Did seeing The Artist make you wish for another black-and-white homage to silent film? Look no further than this Spanish effort. Where The Artist tweaks silent-film conventions, this one plays it just about straight. Though still playful, if not quite comedic, at times, it’s mostly an old-fashioned melodrama, beginning with twin tragedies, continuing with a wicked stepmother, and winding up with (mostly) good-natured dwarves. As the title‘s translation suggests, it’s infused with fairy-tale elements…and bullfighting.
The key character, the long-suffering Carmen, is played by the appealing Sofía Oria as a girl and by Macarena García as a young woman. (Maribel Verdú, of Y tu mamá también and Pan’s Labyrinth, has a prominent role. This kind of slightly unreal story, set in the 1920s, is the perfect kind of story for a silent film. It’s didn’t grab me as immediately as The Artist (though in time), but it was almost as lovely to look at, with scenes set in a lush mansion, enormous arenas, and the open landscape. The score by Alfonso de Vilallonga is tremendously varied and truly carries the film along, and the ending, while not to every taste, is slightly mysterious, mostly surprising, and entirely fitting.
IMDb link
viewed at Ritz 5 7:35 pm 5/8/13 and reviewed 5/8/13
Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts
Friday, April 19, 2013
Friday, June 1, 2012
For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (**1/2)
Sometimes movies are a nice way to get a primer on a less-known historical event, and I confess my ignorance about Mexico’s Cristero War of 1926–1929. This followed President Plutarco Elias Calles’s attempts to enforce strict rules against the Catholic Church, including criticism of the government by priests and the wearing of clerical vestments in public. Understandably, the drama is presented from the point of view of the rebels and their “fight for freedom,” as the opening titles put it. There are no subtitles, as the dialogue is all in English.
Primarily, the story focuses on Enrique Gorostieta Velarde (Andy Garcia), a general with atheistic leanings hired to lead the scattered rebels. Other segments follow one of the female contingent of Cristeros (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who transported ammunition and other equipment; President Calles (Rubén Blades) and his efforts to contain the rebels; a barely teenage boy swayed to the rebel cause by an elderly priest (Peter O’Toole); and a few of the other Cristero leaders, who included priests. Eva Longoria has a small role as the general’s devout wife. Although O’Toole lifts his few scenes, and I enjoyed watching Bruce Greenwood, as the American ambassador, negotiate with the Mexican president, most of the strongest sequences are with Garcia. The exceptions are the ones in which he forms a father-son bond with the boy. Although not as corny as it could have been, this relationship is the most obviously fictionalized thing about a movie that simplifies, but does seem to be basically accurate as to the important facts about the rebellion.
What it doesn’t do is present a historical context or explain why the president believed that the Church needed to be suppressed. It is clearly meant to be inspirational, and even if the historical figures portrayed here had all been as uniformly heroic and brave as is presented, what is inspirational is not always compelling. However, in this case it is at least competent, and, under first-time director Dean Wright, a veteran visual effects producer, it’s always nice to look at, including the brief but frequent battle scenes.
viewed 5/23/12 7:00 pm at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/23/12
Primarily, the story focuses on Enrique Gorostieta Velarde (Andy Garcia), a general with atheistic leanings hired to lead the scattered rebels. Other segments follow one of the female contingent of Cristeros (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who transported ammunition and other equipment; President Calles (Rubén Blades) and his efforts to contain the rebels; a barely teenage boy swayed to the rebel cause by an elderly priest (Peter O’Toole); and a few of the other Cristero leaders, who included priests. Eva Longoria has a small role as the general’s devout wife. Although O’Toole lifts his few scenes, and I enjoyed watching Bruce Greenwood, as the American ambassador, negotiate with the Mexican president, most of the strongest sequences are with Garcia. The exceptions are the ones in which he forms a father-son bond with the boy. Although not as corny as it could have been, this relationship is the most obviously fictionalized thing about a movie that simplifies, but does seem to be basically accurate as to the important facts about the rebellion.
What it doesn’t do is present a historical context or explain why the president believed that the Church needed to be suppressed. It is clearly meant to be inspirational, and even if the historical figures portrayed here had all been as uniformly heroic and brave as is presented, what is inspirational is not always compelling. However, in this case it is at least competent, and, under first-time director Dean Wright, a veteran visual effects producer, it’s always nice to look at, including the brief but frequent battle scenes.
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Artist (***3/4)
As a child, one favorite of mine was Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie (1976), a nearly silent movie about a latter-day effort to make a silent movie. In its opening, this irresistible effort from Michel Hazanavicius — who’s French — goes Brooks one better in the movie-within-a-movie department by being a silent movie set at the gala Hollywood premiere of a silent movie whose star, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, star of Hazanavicius’s OSS 117 spy spoofs), is both onscreen and backstage. Hazanavicius has great fun confusing what’s happening with what’s on screen. Valentin’s accidental encounter with a young female fan, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), sparks her Star Is Born-style ascent as the sound era dawns. That revolution, which doomed many a real career, creates irony and pathos as Valentin (whose name recalls silent star Rudolph Valentino) resists adaptation and Miller embraces the change, the irony being that we, the audience, can’t hear her voice.
Far from being ponderous, Hazanavicius’s film playfully relies on our collective storehouse of Hollywood tropes to both celebrate and satirize movie history. The lack of audible dialogue creates humor that only works in that context, where imagination supplies what is missing. As does music. Even people who rarely notice a film’s soundtrack might notice its heightened importance here, and Ludovic Bource’s score gorgeously sets the mood, though it’s more representative of the early sound era, especially when it cops Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo theme for the climax. While never abandoning the comic overtones, Hazanavicius reminds us of how, even in its earliest days, cinema had the power to move us in ways different from earlier media.
IMDB link
viewed 10/27/11 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed 12/22/11
Far from being ponderous, Hazanavicius’s film playfully relies on our collective storehouse of Hollywood tropes to both celebrate and satirize movie history. The lack of audible dialogue creates humor that only works in that context, where imagination supplies what is missing. As does music. Even people who rarely notice a film’s soundtrack might notice its heightened importance here, and Ludovic Bource’s score gorgeously sets the mood, though it’s more representative of the early sound era, especially when it cops Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo theme for the climax. While never abandoning the comic overtones, Hazanavicius reminds us of how, even in its earliest days, cinema had the power to move us in ways different from earlier media.
IMDB link
Friday, November 11, 2011
J. Edgar (***)
J. Edgar Hoover served the United States Department of Justice for over 50 years, the last 48 (1924–1972) as head of what was called simply the Bureau of Investigation when he joined. So it’s a daunting task to sum up that career in a two-hour film, as director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) have tried to do.
Hoover may be better remembered today for clashing with Bobby Kennedy and trying to discredit Martin Luther King in the 1960s, or for his long relationship with his assistant, Clyde Tolson. But he also created the modern FBI and brought a professionalism to the task of catching criminals, even as the methods he sanctioned stirred controversies that reverberate in these days of warrantless wiretaps and detention without trial. Black and Eastwood devote considerable time to the anti-communist Palmer raids, which made Hoover’s name, and to the Lindbergh kidnapping, which, when solved, solidified his reputation as a crime fighter. A fictional device—Hoover is supposed to be dictating a memoir—frames the 1920s, '30s and '40s segments and gives us Hoover in decline (but still wielding power) while skipping over the 1950s entirely.
The hoary flashback structure doesn’t reveal any notable contrast in the older and younger man, aside from the almost-convincing make-up job on DiCaprio. (In that regard, I thought Naomi Watts, as Hoover’s longtime secretary, and Armie Hammer, as Tolson, were more convincingly aged.) Insofar as Hoover’s view of himself and law enforcement were concerned, he seems to have emerged fully formed in his 20s. Watching the ever-confident Hoover in action is engaging, but rarely exciting. I wonder if a musical score would have helped. Hoover most comes to life in the personal scenes. He seems only to have been close to two people, his mother (Judi Dench), who made him courageous, and Tolson. Tolson, as played by Hammer, humanizes the Hoover character, and even if you have contempt for the man’s self-aggrandizing and legally questionable tactics, the singular devotion of these men seems creditable.
Eastwood takes no clear view on whether Hoover was justified, mostly presenting Hoover as he saw himself. He takes a middle road as to the Tolson relationship. It can scarcely be doubted that these men who dined together, vacationed together, and had no other serious relationships had a romantic attachment, and Black’s screenplay assumes that. However, given how little is known about how they behaved in private, the period of Hoover’s adulthood being an age when privacy was granted to public figures, it shows wise restraint as far as sexual matters. The audience is allowed to assume what they will as regards this while it is suggested that Hoover’s upbringing, his nature, and the times would have made him disinclined to violate propriety. If there is one thing that unites Hoover’s anticommunism, his distrust of agitators like King, and his fierce approach to ordinary criminals, not to mention his careful habits of dress and speech, it seems to be a true distaste for disorder or change.
viewed 1/11/2012 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/11/2012
Hoover may be better remembered today for clashing with Bobby Kennedy and trying to discredit Martin Luther King in the 1960s, or for his long relationship with his assistant, Clyde Tolson. But he also created the modern FBI and brought a professionalism to the task of catching criminals, even as the methods he sanctioned stirred controversies that reverberate in these days of warrantless wiretaps and detention without trial. Black and Eastwood devote considerable time to the anti-communist Palmer raids, which made Hoover’s name, and to the Lindbergh kidnapping, which, when solved, solidified his reputation as a crime fighter. A fictional device—Hoover is supposed to be dictating a memoir—frames the 1920s, '30s and '40s segments and gives us Hoover in decline (but still wielding power) while skipping over the 1950s entirely.
The hoary flashback structure doesn’t reveal any notable contrast in the older and younger man, aside from the almost-convincing make-up job on DiCaprio. (In that regard, I thought Naomi Watts, as Hoover’s longtime secretary, and Armie Hammer, as Tolson, were more convincingly aged.) Insofar as Hoover’s view of himself and law enforcement were concerned, he seems to have emerged fully formed in his 20s. Watching the ever-confident Hoover in action is engaging, but rarely exciting. I wonder if a musical score would have helped. Hoover most comes to life in the personal scenes. He seems only to have been close to two people, his mother (Judi Dench), who made him courageous, and Tolson. Tolson, as played by Hammer, humanizes the Hoover character, and even if you have contempt for the man’s self-aggrandizing and legally questionable tactics, the singular devotion of these men seems creditable.
Eastwood takes no clear view on whether Hoover was justified, mostly presenting Hoover as he saw himself. He takes a middle road as to the Tolson relationship. It can scarcely be doubted that these men who dined together, vacationed together, and had no other serious relationships had a romantic attachment, and Black’s screenplay assumes that. However, given how little is known about how they behaved in private, the period of Hoover’s adulthood being an age when privacy was granted to public figures, it shows wise restraint as far as sexual matters. The audience is allowed to assume what they will as regards this while it is suggested that Hoover’s upbringing, his nature, and the times would have made him disinclined to violate propriety. If there is one thing that unites Hoover’s anticommunism, his distrust of agitators like King, and his fierce approach to ordinary criminals, not to mention his careful habits of dress and speech, it seems to be a true distaste for disorder or change.
viewed 1/11/2012 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/11/2012
Friday, June 3, 2011
Midnight in Paris (***)
Peripatetic in old age, Woody Allen has made a romantic comedy Europe’s most fabled romantic city. But it’s the past, specifically the 1920s, that Gil (Owen Wilson) romanticizes. Engaged to a modern girl (Rachel McAdams), he’s writing a novel about a nostalgia shop, hoping to wean himself from his lucrative Hollywood screenwriting career. But his vacation becomes a very literal nostalgia trip when he’s transported, again literally, to the era of Cole Porter, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Porter’s performance (or that of the actor playing Porter) of his own composition “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” and other clues suggest that it is 1929.
Despite the highbrow trappings, what this is really like is Woody’s version of all of those body-switching comedies that appear every so often. Gil stays in the same body, but experiences a different time. He learns, more or less, the same lessons, though. Of course, it helps to enjoy the movie if you have any affinity for the famous figures of old, and particularly if you can remember such slightly lesser lights as the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Woody doesn’t work hard to set up the premise, and I have no idea how authentic the portrayals are. It doesn’t matter; they’re just there to be amusing celebrities, like all of the folks Tom Hanks runs into in Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gump had an emotional arc to it too, though, whereas this stays strictly on the light side. It is far less deep than Hanks’s own body-switching comedy, Big. It succeeds by virtue of a cute premise, not the paint-by-numbers execution of the premise. Even before Gil meets a sweet 1920s artist “groupie” played by Marion Cotillard—Gil’s use of the term “groupie” confuses her— it’s obvious that he and the fiancée are a lousy couple. Gil himself is an amalgamation of the ornery characters Allen used to play and the boyish ones Wilson usually does. Otherwise Allen sticks with the sort of upper-middle-class and wealthy, sometimes pompous, intellectual characters who populate most of his recent films. Allen does do one clever thing with the time-travel premise. He nicely indulges his love of early jazz in the soundtrack. And he lovingly depicts the city of Paris, especially lovely, as Gil would argue, in the rain, notably in a long, loving montage that sets the mood during the opening credits. Classy fluff, this one.
viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/22/11
Despite the highbrow trappings, what this is really like is Woody’s version of all of those body-switching comedies that appear every so often. Gil stays in the same body, but experiences a different time. He learns, more or less, the same lessons, though. Of course, it helps to enjoy the movie if you have any affinity for the famous figures of old, and particularly if you can remember such slightly lesser lights as the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Woody doesn’t work hard to set up the premise, and I have no idea how authentic the portrayals are. It doesn’t matter; they’re just there to be amusing celebrities, like all of the folks Tom Hanks runs into in Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gump had an emotional arc to it too, though, whereas this stays strictly on the light side. It is far less deep than Hanks’s own body-switching comedy, Big. It succeeds by virtue of a cute premise, not the paint-by-numbers execution of the premise. Even before Gil meets a sweet 1920s artist “groupie” played by Marion Cotillard—Gil’s use of the term “groupie” confuses her— it’s obvious that he and the fiancée are a lousy couple. Gil himself is an amalgamation of the ornery characters Allen used to play and the boyish ones Wilson usually does. Otherwise Allen sticks with the sort of upper-middle-class and wealthy, sometimes pompous, intellectual characters who populate most of his recent films. Allen does do one clever thing with the time-travel premise. He nicely indulges his love of early jazz in the soundtrack. And he lovingly depicts the city of Paris, especially lovely, as Gil would argue, in the rain, notably in a long, loving montage that sets the mood during the opening credits. Classy fluff, this one.
viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/22/11
Friday, April 4, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)