The novelty of its subjects, an aboriginal girl group who cut their teeth entertaining the troops in Vietnam, just barely raises this above showbiz cliché. Despite being (loosely) based on a true story, the prejudicial episodes generate more sympathy than a true understanding of Australia’s history with its native population. But this isn’t Rabbit-Proof Fence, nor the failed epic that was Australia, so it doesn’t need to do that, but only to function as a streamlined underdog story with musical interludes. Funniest moment: Chris O’Dowd, as the semi-alcoholic emcee who becomes the group’s manager, telling them to drop their Merle Haggard covers and embrace soul.
IMDb link
viewed 10/26/12 7:20 [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed 10/30/12
Showing posts with label Belgium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belgium. Show all posts
Friday, March 29, 2013
Friday, April 13, 2012
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Copacabana (***1/4)
If ordinary parents worry when their children rebel, what worries parents who are themselves rebellious? If they’re like Babou, the free-spirited mother played by Isabelle Huppert here, they worry that their children’s embrace of stability represents a rejection of their countercultural values. Babou’s daughter, who has followed her to exotic locales before returning to France, now wants to marry her boyfriend and live a normal life. She’s embarrassed by Babou’s antics, like putting on a sari to serve an Indian meal, to the point where she has disinvited her to the wedding.
And so Babou, heartbroken by this rejection, takes a job selling time share in a Belgian beach resort to prove that she too can live a responsible life. Babou walks the line between being fun and self-absorbed, but as a film character she (and Huppert) are entirely charming.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/16/10
And so Babou, heartbroken by this rejection, takes a job selling time share in a Belgian beach resort to prove that she too can live a responsible life. Babou walks the line between being fun and self-absorbed, but as a film character she (and Huppert) are entirely charming.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/16/10
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Australia (**1/4)
They just don’t come any bigger than this continent-size epic from director Baz Luhrmann, best known for Moulin Rouge. Set in the early part of World War II, the film offers two leads who exude old Hollywood star quality, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The clear antecedent for Kidman would seem to be Kate Hepburn in The African Queen; she is, in this case, a posh Englishwoman, Lady Ashley, alarmed by the rough-and-tumble Aussie town of Darwin, which offers up every cliché of old westerns (fightin’, cussin’, drinkin’, etc.) in the first ten minutes. Luhrmann, a master of style, makes it all look smashing (sometimes literally). Later on, he fills the screen with expensive-looking aerial shots as the lady predictably learns to embrace the Outback. She is plucky, it seems. Jackman’s character is a cattle drover; helpfully, he is called Mr. Drover. He helps Lady Ashley round up the cattle she’s trying to sell. They bicker like Hepburn and Humprey Bogart in African Queen; much more quickly, they follow the cinematic law requiring that the two most attractive-seeming characters must eventually stop bickering and hook up.
However, this does not purport to be what the movie is about. Nor is it about Australia’s role in World War II, though as it happens Darwin was bombed by the Japanese, the attack faithfully re-created in the second half of the feature. But the story the movie claims to tell is that of Australia’s “stolen generations” of mixed-race children subjected to a kind of forced assimilation that only ended in 1973. The narrator is a small boy (Brandon Walters) who, as the son of a white man and an aborigine, is subject to being captured and sent to be re-educated by missionaries. The boy’s grandfather, steeped in the old ways, is a recurring “magical black man.”
Luhrman, though an Aussie, tells this story in the way Hollywood always tells this kind of story, by framing it in the glow of a grand love affair between forward-thinking white folks. It’s not apparent that either Drover or Lady Ashley has ever entertained a racist thought. More interesting might be seeing a character overcome racism, but this is not that sort of a movie, obvious racism being, in this context, a proxy to identify the villain, who wants to acquire Lady Ashley’s land for a fraction of cost.
Superficially, one can level a similar criticism at most any movie with rich/noble white main characters and poor/discriminated-against natives. The similarly epic (and continentally titled) Out of Africa comes to mind. But that romantic drama is, simply put, much better. It’s a movie for grown-ups, with characters exceeding the minimum requirements for complexity and shades of subtlety in the plotting. The music score is better, too. Here, on the other hand, is mere spectacle. The dialogue is typically spouted out as if the script is written in ALL CAPS, though memorable lines are in short supply. Jackman is a perfect combination of Bogart and Robert Redford—a ruffian who cleans up extremely well. (Kidman makes less of an impression, and the chemistry between the two is lacking.) The cattle stampede in the first half can’t help but sweep you up in the excitement. There is action, there is romance, there is drama, there is—crikey!—a dash of comedy. But any real depth of feeling is missing. Australia borrows its sentiment overtly, from The Wizard of Oz. The brief Judy Garland clip is more touching than any of the new footage. (The characters watch the movie in 1939, though as it happens the film did not open Down Under until the next year.) The climactic, presumably cathartic, moment, after two and a half hours, begat titters of laughter from the audience I saw this with, such is the magnitude of the cliché.
I might yet recommend Australia but for this: It is a nearly three-hour movie in which not one truly surprising thing happens. The closest might be when a crocodile bite becomes a major plot point, which is hardly a recommendation. In the end, whether you like this one depends on what you look for in a movie. To me, whereas a film such as Moulin Rouge could succeed on little more than panache, set design, and catchy tunes, the epic requires more substance. Australia recalls great adventure movies of the past, like the ones mentioned above (even the credits font is like that of Casablanca), but the comparison does not flatter. The film to which it truly invites comparison is the formulaic Pearl Harbor, although, blessedly, that film’s corpulent third act is without analogue here. At the very least, this movie doesn’t seem any longer than it is.
There is, as it happens, a movie that more directly tackles the subject of “stolen generations,” and that is Rabbit-Proof Fence. It’s far superior to this exercise in schmaltz.
IMDB link
viewed 11/24/08 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 11/25/08
However, this does not purport to be what the movie is about. Nor is it about Australia’s role in World War II, though as it happens Darwin was bombed by the Japanese, the attack faithfully re-created in the second half of the feature. But the story the movie claims to tell is that of Australia’s “stolen generations” of mixed-race children subjected to a kind of forced assimilation that only ended in 1973. The narrator is a small boy (Brandon Walters) who, as the son of a white man and an aborigine, is subject to being captured and sent to be re-educated by missionaries. The boy’s grandfather, steeped in the old ways, is a recurring “magical black man.”
Luhrman, though an Aussie, tells this story in the way Hollywood always tells this kind of story, by framing it in the glow of a grand love affair between forward-thinking white folks. It’s not apparent that either Drover or Lady Ashley has ever entertained a racist thought. More interesting might be seeing a character overcome racism, but this is not that sort of a movie, obvious racism being, in this context, a proxy to identify the villain, who wants to acquire Lady Ashley’s land for a fraction of cost.
Superficially, one can level a similar criticism at most any movie with rich/noble white main characters and poor/discriminated-against natives. The similarly epic (and continentally titled) Out of Africa comes to mind. But that romantic drama is, simply put, much better. It’s a movie for grown-ups, with characters exceeding the minimum requirements for complexity and shades of subtlety in the plotting. The music score is better, too. Here, on the other hand, is mere spectacle. The dialogue is typically spouted out as if the script is written in ALL CAPS, though memorable lines are in short supply. Jackman is a perfect combination of Bogart and Robert Redford—a ruffian who cleans up extremely well. (Kidman makes less of an impression, and the chemistry between the two is lacking.) The cattle stampede in the first half can’t help but sweep you up in the excitement. There is action, there is romance, there is drama, there is—crikey!—a dash of comedy. But any real depth of feeling is missing. Australia borrows its sentiment overtly, from The Wizard of Oz. The brief Judy Garland clip is more touching than any of the new footage. (The characters watch the movie in 1939, though as it happens the film did not open Down Under until the next year.) The climactic, presumably cathartic, moment, after two and a half hours, begat titters of laughter from the audience I saw this with, such is the magnitude of the cliché.
I might yet recommend Australia but for this: It is a nearly three-hour movie in which not one truly surprising thing happens. The closest might be when a crocodile bite becomes a major plot point, which is hardly a recommendation. In the end, whether you like this one depends on what you look for in a movie. To me, whereas a film such as Moulin Rouge could succeed on little more than panache, set design, and catchy tunes, the epic requires more substance. Australia recalls great adventure movies of the past, like the ones mentioned above (even the credits font is like that of Casablanca), but the comparison does not flatter. The film to which it truly invites comparison is the formulaic Pearl Harbor, although, blessedly, that film’s corpulent third act is without analogue here. At the very least, this movie doesn’t seem any longer than it is.
There is, as it happens, a movie that more directly tackles the subject of “stolen generations,” and that is Rabbit-Proof Fence. It’s far superior to this exercise in schmaltz.
IMDB link
viewed 11/24/08 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 11/25/08
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Nothing to Lose (***1/2)
As in The Fugitive, a convicted killer (Theo Maassen) escapes and sets out to prove his innocence, yet this story, based on an actual case, is far removed from that. That it’s the work of a Belgian, Pieter Kuijpers, who made another good crime drama, Godforsaken, is one reason. Another is that, for much of the film, the escapee is in the company of a thirteen-year-old girl (Lisa Smit) he’s taken as a hostage. Most significantly, the characters make the film unique. For one thing, it’s clear that, innocent or not, the convict is no Richard Kimble. His escape is from a facility for the criminally insane. At times the film operates like a thriller, as when he tries to flee the country. At others, it is more of a drama, but with the tension of wondering whether the girl is right as she begins to trust him, and without undue sentimentality.
IMDB link
viewed 4/13/08 (Philadelphia Film Festival); reviewed 8/8/2010
IMDB link
viewed 4/13/08 (Philadelphia Film Festival); reviewed 8/8/2010
Friday, February 15, 2008
In Bruges (***)
I’ve never understood why people like seeing the same old locations over and over again. Playwright-cum-filmmaker Martin McDonagh must have thought that too. Inspired by a trip to what’s referred to here as the “best-preserved medieval town in he whole of Belgium,” he decided to set a comedy-thriller about a couple of Irish hit men there. Brendan Gleeson is the older and wiser of the two, an old pro who relishes the opportunity to do a little sightseeing, while Colin Farrell is the neophyte, whose interest in Belgian culture extends only to the beer and the women. (“If I’d grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”)
As the two partners in crime await the call from their boss (Ralph Fiennes), who’s sent them to the Flemish city to hide out after a botched job, they bicker, sightsee, drink, and somehow pick a fight with a dwarf who’s in town filming a movie. While edging toward buddy comedy on the one hand, it has a serious side also, and it is this that drives the climax, which moves into thriller territory. The one thing missing is anything about Belgium. Entirely in English, the movie merely uses the locale for scenery.
There’s something contrived about the plotting, especially the too-perfect, almost Shakespearean ending, and these guys seem a bit too nice to be hit men, but it’s undeniably clever, and the comedy comes naturally off the interplay of the two principals. Offering a little something for every taste, this is a good movie for people disagreeing about what to see.
IMDB link
viewed 2/7/08; reviewed 2/14/08
As the two partners in crime await the call from their boss (Ralph Fiennes), who’s sent them to the Flemish city to hide out after a botched job, they bicker, sightsee, drink, and somehow pick a fight with a dwarf who’s in town filming a movie. While edging toward buddy comedy on the one hand, it has a serious side also, and it is this that drives the climax, which moves into thriller territory. The one thing missing is anything about Belgium. Entirely in English, the movie merely uses the locale for scenery.
There’s something contrived about the plotting, especially the too-perfect, almost Shakespearean ending, and these guys seem a bit too nice to be hit men, but it’s undeniably clever, and the comedy comes naturally off the interplay of the two principals. Offering a little something for every taste, this is a good movie for people disagreeing about what to see.
IMDB link
viewed 2/7/08; reviewed 2/14/08
Friday, April 14, 2006
The Child (***1/2)
The two primary characters in this drama are a teenage girl (Déborah François) who’s just given birth, and her boyfriend (Jérémie Renier), who was not around for the event, but has managed to rent out her flat, without telling her, during her hospital stay. A petty criminal, he makes a living, but not a good one, stealing and fencing small electronics and the like. For him, everything is a commodity; the cruel decision he makes is without intention. He has not disregarded his girlfriend’s feelings, but simply not thought of them. The consequences of the decision play out in Seraing, a decaying industrial town in the French-speaking part of Belgium.
Seraing is also the hometown of the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the writing-directing team who seem to be a Belgian counterpart to the British Ken Loach, known for his social realism. The characters in this movie, unsophisticated and seemingly without ambition, are the type of people left behind in cities like Seraing. The barren (yet striking) settings the Dardennes utilize—a key sequence is set on abandoned property below a highway—are suggestive of their lives.
What’s most unusual about the film, and different from Loach’s approach, is its detached point of view. It’s as if the Dardennes simply trained their camera on these people and watched them behave. The viewer is allowed to make his own judgments, and to imagine what will happen to them after the story ends.
IMDB link
viewed on DVD 6/30/10 and reviewed 6/30/10 and 8/7/10
Seraing is also the hometown of the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the writing-directing team who seem to be a Belgian counterpart to the British Ken Loach, known for his social realism. The characters in this movie, unsophisticated and seemingly without ambition, are the type of people left behind in cities like Seraing. The barren (yet striking) settings the Dardennes utilize—a key sequence is set on abandoned property below a highway—are suggestive of their lives.
What’s most unusual about the film, and different from Loach’s approach, is its detached point of view. It’s as if the Dardennes simply trained their camera on these people and watched them behave. The viewer is allowed to make his own judgments, and to imagine what will happen to them after the story ends.
IMDB link
viewed on DVD 6/30/10 and reviewed 6/30/10 and 8/7/10
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