Goodbye to Language 3D (*1/2)

Jean-Luc Goddard began pushing cinematic boundaries with his very first feature, Breathless. Even into his 80s, he’s keeping up with the times, using 3D to create arresting visuals, usually with at least one element seeming almost to touch the viewer. Whether abandoning any notion of traditional narrative can be considered boundary-pushing is another story. But “story” is not a word one would associate with this collection of philosophy, classical music, occasional screeching car noises, and ever-changing images. There are recurring characters, but they do not have anything resembling normal conversation. Or, not for more than a few lines, anyway. Most of the time they, or a narrator, are saying things like, “Animals are not naked, because they are naked.” In one of the more straightforward scenes, a man sitting on the toilet explains to his lover how everyone is equal when they poop. They are both naked. (Or, perhaps, not naked.) In another, the man says that zero and infinity are humankind’s greatest discoveries. No, she says, sex and death are. Hitler is discussed as well as the French Revolution. Several scenes feature a dog, hence the above quote. Others feature blood. Sometimes Godard is clearly being playful, as when he blends two shots so that by closing one or the other eye I saw a completely different image. In other shots he’s used filters to distort the image or the colors.

Beyond the lack of a plot, having all of the dialogue be quotes (from Satre, etc.) and non sequiturs, plus the car noises, made this a seriously annoying movie to watch. It’s slightly redeemed by some truly innovative 3D images and by not also being glacially paced. Quite possibly I am a philistine missing Godard’s genius. I definitely missed whatever he was trying to achieve.

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viewed 10/22/14 6:45 p.m. at Prince Music Theater [Philadelphia Film Festival]

Tuba Atlantic [short] (***1/4)

This absurdist, Norwegian mini-fable about a seaside-dwelling eccentric given six days to live is not for every taste, particularly the tastes of those who mind seeing birds harmed. Naturally, the codger decides to spend his last days ridding his vicinity of the seagulls whose constant presence ruins his tranquility. However, the unexpected arrival of a teenage girl, while not deterring the former project, inspires him to complete another one that began long ago.

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viewed 2/17/12 9:35 at Ritz Bourse [Oscar-nominated live-action shorts program] and reviewed 2/18/12

Margaret (****)

I suppose fans of HBO’s True Blood, or at least of Anna Paquin being in it, should be happy this sat on the shelf so long before getting a little-publicized release. The actress had had a few good roles since winning her Oscar in 1993, but not too many leads as a young adult. But I think had this come out around 2005, when it was filmed, it’s easy to imagine she would have been deluged with film roles that might have kept her off the small screen. The film also partly answers the question of what filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, whose other movie was 2000’s terrific You Can Count on Me, has been up to since Gangs of New York (2002), on which he is one of the credited screenwriters.

Given its novelistic sweep—it has just one main character, Paquin’s, and takes place over only a few months, yet there is a lot of stuff stuffed into the film, which clocks in at 160 minutes—I’d want to ask Lonergan several questions if I could. But if I were to pick one, I’d be tempted to ask about one two-second shot in particular. This is after Paquin’s character—Lisa, not Margaret—a Manhattan high school student, tells a young man who’s called her that she isn’t in the mood to talk. Lonergan then cuts away to the suitor, who’s shown breaking down in tears. He’s a minor character who plays no part in the rest of the story. Maybe it’s only there to show what sort of boy she’s rejected. Or maybe it’s there because quite a lot of the film is about how people react to other people. But I kind of think it’s there because Lonergan wants to show us everything. This may have had something to do with why it took so long to finish the film.

If I were to tell you what the movie is about, I would say it’s about this young woman whose chance flirtation with a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) leads to a tragic accident. Yet it’s also about her relationship with her divorced parents (she plans to visit her father in California), her classmates (the Jewish Lisa and a Muslim classmate clash over foreign policy in history class), a teacher (Matt Damon), and a woman she encounters as a result of the tragedy. Mired in editing problems for years, the released version has been criticized for being messy, and it is.

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viewed 10/19/11 at Ritz East and reviewed 10/19/11

How to Live Forever (***)

If only Mark Wexler’s documentary lived up to the promise of the title, maybe more people would have seen it. But he doesn’t know, and neither do any of the people he speaks to about the subject, although some think they do. (Wexler helpfully flashes everyone’s age on screen.) One of the better-known names—fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne—has already passed on, which is, as he notes, bad for business. Physical activity is a common theme here. Buster Martin, claimed to be Britain’s oldest worker, entered a marathon. (Martin, like LaLanne, died in 2011.) Eating well is another commonality. The Okinawans, renowned for their longevity, eat lots of nutrient-rich but low-calorie foods, and one of the sharper centenarians says she’s a vegetarian. So, by tradition, are the Seventh-Day Adventists, although Wexler doesn’t mention it when he pays a visit to some of them. The universal element, evident among the old folks and advocated, one way or another, by the experts, is a positive attitude.

The organizing principle of the film is Wexler’s own discomfiture about his own mortality. He’s one of the documentary filmmakers who sticks himself onscreen a lot, like Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, only without the humor, politics, or even a strong point of view. Frankly, his concerns about aging are no different than most people’s, so the parts of the movie that dwell on them are dull. However, they add up to ten minutes at most. The rest is just a look at attitudes on aging, or extending life, from a lot of perspectives. This includes, but does not emphasize, the scientific. Famed futurist Ray Kruzweil is among those who believe that within a couple of decades scientists will be able to retard or reverse the aging process. It includes the philosophical, like Sherwin Nuland, who believes we have a duty to make way for the next generation. And it includes the nutty, like the founder of Laughter Yoga International (in—guess where—Los Angeles), whose particular brand of anti-aging therapy would, I felt certain, quickly kill me were I forced to engage in it every day. It was annoying enough to watch. I could’ve also done without the man-on-the-street interviews in which Wexler asks folks whether they’d take a pill that would let them live 500 years. This must be the laziest, though common enough, documentary-film technique in existence.

The (really) old folks themselves have the best perspectives. They all have the positive attitude, but they don’t really know why they’ve lived so long. Their good advice is about how to live, not how to live forever. If that inspires you, thank Mr. Wexler for gathering them all in one film.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 7/21/11

Please Give (***1/2)

Nicole Holofcener’s fourth film as writer director might be her best. Like her last one, Friends with Money, it’s also about money, in a way, though not about friends. Kate (Holofcener regular Catherine Keener) and her husband (Oliver Platt) have money; they make it by taking the furnishings of the dead to resell at a profit. She feels guilty about this, and he doesn’t. The other main characters are sisters whose elderly grandmother lives next door. Neither sister particularly likes the grandmother, who can be blunt. But one sister (Rebecca Hall) feels guilty about this, and the other (Amanda Peet) doesn’t. Holofcener’s last two movies were set in Los Angeles, but she returns to a Manhattan setting here. In such dense locations, where wealth and poverty are closer together, it’s harder to avoid noticing the difference. Kate routinely gives $5 bills to homeless people. She seeks out volunteer opportunities that she doesn’t particularly like but feels like she ought to.

The scene I most remember from Lovely & Amazing, Holofcener’s second film, is the one in which Emily Mortimer’s character asks her boyfriend to critique her figure, body part by body part, as she stands naked before him. This film also stands out in the way it looks at women’s relationship to their own looks. This is primarily, but not solely, seen in the character of the teen daughter, who frets over her body too, but particularly her acne. Wondrously, the actress who plays her looks like, or is made to look like, a genuinely pimpled teen girl. Less believable is the primary sexual liaison in the movie, which serves some story functions but seems unlikely.

These themes all mix in the same kind of character-driven story as in Friends with Money. There is, in the aggregate, less self-absorption on display, but some of that, and some unkindness too. It’s not a great movie for people who want the characters to always be likable, though again it’s better than Friends with Money on that score. However, only the sister played by Rebecca Hall is particularly admirable. The story has a natural ending to it, but doesn’t try to resolve all of the issues it brings up. This is an approach I find quite appealing.

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viewed 7/1/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 7/1–6/10

Departures (***1/4)

The surprise Academy Award winner in the foreign-language film category is, for awhile, something like a Japanese Six Feet Under. Happily married but unhappily laid off (from playing cello in a bankrupt, second-tier Tokyo orchestra), timid Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) returns to his hometown and half accidentally takes a job “encoffining” the deceased. Some of the early scenes are played for laughs, as when Kobayashi’s first job turns out to be playing the deceased in a training video. Gradually, the humor gives way to a sort of circle-of-life vibe, as we see how the job—one heavily stigmatized in Japan—is not about caring for the dead so much as comforting the living. Probably the sequences in which Kobayashi performs his rituals could be edited a bit more tightly, and the story arc is predictable, but the setting is novel and the actors playing Kobayashi’s calm boss (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and chipper wife (Ryoko Hirosue) are appealing. The movie works a little hard to be “moving,” but, aided by the Joe Hisaishi score, actually is at times.

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viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/24/09

Don’t Look Down (**3/4)

Sensuality reigns in this Argentine tale of a stilt-walking, sleepwalking young man whose chance meeting with a slightly older woman of the world changes his life. Or at least his sex life. As the above description suggests, there are a few quirks in both the story and the young man, who thinks his recently deceased father is writing messages in his diary while he sleeps. Death and sex are significant themes, mixing in a way I didn’t quite grasp. However, sex predominates, as the Spanish señorita teaches the young man how to thrust 81 times without climaxing, not to mention such positions as the “Monkey Coiling Around a Tree.” That this Jean Brodie of copulation is played by lovely Antonella Costa helps, since she’s naked in half of her scenes. (Fairly, lead Leandro Stivelman also reveals “Marlon,” the nickname his appendage is given—yes, after Brando—in the movie.) Undoubtedly, this is a cut above the late-night pay cable flicks it comes close to resembling at times. But classy eroticism, light comic touches, and impressive visuals (not merely the sex, but the stilt-walking) don’t completely make up for the lack of any substantial plot.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz East 2 (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 4/6/09

Manon on the Asphalt (***1/2) [2009 Oscar-nominated shorts program]

Struck by a car on her bike, a young woman’s life passes before her eyes as she lies dying. From the mundane (she hopes her panties aren’t showing), her thoughts range to how friends and family might receive the bad news, to the final acts that she had unknowingly undertaken (“May 20—last time I got caught in the rain”), and to the things she’ll never get to experience. This bittersweet, lovely French film makes an ideal short, an essentially plotless exposition of an idea that fits perfectly into a 15-minute space.

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viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/11/09

Ghost Town (***1/4)

If The Sixth Sense had been a comedy, it probably still wouldn’t be much like this. But that’s the idea, anyway. Misanthropic, pudgy New York dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) can see dead people because he was dead, too. Metaphorically, sure, but also, temporarily, during surgery. The city is purgatory to souls with unfinished business, and now Bertram is besieged by them, most persistently by Greg Kinnear’s character, a philanderer who dies cute in the opening sequence and wants Bertram to break up his wife’s (Téa Leoni) new relationship.

So, being an example of what I call the gimmick movie, i.e. the alternate-reality fantasy, Ghost Town must be compared to my favorite example of such, Groundhog Day. I think that’s the best one in terms of exploring all permutations of its premise (reliving the same day over and over), and doing do so cleverly. Now, this is not quite as elegant in its plotting or the way it explores the possibilities of its premise. The ending feels forced. It makes amusing sense that the dead have to wear the clothes they died in, but where are all the old people? Maybe only the young have unfinished business.

But overall the story engages, and there’s a similar sense of romance. Even though it’s the first starring role for Gervais where he hasn’t been the writer or director, it seems as if crafted in mind of his comic persona. Director David Koepp and co-writer John Kamps also collaborated on another fantasy, the underrated Zathura. Time accurately describes Gervais’s persona as “the cringe comedy of unaware arrogance.” In other words, he’s rude, but never smug. He’s too self-absorbed to be supercilious. Wherein lies the humor, as in Gervais’s TV roles on the The Office (the BBC original) and Extras. Gervais is a master of the pained expression. Yet there’s the sweet, but not too sentimental side, to the story; as also with Groundhog Day, it’s a woman who inspires reform. Mostly, this most inevitable transition is natural. Koepp takes the fantastic and makes it seem down to earth.

IMDB link

viewed 8/7/08 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 9/12/08

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (***)

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was a successful journalist, the editor of the fashion magazine Elle, when he suffered a severe stroke. He was left with something called “locked-in syndrome” that left him able to move nothing but one eyelid. This is a film made by an artist, Julian Schnabel (Before Night Falls), so insistent on his vision that he made this story of a French man in French, which is notable because he’s American. It’s a notably artistic film, aimed at presented the experience of its subject, not his life.

The first third of the movie is shot entirely from Bauby’s point of view. We hear his thoughts, we see his at-first blurred vision, and so on. Confusion, annoyance, and frustration, along with sometimes wry observation, predominate, not sadness or self-pity. In other words, it’s not nearly as depressing as you’d think. It’s about the taking stock of one’s life, not death. Bauby reacts to visits from his doting ex-wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), his attractive (he notices) therapists, and his former business associates, with a mind as sharp as in health. When we see him, eventually, it’s a shock. This is an impressionistic movie, not plot-driven, and so may not be to everyone’s taste. At the same time, it’s unique and beautiful, with camera work that exquisitely conveys Bauby’s point of view.


IMDB link

The Invisible (**1/2)

? Beaten and left for dead due to a series of misunderstandings, teenaged Nick finds himself able to leave his own body, but with no one able to see him the only hope of the truth coming out lies with the female gang leader who delivered the deadly blow.
+ Despite the trappings of a teen crime drama, the appeal is really the fantasy of getting to watch the aftermath of your own death. So Nick learns that his mom (Marcia Gay Harden) really wasn’t so bad, and, surprisingly, neither was the thieving thug who almost killed him. (I expect they made the thug a girl because it would be easier to make her sympathetic later on.) The emphasis is on the two teens (who are both fatherless) coming to grips with their own lives as much as on the plot, since, unlike them, we already know what happened.
- What do Hollywood executives do when there’s no more sequels and adaptations of old TV shows and comic books to make? Why, they scan the globe for foreign-language hits they can make shitty English-language versions of. I didn’t see this in its 2002 Swedish incarnation, so can’t really say if the movie as a whole is worse, but I can say they’ve gone and given it a crap American-style ending that, even considering the premise, is dumb. And so is the Ghost-style scene where Nick is able to channel his voice through the living.
= **1/2 This won’t win you over if you think the whole idea of the story is dopey, but it’s not a typical teen movie and was better than I might have expected.

IMDB link

reviewed 5/3/07

Reign Over Me (***1/2)

? A mild-mannered dentist (Don Cheadle) tries to reconnect with his old college roommate (Adam Sandler), who’s become unhinged since the plane-crash death of his wife and children and seems not to remember him. Written and directed by Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger), who also has a supporting role as an accountant.
+ The brilliant thing about Binder’s script is the way it uses the Sandler character as a way into exploring the dentist’s self-image and his marriage. (It’s a bit like the way Upside of Anger used the flamboyant Kevin Costner character as a window into the bitterness felt by Joan Allen, an abandoned wife.) Compare I Think I Love My Wife, which uses reams of narration to explain the feelings that looks and gestures impart here. Moments like the husband’s unspoken distaste at spending an evening doing a jigsaw puzzle let us in on the small accommodations couples make to each other. But you also see that the wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) is self-aware enough to know that he’s doing it for her, and that she somewhat controlling. And finally, you see that although this is an issue, the marriage is still a good one. Cheadle is at his best here, underplaying opposite Sandler’s showier role. This movie would seem to have no point unless his character can "break through" and help his friend start to heal, to use the jargon of psychotherapy. But I thought that Binder frames the story in a way that makes the tearjerker parts seem honest. Both characters move far enough to make the story interesting, but not so much that it seems manipulative or soppy.
- There’s something slightly unreal about Sandler’s character (though I liked Sandler himself), perhaps that he seems to have dropped about 30 IQ points along with his dental practice, perhaps the overt symbolism of his using headphones to literally shut out the world with classic rock, perhaps that latter-day Phil Spector haircut. Another troubled character, played by Saffron Burrows, sticks around too long, until she feels like just a plot device.
= ***1/2 This reminded me of Good Will Hunting, also about an angry character whose anger holds him back from what other people think he ought to be doing. If you liked that, you’ll probably like this.

IMDB link

reviewed 3/29/07

Bridge to Terabithia (***1/2)

? Katherine Paterson’s Newbery Medal-winning novel, published in 1977, is the basis for this story of pre-teen misfits (AnnaSophia Robb and Josh Hutcherson), who become the king and queen of a magical world of imagination. Paterson’s son David, an inspiration for one of the main characters, is one of the two credited screenwriters.
+ The preview for this movie makes it appear to be a pure fantasy movie in the manner of The Chronicles of Narnia. While the imaginary world is explicitly inspired by the C. S. Lewis classic, the story is less about escapism than the need to escape. It’s mostly set in the real world, where suburban middle-schoolers look down on a poor farm kid and a brainy tomboy type. These two main characters are beautifully realized, the sort of precocious kids that nonetheless manage not to seem merely like the miniature adults that you too often see in lesser films. As in last year’s Monster House, this is a story that looks at the middle period of childhood as a time when kids first grapple in a serious way with such issues as religion, loss, jealousy, and guilt. The casting is solid, and Robb (of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Because of Winn-Dixie) particularly stands out as the next-door neighbor who’s the free-spirited daughter of writers who don’t own a TV.
- The fantasy sequences are nice, but perhaps too few.
= ***1/2 A wonderful movie that’s great for parents to watch with children (but not ones much younger than the two main characters, given the subject), or even if they’re not around.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/23/07

Venus (***)

? An aging actor (Peter O’Toole) strikes up an unlikely friendship with a friend’s young niece, who’s just arrived in London.
+ I can’t think of another movie that looks at a relationship like this one. There are plenty of movies about May-December romances, but this isn’t about a romance. Not exactly. Although O’Toole retains enough of his looks, and more of his charm, to remind you of what a man about town his character must have once been, you don’t watch this expecting the two characters to hook up. Nor, I think, does the man himself, not that he wouldn’t want to. Clearly, her youth and looks are much of why he wants to be with her. His kindness is why she wants to be with him, and why his clearly expressed lust doesn’t come off as sleazy. Besides the obvious themes of age versus youth, the script touches upon his sophistication versus her inexperience, his carefree optimism versus her caution and suspicion, and so on, but not in a didactic way. In other words, it doesn’t make too much of these differences, isn’t a story of Eliza Doolittle turning into a fair lady, and hasn’t got a moral lesson. O’Toole, who earned his eighth Oscar nomination, and newcomer Jodie Whitaker are appealing. Vanessa Redgrave appears as the actor’s ex-wife.
- You don’t find many very young women hanging out with lecherous old guys, so the biggest hurdle for a movie like this is to get these two characters together in the first place, and, in terms of being entirely convincing, that was the weakest point. Overall, no one will watch this for the plot.
= *** Like its main character, this film isn’t too introspective. It’s a little film, a pretty pencil sketch rather than a full-on portrait, but a nice one all the same.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/16/07

Copying Beethoven (**1/4)

? A young composition student (Diane Kruger) struggles to win over her sexist, cantankerous, nearly deaf boss (Ed Harris), who also happens to be the most celebrated composer in 1824 Vienna.

+ The scenes that shed light on the compositional process are the best. Fans of the 9^th Symphony and the Grosse Fuge, which figure heavily in the plot, will enjoy hearing those pieces.

- Considering that screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson previously collaborated on Nixon and Ali, and that director Agnieszka Holland made the heart-rending Europa Europa, this is a surprisingly lightweight movie. Notwithstanding the period setting, it reminded me of nothing so much as Scent of a Woman. All you needed was Ed Harris saying “Hoo-hah!” As we already know from the opening sequence in which the great composer appears dying, the young lass will wear away the old man’s crusty exterior, and he will impart his wisdom, etc. There’s hardly anything else to the story. Minor characters (her boyfriend, his nephew) come and go, and then the movie just ends. Rather strangely, even though Kruger is German, she speaks with an American accent, one of the things that lessened the authenticity.

= **1/4 Harmless, fictional fluff. Despite my objections, it’s consistently pleasant. Watch it if you like seeing Ed Harris chew the scenery, but not to learn about Beethoven.

IMDb link

viewed at PFS screening

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (***1/4)

-->Fans of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s Amoros Perres and 21 Grams will appreciate this mystery-cum-western that marks the directorial debut of its star, Tommy Lee Jones.

Tommy Lee Jones stars in and makes his directorial debut with this West Texas-set drama. I took awhile getting to see it, in part, because the title sounded boring or pretentious. It’s neither, though it is slow-paced. It starts off like a John Sayles movie, cutting between a border guard (Barry Pepper) and his wife (January Jones), a waitress in the local coffee shop (Michelle Leo), and Tommy Lee himself, as a friend of the recently shot title character. But then—mystery solved—that’s only the first two burials. The last, longest part of the film winds like a snaky appendage from the rest, slowly shedding the layers of the main characters. Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges makes the most of the location shooting, with Texas also doubling for Mexico. This movie wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, but did earn both Jones (as an actor) and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga honors at Cannes. Admirers of Arriaga’s last two films, Amoros Perres and 21 Grams, will probably like this one too. It starts off like a Tex-Mex hybrid of those movies, yet the second half is something different, an eccentric Western that offers a couple more surprises and some absorbing, border-crossing detours on the way to that final resting place.

IMDb link

posted 9/9/13

Grizzly Man (***)

Director Werner Herzog documents the life of Timothy Treadwell, a self-styled “protector” of the fearsome bears, one of which would maul him and a girlfriend to death in 2003. Treadwell extensively filmed himself and the Alaskan grizzlies with whom he lived for part of each year, and Herzog utilizes this footage as well as after-the fact interviews with friends, family, and the occasional foe. Treadwell comes off as a New Age-y Californian who also has deep reservoirs of anger. Herzog, who views his subject with a mixture of sympathy and disagreement, offers his own views at times, making the documentary more personal than most, as if told by a fair-minded, but not uncritical, friend. Treadwell is an exemplar of self-invention, but also self-delusion. The acoustic score is by guitarist Richard Thompson.

IMDB link

viewed on DVD 2/1/08; reviewed 2/7/08