Ballad of Big Nothing

The Winslow Boy(1999, D. Mamet)BWatched on DVD, Athens,...

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:46:00 -0400

The Winslow Boy
(1999, D. Mamet)
B
Watched on DVD, Athens, Ga.

Oddly enough for Mamet, this is not an original work but an adaptation of a play—one that is, as it turns out, ultimately pretty thin stuff. The Winslow Boy is deeply enjoyable nonetheless, and the pleasure comes from nothing more than how Mamet writes these incredibly well-mannered gentlefolk as, well, incredibly well-mannered. He doesn’t subvert the way you would expect them to talk - not one “fuck you” to be found here - but shapes their very proper, British comportments into the familiar rhythms of his writing and preferred performance style. (“Care for a smoke?” “No sir, I’m— I’m already smoking.”) Which rhythms I, with very few exceptions, find extraordinarily pleasurable. This isn’t one of Mamet’s great films - it lacks the thorniness, complexity, and depth of something like Homicide or House of Games - but even his merely good films are awful damn good.

Time Bandits(1981, T. Gilliam)CWatched on Blu-ray, Athens,...

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:23:39 -0400

Time Bandits
(1981, T. Gilliam)
C
Watched on Blu-ray, Athens, Ga.

Review for Slant Magazine here.

Europa(1991, L. von Trier) B-On Netflix Instant, Athens, Ga. Von...

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:37:39 -0400

Europa
(1991, L. von Trier)
B-
On Netflix Instant, Athens, Ga.

Von Trier had yet to fully come into his own as a filmmaker here, but it’s very clearly the work of a soon-to-be major artist. It is perhaps the closest any film I’ve seen has come to visualizing the sense of otherworldly oddness and dread of Franz Kafka’s writing, but for all of its stunning, bold, meta-movie imagery, Europa never becomes much more than a gorgeous muddle. Individual scenes presage the fearless, gut-punch brilliance of von Trier’s later work, but as a whole the film is confused, with too many ideas, themes, ideologies, and arguments crowding the stage for it ever fully to come together.

Late August, Early September(1998, O. Assayas)B+Watched on DVD,...

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:50:00 -0400

Late August, Early September
(1998, O. Assayas)
B+
Watched on DVD, Athens, Ga.

Discursive and observational and very French. Seems unfocused initially, and is, a little, though completely deliberately; it’s very self-aware (as former Cahiers critic Assayas’s films often are), comparing itself to Francois Cluzet’s character’s novels, which avoid story in favor of mood and texture. So too does Assayass, structuring the movie into chapters, each of which is itself divided into self-contained scenes separated by elegant fades to black. The sense of life going on between and beneath scenes is extraordinary; this is an incredibly rich film, beautifully performed, shot, and choreographed. It’s about how people structure their lives as stories with themselves as the hero, largely ignoring other peoples’ stories or problems; and about how that world-view is at once challenged and deepened by aging and the various tragedies that come with it. At the end, you’re still “all alone with what happens inside your body.”

Solitary Man(2009, B. Koppelman & D. Levien) C Watched at...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:51:12 -0400

Solitary Man
(2009, B. Koppelman & D. Levien)
C
Watched at home in Athens, Ga.

At least has the decency to announce its mediocrity right away by signaling the weight of some bad medical news given to Michael Douglas’s character by resorting to that old chestnut of dropping the audio out in the middle of the doctor’s speech. Then Koppelman and Levien score the opening credits to Johnny Cash’s cover of Neil Diamond’s - yep - “Solitary Man.” I considered giving up right then, and I frankly wish I had; although Solitary Man improves somewhat as it goes along, it at no point transcends its reliance on that sort of groaning cliché. Douglas’s silver-fox Lothario fucks up his life with his drinking and lying and sexing and is made miserable and alone because of it, and the movie hits every expected beat along that path. It’s never painful, exactly; it’s just dull, despite a breezy screenplay and sharp Douglas performance. Clever and superficially charming, sure, but mostly creaky, tired, and depressingly predictable - just like Douglas’s character.

A Town Called Panic(2009, S. Aubier & V. Patar)C+Watched at...

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:55:00 -0400

A Town Called Panic
(2009, S. Aubier & V. Patar)
C+
Watched at home in Athens, Ga., via Netflix Instant

Very clearly based on a short cartoon, and I can certainly see how it could be hilarious in those five minute bursts. Indeed, the first fifteen (or so) minutes of A Town Called Panic are hysterical. But what works in (very) short form doesn’t necessarily at feature length, and Panic’s intentionally thin premise - a toy horse, cowboy, and Indian (named Horse, Cowboy, and Indian) run around and get into lots of hyperactive hijinks - really can’t sustain itself for longer than 25 minutes. After that, the filmmakers seem to have no idea of where to go, and despite some bits of gold here and there, the whole thing eventually devolves into unproductive randomness, more manic than actually funny.

/Airplane!/(1980, J. Abrahams / D. Zucker / J. Zucker)A-Watched...

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:52:00 -0400

/Airplane!/
(1980, J. Abrahams / D. Zucker / J. Zucker)
A-
Watched at home in Athens, Ga., via IFC OnDemand
Second viewing

My first viewing in probably 10 years (at least). I wasn’t sure it would hold up - it’s hard to think of Airplane! without flashing to the members of ZAZ’s dire contemporary output, or to the Seltzer/Friedberg atrocities it influenced - but boy, does it ever. Endlessly inspired and inventive, with one clever, sharp, or smart-stupid gag after another. Dada-esque in its absurdist assault (its closest recent comparison may be the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie), made all the better because it’s taking place in such a superficially serious universe (the casting of stoic dramatic actors is a genius move). This time out, I also picked up on a strand of social critique, a deft commentary on how Hollywood genre cinema mistreats its black characters. Like all ZAZ outings, it whiffs occasionally, but the hits so outnumber the misses - and are so funny - that you don’t notice. ( It’s also worth pointing out that the bits that fall flat - the Saturday Night Fever parody especially - are the same kind that have come to dominate awful contemporary spoof movies. Fewer references and more, I dunno, jokes.)

Soul Kitchen(2009, F. Akin) B- Watched at home in Athens,...

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:46:00 -0400

Soul Kitchen
(2009, F. Akin)
B-
Watched at home in Athens, Ga.

For awhile this is just kind of odd, as Akin trades the dramatics of his Head-On and The Edge of Heaven for goofy, insubstantial comedy. The energy is sort of anarchist, a see-what-sticks approach of committing to whatever nutty idea Akin had. Still, I found myself at a bit of a remove for the first two-thirds; most of the comedy is more theoretically than actually funny, and though I admire Akin’s rambunctious spirit, it’s not quite as infectious as I think he intends. That is, until the final third, when all of the film’s (entirely vestigial) plot strands are resolved in gleefully, knowingly preposterous ways and the goofy energy goes off the rails; from the moment our hero takes a pratfall and the camera goes with him in an extreme cant that rates among the silliest camera movements I’ve ever seen, Soul Kitchen had me. In fact, I was impressed all the way through by Akin’s style, which in its technical aspects is similar to those of Head-On and The Edge of Heaven - long shots, hand-held camera work, elegant pans - but executed in an entirely different context, for an entirely different purpose. Even stuff like the aphrodisiac powder that leaves an entire party outrageously horny - stuff that could have come straight out of any dumb, obnoxious Hollywood comedy - is made at least tolerable by Soul Kitchen’s affable, shaggy-dog nature.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010, E. Wright) B+ At Beechwood...

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:24:00 -0400

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
(2010, E. Wright)
B+
At Beechwood Stadium Cinemas, Athens, Ga.

A complete blast just about from beginning to end, endlessly inventive and alive with the plastic potential of the cinema. Its aggressive use of just about every stylistic trick in the book (split screens, shifting aspect ratios, beautifully integrated CGI effects) comes across not as self-satisfied but as a joyful exploration of limitless film form. The obvious love in Wright’s filmmaking - for cinema, comics, videogames (and every other bit of pop culture he’s embracing/appropriating) - is infectious.

It helps that the cast is spectacular and very, very game; terrific comic performers and crush objects abound. Michael Cera continues to do terrific, slight variations of the same type - here, his halting mumbling is the solipsism of a self-obsessed jerk. Wright’s style is an evocation of his po-mo-ironic worldview, of which it is to some extent critical (or at least gently mocking). It’s bright and pretty and clever and fun, no doubt, but the movie is well aware that Scott is frequently kind of an asshole.

The ending is a disappointment, then, in that it forgives him too patly and gives him what he wants too easily. Mike D’Angelo is right when he says that the movie is, broadly, Manhattan with the wrong ending. But that’s a quibble. The thing is just a joy to watch, and I part with critics who say it’s emotionally hollow. Its style is its emotion, a dead-on metaphor for relationships and self-discovery within my generation. For better or worse, it gets us.

[A review will be appearing on In Review Online at some future point.]

/Winter’s Bone/(2010, D. Granik) A- Second viewing At...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:40:00 -0400

/Winter’s Bone/
(2010, D. Granik)
A-
Second viewing
At Cine, Athens, Ga.

Found it no thematically richer, exactly, but even more involving, both dramatically and emotionally. This was aided by my picking up on some plot details and connective tissue I missed the first time out because I’m an idiot. The end gained a lot of resonance for me when I finally made the connection between Teardrop’s pronouncement that he’s found out the killer and the earlier scene in which he acknowledges an awareness of the inevitable outcome of that knowledge. There’s a nagging unease as the credits roll that matches the film’s mood of constant threat, the uncertainty of what Teardrop plans and what it means. Speaking of which: How fucking good is John Hawkes in this movie? So fucking good.