This is kind of a sports movie in disguise. If conservatory student Andrew (Miles Teller) were a college basketball player instead of an aspiring jazz drummer, this movie might’ve made into a multiplex. And Andrew’s nemesis might’ve been someone like coach Bobby Knight, instead of the mercurial Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who commandeers the school’s elite jazz orchestra and, like Knight, is not averse to throwing a chair.
Fletcher is warm and friendly to outsiders but uses strategic humiliation and browbeating to get his players to play better. In an early scene, a horn player gets booted for supposedly being out of tune. But he also gets Andrew to play and play until his hands bleed. Never has music seemed so physically punishing. Are such tiger-mother tactics the best way to get such results? Are they the only way? The film, an expanded version of a short by writer-director Damien Chazelle, ultimately leaves the conclusion to the viewer. Meanwhile, it’s a excellent bit of psychological and character drama with a fierce performance from Simmons, a great character actor.
IMDb link
viewed 11/13/14 7:15 at Ritz 5 and posted 11/13/14
Showing posts with label psychological drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychological drama. Show all posts
Friday, October 24, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Child’s Pose (***3/4)
A tragic accident forms the thread of this drama about a mother and her adult son. As far as I can tell, the film’s star, Luminita Gheorghiu, has been in every Romanian movie I’ve seen — The Death of Mr. Lazarescu…4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days…12:08 East of Bucharest…Beyond the Hills — but here gets a tour de force role playing Cornelia, a married, 60ish architect who tries to fix things when her son (Bogdan Dumitrache) speeds into a teenage boy, killing him. At first, the story suggests a commentary on class — Cornelia is comfortably well off compared to the victim’s family — and corruption, perhaps even a police procedural. Cornelia bullies the officers conducting the investigation and even bullies her own son into changing his statement.
The second half of the movie, though, moves more directly into the personal. We see why her son has been avoiding her, but for a long time he himself barely speaks. The title of the movie is a little oblique; it might refer to the son, who is married but retains a childish passivity at times, or his mother, whose love is the selfish love of a child. (Stylistically, the film is very much of a piece with the films above. Shot with little artifice, the film has no score and features handheld camera work. Many of the scenes are long. Despite this, the pacing is much faster than The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or Beyond the Hills. It’s a fairly short film that ends with an emotionally revelatory (though still ambiguous in terms of plot and interpretation) sequence that makes the heroine, if not exactly likeable (she rarely is), then human, and wonderfully complex.
IMDb link
viewed 2/19/14 7:30 at Gershman Y (PFS screening) and posted 2/19/14
The second half of the movie, though, moves more directly into the personal. We see why her son has been avoiding her, but for a long time he himself barely speaks. The title of the movie is a little oblique; it might refer to the son, who is married but retains a childish passivity at times, or his mother, whose love is the selfish love of a child. (Stylistically, the film is very much of a piece with the films above. Shot with little artifice, the film has no score and features handheld camera work. Many of the scenes are long. Despite this, the pacing is much faster than The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or Beyond the Hills. It’s a fairly short film that ends with an emotionally revelatory (though still ambiguous in terms of plot and interpretation) sequence that makes the heroine, if not exactly likeable (she rarely is), then human, and wonderfully complex.
IMDb link
viewed 2/19/14 7:30 at Gershman Y (PFS screening) and posted 2/19/14
Friday, November 1, 2013
Blue Is the Warmest Color (***)
This film caused a sensation at Cannes, where it won the Palm D’Or, both for its storytelling and for the lengthy sex scenes featuring the two female leads, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. Also reported was the grueling shooting schedule to which director Abdellatif Kechiche subjected them, but he certainly got results. Exarchopoulos plays Adèle, the a teenage girl who meets the older Emma (whose dyed hair presumably supplies the film’s American title) and is lured by her confident attitude. With a characteristic open-mouthed expression, Exarchopoulos projects an combination of innocence, curiosity, and nervousness. Kechiche favors an improvisatory style that comes across as much in the introductory high school scenes, where Adèle gossips with friends and, briefly, acquires a boyfriend, as in the later, more intimate, ones.
The characters are stronger than the story, which simply carries the two women forward in time, skipping over some potentially dramatic turf, like anything much about the reaction of Adèle’s parents to either having a lesbian daughter or the older girlfriend. Mainly, the film is not about sexuality, but about the intensity of a first crush and the indelible stamp it tends to leave.
IMDb link
viewed 12/18/13 7:35 at posted 1/24/14
The characters are stronger than the story, which simply carries the two women forward in time, skipping over some potentially dramatic turf, like anything much about the reaction of Adèle’s parents to either having a lesbian daughter or the older girlfriend. Mainly, the film is not about sexuality, but about the intensity of a first crush and the indelible stamp it tends to leave.
IMDb link
viewed 12/18/13 7:35 at posted 1/24/14
Friday, October 25, 2013
All Is Lost (***1/2)
J. C. Chandor’s (Margin Call) possibly allegorical tale is a model of visual storytelling. It begins with a man (Robert Redford) literally and figuratively at sea reading a desperate-sounding message in a voice-over that become the last bit of dialogue for a long while. Then it flashes back, but barely a week, and in that scene he is also at sea, on a boat that has had its hull damaged and is leaking. One thing after another is the story. It is Life of Pi without the magical realism or idyllic beginning. (The two films do both employ the gifted underwater photographer, Peter Zuccarini.) The breakdown of the man is the story also, and Redford must and does carry the entire film. We know virtually nothing about the man except that he is resourceful and seemingly stoic. Save for the scenes shot from above and below the waterline, the movie is entirely from his point of view. We are too caught up in his battle for survival to be depressed. It’s essentially a simple story whose powerful, concise telling is a strong argument for the power of the medium of film.
IMDb link
viewed 10/17/13 8:00 pm at Perelman Theater at Kimmel Center [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/14/13
IMDb link
viewed 10/17/13 8:00 pm at Perelman Theater at Kimmel Center [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/14/13
Friday, July 26, 2013
The Hunt (***1/2)
In fact, he appears to be the victim of a misunderstanding. The first half of the Danish drama shows the steps by which entirely reasonable people could come to believe in the man’s guilt; the second is more about Lucas’s stunned reaction. Annika Wedderkopp sweetly plays the little girl who cannot anticipate, and only slowly comprehends, the impact of ephemeral remarks. The theme of wrongful accusation has been at the center of several classic films, including Twelve Angry Men, North by Northwest, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Atonement. This isn’t a thriller like North by Northwest and doesn’t focus on the legal case like the other three; it’s a smaller kind of film, but powerful in its way. Director Thomas Vinterberg is still probably best known for his 1998 feature The Celebration; this film is its equal.
viewed 8/8/13 at Ritz East and reviewed 8/8/13
Friday, November 16, 2012
Wake in Fright (***1/4)
A young Sydney schoolteacher (Gary Bond), midway through a year-long stint in a small town that he can’t wait for to end, stops over in another remote town on the way back home for vacation. The local pastime, at least among the men, seems to be beer drinking and gambling; the teacher seems to hold himself above them, but in the course of a single weekend learns that he shares some of their basest instincts. This 1971 film, re-released, recalls the sort of western in which a stranger wanders
into a small town, but instead of facing down a local outlaw the educated teacher must face
down his own nature. It can also be seen as relating to group
conformity, a fictional exposition of a psychological experiment.
One or two things about the movie seem a bit forced. Does every male Australian take offense if you won’t drink beer with him? The time line seems somewhat compressed as well, making the hero’s unraveling less convincing, although we actually know little about him. Still, the economy of the storytelling has power, and the outback setting is indelibly evoked by director Ted Kotcheff, who with screenwriter Evan Jones adapted a novel by Kenneth Cook. There is apparently no new footage, but a disclaimer at the end relating to a kangaroo hunt notes that footage was taken from an actual hunt. Animal lovers, or admirers of human nature, be warned. The best-known (and most memorable) cast member is Donald Pleasence, playing an alcoholic, debauched doctor. Director, Ted Kotcheff went on to do, among other films, Weekend at Bernie’s.
IMDb link
viewed 11/19/12 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/20/12
One or two things about the movie seem a bit forced. Does every male Australian take offense if you won’t drink beer with him? The time line seems somewhat compressed as well, making the hero’s unraveling less convincing, although we actually know little about him. Still, the economy of the storytelling has power, and the outback setting is indelibly evoked by director Ted Kotcheff, who with screenwriter Evan Jones adapted a novel by Kenneth Cook. There is apparently no new footage, but a disclaimer at the end relating to a kangaroo hunt notes that footage was taken from an actual hunt. Animal lovers, or admirers of human nature, be warned. The best-known (and most memorable) cast member is Donald Pleasence, playing an alcoholic, debauched doctor. Director, Ted Kotcheff went on to do, among other films, Weekend at Bernie’s.
IMDb link
viewed 11/19/12 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/20/12
Friday, September 14, 2012
The Master (**1/2)
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), is one of
the few director of whom it can be said both that he brings a
distinctive sensibility to all his films, yet makes films distinctly
different from each other. A common element is the presence of a
character pushed to his limit, often along with a larger-than-life
character who pushes him there. That was the case with There Will Be Blood,
set in the early days of the oil business, and is in the film, set in
mostly in the first years of the 1950s. Pushed to his limits is Freddy
Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a drifter, alcoholic, sex-obsessive, and World War II veteran who literally wanders into the orbit of larger-than-life Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Said to be inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Dodd is a man bold enough to introduce himself as a “writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all…a man.” The Dodd we encounter in this film has already coalesced into his final form as a guru, though. His philosophies, gathered in a book called The Cause, are an admixture of simple mind-over-matter pronouncements — “man is not an animal” —and metaphysical gobbledegook. His own son says that he “makes hit up as he goes along,” but his second wife (Amy Adams) seems simultaneously to be a true believer and to understand that “The Cause,” as it is called in the movie, is a self-creation. Assistant, partner, moral compass, power behind the throne, and more, this character intrigues in Adams’s relatively few scenes. Though we aren’t meant to take the Cause seriously, and it’s doesn’t seem that Dodd is truly sinister (so the movie is no exposé), the ways such men seduce their followers seems to me an inherently fascinating subject.
Unfortunately, the way Anderson explores this subject is through the lens of the film’s primary protagonist, Quell called a “scoundrel” by Dodd but nonetheless an object of indulgence, curiosity, and attention for him. Quill is not likable; he is not impressive; he is not a villain; he is not even particularly complex; he is alienating rather than charismatic, as the Daniel-Day Lewis character in There Will Be Blood was charismatic. In short, he is a difficult, unpleasant character to follow for two and a half hours. Though I gather that we are supposed to become involved in his efforts to overcome the darker parts of his nature, and the efforts of Dodd and, to a lesser extent, his followers, I did not find myself absorbed by this quest, though individual scenes between the two of them, which often are like a strange kind of therapy, are intense and well done. I will also concede that Phoenix’s portrayal is consistent and skillful, even down to his odd posture, and my reaction to the character, that he seems incredibly creepy and repellent, subjective, as was my feeling that Phoenix seemed too old to portray the character. (A subplot is Quell continuing longing for a girl he knew when she was 16; it’s unclear how old Quell is supposed to have been when he knew her, but the flashback scenes make no attempt to make Phoenix look younger. Also, the plot fits better if we assume Quell was about 20, not 30 or so, when he courted the girl and went off to join the Navy. But Quell/Phoenix looks too old to have been 20 around 1941.)
In a way, figures like Dodd (or Hubbard) represent the seemingly very American ability to turn imagination, even an amalgamation of psychobabble and pseudoscience, into reality. No doubt it’s unfair of me to want the movie to be Elmer Gantry, i.e. more about the spiritual leader as huckster. No doubt Anderson is a very skillful filmmaker. His camerawork, especially in shooting wide vistas, is memorable, and there is an intensity he brings to his storytelling. But, no doubt, I found The Master only intermittently spellbinding.
IMDb link
viewed 11/14/12 5:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/15–11/17/12
Said to be inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Dodd is a man bold enough to introduce himself as a “writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all…a man.” The Dodd we encounter in this film has already coalesced into his final form as a guru, though. His philosophies, gathered in a book called The Cause, are an admixture of simple mind-over-matter pronouncements — “man is not an animal” —and metaphysical gobbledegook. His own son says that he “makes hit up as he goes along,” but his second wife (Amy Adams) seems simultaneously to be a true believer and to understand that “The Cause,” as it is called in the movie, is a self-creation. Assistant, partner, moral compass, power behind the throne, and more, this character intrigues in Adams’s relatively few scenes. Though we aren’t meant to take the Cause seriously, and it’s doesn’t seem that Dodd is truly sinister (so the movie is no exposé), the ways such men seduce their followers seems to me an inherently fascinating subject.
Unfortunately, the way Anderson explores this subject is through the lens of the film’s primary protagonist, Quell called a “scoundrel” by Dodd but nonetheless an object of indulgence, curiosity, and attention for him. Quill is not likable; he is not impressive; he is not a villain; he is not even particularly complex; he is alienating rather than charismatic, as the Daniel-Day Lewis character in There Will Be Blood was charismatic. In short, he is a difficult, unpleasant character to follow for two and a half hours. Though I gather that we are supposed to become involved in his efforts to overcome the darker parts of his nature, and the efforts of Dodd and, to a lesser extent, his followers, I did not find myself absorbed by this quest, though individual scenes between the two of them, which often are like a strange kind of therapy, are intense and well done. I will also concede that Phoenix’s portrayal is consistent and skillful, even down to his odd posture, and my reaction to the character, that he seems incredibly creepy and repellent, subjective, as was my feeling that Phoenix seemed too old to portray the character. (A subplot is Quell continuing longing for a girl he knew when she was 16; it’s unclear how old Quell is supposed to have been when he knew her, but the flashback scenes make no attempt to make Phoenix look younger. Also, the plot fits better if we assume Quell was about 20, not 30 or so, when he courted the girl and went off to join the Navy. But Quell/Phoenix looks too old to have been 20 around 1941.)
In a way, figures like Dodd (or Hubbard) represent the seemingly very American ability to turn imagination, even an amalgamation of psychobabble and pseudoscience, into reality. No doubt it’s unfair of me to want the movie to be Elmer Gantry, i.e. more about the spiritual leader as huckster. No doubt Anderson is a very skillful filmmaker. His camerawork, especially in shooting wide vistas, is memorable, and there is an intensity he brings to his storytelling. But, no doubt, I found The Master only intermittently spellbinding.
IMDb link
viewed 11/14/12 5:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/15–11/17/12
Friday, August 24, 2012
Compliance (***1/2)
Just because something really happened doesn’t mean people will believe it, and that’s the only problem with this movie, which, nonetheless, a lot of people might benefit from seeing. It begins with a giant “based on real events,” which as often as not signals a story that heavily departs from reality, but, based on a little post-movie reading about the case, and ABC News footage from a 20/20 investigation, it would appear that this sticks pretty close to what happened in a McDonald’s restaurant—here styled a “Chick-wich”—in a Kentucky town. The film is done in a quasi-documentary style, and even the first few minutes of it give off the familiar vibe of what it’s like working in a low-wage retail establishment.
It is better not to give too much of the story away, but it begins with the manager of the restaurant (Ann Dowd), an ordinary-seeming middle-aged woman, getting a call. The caller states that he is a police officer, and that a patron has accused the young cashier there of stealing. This leads to an increasingly unpleasant experience for the young woman (Dreama Walker). Without giving more away, it’s worth noting that nothing than happens to her is worse than what happens to victims of violence in many a popular thriller, and yet I suspect that most people will feel as I did, much more squeamish watching this.
I saw the movie at a screening the other night. I was near the front and didn’t see, but the person leading a Q&A afterward said there were a few walkouts. I heard a few cries of “she is so stupid” and such even during the movie. The discussion was polite, though. I made a comment about the Milgram experiments as well as the tricks “psychics” use to elicit information from their marks and then feed the same information back to them to gain trust. The caller does that in the movie. I also disagree that the restaurant manager in the 20/20 piece is necessarily lying. She may be, but people’s memories have a funny way of reconstructing things in a way that makes sense to them. Her doing something so awful doesn’t make sense to her.
But someone wants to know why anyone wants to see this. I would say, why does anyone want to see a movie like Saw III, in which we are somewhat made to identify with the torturer? Here we identify with the victim, and it makes us (me, at least) incredibly squeamish. Yet what happens to the girl is no worse than what happens to victims of violence in many a thriller. Why do we not feel so awful in these kinds of movies? Is it that they don’t seem real, that we are desensitized to that kind of violence, or that those movies attribute most or all of the bad behavior to outright villains, whereas this movie has seemingly ordinary people doing the ordinary things.
I think it would be great if a lot of people saw Compliance, which reminds us that movies can present idealized models of human behavior, and reality is a lot more complex.
By the way, the epilogue to the film [spoiler, sort of] tells us there have been many such incidents.
IMDb link
viewed 8/15/12 7:30 at Ritz Bourse
It is better not to give too much of the story away, but it begins with the manager of the restaurant (Ann Dowd), an ordinary-seeming middle-aged woman, getting a call. The caller states that he is a police officer, and that a patron has accused the young cashier there of stealing. This leads to an increasingly unpleasant experience for the young woman (Dreama Walker). Without giving more away, it’s worth noting that nothing than happens to her is worse than what happens to victims of violence in many a popular thriller, and yet I suspect that most people will feel as I did, much more squeamish watching this.
I saw the movie at a screening the other night. I was near the front and didn’t see, but the person leading a Q&A afterward said there were a few walkouts. I heard a few cries of “she is so stupid” and such even during the movie. The discussion was polite, though. I made a comment about the Milgram experiments as well as the tricks “psychics” use to elicit information from their marks and then feed the same information back to them to gain trust. The caller does that in the movie. I also disagree that the restaurant manager in the 20/20 piece is necessarily lying. She may be, but people’s memories have a funny way of reconstructing things in a way that makes sense to them. Her doing something so awful doesn’t make sense to her.
But someone wants to know why anyone wants to see this. I would say, why does anyone want to see a movie like Saw III, in which we are somewhat made to identify with the torturer? Here we identify with the victim, and it makes us (me, at least) incredibly squeamish. Yet what happens to the girl is no worse than what happens to victims of violence in many a thriller. Why do we not feel so awful in these kinds of movies? Is it that they don’t seem real, that we are desensitized to that kind of violence, or that those movies attribute most or all of the bad behavior to outright villains, whereas this movie has seemingly ordinary people doing the ordinary things.
I think it would be great if a lot of people saw Compliance, which reminds us that movies can present idealized models of human behavior, and reality is a lot more complex.
By the way, the epilogue to the film [spoiler, sort of] tells us there have been many such incidents.
IMDb link
viewed 8/15/12 7:30 at Ritz Bourse
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Sound of My Voice (***1/4)
Some actresses complain about the dearth of good parts for women. Brit Marling writes them for herself. In Another Earth,
she was an ex-offender hoping for a trip to an alternative future. In this, one of two film’s she’s written with director Zal Batmanglij, she’s a purported visitor from the future, or charlatan,
maybe, preparing a cult-like group of followers to return with her to the year 2054.
The key characters, though, are a couple (Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius) who’ve been admitted to her circle but are actually aspiring journalists aiming to expose her as a fraud. As Another Earth used its nominally sci-fi premise as a way to explore the guilt felt by its main character, The Sound of My Voice uses its cult story to explore the issue of trust. At the same time, it functions as a tight little mystery.
viewed 5/9/12 7:20 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/10–11/12
Friday, February 24, 2012
Rampart (***)
A few more movies like this and the LAPD might get a bad reputation. Woody Harrelson’s character, Dave Brown, instantly dislikable yet, by the end, a bit pitiable, is the unclean cop in a film that starts out seeming something like Training Day. As Brown, nicknamed “date rape,” but not for the reason you think, instructs his own trainee on the ways of controlling “wetbacks” and other riff raff, she asks if he isn’t afraid of getting a “128” (sanction for misbehavior). “Illegal is just a sick bird,” he replies. But the recruit moves on, and the Brown’s misconduct catches up the modern way, by being caught on video. Arrogant charm is enough to get a lawyer (Robin Wright) into his bed, but seems less likely to win over Internal Affairs. A retired cop buddy (Ned Beatty) may or may not be helping. And his two exes—sisters—and two daughters (one by each sister) are losing patience with him. (The high school-age daughter, especially.)
Unlike most cop films, this is very much a character study, not an action thriller. The director is Oren Moverman, who previously directed Harrelson in The Messenger, but the low-key realism, and no doubt much of the gritty, witty dialogue comes partly by way of cowriter James Ellroy. Ellroy wrote the book on corrupt Los Angeles cops, several in fact; one was L.A. Confidential. (Rampart is an L.A. police division involved in a real misconduct scandal in the late 1990s, but this story is narrowly focused.) Wisely, the movie doesn’t drift into obvious moralizing like Training Day. There’s no Ethan Hawke character to serve as audience surrogate. Brown’s family serves some of the same function, but mostly this is about a man who has lived by his own rules slowly coming to grips with the cost. By the end, that theme has been reiterated to the point of near redundancy. Still, Moverman is not heavy handed, and the movie stops before depicting an ending that is by then, broadly obvious.
viewed at Ritz Bourse 2/16/12 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and reviewed 2/16/12
Friday, January 27, 2012
A Separation (****)
Iran boasts a fairly robust film industry, but its only filmmakers whose movies have been widely seen outside the country are Jafar Panahi, whose politically laced work led to his arrest and a ban on further filmmaking, and Abbas Kiarostami, who makes minimalist, arty films like A Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us. This drama by Asghar Farhadi (whose previous work has been shown at US film festivals) is neither political or arty in an obvious way. It is both accessible enough to have been a hit in its native country and complex enough to garner a passel of awards.
The main characters in this story (Leila Hatami, Peyman Maadi) are a married, middle-class couple, but the wife is seeking a divorce. On what grounds an unseen clerk asks. Does he mistreat you? No, he is a good man, she explains, but will not emigrate with her. He does not wish to leave his elderly father, who has dementia. Neither party will budge. And so, instead of divorce, the couple separate, necessitating hiring a housekeeper who can also look after the old man. There is also a choice for the couple’s eleven-year-old, who elects, for now, to stay with her father.
The rest of the story is all complications that lead to an unfortunate incident and an accusation against the husband. What’s brilliant about the movie is the way it brings several elements together in a completely natural way. It has much to say about the push-pull of relationships, but it’s not a self-consciously psychological film. It depicts an unfamiliar (to Americans) legal system, but is not a legal thriller. It has certain cultural particulars—humorously, the housekeeper consults a sort of dial-a-cleric to see whether it’s okay for her to help undress the old man—but its broad themes are universal.
IMDb link
viewed 2/11/12 12:45 pm at Ritz 5
The main characters in this story (Leila Hatami, Peyman Maadi) are a married, middle-class couple, but the wife is seeking a divorce. On what grounds an unseen clerk asks. Does he mistreat you? No, he is a good man, she explains, but will not emigrate with her. He does not wish to leave his elderly father, who has dementia. Neither party will budge. And so, instead of divorce, the couple separate, necessitating hiring a housekeeper who can also look after the old man. There is also a choice for the couple’s eleven-year-old, who elects, for now, to stay with her father.
The rest of the story is all complications that lead to an unfortunate incident and an accusation against the husband. What’s brilliant about the movie is the way it brings several elements together in a completely natural way. It has much to say about the push-pull of relationships, but it’s not a self-consciously psychological film. It depicts an unfamiliar (to Americans) legal system, but is not a legal thriller. It has certain cultural particulars—humorously, the housekeeper consults a sort of dial-a-cleric to see whether it’s okay for her to help undress the old man—but its broad themes are universal.
IMDb link
viewed 2/11/12 12:45 pm at Ritz 5
Friday, January 6, 2012
A Dangerous Method (***
It’s probably a cliché to point out that being a good therapist doesn’t necessarily bring you closer to resolving your own conflicts. Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly)
Viggo Mortenson, hardly recognizable with his thick beard, plays his mentor, Sigmund Freud, with whom he famously spoke to for 13 hours upon their first meeting and, even more famously, fell out with later.
IMDb link
Viggo Mortenson, hardly recognizable with his thick beard, plays his mentor, Sigmund Freud, with whom he famously spoke to for 13 hours upon their first meeting and, even more famously, fell out with later.
IMDb link
Friday, October 28, 2011
Martha Marcy May Marlene (***3/4)
I know this indie drama was effective because I was still a little unsettled ten or fifteen minutes after it ended. It would be incorrect to say it was about a cult (a word the film itself avoids), or why someone would join one. It is instead about a transition back to normalcy; the curious title intends to evoke the fragile state of one uncertain of herself. If this were a war film one would say it is about PTSD. Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has just left, maybe escaped, after a time with the group, and is staying with her sister (Sarah Paulson).
Flashbacks depict the place she has just left, an upstate New York farmhouse. The dozen or so folks there seem like latter-day flower children practicing a back-to-nature sort of self-reliance. John Hawkes plays the leader, whose palpable creepiness (to me, anyway) is the only sign, at first, of things gone amiss. You’ve seen these kind of flashbacks before, where the scene in the present merges into a similar-looking one in the past. But first-time writer-director Sean Durkin does it about as well as I’ve seen, so that it takes you a few seconds to realize the scene has moved from the sister’s house to the farmhouse. As for Martha, the past blurs with the present, and reality with paranoia.
Durkin gives hints about Martha’s back story in her interactions with the sister, who is living with her fiancé (Hugh Dancy). The story is about family dynamics and Martha’s erratic behavior. But the mood comes close to psychological horror. Or suspense, more than horror. In any case, Durkin and Olsen give us one of the most subtle, yet gripping portrayals of a damaged individual.
viewed 8/22/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening]
Friday, June 10, 2011
Beautiful Boy (**3/4)
This is a heartfelt drama about parents grieving for a child, with one difference: their son had, previous to killing himself, shot several classmates at college. The parents (Michael Sheen and Maria Bello), already having marital difficulties, go through the expected steps of sorrow, shock (second, because they don’t immediately learn that he was the shooter), self-blame, and blaming each other. Despite the added dimension of learning their son is a killer, the drama plays a lot like the better Rabbit Hole. Even though the couple there are merely dealing with an accidental death, there is similarity in the focus on each partner’s different grieving style, and how it affects the couple’s relationship.
There is nothing inauthentic about this movie, and it’s a nice actors’ showcase for Bello and Sheen, who uses an American accent. However, everything was pretty much what I expected to be. Tears, pity, confrontation. True, it didn’t occur to me, as it does the husband here, that there would be a need to craft a media statement to assure the public and the families of the other students of their sorrow for what their son had done. But I did anticipate that they would wonder about why he did it, a question the film raises but doesn’t try to answer. And that really is the question you want answered in a film like this. It wouldn’t be fair to ask a film to supply an explanation for such a rare event. But it would have been more compelling to have explored the parent-child relationship as it was rather than only seeing a husband and wife wondering, as I was, later.
viewed 5/25/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/9/11
There is nothing inauthentic about this movie, and it’s a nice actors’ showcase for Bello and Sheen, who uses an American accent. However, everything was pretty much what I expected to be. Tears, pity, confrontation. True, it didn’t occur to me, as it does the husband here, that there would be a need to craft a media statement to assure the public and the families of the other students of their sorrow for what their son had done. But I did anticipate that they would wonder about why he did it, a question the film raises but doesn’t try to answer. And that really is the question you want answered in a film like this. It wouldn’t be fair to ask a film to supply an explanation for such a rare event. But it would have been more compelling to have explored the parent-child relationship as it was rather than only seeing a husband and wife wondering, as I was, later.
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Robber (***)
An aloof drama about an aloof character. Though adapted from a novel by Martin Prinz, the main character is based on real-life bank robber and marathoner Johann Kastenberger, called Rettenberger in the film. Rettenberger/Kastenberger (Andreas Lust) uses his running skills (and a mask) to evade the police, and so there are a number of chase sequences. But director Benjamin Heisenberger takes such a clinical approach to his subject that it’s hard to call this a thriller. Whether or not the real Kastenberger was like this I don’t know, but the character here comes off as nearly emotionless, and it’s as if the robberies are done more for the jolt of adrenalin than the money, which he doesn’t use. As such, this is something like a psychological drama about someone whose psychology is obscure. The girlfriend character is also difficult to understand; the source of her devotion is uncertain.
viewed 6/7/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 6/7 and 6/8/11
viewed 6/7/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 6/7 and 6/8/11
Friday, May 13, 2011
Everything Must Go (***1/2)
There seemingly comes a time in every comedic actor’s career when he or she (well, usually he) must essay a serious dramatic role. That time has come for Will Ferrell. This adaptation of a Raymond Carver story doesn’t completely lack humor, but its the humor of pathos, specifically of a man who has lost his job and his marriage on the very same day, and whose lawn sprinkler has suddenly become his alarm clock, wetting his face on a dry Arizona morning. Getting fired from his sales job and having his wife place all of his belongings on the front yard (and change the locks, and freeze the joint accounts) have something to do with his drinking problem. The coincidental timing of those events and the nice new, and temporarily single, neighbor (Rebecca Hall) moving in, is kind of a contrivance. Still, maybe that’s why the movie wasn’t depressing for me. I think the real experience would have felt lonelier. Or maybe it’s because having everything go all at once can be liberating as well as depressing and frightening. At least on film.
At any rate, I don’t think this felt like a bleak film about an alcoholic. (He is, in fact, not drunk much, as the story develops.) Ferrell plays the role, and first-time director Dan Rush has written it, more like an everyman character, and the alcoholism his particular cross to bear. At least that’s how it seemed to me. And so, as he sits on his lawn for days, with the lonely fat kid he’s paid to watch, or sell, his stuff, it doesn’t seem so bad, although one scene in particular choked me up. The period covered is only a few days, and Rush doesn’t make the mistake of having the alcoholic turn his life around too much. But he believably suggests there’s hope for him, and all of us.
viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/19/11
At any rate, I don’t think this felt like a bleak film about an alcoholic. (He is, in fact, not drunk much, as the story develops.) Ferrell plays the role, and first-time director Dan Rush has written it, more like an everyman character, and the alcoholism his particular cross to bear. At least that’s how it seemed to me. And so, as he sits on his lawn for days, with the lonely fat kid he’s paid to watch, or sell, his stuff, it doesn’t seem so bad, although one scene in particular choked me up. The period covered is only a few days, and Rush doesn’t make the mistake of having the alcoholic turn his life around too much. But he believably suggests there’s hope for him, and all of us.
viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/19/11
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Housemaid (***1/2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the rich “are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” South Korean director Sang-soo Im uses a remake of a 50-year-old film to explore this idea. At the same time, like its predecessor, it’s a psychological drama. Do-yeon Jeon (Secret Sunshine) plays the title character, whose sexual liaison with her wealthy employer begins a surprising and unfortunate chain of events.
When the original version of this movie was made, in 1960, South Korea was a poorer country, and the family the girl works for has struggled to afford a nice house. Here, although we never find out the source of the wealth, it’s clear that the husband has never wanted for it, and that his wife, pregnant with twins, shares his attitude of entitlement. There are a couple of other significant characters not found in the 1960 version. Notably there is an older servant who has been with the family four decades. As the film goes on, we find that she is more than a stock character, but instead a woman with her own resentments and motivation.
The older film is a well-made, but at times campy, melodrama that winds up being a bit like Fatal Attraction. Besides the issue of class being much more prominent here, the other difference is that the maid herself is a much more thought-out character, really a different one altogether. In the original, she veers wildly between heartsickness and vindictiveness in a way that suggests she’s simply a crazy girl. Sang-soo’s film is much more sympathetic to the maid. For her employer, there is another quote, attributed to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, that seems apt: “In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.”
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/24/10
When the original version of this movie was made, in 1960, South Korea was a poorer country, and the family the girl works for has struggled to afford a nice house. Here, although we never find out the source of the wealth, it’s clear that the husband has never wanted for it, and that his wife, pregnant with twins, shares his attitude of entitlement. There are a couple of other significant characters not found in the 1960 version. Notably there is an older servant who has been with the family four decades. As the film goes on, we find that she is more than a stock character, but instead a woman with her own resentments and motivation.
The older film is a well-made, but at times campy, melodrama that winds up being a bit like Fatal Attraction. Besides the issue of class being much more prominent here, the other difference is that the maid herself is a much more thought-out character, really a different one altogether. In the original, she veers wildly between heartsickness and vindictiveness in a way that suggests she’s simply a crazy girl. Sang-soo’s film is much more sympathetic to the maid. For her employer, there is another quote, attributed to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, that seems apt: “In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.”
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/24/10
Friday, January 14, 2011
Blue Valentine (***)
Commenting on contemporary fiction in The Atlantic, literary conservative B. R. Myers laments that “[c]haracters are now conceived as if the whole point of literature were to create plausible likenesses of the folks next door.” Mainstream cinema veers between fantasy characters and ordinary characters in fantastic situations, but only independent usually looks at regular people in regular situations. Here, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play Dean and Cindy, a couple living in northern Pennsylvania with a preschool-age daughter whose relationship may be starting to deteriorate.
The movie is not as depressing as it might be because about half of it is flashbacks relating the tender courtship—the charming high school dropout wooing the young medical student. Gosling reminded me of his breakthrough role in The Notebook in a scene in which Dean threatens to jump off a bridge if Cindy won’t tell him what’s on her mind. (In The Notebook, Gosling’s character vows to jump off a Ferris wheel if Rachel McAdams’s character won’t agree to a date.) The Notebook is the fantasy version of a romance, and it’s notable in skipping from marriage right to death. I wonder what either of its character would have said if a granddaughter had asked, as Cindy asks her grandmother, “How do you trust your feelings when it can just disappear like that?” Of course, charming courtship scenes look at little different when that thought hangs over the drama.
In flitting back and forth a few years, I’m not sure director Derek Cianfrance really shows the path from blind love to malaise, but he excels at evoking it. In an early scene, Dean lightly scolds Cindy for giving tasteless oatmeal to their daughter, and she gets upset at his encouraging her to eat off the table. Dean’s attempt at arranging a romantic weekend getaway constitutes much of the drama, and eventually brings things to a head, but the ending is typically low-key. Cianfrance doesn’t use handheld cameras, but the music is minimal and the voices are often miked far away, so the movie comes off a little lo-fi. It’s film of small details, like another Michelle Williams film, Wendy and Lucy. I’m not sure Myers would approve of this kind of film, but even he allows that “a good storyteller can interest us in just about anybody.”
There was some controversy about this movie because the producers successfully challenged the initial NC-17 rating. There are a few intimate scenes; Williams is shown topless, and Dean is shown orally pleasuring her, but you can’t directly see that. All in all, the notion that such a film would be considered for the harshest rating and mainstream films with torture scenes would not is, to my mind, an indictment of the ratings system and/or American values.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 3/10/11
The movie is not as depressing as it might be because about half of it is flashbacks relating the tender courtship—the charming high school dropout wooing the young medical student. Gosling reminded me of his breakthrough role in The Notebook in a scene in which Dean threatens to jump off a bridge if Cindy won’t tell him what’s on her mind. (In The Notebook, Gosling’s character vows to jump off a Ferris wheel if Rachel McAdams’s character won’t agree to a date.) The Notebook is the fantasy version of a romance, and it’s notable in skipping from marriage right to death. I wonder what either of its character would have said if a granddaughter had asked, as Cindy asks her grandmother, “How do you trust your feelings when it can just disappear like that?” Of course, charming courtship scenes look at little different when that thought hangs over the drama.
In flitting back and forth a few years, I’m not sure director Derek Cianfrance really shows the path from blind love to malaise, but he excels at evoking it. In an early scene, Dean lightly scolds Cindy for giving tasteless oatmeal to their daughter, and she gets upset at his encouraging her to eat off the table. Dean’s attempt at arranging a romantic weekend getaway constitutes much of the drama, and eventually brings things to a head, but the ending is typically low-key. Cianfrance doesn’t use handheld cameras, but the music is minimal and the voices are often miked far away, so the movie comes off a little lo-fi. It’s film of small details, like another Michelle Williams film, Wendy and Lucy. I’m not sure Myers would approve of this kind of film, but even he allows that “a good storyteller can interest us in just about anybody.”
There was some controversy about this movie because the producers successfully challenged the initial NC-17 rating. There are a few intimate scenes; Williams is shown topless, and Dean is shown orally pleasuring her, but you can’t directly see that. All in all, the notion that such a film would be considered for the harshest rating and mainstream films with torture scenes would not is, to my mind, an indictment of the ratings system and/or American values.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 3/10/11
Friday, December 17, 2010
All Good Things (***1/4)
Some are ruined by being born into the wrong family. And some by marrying the wrong person. It’s not obvious, except in the fact that the story flashes back from a courtroom scene, that things will go wrong for David Marks (Ryan Gosling), the personable young son of a wealthy New York real estate speculator (Frank Langella). Nor for his future wife Katie (Kirsten Dunst), a sweet girl he meets in 1971. With her, he moves to Vermont, where they run a health-food store called All Good Things. Seemingly metaphorical, this was in fact the real name of the store operated by the husband and wife who inspired this movie, directed by Andrew Jarecki from a script by Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling.
Jarecki is best known for another family saga, the Capturing the Friedmans. That was a documentary whose intrigue came in part because the truth about this strange family was somewhat elusive. The reason this heavily researched drama is not a documentary becomes clear eventually; although Jarecki is subtle about depicting some of the darker elements of the story, he obviously has assumed (or very strongly implied) facts that in real life must have been uncertain. Where the film remains ambiguous is in why David’s life goes sour, or at least why it happens when it does. Jarecki succeeds in depicting the progress of his disintegration, and Katie’s different sort of decline. Gosling is typically fine, Dunst heart-rending in her later scenes, and Langella suitably imposing. And obviously, that David witnesses his mother’s death as a child, that he is emotionally repressed, and that his father was an overbearing presence are part of what leads him astray. Yet what is apparent, especially the hold the family real estate business has on him, is not always palpable. In the end, this is a character who remains as elusive as he must have seemed to the Texas jury he testified before in 2003.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/13/11
Jarecki is best known for another family saga, the Capturing the Friedmans. That was a documentary whose intrigue came in part because the truth about this strange family was somewhat elusive. The reason this heavily researched drama is not a documentary becomes clear eventually; although Jarecki is subtle about depicting some of the darker elements of the story, he obviously has assumed (or very strongly implied) facts that in real life must have been uncertain. Where the film remains ambiguous is in why David’s life goes sour, or at least why it happens when it does. Jarecki succeeds in depicting the progress of his disintegration, and Katie’s different sort of decline. Gosling is typically fine, Dunst heart-rending in her later scenes, and Langella suitably imposing. And obviously, that David witnesses his mother’s death as a child, that he is emotionally repressed, and that his father was an overbearing presence are part of what leads him astray. Yet what is apparent, especially the hold the family real estate business has on him, is not always palpable. In the end, this is a character who remains as elusive as he must have seemed to the Texas jury he testified before in 2003.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/13/11
Friday, December 10, 2010
Black Swan (**1/2)
Obsession, jealousy and repressed desire are the themes in this Darren Aronofsky-directed drama. All of Aronofsky’s lead characters seem to be obsessed with something. Here, the pressure of mastering the lead role in Swan Lake threatens to undo ballet dancer Nina (Natalie Portman). Her director (Vincent Cassel) tells her she has the technique necessary to play the White Swan, but seems to lack the passion to play her alter ego, the Black Swan. Nervous about her chances of landing the role, she sees a woman on the subway who looks exactly like her, her own alter ego. And then there is the company’s new dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), who may be a friend, may be competition, or may be the Black Swan of Nina’s imagination.
This is all very stylish, so that it seems both that Nina’s mind is playing tricks on her and that Aronofsky is playing with his audience. The direction is skillful, the shots crisp, with an effective use of close-ups. Cliff Mansell’s piano-driven score is also very dramatic. Aronofsky’s camerawork doesn’t call attention to itself as often as in early efforts like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, his first two features. Nor, with The Wrestler and this film, are his stories as pretentious as in Pi, or the ambitious mess that was The Fountain. Possibly this is because he no longer is co-writing his own films (or at least isn’t credited). Hence he plays to his strengths as a visual stylist here. It’s certainly a lot artier than The Wrestler, but the story is even simpler.
It’s a showcase role for Portman, who’s in every scene and herself must embody both swans, the repressed “mama’s girl” at the start of the film and the one who awakens to her own desires as the story moves to a climax (pun intended). Barbara Hershey plays Nina’s overbearing mother, and Winona Ryder makes a nice mini-comeback as a retiring dancer who feels pushed aside. Cassel, so excellent as the title character in the Mesrine gangster films, is well cast as the director who presses and manipulates Nina into letting herself go. The reason my rating is not higher is simply because, like Nina, Aronofsky has a lot of technique, but his movie feels full of artifice. It’s more psychological horror film than psychological drama. Black Swan is, metaphorically though not literally, bloodless.
IMDB link
viewed 12/8/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/8–9/10
This is all very stylish, so that it seems both that Nina’s mind is playing tricks on her and that Aronofsky is playing with his audience. The direction is skillful, the shots crisp, with an effective use of close-ups. Cliff Mansell’s piano-driven score is also very dramatic. Aronofsky’s camerawork doesn’t call attention to itself as often as in early efforts like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, his first two features. Nor, with The Wrestler and this film, are his stories as pretentious as in Pi, or the ambitious mess that was The Fountain. Possibly this is because he no longer is co-writing his own films (or at least isn’t credited). Hence he plays to his strengths as a visual stylist here. It’s certainly a lot artier than The Wrestler, but the story is even simpler.
It’s a showcase role for Portman, who’s in every scene and herself must embody both swans, the repressed “mama’s girl” at the start of the film and the one who awakens to her own desires as the story moves to a climax (pun intended). Barbara Hershey plays Nina’s overbearing mother, and Winona Ryder makes a nice mini-comeback as a retiring dancer who feels pushed aside. Cassel, so excellent as the title character in the Mesrine gangster films, is well cast as the director who presses and manipulates Nina into letting herself go. The reason my rating is not higher is simply because, like Nina, Aronofsky has a lot of technique, but his movie feels full of artifice. It’s more psychological horror film than psychological drama. Black Swan is, metaphorically though not literally, bloodless.
IMDB link
viewed 12/8/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/8–9/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)