" is read and written by Michael, Sarahs dad (spoiler excluded). It is pure poetry and the actor's voice...he is a stage actor in life...is marvelously emotive. This is enough to say...just go see it and marvel at the audacity of the filmmaker and her crew who labored for five years to bring this film to screening.
Another Year (2010)
The insular couple of London
Leigh is a good filmmaker, no doubt. The film has a very nice look, changing subtly for the seasons, winter being rather blue, as is what the film has made many viewers. Acting is superb and the script/unscript is fine, though in its worst moments I thought of Handke whom I dislike quite a bit. Since everybody here knows the story line I think all I can appropriately add is my disdain for the "happy" couple and their 30 year old boy. As an earlier poster and a German lady in an audience where Leigh took questions thought, this couple had no business having any kind of relationship with the poor victim of life and their noblesse oblige. They were in control and they should have been responsible for drawing boundaries. Instead they treated her with barely disguised disdain. The relationship was a contrivance that allowed Leigh to get even with all those irksome aunts he disliked as a child. The number of disapproving eyebrow and glance movements among mom, pop, and junior became tiresome, as well. A nasty side of Leigh I did not previously observe.
High Fidelity (2000)
Film in the key of Middle B
Premise movie. Sounded good in the dorm. Played out, or forced out might be better a description, on the screen, this is banal scripting, dull direction, less than ordinary camera work. Some nice performances, however. Cusack is not one of them. He seems to be in this for the paycheck. He mugs and has all of the emotional range of a chicken. Mugging is not acting. The girlfriend is good, unknown to me and convincing, given the banal script. The balding clerk does a wonderfully ditsy nerdy turn with just the perfect physical and verbal mannerisms that make you believe he is who he is playing. His familiar mate in the record store is good at what he does, which is broad and obvious and after a time annoying. I am mystified as to how this director keeps being mentioned as somebody of import. Maybe they mistake him for somebody else?
Chéri (2009)
Outstandingly bad
The TWO is for the set dresser, but barely. This is an astoundingly bad film in every way. The spoken words are so bad and off-key that the viewer winces. I promised to remember bad lines but there were so many my mind is overwhelmed by them. Just be assured that an uneducated valley boy or girl could have (probably did) written the text. The acting is wooden (forgive me, wood) and totally uncommitted. The good news for all involved on that level, I suppose, is that the check cleared. I must except the performance of the little unloved wifey, which was pretty good, and the two friends, a sexually ambiguous older couple, were very good. They did the job well under what must have been awful circumstances. The photography was miserable. Setting the shots was almost always wrong. The little house of Michelle Pfeiffer was very badly framed. I expected to see milk bottles at the entry, as well. Music was not a factor for me, though when I did notice it it was dreadful. To know that there are children starving and money is being used for this sort of amateurish movie making absolutely makes me livid.
Last Chance Harvey (2008)
Layers of Qualities
This is a really well written and touching script. Hoffman is still as good as ever...or better...than he was on Warrenton Street. He makes it all look very easy, and it ain't! Ms. Thompson is a marvelous player, as well, and would be difficult to fault. The father daughter story line is the propelling one, with Thompson the unlikely angel who brings it together. Her own mother-daughter relationship... neurotic, sad, and lonely mom forever on the phone for reassurance, a reach out and touch someone moment oft but believably repeated, and the dutiful daughter wanting to help but also filling her otherwise relationship bare life, also touches.
The loser aspect...in contemporary terms... the failed musician doing jingles and even at that on the knife' edge, is well handled and movingly acted by Hoffman.
Lighting Hoffman face in one scene was a perfect underlining of the sadness of the moment. (That might have been the only "self-conscious" art moment in a beautifully directed and filmed movie, a comment not a criticism) And making London seem so interesting was great. Shooting on the correct side of the river, choosing the locations, finding the most French plaza for the demi-proposal was great, giving London a touch of the great city across the drink.
Very good film-making, wonderful acting, terrific text.
Rocket Science (2007)
Holden in Trenton
Oh, my goodness. J. D could sue. Complete with teacher in flannel robe?... no, with a Rubik's cube, pasty white hairy legs, and a middle aged spread... but with a comely if disinterested Asian girlfriend. The writing is beautiful and the perfect voice of Dan Cashman narrating heightens that The music is perfect and timed just right, some of the camera work results in achingly good and touching stills. And the acting is wonderful straight across the board.
The ineffectuality of the pasty-legged teacher, the mixed genius for nasty/sweet of the motive force female, the search for love of our main man and just about everyone else in the piece, excepting the mother who will spoil her own life again and again, the endearing Korean boyfriend who moves in and seems to really attach to the kids, the sweet/authoritarian hopeful debate coach, the Summa Theologica kid, and that beachside Pizza sign come together to make a very satisfying movie.
Bravo, bravo, bravo.
Lady Chatterley (2006)
Over the Top Writer Meets Over the Top Filmmaker and Hallmark for Hours
This is a partly beautiful film with partly great lighting, fully fine interior design and scene making , perfectionist costuming, good rain, good miners shots in appropriately charred visages, a very appealing Lady Chatterly, a fairly convincing gamesman, fine secondary cast, a social fabric badly stitched in from time to time, with enough bad stuff to spray around on everybody from the too intense DH Lawrence to the muddled and too ambitious to cover the whole bloody waterfront script, to continuity missteps, to the socially unconscious Hallmark ending. To quote JD Salinger's Holden, sometimes Lawrence (and his adaptors) are as sensitive as a toilet seat.
Lawrence is a writer who fits an historic niche. Not a particularly good writer but fervent and fervid and heart in the right place at some point. Good for social history classes. Adapting this passionate mess (one of three versions, mind you) is not an easy task. Perhaps a thankless one. But this Frenchman gave it a good if uncritical enough a shot.
The film is endless. It is mushy, even literally so, with the ground giving out from under the poor Lord's industrial machine which then requires "manpower" and even woman power in this version, to get the poor cuckolded fellow back to the house. Rains and flowers and that awful gamboling together in the rain... kind of makes me think of commercials for antihistamines...
The performances are generally good. Hard to not like Lady Chatterly as a kind of beauty- symbol, but not much of a person. After all, in the end it is about lust, not mind. She is easy to lust after. The noble savage does a good job. Good jaw line, good build. Lord Chatterly is a bit of a mess of a character though I would not fault the actor but the director/script. As said before, the subsidiary parts are all very well played.
Beautifully composed interior shots in the first third or so of the film the interiors in particular. Very effective lighting. Then things sort of flatten out with all that Hallmark stuff and endless marches through the wood and field.
Why this has gotten raves from so many writers eludes me. Chaque un a son gout.
Lost in Translation (2003)
How Perfect Can a Movie Be?
To answer the question, see Lost In Translation.
A first time outing for a director with a good gene pool, Lost... is an astounding film. I have seen films at the cinema and loved them, then rented them to see again at home and realized that love at first sight was as bad in films at is can be in life. This film, however, stands up and more. Seeing it again this week I wondered why I had not been on the street proselytizing for Ms. Coppola's film.
The cast is perfect. Nobody can do hangdog like Bill Murray. His benign disapproval is sweet and withering at the same time. His ability to denote sageness with his minimalist mugging is art. When Bill Murray does getting tired, your own bones ache, your head gets heavy, and you yearn for just a little peaceful sleep. While part of the talent may be a happenstance based on physiology, whatever it is I vote yes.
Johansson is not a woman of vast range...or perhaps only not a good judge of parts to take...but she is absolutely tuning fork right for this role. A little too ripe of mouth is just right, so again we are talking physiology. And there is a sweetness that she brings to her mid-western desire for this much older man that really does say comme ci, comme ca. Her maturity of character here is very well played. From a male point of view, this fantasy woman would be the perfect tryst, of course.
Which bring us to the script that is witty and intelligent, and does not make any major statements on moral subjects. It plays like life. Though that life is certainly special for our whisky advertising man and not so bad for the Johansson figure married to an oaf with some sort of salable talent and the awkwardness of just the man he is.
Every shot in the film is so good that you wonder how this came about. Ditto editing. Ditto light and music choices. Ditto the social cultural stuff. Japan is strange to us, though the "artiste" nonsense is the same everywhere.
Movies don't often get made this well. Let's be quietly grateful.
Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
The Wall of Monsiuer Hire
The performances in this film are perfectly tuned. The set design is incredible, the cinematography stunning, the lighting as it should be, the script fine, the music perfectly chosen, and the morality of the tale unquestionable. The first half hour of the film seemed a little over the top (unintended word play, think The Wall), mainly due to the monotonal quality of Ulrich Muhe's character, but that performance is reasonable in the context of the whole. The secondary slow development problem is related to the historicity of the piece, which gets a little newsreely in tone early on. BUT, and that is a big but, the film as a whole works superbly. The M. Hire in the headline summary is because of the similarity of character, in major part, to that of Michel Blanc in the brilliant French film of that title based on a Simenon novel. It, too is about deception and betrayal and integrity. Sebastian Koch who gives a very fine performance, bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Canadian American television journalist, Peter Jennings, and his style reminded me of a Scandinavian actor in a rather cultish philosophical group whose name eludes me, in particular a film about a rich man's retirement party he gives in praise of himself. It could be purely physiognomy (the son of the retiring monster) but it did occur to me while watching. Touching for the pure human aspect of the film, the heroic humanity of some characters, the subtle and visible transformation of the true believer (Muhe), the cumulative power of all of the aspects of the film is very strong. If there is any better framed and art designed film in the past year I did not see it.
Sherrybaby (2006)
Bring a Razor Blade, Hold the Tape
This is brilliantly acted, at least the probably 35 minutes I could handle it. Gylenhaal is a killer actress, and nobody in the cast disappoints. Thematically tough as hell, this drama of hoping to make it out of a vicious hole the society has created for the vulnerable and addictive personalities among us, is so deadly on target that this thin-skinned great grandfather had to leave, to flee back into the sunlight, as the walk into the abyss...I assume there was an abyss, for nothing suggested otherwise...was emotionally brutalizing.
Bless those who hung in there. Great acting. Wonderful filming, spare and effective script. Was there music? I don't remember, which means the music was right.
Don't Look Now (1973)
What Becomes a Legend Most: Excess
Roeg is revered. A filmmakers filmmaker, he is often called. All that "pure film" aesthetic at play in all criticisms. We bow. But enough, already.
The film story is outlined again and again in previous viewers' opinions, so that we will dispense with. The story is what it is and you either give yourself over to it or not. Wise to say yes, I think. We will also quickly get over the fact of the 70's, when the film was made, when men's hair and clothing left everything to be desired, thus the fine actor, Mr. Sutherland, looks a bit silly in our hindsight, which is all we have now. On the other hand, Julie Christie looks just fine in her suburban housewife's pert clothing, accompanied by a figure that leaves the viewer grateful for the differences in the species.
The semi-famous love scene is semi-good, with that pre-post coital cutting dizzy making and aesthetically wrong. But she is lovely, yes.
The setting could not be better. You could do Chain Saw Massacre in Venice and get my attention. A lovely, dark, romantic, corrupt, atmospheric dream, the sinking city. But...Mr. Roeg far too often gives himself over to his weakness, the eye of an interior decorator. Or a romantic still photographer?
A shot by shot analysis says...oh, nice, great set-up, pretty shot, good eye, oh yes! But when they accumulate as they do you begin to feel as if you are being treated to a soft porn filmmaker's first serious film. Too much of a muchness, as my mother-in-law used to say.
A generally quite good film with too much schlag.
In the Realms of the Unreal (2004)
The Fruits of Loneliness
What a find for the unsuspecting moviegoer. The story is already known: damaged young boy turns into damaged and embittered adult who seeks refuge in a fantasy land influenced by school books, children's literature, and some classics. The result is a monumental work of words and illustrations that result in fame...in death...as an outside artist. The film itself is beautifully made. After ten minutes the doubts that the filmmaker can make this nearly on-liner work is erased, and the world of an unhappy, naive, angry, talented man is joyfully received. Great conceit animating the work, wonderful rendering of the artist's subtle colors (think Bonnard, Vuillard,) and a truly touching look at the soul of a true outsider in every respect. Ah yes, we love the children, always have...on our lips, but in life it has been, and remains, something else.
Monsieur Hire (1989)
A brilliant film of The Outsider, The Perversity of Love, Betrayal
Solid and perfectly paced camera work and direction, players of exquisite talent and nuance, make this Simenon novel a powerful film . The winsomeness and cunning of Bonnaire, one of France's great actresses as the love object; the fanatic and unsettling calm conviction of the police detective played by Andre Wilms; the furtiveness, loneliness, and longing of the brilliant Michel Blanc; and the cowardliness and thugness of Thullier, a man made to play the thug, combine to make both a believable tale and a great metaphor for our need for "the other." The Brahms loop in the vital scenes of longing are a masterful touch. A work of great competence, sensitivity, and truth. What is essential in the novel but too subtly hinted at in the film, is anti-semitism only suggested by the revealing of M. Hire's original family name in questioning by the detective. A truly great film.
Sirens (1994)
A quite imperfect enchanting film
It is not the bosoms, really. No, there is an earnest quality here that is dependent on performances and landscapes and an essential moral tale than on the bounteousness of bums and bosoms frolicking in Australia. Neil is always good, Tara Fitzgerland is fine, and that often one-note Hugh Grant works perfectly as a priggish English priest who opens up ever so slightly when all is said and done. And much is said and some is done. There is some absolutley wonderful photography and some perfectly awful and obvious photography that would make Hallmark blush. Pretty good script with the story wandering about more than a bit. Shorter would have been better and the blue shots of nude statuary of indifferent quality by this nice but hardly profound Australian artist(on whose life and an episode therein, is it based)could have been a one-shot affair for my money. But I liked it for the performances.
Saved! (2004)
Nailing the Jesus Thing
Sure, its a teen film, but it is slightly subversive, definitely has a message, and is smart enough to know not to **ss in the soup so that it still gets an audience to preach to. Fine acting, excellent and often clever and funny script, familiar story line with a Born Again and self-satisfied, inevitably smiling that smile of steel belief core of believers at its center. Even Mary Lee Parker didn't do her usual eye mugging but actually played a part! For those who say the minister is over the top, ya'll come to Orange County (if you are a diabetic please check with your doctor) to be hiply loved to death by faux friendly preachers doing the reduction a absurdum to keep the mindless Lexus divers coming to the 100 million dollar as well as the ordinary tents. A good piece of work that serves a higher value than entertaining, it will be seen by a lot of people who would walk away if the message was "to hell with all belief systems." I think this gang have done a good and socially valuable thing in making a film that is fun to spend a couple of hours with and leaves room for believers.
Assassination Tango (2002)
Great Dance, Great Killer, Great Love Story
This Duvall feature is quirky, touching, beautiful, odd, and by a man whose politics I do not at all like, yet I have to say that its qualities, including the camera work, the cutting, the music, the actors, the spoken script come close to creating a film Fellini would have been pleased to have authored. The crude, centered, killer played by Duvall has such love for his girlfriend's child it is palpable. The character's professionalism in his trade is of the highest order...the highest order in a lowly profession...though in this instance his job does have positive results in terms of assassinating a monster who took refuge in Argentina from Germany.
His little, tightly wound but precise killer is, like the dance which carries the spirit of a place and people in the film, and the panther which his dance teacher admires, is a wary watchful beast whose devotion to the ten year old daughter redeems him in part. Great performances across the board. Gesture, sounds, perfect. Chapeaux.
La balance (1982)
Dirty, Gritty, Seamy Paris
What a nifty top of the B-film heap is this gritty Paris film, complete with love stories going bad, habits going strong, and cars going fast. Leotard has one of the great faces in the world and Nathalie Baye (in this outing new to me on release date) is just spectacularly vulnerable and perhaps a bit duplicitous. I would definitely make this part of my French film library. The film's co-director is from Evanston, Illinois! Bob Swaim has written films and directed them, mostly in France, and obviously learned his B-films on Saturdays with the rest of us and his France by living in it for a long time.
Salmer fra kjøkkenet (2003)
A Scandinavian Love Story
If William Steig had made a film this would have been it. The tone, the sadness, the warmth, the understanding, the yearning, the apartness, and the awkwardness of human relations are all beautifully and unselfconsciously portrayed here by a fine cast. The Volvo driving lead made me think of Alec Guiness as he carried of this offbeat role so successfully. Shot in a spare but deliberate manner to match the simplicity of the story line, the cinematography underlines the mood of place and people without begging the question. If there is a fault it is the music in three or so instances that played to the handkerchiefs in the balcony. These sunless people know how to play the darkness. Chapeau.
Brideshead Revisited (1981)
A Long Way from 1981
I remember stopping at a hotel in Pennsylvania, rather than continue the push to Boston from a driving visit to Ohio. The sole purpose of that stop was to view the final two episodes (they were to be back to back at GBH, probably fund-raising time) with my wife. As it turned out, only one aired that night in Pennsylvania. It was a great series and I had some emotional involvement, having been the editor who republished all the Waugh titles at Little Brown in Boston. But Brideshead night was an event in certain places, Boston being one of them. Visiting Castle Howard this past September conjured this, and upon return my wife and I ordered up the new CD set. It is a long way from 1981 we discover. The series is superb in almost all of its aspects... as film. It is gorgeous, stately, purposefully wispy. The limp and languorous rule. The headstrong heiress has her very common non-Brit (was he an American? I am not clear on that) the marvelous turns of Gielgud and Olivier and Blum and Andrews and Irons, they all fulfill their roles splendidly. The professor/jumper/snitch is great, the stuttering sad and extravagantly gay friend beautifully done, Lord Marchmain...what can you say? These are the best of British acting turning it on. Admiring the acting is essential and perhaps all there is, for the failure to engage this viewer who sat and wondered what anyone saw in anyone else in this human cast was the overarching feeling throughout. I suppose I am saying no redeeming value was seen, except, ironically, in the older brother, impossible prig and fool but devoted to his priggishness and foolishness as a perfect representative of his class, and the young sister who was clearly the only person among the lot who had the ability to empathize.
Fascinating, beautiful, yet so unlikable and lacking in illumination.
I definitely recommend it for theatre, but leave your soulful expectations at the door.
Les invasions barbares (2003)
The Other Bookend
To have created two such marvelous films as this and Decline of the American Empire is remarkable. The director is a stealthy fellow, taking the quotidian and squeezing it...and out pops the profound. Which is not to say that this is obvious in its mechanics. The text, the acting, the cinematography, the musical choices come together to forcefully support the emotional truths of the life of our daily choices, the life of our dreams, and the facing of death. This is, indeed, the other bookend to Decline.... Two films or books, if you will, making a tidy library and fulfilling the goal of art. Merci, merci mille fois.
Le déclin de l'empire américain (1986)
Power Meal
This is an extraordinary, in the very French (this is French Canadian,) slice of life film. Fidelity, infidelity, values, intellectuality, deceit, love, mortality, frienship beautifully explored by a great ensemble playing a great script with heart, no pretension, and to great result. This is one of those "trust me" films, almost inexplicable in its gathering power. Fine art, this.
Swimming Pool (2003)
Gallic Sensuality, British Repression, Sophomoric Mystery
If you long to return to the dear dead days of Antonioni and the "enigma" of plot and life, well, this may be your tasse of tea. Everyone above has hit the plot lines on the mark, even the lovely figure of the young French woman has been commented upon, so it may be that there is not much to say. But then that is my specialty. Rampling sleep-walked through her last role that called for that, given the circumstances of the story. Here she proves that you can use the peculiarity of your epicanthic fold to purpose, though this was known as mugging in the past. The mildly graphic struggle between Mediterranean sensuality and Anglo iciness is a constant dull note. Perhaps her body attitude in the real/imagined bedroom scene with the old man says it all.
A shifting, plodding plot with even the "realistic" aspects (the book publication business at the end is so bad it hurts my teeth)failing to convince, adequate performances, nice grounds add up to a wasted two hours in a season when a lot of good small films are a l'affiche.