moviemartyr

The House Keys (Gianni Amelio) 52 [Perfectly well-meaning, but not very exciting at all. The drama here is all about a negligent father coming to terms with his retarded son's existence, but the mood is awfully similar to Moretti's The Son's Room. I'm not sure why I didn't have a violent reaction against this one, since it's restrained in the same way as that film... perhaps it's because there's a little less at stake here emotionally, and because Amelio directs in a way that's far less self-assured (not that I mind self-assured direction... just that cocky direction isn't necessarily a good fit for a story about such emotional uncertainty). It predictably moves from one crisis (the boy is spazzing out in public!) to the next (the boy got himself lost!), while retaining its predictable good taste and predictably good performances. Ho-hum, next, etc...]

Sucker Free City (Spike Lee) 25 [I guess the medium (this was conceived as a pilot for a TV series) has to be blamed here, since none of Spike Lee's feature films feature such completely uninspired and anonymous direction. I guess the guy was trying to create a "house style" that could be easily imitated by incompetents, and on that count he's succeeded. The script dawdles, as if time was not at all valuable, and the acting is subpar, with the performances still feeling like they're in gestation. The lone exception is Anthony Mackie, who is much better here than he was in She Hate Me. Essentially, this shows me why I like cinema and I don't particularly enjoy TV shows. Whatever She Hate Me's sins, it was at least recognizable as a cohesive piece of work. Watching this vacuous exercise in a theater was an utterly dispiriting exercise, especially once it became apparent that Lee wasn't going to pull a Mulholland Dr.-style save out of his ass.]

Eros (Stephen Soderbergh, Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai) 50 [The Wong is perfectly fine, but somewhat less impassioned than the stylistically rapturous In the Mood for Love, and certainly minor. It's saddening to hear 2046 has more in common with this short than Mood. Then again, I kind of had the realization while watching that I rarely adore WKW's movies as much in execution as I do in a conceptual sense. They're so exquisite and hermetic that they're almost off-putting when they're not intoxicating.

The Soderbergh is rather funny, but somewhat confusing when it's all said and done. I had no idea what it was trying to say. If anyone could explain its attitudes toward sex, dreams and advertising to me, I'm all ears. Still, it has one great concept... that we think our sexual fantasies are fascinating windows into our souls, but they mostly bore anyone who hears them (sort of invalidates the whole trio of films, no?). Also, seeing the sexually charged dream sequence of Downey's character in Soderbergian blue and orange is pretty significant to fans of his work.

The Antonioni is just out there. The actors are being used as symbolic signposts (e.g. she's standing in front of an ocean, he's in front of the sand) in a way that I can recognize), but when you quit reading the images and try to actually listen to the lines that the actors are speaking (I won't even say acting), it all falls to pieces rather quickly. Unintended chuckles ensued from most of the audience.]

Brodeuses (Eleonore Faucher) 41 [Stop me if you've heard this one before: A pregnant teen befriends a grieving mother and the two of them begin to work through their issues togeth....]

Saw (James Wan) 53 [Sad that this was the highlight of my last day of the festival, especially considering how completely inane and ludicrous it is. The Midnight audience helped a good deal here, turning unintentinonal howlers into communal comic relief. There's actually a neat concept here, although it's sadistic and gimmicky and not nearly thought through to the extent that it would need to be to be effectively scary. It's almost hilarious, but mostly pathetic, how quickly the moralizing serial killer discards his pretenses.]

A Perfect time to finish some unfinished business:

Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke) 63 - Maybe better than this grade suggests, though it's not quite as controlled as I would have liked (e.g. those mood-setting opening moments set the wrong mood), this quirky teen comedy gets a lot of mileage out of its aesthetic approach (b&w, mostly still shots) and its setting (most of it takes place in one apartment building). I like the way it progresses, though, slowly introducing more poignant themes until the end has a considerable amount of impact, despite the clunky duck metaphor. The flow of time is convincing, with small revelations instead of big changes being the norm, ensuring that the all-in-one-afternoon conceit doesn't feel in any way forced. It's funny too, with the kids at the start of the film quickly collapsing into boredom when a (too convenient?) power outage spoils their freedom.

Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto) 38 - Great concept here (mourning med student comes to terms with the loss of his girlfriend while dissecting her), marred by execution that somehow manages to be boring. The director juggles chronology and mixes up his stylistic approach, but it doesn't really serve the story very much. There's an incredible melodrama hidden away here, but it's gone at with a clinician's touch, unfortunately, muting emotions until they're barely perceptible. If nothing else, gorehounds can be happy to know that it really doesn't turn away from the particulars of the dissection. It's maybe the most visceral examination of the human body's workings that I've seen outside of Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes. Cronenberg should have directed this script.

Rahtree: Flower of the Night (Yuthlert Sippapak) 59 - This was the best of this year's Midnight Madness crop (at least if reports on The Machinist, still unseen by me, can be trusted), thanks in part to its sheer unpredictability. The first act suggests In the Mood for Love, of all things, with an obsessed student tracking his fixation's routine. It soon spirals off into much more genre-friendly territory, but it never loses its taste for idiosyncrasy. It's almost never scary, but it's got a good forty-five minutes or so that are gut-bustingly funny, at least if you like watching cowardly Thai people scurry away and curse a lot (which I suppose I do...). Some of it is desperate (the Exorcist parody goes on too long), but it's all, clearly, meant in good fun.

This is one of those rare films that sets up its high concept plotline with the same expediency of a movie trailer. The general lack of digressions is much appreciated, since it keeps the tone from ever becoming more weighty than the thin plot can hold (when Kim Basinger is introduced as a science teacher, all hopes of plausibility vanish). Larry Cohen wrote the story that the screenplay was based on, and his unapologetic politics are detectable throughout. The travails of the desperate protagonist play like a compendium of urban annoyance, though it’s only occasionally successful in making you feel empowered by the protagonist’s overstepping of the rules. It seems only a matter of time before director David R. Ellis (helmer of Final Destination 2’s astounding crash scene) creates a truly great popcorn movie. The bank sequence and the subsequent chase is real a knockout here. Ultimately this is a good, but not great, thriller. It’s certainly unpretentious, but it’s also pretty dumb.

It’s not the zombies that are scary in Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The exaggerated crunch that you hear as they chomp into someone is almost comforting in its grotesque familiarity. The real villain here is malicious corporate fascism, which, it has to be said, makes a much less compelling antagonist than zombies to this viewer. There are visual touchstones that suggest this might go somewhere, but the concept never really comes to fruition. The evil Umbrella Corporation functions roughly as an imaginary corrupt government would, and certainly looks the part, but it never achieves any sort of personality as its own entity. Security cameras once again populate the territory in which this sequel is set, but while they provided a reminder of the videogame that the series was based on in the original movie, this time out, they’re a lame reminder of the watchful corporate eye.

Everything here, though, seems sloppier than it was in the first movie. The direction is far less inspired, giving us inconsequential action scenes instead of genuine frights. Although Paul W. S. Anderson, director of the first film, hasn’t returned here, except as screenwriter, his unfortunate assault on the Alien franchise makes that less lamentable than it would usually be in such a case. This is the first feature for Alexander Witt, who has a long history as a second unit director on big-budget action films. Unfortunately, that training shows. Strained kinetics take precedence over any kind of atmosphere here, and the film, for all of its atmospherics, totally lacks the plastic pleasure that the first one had. Shots never really flow into each other, and space is never adequately defined, casting a feeling that the movie was made on the cheap, especially when slow-motion is badly employed.

Milla Jovovich returns to the series, but her impact in it is reduced. Playing an amnesiac in the first film, she had a unique brand of uncertainty in her actions, even when she was kicking ass. As in turn in The Fifth Element, she gave the impression that she was uncomfortable in her own body. Unfortunately, this time out she’s been consigned to the much less interesting and ambivalent role of “female action hero”. In the few instances where she’s allowed to drop that façade, she still admirably exhibits a kind of primal fear that few actors would dream of showing, but such moments are the rare exception to the rule this time out. In her oddball moments, she’s still the film’s prime asset, but given the surroundings, that’s not much of a compliment.

This sequel begins with a recap of events leading up to its predecessor’s ending, which was, ironically, far more apocalyptic than anything in Apocalypse. The final shot of that film was a terrifying visual that this one can’t begin to match in terms of size or impact. The escape plot that’s used this time out scarcely makes sense, even on the terms of its genre (a scientist with a tracking device and a missing daughter waits for 18 hours to employ it?), and even the bio-zombies are relegated to a supporting role here, depriving horror fans of the grisly action and clever set pieces that the first film had in abundance.

So, upon returning from TIFF, it turns out that my computer's hard drive had crashed, leaving me (temporarily?) unable to update my site. In the interest of not forgetting what I've seen between Sunday and sometime next week when my new system arrives, I'll list new grades here.

19. You Got Served (Chris Stokes, 2004) 12

20. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003) 58

21. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1936) 76

22. Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) 90

23. Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Alexander Witt, 2004) 36

Cellular (David R. Ellis, 2004) 59

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran, 2004) 78

The House Keys (Gianni Amelio) 52

Sucker Free City (Spike Lee) 25

Eros (Stephen Soderbergh, Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai) 50

Brodeuses (Eleonore Faucher) 41

Saw (James Wan) 53

Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke) 63

Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto) 38

Rahtree: Flower of the Night (Yuthlert Sippapak) 59

How do you keep your reputation as a women’s director intact? Simply make the man in your relationship drama an insufferable lout. It’s not quite as cut and dried as that, but the effect to bring the saintly female down to a human level feels so forced that it might as well be. The obvious touchstone here, despite the structure (which barely illuminates things at all, even if it makes the woman more sympathetic), is Scenes from a Marriage. With only five scenes, however, it’s kind of difficult for this to transcend its gimmick and really feel like the full story of a relationship. It doesn’t help matters that Ozon picks very predictable moments from the relationship to tell this story, nor that he populates it with a series of supporting characters (the 2 in the title is misleading), who help provide understanding of the main couple and distract from it with about equal frequency. Each segment has at one moment that makes you think he’s choosing the real turning points in this relationship, but collectively it has the effect of making the whole affair seem a tad phony and contrived. Thankfully, there is a very good performance from the female and several choice musical bits where Ozon’s style takes over to keep things nice and watchable.

Argento demonstrates considerable growth as a filmmaker over her navel-gazing (but curiously fascinating) debut in this Dickensian Southern gothic drama. Unremittingly unpleasant, it has a kind of hellish atmosphere that’s never compromised, for better or worse. Featuring the simultaneously magnetic and repulsive Argento as one of the most unfit mothers ever to grace a movie screen, it moves through one nightmarish scenario after another, as we watch her confused and abused child try to cope with his surroundings. Despite nonstop drug use, child molestation, and prostitution, it never breaks down into easy moralizing, giving the audience reason to be skeptical even of the Christian element that presents itself as the boy’s savior. It’s kind of the anti-Clean – despairing where Assayas’ film saw hope and dubious compassion - and the aesthetic called to mind “Dirrty”, the David LaChapelle directed music video for Christina Aguilera. More than one scene feels as if it could have been ripped out of Gummo, as well, with the decomposing South serving as a makeshift backdrop for endless debauchery. It rather rigorously goes about denying us any kind of titillation or vicarious thrill from its situations, and from that punishing approach, it achieves the kind of Christian moral that it never articulates. The plot here is a lot more articulated than in Scarlet Diva (though the last act sort of spirals out of control), which is probably due to its roots in JT LeRoy’s novel. One of my prime reasons for respect for this film is the realization that practically any other filmmaker would have whitewashed this material in its translation to screen and lessened its impact.

Dullsville. Amenabar’s direction sometimes helps matters in this euthanasia drama, but this is a film saddled with a blatantly unquestioning script. The movie you think it will be in the first reel is the movie it stays throughout, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s never even in the same ballpark as other similar message movies like Dead Man Walking, or even Philadelphia (Bardem’s character recalls Hanks there, but with more mugging). Everything is cast in a radiant sunlight, giving an inappropriate glow to the action. This is clearly less a movie about how a man has the right to die than one about how we all should cherish our right to live, and that’s its real failing. As such, it’s the crippled man’s friendships and romances that get pushed to the fore. We witness moment after moment of the protagonist’s imagined transcendence, but for all the talk of what a miserable, undignified hell his existence is, there’s not much on screen to visually suggest it (indeed, the camera is often turned on its side during conversations to help us forget he’s in a bed). By the final act I was sort of bored with the conflict, because it’s so one-sided. With its attempts to come to terms with the specter of death, it clearly fits into the director’s body of work, but that’s about the best that can be said for it as a noteworthy work. Out of desperation, I found myself hoping Amenabar would shelve his respectable humanism and toss another twist at us (they’re already dead!), but no such thing arrived. It’s by the book prestige filmmaking, which is fine, but never very exciting. Belen Rueda, as the attorney / love interest is very good.

Apparently, in Uruguay, they say “Whisky!” instead of “Cheese!” when a photo is snapped. The title of this quasi-romantic deception comedy refers to the phoniness of that gesture, and as the plot unfolds we become aware that people are not always as they appear to be on the surface (!). Obviously, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it plays out with a number of moments of drollery that really work (and a fair share that are entirely forced). The style is a kind of fake rigor. The camera doesn’t move, but the directors are willing to cut as much as they need to in order to tell us how we should feel about things. The final scene is pretty good.

“I am the sister of The Bicycle Thief!” yells one character at the end of this film, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. The sad part is that I’d much rather see Meshkini’s other bicycle movie (The Day I Became a Woman) again than this. That is bold and conceptual. This is disappointingly grounded and full of unquestioning goodwill. It doesn’t tweak our expectations very much, nor does it shock with its insights into the society it’s looking at (and it also fails to achieve Di Sica’s graceful simplicity). There are some good moments, though. For example, after the director uses a cute dog to win our sympathies, she has the heroine use the same dog to win over prison guards. It feels like anything but growth from the director, though.

Starts out as the worst kind of cute movie: Retarded people are treated as purer entities in society, ready to show us all how to slow down and start enjoying life. It doesn’t exactly deviate from that approach as it wears on, but it gets more bearable as it moves into messier territory. Still, the incessantly quirky touches (e.g. the title card is captioned “Population: 1,000,002”) keep this from ever getting anywhere near my kinda thing. If junkyard weddings and scenes of people trying to move into store displays tickle your fancy, however, have at it. Martin Compston is a good actor and all, but does this story really have to be about the two most attractive mongoloids on earth?

Thanks to Claire Denis for at least giving me one film in the second half of this year’s fest that remained a challenging, engaging experience throughout. With so many of the movies that I’m watching this week, I feel like I have them pegged within a few minutes, and it’s grown disappointing how often I’ve turned out to be right. This one’s a whole ‘nother thing. I still can’t recap some facets of the plot with any degree of certainty. The director described it pre-screening as “a dream about a heart transplant – or perhaps a nightmare,” which turned out to be a phenomenally useful bit of information. It seems like this is this year’s official festival mind-fuck, but I think I have a reasonable handle on what was going on, at least on an emotional level.

I’d still relish a second viewing (which might be hard to accomplish, since domestic distribution could take a while), because the fragmentary construction of the plot and the way that the images play off of one another almost demands the viewer knows where he’s going to understand the process of getting there. I guess the key scene here for my viewing experience was a relatively inconsequential one, in which we see a bland exchange of pleasantries during a transaction at a pharmacy. It underlined the degree to which the rest of the film was taking place in a rarefied, even fanciful, space. The approach leads to a fair number of frustrating moments (It can’t be stressed enough that this isn’t an easy film), but the end result really does feel like a startlingly fresh, rigorously demanding approach to storytelling.

Nice and moody from frame one, with some super grainy 16mm (I think...) photography illustrating how fine the line between the creepy and mundane can be. It is slow in setting up its ultimate horrors, but the gradually escalating sense of dread is a heck of a thing to luxuriate in. As the third rate lounge singer hero (Laurent Lucas) watches, his situation moves from mild inconvenience to desperate, prolonged torture. Director du Welz stages some effectively creepy bits (a lurching dancehall romp, particularly) that are not quite alarming, but certainly feel “wrong”. The payoff, while interesting due to a skewed since of humor, is underwhelming, unfortunately.

Calvaire (Fabrice du Welz) 48

L'Intrus (Claire Denis) 69

Niceland (Fridrik Thor Fridriksson) 31

Stray Dogs (Marziyeh Meshkini) 44

As Follows (? -- Some Short) 22

Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella / Pablo Stoll) 45

The director's name begs for a snooty quip, but this movie isn't really that bad. Think "Hungarian Transpotting", and you'll be thinking of a movie that plays better than this one, but you'll be in the right ball park. Several sequences are strong enough to suggest that this guy could become at least a very talented mainstream hack some day, but the tendency to let subplots just die for large swaths of the story hampers things considerably. It's often funny, and it is admirable for never becoming visually repetitive despite never coming above ground, but it really doesn't ever build in momentum, leaving the feel that it's more a series of vignettes than a cohesively plotted total work.

Very much a movie of the moment, and again, I feel like I might be slightly underrating this. It's hyper-concerned with America's national identity, and if neither of the two lead characters really feel as if their existence helps to articulate what that identity might be, their combined presence suggests that we're living in a schizophrenic nation, and that might be right. She represents faith-based charity and unending tolerance. He's indicative of our stunted brand of freedom and increased suspicion. The prime disappointment is the reliance on a murder mystery plot to provide pretext for the road movie that the final two thirds becomes. Of course, that road movie is hampered by the DV photography to a greater extent than the earlier, LA-based scenes, so maybe that film wouldn't have worked either. The glorious montage of the last five minutes, suggest Wenders has at least one more great road trip in him, however, and when he makes that movie (preferrably on film, thanks) I'll be first in the proverbial line.

This one plays cute for the most part, but at the same time it's not afraid to delve into darker emotional territory (one really can't call that final twist "cute", after all). The first half is an odd mix of blatant audience manipulation (Old folks have feelings too!, Little girls can be so self-sufficient!) and nearly jaw-dropping complications of those ideas (Feelings are liable to knock old folks out of commission!, Sandrine Bonnaire sells her hurt too much for us to be pleased with her daughter's disappearance.) It's a movie that is more complex than one might initially suspect. It sets up dualities left and right, even going so far as morphing from a movie about father-daughter reconciliation to one more concerned with mother-daughter bonding midway through. The final sequences have moments that contradict each other, in a way that I'm only beginning to realize as I type this (e.g. time *Doesn't* make everything okay.). I'm probably underrating this, though given the usually wretched state of its genre, I doubt I'm the only one...

Even after the rapturous Cannes buzz, I didn't have high expectations for this one (I guess it's because it's an African film, and I've been burned too many times before on that front...). This is a surprisingly great movie, however, as much a social comedy as it is a serious protest film. Female circumcision is the topic at hand, but by focusing on the power struggle that erupts between men and women when several girls refuse the procedure, Sembene makes a movie that is bigger than its ostensible subject matter. What's really great here is the tone, which always remains resilient and proud, even in the face of death and mutilation. The feminine empowerment here is inspired by the messages heard on the radios that the town's women treasure, but it grows naturally out of their own lives' circumstances in a way that suggests it's not merely a fashionable move. Inspiring, simple, confrontational, funny, and direct, this lives up to the hype.

The one distraction was the way that characters repeatedly relayed the same piece of exposition to one another. This probably reflects the diffusion of information in such a town, but that's no reason not to edit it.