DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: 2009 Films

Showing posts with label 2009 Films. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Accident

This TIFF inclusion from 2009 finally emerges on Canadian soil for public consumption on Blu-ray via Shout Factory almost three years later. While not widely known, Soi Cheang's film has one of the most clever conceptual plot hooks since 'Infernal Affairs': a group of assassins-for-hire specialize in elaborately choreographed murders made to look like accidents, thus absolving their clients and themselves of persecution or retribution. It makes for a stimulating, small-scale thriller ripe for a bigger, more spectacular Hollywood remake.

Accident (2009) dir. Soi Cheang
Starring: Louis Koo, Richie Ren, Shui-Fan Fung, Michelle Ye, Suet Lam

By Alan Bacchus

Hong Kong star Louis Koo plays Ho Kwok-Fai, the brain of the team, a foursome not unlike something we'd see in a Mission Impossible film. They're introduced overseeing their latest orchestration: a car accident on a busy Hong Kong street. Seemingly random details, such as a rogue balloon flying in the air covering up a street camera and a blinding flash of reflected light from a mirror, combine to create a perfectly constructed domino effect that results in their pre-planned fake accident. But on their latest job, when a bus seemingly runs out of control, killing one of Ho's colleagues, Ho suspects he might be the target of someone else's accident orchestration.

Director Soi Cheang keeps the action and plotting contained, making Accident a relatively small picture and focusing in on Ho's character and his obsession, paranoia and isolation. Not unlike Gene Hackman's Harry Caul from The Conversation or Leonardo Di Caprio in Inception, Ho's life of clandestine deception has altered his perception of reality. This boils over into a paranoia-fuelled search for his assassin. He rents an apartment directly below his suspect, maps out his floor plan on his ceiling and listens in on his telephone conversations. Doubt and confusion create an obsessed mania akin to the destruction of Hackman's apartment in The Conversation or Guy Pearce's tattooed notes in Memento.

Louis Koo's performance is delightfully intense and focused, portraying Ho as a broken man plagued by the nightmarish memories of his wife's fatal car accident (or potential murder). Koo's attire complements this intensity, as he wears constricting clothes, a form-fitting jacket and large, industrial sniper glasses.

Cheang imbues a distinct visual palette using long lenses almost exclusively to convey a voyeuristic feel and visually compressing the world around Ho.

If anything, where Cheang leaves us short is in detailing the procedural aspects of his characters' schemes, something a Hollywood remake, as made by Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese, would map out and visualize with greater fastidiousness and care. But the work presented here is still an intriguing conceptual film that stands on its own, a sharp little gem to find in the glut of other new home video releases.

The Shout Factory Blu-ray features a decent making-of documentary and curiously, a faulty 2:35:1 anamorphic transfer, which appears as a vertically stretched 16x9 full frame aspect ratio. It's difficult to say if this fault applies to all the Blu-rays in circulation, however.

***½

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Mother

Mother (2009) dir. Bong Joon-Ho
Starring: Hye-ja Kim, Bin Won, Ku Jin

****

By Alan Bacchus

One of Asian cinema’s current giants, Bong Joon-Ho is primarily known for his cross-over creature feature The Host. But in his follow-up picture, Mother, he executes a deeper, more emotionally driven character story, a powerful masterpiece about the impenetrable bond of mother and son.

Hye-ja is a single mother to mentally challenged Yoon Do-joon, a young man who follows around his tougher miscreant buddy, Jin-Tae. After a night out on the town Do-joon follows a young village girl home before turning in for the night. But when she turns up dead the next day as a victim of a brutal murder, Do-joon gets the blame.

Witnessing the callous indifference to her son’s pleaded innocence, the mother begins an epic journey to clear her son’s name. Fuelled by her unerring need to protect her naïve son, she comes face to face with a cacophony of hard-ass cops, slimy/drunken lawyers and varied petty criminals in the name of justice.

Joon-ho’s magnificent script never rests, as it constantly changes pace and sends us on a number of sudden and shocking twists. While The Host elevated Joon-ho to international genre auteur of the highest order, Mother lines up more with his murder mystery Memories of Murder, an equally beguiling and intense pot boiler. His razor sharp criminal procedural plotting creates an intense and sometimes frantic pace. And we’re putty in his hands as he moves us elegantly through sequences of absurd humour and heartbreaking moments of emotional release.

Hye-ja’s performance might just be the last word in female revenge heroes. Forget about Lisbeth Salander or Thelma & Louise, hell hath no fury like this woman scorned (sorry, I couldn’t resist that line). Hye-ja’s supremely interesting face contains a range of remarkable emotions, from supreme sadness and pity to laser-sighted intensity. Joon-ho subverts our expectations through a number of turns, giving us a couple of red herrings to tease us before unveiling a climax that turns Hye-ja’s character inside-out.

Unlike the generic and salaciously titled Memories of Murder, Mother is the only appropriate title for this film. By the end it ceases to be about who did what to whom and more about the clouded version of justice a mother conceives for her son.

Friday, 24 June 2011

The Time That Remains

The Time That Remains (2010) dir. Elia Suleiman
Starring: Ali Suliman, Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri, Samar Qudha Tanus, Shafika Bajjali

***

By Alan Bacchus

Elia Suleiman's autobiographical portrait of 60+ years of his Palestinian family living under occupation in Israel is brought to life with his own brand of silent cerebral comedy. This highly regarded film played notably at Cannes and Toronto, and now a couple of years later it makes its way to DVD. From the mix of sharp and highly personal political commentary and wicked black comedy, indeed it feels like an auteur presence at the helm with very important subject matter. Unfortunately, Suleiman's insistence on style distances himself from his subjects at the most crucial points in the film. But politically it's a powerhouse, in line with other fine political comedies from marginalized peoples, such as Tales from the Golden Age and Goodbye Lenin.

Suleiman begins in 1948 with the victory of the Israelis in creating their own state at the expense, of course, of the native Palestinians, including Fuad, the patriarch of the Suleiman family and a rebellious young man keen on fighting the Israelis in the name of his people. Director Suleiman structures the film in a series of episodes over the course of this period, with Fuad and his family as the throughline.

In the ‘70s, Fuad is a father and a family man, reluctantly accepting of his position, but quietly eager and worried that his son has continued the tradition of rebelliousness. Unfortunately, he would later see his son forced to leave the country when he's an adult and thus more dangerous to the establishment. The film ends with Fuad and his wife quietly contemplating their life together in a land of perpetual conflict.

Suleiman is not shy to wear his opinion loud and proud. The Israelis are portrayed as war mongering control freaks, shamefully denigrating the people they have ‘conquered’. The opening scene of the Israeli leaders giving the Palestinian leaders their one-sided terms of surrender and then in the same breath asking to take their picture with them is utterly painful and comically tragic.

Much of the comedy comes silent without dialogue from the observance of the sad ironies. Suleiman's strong wide-angle compositions and portraits highlight both the absurdity and horror of war. Perhaps the most memorable image comes towards the end of this film. It’s a shot of a tank pointing its gun at a Palestinian man walking casually from his home. The site of the massive gun mere inches away from the innocent man is monumentally absurd, but representative of the statement the film wants to make.

In the final segment, the concerted lack of emotion from the characters wears thin, and as the picture comes to its close we desperately want to engage with them, but don't. Suleiman, who goes in front of the camera to play the elder Fuad (I think?), enacts his Tati/Keaton persona, a sequence wherein Fuad simply walks into rooms, stares at his wife sitting on her balcony and then walks away. Comparisons have been made to the silent mugging of Buster Keaton, but silence is about the only thing these two have in common. Here, the segment is egotistical and furthers the distance from his characters for the sake of his artificial aesthetic.

It’s a shame the film peters out with art house obtuseness instead of elevating and intensifying itself to make a stronger statement.

The Time That Remains is available on DVD from EOne Home Entertainment in Canada.

Saturday, 9 April 2011

L'Affaire Farewell

L’Affaire Farewell (2010) dir. Christian Carion
Starring: Guillaume Canet, Emir Kusturica, Willem Dafoe, Fred Ward, Alexandra Maria Lara, Niels Arestrup, Dina Korzun

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

If anything, this absorbing too-real-to-be-true spy story underplays the significance of the real life events of 1981 depicted in this film. In the early days of the Reagan Presidential era, a series of complex spy games resulted in the transfer of vital Soviet documents from Moscow, through Paris, to Washington. The documents included Soviet copies of the NASA Space Shuttle blueprints and a top secret list of Communist spies within the CIA, FBI and the White House.

Christian Carion (Joyeux Noel) executes this potent firecracker story with the sensitivity of an intimate character film. The key relationship is the working friendship between Pierre Froment (Canet), a French engineer working for the French embassy in Moscow, and Sergei Gregoriev (Kusturica), a high ranking KGB operative who risks his life and his family for his political values.

Sergei and Pierre meet almost coincidentally when Pierre is instructed by his superiors to exchange a small package with a suspected Soviet informer. This one act turns into a lengthy series of secret exchanges and increasingly dangerous spy games. Through their intimate meetings, we get to know their characters, both of them humble men who work in secret, fearful of the backlash from their families. At the same time, we see the big picture ramifications of their actions. Fred Ward plays Ronald Reagan and Philippe Magnon plays Francois Mitterand, both of whom trade this information like baseball cards, neglectful of the personal risk taken by their courageous operatives.

Cold War spy games like these always make for great cinema. And Carion’s treatment of this subject has all the quiet tension of a John le Carré novel or something with Gene Hackman in it. There are no action scenes, yet we’re not without a sense of impending danger. Carion clearly shows the importance of family. These are the stakes for Sergei and Pierre. Sergei’s inner conflict is the battle between his patriotic desire to see Russia rise from the idealistic ashes of Communism and his desire to be a family man and care for his son and wife. He commits several acts of betrayal along the way, including having an affair with a secretary in order to get information. This is the stuff of great screenwriting – flawed heroes with obstacles the size of mountains to surmount.

As for Pierre, he’s been lying to his wife the whole time, which threatens to cause the breakup of their marriage. But why does he risk his family? His motives are less clear than Sergei’s. Perhaps it’s his desire to make a difference in the world, or a feeling of inadequacy as a French engineer living outside his home, subject to the strict control of his superiors. Guillaume Canet’s introspective everyman performance renders Pierre as the ideal, identifiable point of view into this secret and dangerous world.

Carion executes a marvellous cinematic third act, during which Sergei comes face-to-face with the sacrifices he’s made. His final conversation with his son is a highly emotional moment, and their final embrace is simply heartbreaking.

An interesting side note is the casting of two expert directors in the lead roles. Emir Kusturica is a Bosnian cinema master and two-time Palm D’Or winner appearing in his first ever lead role speaking both Russian and French. Bravo. And Guillaume Canet is a HUGE mega star in France (husband to Marion Cotillard), but also a budding master director (Tell No One, Little White Lies).

Though L’Affaire Farewell didn’t benefit from a theatrical release, by no means should this film be considered ‘straight-to-video’. This is as important, entertaining and mainstream as any ‘foreign language’ film you’ll see.

L’Affaire Farewell is available on Blu-ray and DVD from E1 Home Entertainment in Canada.

Friday, 25 March 2011

Lebanon

Lebanon (2009) dir. Samuel Maoz
Starring: Itay Tiran, Yoav Donat, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Shtrauss

***

By Alan Bacchus

The surprise Venice Golden Lion winner of 2009 is an intense adventure using the same subject matter as Waltz with Bashir—another Israeli take on the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This time we’re put into a tank with four Israeli soldiers. There’s Assi the commander, Shmulik the gunner, Yigal the driver and Hertzel the loquacious loader. Being friends as well as comrades means that Assi often has difficulty asserting his orders to the group, specifically with Hertzel, who questions the logic of the chain of command and the hierarchy of duties. It makes for light, humorous banter, dulling us to the horror going on outside the tank.

But when Major Jamil enters the tank, orders get thrown down with authority. With clarity, Jamil makes it simple—proceed through the recently demolished village, look for surviving enemy soldiers and contain any lingering threats. We’re told it’s a walk in the park until they get to their next destination, an impending battle in San Tropez.

The tank has two points of view, a wide angle pigeonhole target sight of the gun and a closer zoomed in view from the same angle. From these two shots we watch as Shmulik slowly goes stir crazy due to the brutality he’s forced to watch happening on the outside. A family being shot to death in a vacant building, an innocent Muslim blown apart in his car and even a cow clinging to life with his stomach torn open are indelible images to both Shmulik and the audience.

For the others, the intensity increases because of the earth-quaking caused by the explosions and the devastating sounds of war echoing through the steel machine. Like the metallic claustrophobia of the German sub in Das Boot, the confines of the metal tank serves as the film’s only location. The space is tight and perhaps Maoz used Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat as inspiration to maintain a dynamic and non-repetitive visual experience in such a small place. But it's important to note this film was made before the rash of single location thrillers of 2010 (i.e., 127 Hours, Frozen, Buried, etc.)

The few sources of light create enough creative light schemes to play with. And the occasional time when the hatch is opened up, a blinding beam of light is sent into the tank, which is enough to remind us that there is another world outside.

Admirable as it is, in creating an intense war film without really seeing anything, the film suffers from our uncertainty about whether the filmmakers are actually taking a stand on something. War is bad, we know. Perhaps it’s the singular point of view of the tank as a metaphor for the unwavering party line of the Israeli military. Maybe. It’s an implied theme, which we have to stretch to find, but it lacks the passionate confessional tone of Waltz with Bashir. And so it fails to raise itself to the cinematic level of brilliance the concept and the era in history demands.

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Dogtooth

Dogtooth (2009) dir. Giorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis

***

By Alan Bacchus

The opening scene is especially confusing, three siblings in a bathroom playing some kind of cryptic game, an endurance test to see who can hold their fingers under the hot water tap the longest before pulling away. It’s not so much the task at hand which is odd, it’s the language used. It’s in Greek, though the words they refer to just match up. Sea' becomes a 'chair', 'motorway' means 'strong wind' and 'carbine' means 'a white bird'? Just typos by the subtitler? Nope, this is just one part of the extraordinary and audacious subversion at play in Giorgos Lanthimos’ sick and twisted art house black comedy.

This film original premiered in Cannes 2009, winning the Prix En Certain Regard, but has seen public release in US or Canada until now, when it received an Oscar nomination of Best Foreign Language Film. If anyone doubted the Academy willingness to go dark and edgy and risky, they just need to watch Dogtooth.

This film perhaps sets new benchmarks for torture and brainwashing. None of the characters have names but it appears the five main characters in this film are a family, living in some kind of enclosed compound. Father (Christos Stergioglou) is leader, and the only one allowed to leave the compound, mother (Michele Valley) is allowed to make phonecalls and seems privy to what’s going on, but is still clueless. The three children, identified as son (Hristos Passalis) , eldest (Aggeliki Papoulia) and youngest (Mary Tsoni), live like captive slaves unaware of the social existence outside of what Father has fed them since birth – a wholly deranged experiment is domestication commanded by Father presumably over the course of 20+ years.

A staid and dead pan tone is established by the director early. We see long almost silent takes of the characters looking, reacting, observing without editorial manipulation. The awkward camera angles and wide angle lenses enhance the twisted nature of this domestic story.

Lanthimos’ objective, non judgemental point of view means we’re left to our own to infer what exactly is going in. After the first scene, wherein characters seem to be talking in a jumbled up version of their language, we slow figure out what’s going on. A cruel experiment by the father to shape or mould his children into a mutated social beings. Early on we see Father go to a dog kennel to check on the progress of his dogs who are being trained as attack dogs. At this point most of us will clue in to the metaphor. But the purpose of this bizarre game remains clouded in mystery.

Lanthimos moves quietly from scenes of surreal black comedy to shocking violence and depravity, with a consistent undercurrent of monumental existential tragedy and despair for these children. A life wasted on the deranged whims of a madman, and yet they are completely unaware of their plight.

The sexual development of the children is carefully handled. A young woman from the outside is pimped out by Father for the gratification of his son’s urges. The sex, of course, is immoral and cruel for the son, but it never feels like pure exploitation. On the other hand Father has also trained his family when in danger to go down on their hands and knees and bark like dogs.

As audacious and beguiling the concept, there’s a repititiousness which sets in. Like some of the great cinematic enfant terribles, Michael Haneke and Lars Von Trier Lanthimos pushes our buttons, pushing the audiences willingness to be in the point of view of pure madness, without a traditional dramatic arc to suspend our disbelief. In the back of my mind I was prepared for the film to cut to black and at any moment, leaving us shocked and wanting – the same effect I had at the end of The White Ribbon. Lanthimos is not quite as cruel as Haneke and he engineers a semblance of a third act, a glimmer of hope for the children to escape their prison.

Whether or not this film wins the Oscar is inconsequetial as the recoginition it will receive when announced as a nominee by some Hollywood celebrity on Sunday night will be monumentous. The film will thus attract an audience of curiosity-seekers, many of whom will experience something they’ve never seen before.

Friday, 21 January 2011

Enter the Void

Enter the Void (2009) dir. Gaspar Noe
Starring: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Ed Spear, Cyril Roy

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

There’s a conscious effort to titillate our senses and provoke extreme reaction to this film. It almost goes without saying though for Gaspar Noe, who has carved out for himself this title as the current l’enfant terrible of cinema. He certainly gives Lars Von Trier a run, and this film seems to be him matching von Trier’s Anti-Christ experience.

Enter the Void is beyond Anti-Christ though. Beneath the salacious sex, anatomical closeups of the genitalia, hardcore drug use and general loopy psychedelic aesthetic is a warm heart, a genuine love for his characters to succeed and survive in a tough uncompromising world.

This heart also exists in Irreversible, Noe’s previous shock fest, a film known more for it’s graphic beating scene and the infamous rape of Monica Belluci’s character. What people rarely discuss is the genuine romance between his characters, which fueled the monumentally excessive dramatic journey of his hero.

Like Dave Bowman's leap into the infinite so is the neon blasted, strobe-lit rollercoaster ride Noe takes us on in Enter The Void. For most of the time we're behind the head of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American living in Tokyo, presumably a former backpacker who stayed in this electric city and got caught up in the twisted underworld of drug dealing. His estranged sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta) has just arrived in the city, a reunification completing their lifelong promise to each other after they split up in a complicated and melodramatic backstory. Oscar's criminalistic predilections quickly creep into Linda's life, thereby corrupting her as well. First it's a harmless hit of E, then some pelvic grinding with disreputable douchebags in a club, pretty soon she's stripping in a club and destroying everything that is straight and narrow in her life.

A drug deal gone wrong makes Oscar enemies with some nasty gangsters, which results in his death at the hands of the police. In this moment things get even screwier, when Oscar's DHT hormones kick in giving him the ultimate and final trip, flashing us around through the events of his life.

We're literally behind his head for two thirds of the film, as Noe frames his camera either from his point of view or behind his neck seeing what he's looking at. The camera floats around Oscar as he moves through space and time, with no seemingly no spacial or temporal limits. After Oscar fully dies we're still left with 45mins on the running time whereby Noe's camera becomes part of Linda's point of view and eventually a god-like omniscient viewpoint, perhaps Oscar's again from the afterlife watching where Linda will end up. The camera elegantly glides through inanimate objects connecting these time jumps, and in the most salacious camera moves, manages to fit inside Linda's cervix, through her birth canal and into her uterus wherein we get to see the miracle of life up close and in real time.

This is bold aggressive and hopelessly romantic filmmaking at its best, a filmmaker with all the tools at his disposal to challenge us aesthetically and intellectually, a true cinematic experience incomparable to anything we've seen before.

Enter the Void is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from EOne Home Entertainment in Canada

Monday, 17 January 2011

Casino Jack and the United States of Money

Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2009) dir. Alex Gibney
Documentary

By Alan Bacchus

***

I’m only a casual follower of American politics, and know very little of the complex system of the lobbying wherein third party organizations hire non-governmental third party firms to pressure members of Congress into voting and passing Bills and thus affecting the policies of the nation. Casino Jack attempts to make sense of this system so reliant on money and thus susceptible to corruption by telling the story Jack Abramoff, the king of the lobbyists, who was famously indicted and served time for fraud.

It’s no surprise this is a Republican story, when it comes to political controversy, for Democrats, it always seems to be sex scandals, for Republicans it’s always about money. As the most aggressively free market country in the world, success in business seems to go to those who can push the moral and ethical edge to the max in order to squeeze as much money out of the system.

Jack Abramoff squeezed a lot. It’s a head spinning first hour of information thrown at us. Like All the President’s Men or even that lengthy speech by Donald Sutherland in the middle of Oliver Stone’s JFK, Alex Gibney bombards us with names of lobbyists, politicians, dollar figures and organization names which Abramoff used to move money from place to place in exchange for political favours.

The title refers to Abramoff’s association with Native American Casinos which Abramoff exploited in order to cheat and swindle millions of dollars out of the entitlement of these native reserves. Abramoff seemd to scour the world for loopholes to exploit, including supporting sweatshop manufacturing operations in the unregulated US commonwealth nation of Sai Pan.

Casino Jack produces the same effect as watching Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job, or even Gibney’s Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room, all of which simplifies the complexities of white collar crimes. Casino Jack arrives on DVD in time with the release of the dramatic version of this story, starring Kevin Spacey and directed by former documentarian George Hickenlooper (who sadly died last year). There’s enough special features to add even more context and information, as if we didn’t get enough in the actual film. Unfortunately we’re also given a rather large pitch for ‘Take Part’ an advocate group against these heinous lobbying practices. It’s an important cause, but ironically we feel as if we’re being lobbied to ourselves by watching this DVD.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Collapse

Collapse (2009) dir. Chris Smith
A documentary featuring Michael Ruppert

***

By Blair Stewart

At some point in our present existence predicated by its own existence civilization will run low on oil. In lockstep with this fact is the exponential swelling of our populace while entrenched battles for fossil fuels causes the global economy to pinball around. Until then.

Made by Chris Smith, the documenatarian responsible for "American Movie" and "The Yes Men", "Collapse" probes the career of Michael Ruppert; former LAPD officer, investigative reporter, publisher of the underground newsletter 'From the Wilderness' and possible Oracle of western civilizations decline. Together they sit in a grubby warehouse for an interview as tentacles crept their way around my plans for a fat retirement.

Locked into a single-person bull session with an old man shouldn't make for an unsettling experience and yet the intelligence and the paranoia and the devout cynicism of Ruppert did just that to my placidity. Switching between Ruppert's talking head and related footage of his scorn for most media, government, higher law enforcement and alternative energy, "Collapse" maps out the fierce bush humanity may need to hack through for progression. No doubt an ego boost for survivalist and vegan hippies alike. Like a knowing horror film where bloodshed outside of the frame is far worse for the imagination a similar effect is had just from Smith's subject talking. This doesn't make everything Michael Ruppert is saying to be cardinal virtues from hell; it's that he has a convincingly burnt-out way of pointing out likely cataclysms and the realities of overpopulation and peak oil overpowers my personal horseshit detector.

"Collapse" is a stylistically unusual documentary for Smith as it has an Errol Morris "Fog of War"/"Mr. Death" touch to it from the film's setting to the Philip Glass-ish soundtrack down to the poster design. This is akin to Soderbergh blatantly aping Wong Kar-wai's style and odd as Smith is one of the best in his field. A form of flattery perhaps, and possibly the proper (only?) way to approach the singular personality of the cigarette-punishing Ruppert. A good documentary on a great mouthpiece, and worthwhile viewing for everyone who has a stake in the derivatives of oil.

N.B. One piece of sage advice is passed along: buy perennial vegetable seeds for your garden, you might need them down the road.

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Avatar (Special Edition)

Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Giovani Ribisi, Stephen Lang

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

There’s nothing really special edition about a Collector's Edition of Avatar, which comprises of 16 extra mins added to the original film, bringing it now to a near 3-hour running time. It’s not very special when the film came out not less than a year ago, with absolutely no time to let it even breathe and have it’s scenes, characters, motivations, special effects, and it’s individual moments of anger, sadness and comedy become etched in cinema history. It’s $700million take notwithstanding, is the film that memorable enough (yet) to justify having new footage added in?

It’s not like Lord of the Rings where there’s the books whose characters and events are already entrenched in pop culture and with an already loyal fanbase who desire to see such excised portions reinstated. And so, watching the new Avatar, I couldn’t even feel a difference in the two versions. Sure, I know the opening scene is different, because it takes place on earth, but, it took me an internet search to figure what exactly these other extra scenes are.

Why didn’t Mr. Cameron, and the fellows at Fox, wait, till say, the second and third Avatars come out before rewarding us with this special edition? Well, it surely maximizes the revenue possibilities releasing this just prior to Black Friday and at the beginning of Christmas shopping season. Or maybe it’s because secretly the filmmakers know that the film might have a shorter shelf life than it’s box office take might suggest?

I doubt the latter is the case, but I do believe 10 years from now Avatar will seem like a fun fantasy adventure, a disposable and forgettable slice of entertainment from the bygone era of 3D hyper and over-exuberance.

Looking back on the film, a third time, twice on Blu-Ray and once in 3D on the big screen, my opinion on the film has changed little.

The plotting of Cameron’s sci-fi version of Dances With Wolves borrows characters, dramatic arcs and story beats are all rooted in familiar storytelling, in addition to Wolves, films like Braveheart, Last of the Mohicans, The Matrix and a number of westerns all contribute to Cameron's screenplay. Although I’ve heard Mr. Cameron expound again and again that ultimately, ’it comes down to story’, it’s all BS because clearly story here takes a backseat for special effects and spectacle. So let’s leave the story as that - a functional skeleton for Cameron to hang all his fantastical creations.

The creatures are all rendered as perfect as can be compared to other CGI films. The blue creatures look almost real. But of course they can never look 100% real, because there is no such creature as a Na’vi. They run just like humans, can shoot guns and arrows just like humans and embrace and kiss just like humans. Everything works as good as it can. But their computer generated facial expressions can never substitute for the expressiveness of the humans - though Cameron would argue against that as well. And so, true immersion into the material comes down to whether you don’t mind watching nine-foot talk blue people interact and act like humans. ‘Titanic’ had worse dialogue and worse characters, yet when Jack was saying goodbye to Rose as her lifeboat was being lowered into the water the moment hit us in the gut because Leonardo Di Caprio was a real person and Kate Winslet was a real person. Avatar does not have that luxury and thus these moments never quite work as well.

The action is a marvel and mind blowing. The final twenty minutes, Transformers-like army vs. army battle, the kind of battle which could have easily been a wash of random swooshing imagery, quick cuts and incomprehensive movement is executed with typical Cameron panache. Even after 15 years, Cameron it appeared to me he hadn’t lost a step in that department.

And yet, after I saw Aliens again, I think he has. The organic feeling we get from the action between physical humans and physical aliens (puppets, of course, but animate objects no less), can not be fully substituted with CGI. And this is where Avatar never reaches it’s full potential, no matter how hard Cameron has tried (and believe me, on the accompanying documentary, he tried really really hard), he just can’t make me feel true emotions for these characters and buy into their journey.

Your sincerely,

A humble but grumpy curmudgeon.

'Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition) is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Sunday, 17 October 2010

Bomber

Bomber (2009) dir. Paul Cotter
Starring: Shane Taylor, Benjamin Whitrow, Eileen Nicholas

***

By Greg Klymkiw

A terse, tight-lipped old Brit and his seemingly vivacious wife coerce their touchy-feely layabout son into driving them to a village in Germany to fulfil Dad's decades-old obsession of finding a building dotted on a 60-year-old aerial photo and in this odyssey on the backroads of Europe, the family reaches new understandings about each other and Dad finds redemption in the unlikeliest of places.

Road trips in the movies are certainly not without merit. Tried and true, this is a genre wherein an old chestnut of a story premise will not trouble anyone due to familiarity with the narrative backbone if the ride itself proves rewarding.

Given the title Bomber, one has a fairly good idea what the "secret" revelation and need for redemption will be in this film written and directed by Paul Cotter, but again, that's less important than the journey itself. For such yarns to still have punch, there are several questions that need to be answered in the affirmative. Is the pilgrimage rife with drama and emotion of the highest order? Is it compelling? Is it plausible? Are the literal twists and turns in the road carefully and evocatively mirrored with twists and turns of the thematic and psychological kind? Are they layered, original and, most importantly, entertaining and thought provoking?

These then, are the challenges, not only of the filmmaker in general, but frankly, the reviewer who must assess the worth or lack thereof in this specific film. And the answer to each question above is, rather maddeningly - yes... and no.

Bomber is certainly a film worth seeing, though the whole is definitely not equal to the sum of its parts. Granted, with any film, one takes away individual moments, scenes, sequences and the like, holding on to them long after we've seen the picture, but I think what separates the good from the great in cinema (we can leave the mediocre and merely wretched behind in discussing this work) is when everything comes together in the actual process of watching the film - when what we see while we see it is as seamless as possible, so that questions about character, motivation and plot are answered in due course as the picture unspools. Questions should (almost) always come after. Analysis and thought about what we've seen is richer when the picture delivers a narrative that has as few speed bumps as possible to take us out of the drama, unless taking us out of the drama is an intentional tool to enhance the drama as the film progresses.

For example, Bomber has an uphill climb in gaining our avid interest. This is not a case of a film leisurely giving us necessary information in order to lull us into acceptance of the narrative and/or tone and pace, but rather the fact that the picture seems to start off on the sort of footing that strains credibility in the actions of the main character - who, as it turns out, is not necessarily the father figure, but the son.

At the outset, we are introduced to the son as he tries silently waking while his live-in girlfriend sleeps. Alas, she wakes up and he needs to explain to her that he's popping out to see his parents off on their trip to Europe. The girlfriend reminds him they have an important commitment and that he must not blow it "again". He emphatically assures her he won't, but just as forcefully insists how important it is he visits with his parents.

So far, so good.

He shows up at Mom and Dad's house, helps them pack their car, says his goodbyes and offers his well wishes. We're given an excellent series of clues and character traits about all three characters and their relationships with one another. The son hugs and kisses Mom. When he goes to give Dad a hug, it's rebuffed in favour of a handshake. It's true-to-life, intriguing and entertaining.

And then... Dad and Mom start the car, back out of the garage and... KAPUT! The car dies.

This is where you start to get a sinking feeling as the next series of shots are of the son transporting Mom and Dad to Germany in his van - accompanied, sadly, by some horrendous up-tempo folkie tune. We don't actually see the son's decision to screw things up with his girlfriend (presumably yet again) and drop everything to drive his parents which, in and of itself is not a big problem, but because considerable running time passes with ho-hum driving shots and scant few clues as to how the son agrees to let this happen, all one thinks while watching is, "Why the hell is he doing this?" and "Oh, give me a break, I'm not buying this." Not only is credibility being strained, but also we're not given enough clues for quite some time as to why the son would do this. All the while, we're taken out of the narrative and left with borderline cutesy-pie quirkiness.

Annoying as hell, really. Here we are at the beginning of the road trip and we're NOT buying it, but instead are forced to feed upon a few jaunty dollops of whimsy. Ugh!

Eventually, we come to understand the son's motivations, but frankly, this has taken far too long to occur and it becomes a real chore to stay with the movie. Once we eventually do, there are considerable pleasures to be had, but they come in fits and starts - the entire film being marred by either lapses in credibility or forced quirkiness.

All that said, when the film is clicking, it's funny, bittersweet and often very moving. The trio of performances from Shane Taylor, Benjamin Whitrow and Eileen Nicholas are uniformly fine. Whitrow, in particular offers up knockout work. The scene where he finally encounters what he's been looking for sees him deliver such a moving monologue that we're riveted and though his "audience" in the film is finally less than enthralled, we're moved and shattered to see this character redeem himself. When he discovers the real truth behind the thing he's been haunted by for over sixty years of his life, I defy anyone to control the opening of their tear duct floodgates.

Bomber is without question a flawed work, but in spite of this you'll experience any number of moments so profoundly moving that you'll be grateful to have experienced the parts, if not the whole.

"Bomber", a SXSW 2009 Selection, is now available on DVD from Film Movement.

Sunday, 3 October 2010

Enter the Void

Enter the Void (2009) dir. by Gaspar Noé
Starring Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta

***

By Blair Stewart

KRAZEE CREDIT SEQUENCE! STROBING LIGHTS! LOUD NOISES! TOKYO BUZZING AT NIGHT! MOST LIKELY FILMED AROUND SHINJUKU AND SHIBUYA! PAZ DE LA HUERTA AS THE INCESTIOUS SISTER! THAT NATHANIEL BROWN GUY CAN'T DELIVER HIS DIALOGUE FOR SHIT! "FREAK" BY LFO IS A GOOD SONG! 'THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD' AS YOUR THEMATIC CENTERPIECE! MAN, WHENS THE LAST TIME I SMOKED WEED? THREE YEARS? I SHOULD HAVE SMOKED WEED FOR THIS! STROBE LIGHTS! GUNSHOTS! PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED....YEAH! TONS OF CGI! 'POWER. SEX. MONEY.' IS A CLEVER NAME FOR A STRIP CLUB! MORE STROBING LIGHTS! NOW MY NOSE IS BLEEDING, THANKS GASPAR! COMPARISONS TO MONTGOMERY'S 1947 "LADY IN THE LAKE" SHOOTING-STYLE IS NIFTY AND ALL BUT I'M ALSO REMINDED OF BIGELOW'S UNDERRATED 1995 CYBERPUNK FLICK "STRANGE DAYS"! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BROWN FELLA SMOKING? DMT? YOU CAN SMOKE THAT? I'M GOING TO BUY THE FILM SCORE BY THOMAS BANGALTER OF DAFT PUNK, HIS WORK IS STERLING! I HOPE DAFT PUNK'S SOUNDTRACK FOR THE NEXT "TRON" MOVIE BUSTS SOME HEADS AND TAKES SOME NAMES! TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF CRUNKED-OUT BASS LINES! WHY IS EVERY WOMAN IN THIS FILM A LUSTY BABE AND NAKED AND SCREWING EVERYONE?

OH WAIT SAME THING GOES FOR THE DUDES IN THIS! WALL-TO-WALL SEX! IS GASPAR NOE A DRUG-MUNCHING RABBIT? THANK GOODNESS THERE ISN'T ANY BRUTAL RAPE SCENES LIKE NOE'S REVILED/REVERED "IRREVERSIBLE"! BECAUSE OF GASPAR NOE'S ENFANT TERRIBLE NATURE LIKE ANY NEW WORK BY TARANTINO OR VON TRIER OR PARK CHAN-WOOK HIS FILMS ADD AN ELEMENT OF DANGER AND SPECTACLE TO THEATERS THAT A 100 BASHFUL SUNDANCE INDIE DARLINGS CAN'T MATCH! OUTSIDE OF THIS WORK WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEX IN MATURE MODERN CINEMA, BOTH MAINSTREAM AND ART-HOUSE? THE BY-GONE DAYS OF "DAMAGE" AND "LAST TANGO IN PARIS", YOU KNOW? I BLAME THE INTERNET!

SOME OF THE DIALOGUE IN THIS FILM IS AWFUL,
YET LOTS OF SHINY, SHINY LIGHTS!

DIMETHYLTRYPTAMINE!

GRAPHIC CAR CRASH! PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED ONCE AGAIN! WAIT, I PUFFED ON A JOINT OUTSIDE OF THAT 'COOL' BAR IN SHOREDITCH A YEAR AND A HALF AGO WITH THAT HIPSTER GUY FROM SPAIN! THAT GUY WAS A HORSE'S ASS AND TWICE AS DULL! GREAT SET DESIGN BY MARC CARO OF "DELICATESSEN" ACCLAIM AND HIS CREW! NOW OUR P.O.V. IS THE BROWN GUY'S SPIRIT FLOATING THROUGHOUT HIS SHORT LIFE AND OVER/IN/AROUND TOKYO! "ENTER THE VOID" BUDGET COST ABOUT 1/10TH OF WHAT WAS SPENT TO MAKE "AVATAR", BUT I FIND THIS FILM TO BE MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL IN ITS TECHNICOLOR DAY-GLO SPLENDOR!

HOORAY FOR CINEMATOGRAPHER BENOIT DEBIE AND BUF COMPAGNIE'S VISUAL EFFECTS!

PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED....YET AGAIN! SOME OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE STOCK AT BEST, BUT THE FILM SEEMS TO BE BUILT FOR EXPERIENCING ON AN ENTIRELY EMOTIONAL LEVEL INSTEAD OF AN ANALYTICAL LEVEL, OTHERWISE IT'S QUITE FLIMSY! I MUST ADMIT THOUGH, IT IS AN EXPERIENCE! THE DIRECTOR'S CUT IS THREE-AND-A-HALF HOURS LONG! I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO STOMACH THAT VERSION!

PEOPLE WHO SAY YOU'LL EITHER LOVE OR HATE "ENTER THE VOID" ARE FULL OF SHIT, IT HAS GLARING FLAWS AS I'VE MENTIONED ABOVE BUT IT HAS ITS QUALITIES TOO! YOU COULD SAY THE SAME ABOUT MANY OF KUBRICK'S FILMS, HIS "2001" WAS A BIG INFLUENCE HERE! PINK FLOYD'S "THE WALL" BY ALAN PARKER IS VASTLY OVERRATED IN STONER CIRCLES!

SOME MORE DISTURBING IMAGERY, ITS RATED 18A FOR A REASON, YOU WERE WARNED! NEON TWINKLING TOKYO! ORGIES! PAZ DE LA HUERTA MIGHT BE AN EXHIBITIONIST!

I JUST WANNA DANCE! RIDICULOUS FINAL MINUTES, BUT APPROPRIATE AFTER WHAT'S PRECEDED IT! DESPITE MY ISSUES NOE'S LATEST TRIP IS A GREAT LIVE-ACTION DRUGGIE TRIP ON PAR WITH GILLIAM'S TAKE ON "FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS"!

I JUST HAD AN ACID FLASHBACK, AND I'VE NEVER TAKEN ACID!
DO YOU HAVE ANY WEED?

HERE COMES THE EPILEPSY!

Saturday, 2 October 2010

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2009) dir. Jan Kounen
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Anna Mouglalis, Elena Morozova, Grigori Manoukov and Anatole Taubman

*

By Greg Klymkiw

You know a movie about the affair between Igor Stravinsky and Coco Chanel is going to be as entertaining as anal fissures when the camera glides along lugubriously for no rhyme nor reason save for the pretension of its director as characters stare endlessly at each other or at nobody or nothing in particular and worst of all, when the opening set piece - an attempt to recreate the disastrous premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps is presented with all the "style" of those dull performing arts TV specials so popular in the late 80s and early 90s.

While it would be unfair to slog the rich production design and often gorgeously lit cinematography, it's as staid and overtly arty as most everything else in this movie. The picture is often gorgeous, but to what end? The drama is so mute and dull, the performances so sub-Masterpiece Theatre, the screenplay so bereft of any true passion or conflict, that the picture is little more than a foreign language Merchant-Ivory costumer (sans the occasionally trashy/arty Merchant-Ivory aesthetic).

So what do we get? A largely passion-free ill-fated romance between Coco and Igor. Coco, still pining for her dead lover Arthur "Boy" Capel, attends the premiere of Stravinsky's work. In spite of the jeers of derision from all the snooty French people in the audience, she recognizes in Stravinsky's work the same sort of commitment to expanding the boundaries of music as she is endowed with expanding in the world of fashion and perfume. Given, however, director Kounen's middle-of-the-road rendering of the ballet is, one wonders why she doesn't join the rioting Gallic upper crust types. But no, instead she offers Stravinsky and his family a safe haven in her country mansion and her patronage.

This is followed by much staring and a plethora of unmotivated camera moves.

Almost one hour into the movie, we get our first sex scene between Coco and Igor. And what a doozy! It's about as sexy as one of those unmotivated camera moves. Watching it, I longed for an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, but sooner than you can say "cum shot", Kounen cuts out of the dishwater dull gymnastics on the rug and gives us some nice shots of foliage.

Speaking of Red Shoes (minus the "Diaries" part), any movie that features ballet needs to include dance sequences that at least match if not better the great Powell-Pressburger classic The Red Shoes. If not, it's best to just forget it. Emulation of performing arts specials on television just doesn't cut it. Darren Aronofsky knew this all to well - hence, the brilliant Black Swan.

And if you're going to ask your actors to strip down and pretend to have sex, you kind of need to shoot them with some panache.

The second coital snore-fest is bookended with endless shots of Stravinsky's wife looking dour and more unmotivated camera moves, and worse yet, some incredibly hopeless still-life shots of, well, not much of anything really. A few dull conversation scenes about, not much of anything follow and Coco is off on a business trip, leaving Igor in her mansion alone with his wife and family. This, happily, gives us an opportunity to watch Igor play chess with his son, followed by a snail-paced conversation between Igor and his wife where she finally reveals, "I feel like I don't know you anymore." Seeking something even more scintillating, helmer Kounen takes us back to Coco as she spends an eternity sniffing perfumes in her lab and finally, she hits pay dirt and discovers Chanel No. 5 - certainly reason enough to celebrate and return to her country home for another dull round of sex with Igor.

At approximately 75 minutes into the picture, Coco offers Igor's wife some free perfume while Igor plays croquet with the kids. A ridiculous conversation ensues between the two ladies where wifey begs Coco not to interfere with Igor's music. This leads to wifey telling Igor she smells the decay of her own insides as if she were dead. Yup, that sure would make any man's schwance rise to the occasion. Igor and wifey stare at each other and we cut to another boring sex scene twixt Coco and Igor and more unmotivated camera moves and skewed angles during pillow talk.

When Coco makes another trip away from home we are treated to shots of Igor lying on the ground, walking around and wifey sitting forlornly on a swing.

Do I need to go on?

I thought not.

However, indulge me.

We get a dull dinner scene with Diaghlev and Nijinsky. It's actually quite a feat making a dinner party with those two light-in-the-loafers funsters boring. My hat off to our helmer.

After what seems an eternity, Igor's wife and family finally leave so Igor can romp about in Coco's love nest all by his lonesome. Coco reads a letter from wifey and Kounen brilliantly reveals an imaginary wifey behind Coco's back whispering her contemptuous thoughts into her ear. Gee whiz! I cant say I've seen that before.

Soon enough, Igor begins writing music furiously, but when he needs to saw off a piece of Coco ass, she rebuffs him. He goes back to his music, composes a masterpiece, drinks himself into a stupor and Coco loads him into a bathtub without offering even a hand job. Scintillatingly, we get to see Igor lying in the bath alone for quite some time.

Eventually, Chanel No. 5 becomes popular and Igor achieves the fame he deserves.

Both become old.

Alone and adorned with bad, heavily applied makeup to remind us they are old, 'tis only the memories of their passionless affair that keeps them going, no doubt, to their respective deaths.

And what of me? Or you, the audience?

We are left only with the feeling that we've lost 120 precious minutes of our lives watching pretentious art house drivel.

It's a wonderful life, mais non? Yeah sure! Pass me a bottle of Chanel No. 5 so I can chug it back and drown out my sorrow.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Sunday, 5 September 2010

Maradona by Kusturica

Maradona by Kusturica (2009) dir. Emir Kusturica
Documentary

*1/2

By Alan Bacchus

It’s a shame this film didn’t turn out any better, but a great filmmaker plus a great sports star doesn’t always equal a good movie. I was reminded of Spike Lee’s portrait of Kobe Bryant from the ESPN 30 for 30 series, Kobe Doin Work. Despite the potential, that film didn’t work. Neither does this.

Eminent director, two-time Palme D’Or winner, sometimes actor, and soccer/football enthusiast Emir Kusturica seeks to discover the man behind the legend of Argentinean soccer star Diego Maradona. To refresh, Maradona is considered one of the greatest footballers ever after his thrilling performance at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Since then his private life has seen some ups and downs, including a nasty cocaine habit, outspoken politics, his publicly alliance with socialist parties denouncing US and British Imperialism and now as coach of the Argentinean national team.

Kusturica puts himself as a character in the film as pronounced as Maradona’s, Michael Moore-type of participatory narrative. Thus, Kusturica’s discovery is our discovery. Unfortunately Kusturica never cracks the man, and at all times we only get the surface celebrity treatment of Maradona. He’s an experienced celebrity, and being accustomed to cameras for most of his life we get a sense that Maradona is always a step ahead of the filmmaker.

What’s fascinating is the celebatory exaltation which the Argentineans hold for the man. Wayne Gretzky is hailed over here in Canada but he has nothing on this man. A recurring motif is a the Church of Maradona sect which idolizes him so much they literally consider him a God. In between the limo rides the moment Maradona steps outside onto the streets he’s mobbed by the masses and the paparazzi, not just in Argentina but ‘round the world, including Italy where he played a good part of his club football. His trip to Naples in particular provides some magnificent footage. Maradona listening to the loud and consistent chanting from the streets below his hotel room of his Italian fans brings tears to his eyes. It’s a great moment.

Content aside, the film also suffers from surprisingly shoddy technical look and feel. The quality of camera, lens or even camera work feels too amateurish not just for a two-time Palme D’Or winner, but a high profile documentary in the ‘age of documentary’. And mixed in with the verite footage is are rather silly and annoying Gilliamesque animated sequences. These sequences lead into more repitition of the ‘Goal of the Century’ the dramatic 1986 World Cup semi-final goal where Maradona single-handedly dismantled the English squad. Unfortunately we see this goal about 10 times throughout the film thus reducing the effect of the moment.

Sadly Maradona is an uninspired film, from a director and a subject who inspired so many people. Maradona needed a Werner Herzog or Nick Broomfield to really get under his skin and make this memorable.

“Maradona by Kusturica” is available on DVD from TVA Films in Canada

Saturday, 28 August 2010

The Messenger

The Messenger (2010) dir. Oren Moverman
Starring: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Jena Malone, Samantha Morton

***

By Alan Bacchus

How many ways from Sunday can the effect of the Iraq war be deconstructed? Back in the Vietnam days there was Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now – that’s it. We seem to have it all in perspective now, even though the war is still going on. It’s not that The Messenger doesn’t feel disingenuous, but we are just bombarded with these films.

It’s different era than the 40’s when Hollywood made unabashedly patriotic propaganda films about the War being fought. Casablanca is perhaps the best example. Even in the Vietnam War, a successful film like John Wayne’s The Green Berets was shamelessly rabble-rousing and also controversial in its inaccurate portrayal of the reality of the fighting in Vietnam.

And with so much information available to us, we can’t dress up the general feeling of distaste that is the Iraq War. Few if any of us want soldiers fighting over there. Even those who think the War is necessarily politically and economically would likely never want to use propaganda to fool the homefront for the sake of patriotism.

The Messenger actually manages to find a point of view of war that surprisingly no one else in cinema, to my recollection, has shown. That is the job of the soldiers who go door to door to give the wives, mothers and fathers the news of soldiers’ deaths in combat.

Ben Foster Sgt Will Montgomery, a newbie to the gig, is partnered up with Cpt Tony Stone the more experienced of the two who has a textbook approach to bed side manner. In the film’s best moments, Stone educates Will about what to do and what not to do when telling someone their son or daughter has just been killed in action – show no emotion, no hugs, no physical contact of any sort, even small details like parking one's car a block away from the house. Absurd as it sounds; I believe there is such a book and that the job of bereavement has been turned into a science by the military.

After a number of encounters, Will betrays almost every rule by attempting to start a relationship with one of the widows played by Samantha Morton. It's relationship played very delicately but one which arises from their mutual desperation for love. The film loses its direction (pun intended) when Will and Tony drive off on a wacky road trip which ends at the engagement party of his former girlfriend, played by Jena Malone.

Woody Harrelson is very good and probably deserves his Oscar-nomination. Miraculously despite his oddball, pot smoking behaviour in real life he manages to find roles which best take advantage of his deranged view of the world. Perhaps credit goes to his agent. Think of his roles in the past couple of years – a wacky cultist in 2012, a deranged vigilante in Defendor, a hillbilly zombie fighter in Zombieland, and now a serious but also slightly off-kilter former soldier.

It’s also fun to see former child actor Jena Malone doing the nasty with partial nudity with Foster in the opening. The poor girl stayed under the celebrity rader of the Lindsay Lohans in Hollywood, but unfortunately has not yet became the adult star Kristin Stewart is or Dakota Fanning will become.

It’s Ben Foster’s film though and like almost everything else he does, he’s intense and magnetic in a 50’s tortured James Dean kind of way. It’s only a matter of time before Foster finds his role of a lifetime and becomes a Robert De Niro of his generation.

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

The Wind Journeys

The Wind Journeys (2009) dir. Ciro Guerra
Starring: Marciano Martínez, Yull Núñez

****

By Alan Bacchus

In the Colombian rural countryside that is setting of this film the accordion player is characterized, like a doctor or priest, as an important and valued member of society. These travelling musicians, called Troubadours, fulfil a number of roles in society, most importantly to bring light through entertainment to the very very poor farmers.

Guerra’s lead character Ignacio Carrillo is one such man, an elderly and revered soft spoken musician as loquacious as Alan Ladd’s Shane. But success in life has come at a price. After the death of his wife, he’s convinced his accordion is cursed, not unlike the blues legend Robert Johnson who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. The only way to break the curse is to give the accordion back to its maker – like Lord of the Rings, replaced by an accordion. Along for the ride is a younger musician who may or may not be Igancio’s son, but an apprentice who desires to absorb the essence of the type of musician his absentee father might have been.

The result is a lengthy and epic journey across the stunning landscape of Columbia with allusions to the American Western, the said Tolkien classic, the good ol’ fashioned road movie and the familiar literary rites of passage and mythological resonance of an Odyssian journey.

It’s these familiar and grounded archetypal relationships which give this minuscule Colombian festival art film immense pathos and cinematic gravitas. It’s stunning piece of cinema one of those miracle discoveries which falls into ones lap by chance. It’s the July DVD of the Month from the Film Movement – the unique film distributor that essentially chooses and programs these films to its subscribers.

Along the journey the pair encounter a number of situations which make for often stunning set pieces. There’s a lengthy accordion duel in the first half which features the village champion squaring off against any claimers to the title of champion - a thrilling trash-talking show off, like an 8-Mile with accordions. There’s also an encounter between two men who duel to the death by machete on a bridge over water. And the young man's baptism by the blood of a lizard after proving his worth on the bongo drums is the stuff masterpieces are made of.

It’s also very arty and thus imposing to mainstream viewers. Guerra sets a ‘deliberately paced’ elegant and almost rhythmic style. Some might also call it 'slow'. But it fits in well use of landscape, pastoral widescreen compositions and controlled pacing of a Carlos Reygadas film (Silent Light or Japon) of even the revered existential films of Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry).

The treasure of this film though is Paulo Andrés Pérez’s stunning cinematography, one of the best looking films in international cinema I’ve seen in a while - rich colours pop out of the dense and textured frames. Fluid camera moves enhance the elegance and beauty of the Colombian landscape. Along the way, Guerra placing his characters atop mountains peaks, frames against stupendous godlike cloudscape and sharp cliffs which remind us of the ethereal Herzog classic Aguirre The Wrath of God.

Director Ciro Guerra, only 28 when he made this film, shows remarkable maturity and restraint, in addition to some solid chops of cinematic grandeur. Guerra is a major international talent waiting to break out. The Wind Journeys never quite broke out, but with his next film he’s poised for Palme D’Or deification.

The Wind Journeys, a 2009 Cannes and TIFF selection, is now available in Canada on DVD from Film Movement Canada.

Sunday, 1 August 2010

Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah (2009) dir. Warwick Thornton
Starring Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson

***

By Blair Stewart

In the godforsaken terrain of the Australia's Northern Territories a young Aborigine couple form a rickety bond as they flee the reservation. The surroundings of the Outback are equal in its cruelty to the circumstances of Samson (Rowan McNamara) and Delilah's (Marissa Gibson) off-kilter courtship as they stagger into adulthood. A near-mute love is possible for them despite the boy being blasted out of his skull on gas fumes while the girl cares for her brittle matchmaker of a granny.

Soon fleeing their dismal community for Alice Springs the young lovers suffer hardship in the strangeness of the white man's land. They'll be reduced to living under a highway bridge as challenges faced by the couple both within and outside of their grasp are often more appropriate for that other biblical subject Job.

An Australian award-magnet by novice director Warwick Thornton, "Samson and Delilah" is something I would classify as being critic-proof (young talented director + little-known foreign culture + a few tragedies + unknown actors= 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) that succeeds despite some contrivances. The acting by McNamara and Gibson is certainly lovely for roles that require them to work almost exclusively only with their eyes, and this debut feature would have failed without their ability to do so. If non-existent dialogue and stories told in repetitive motifs aren't your bag, you should avoid it.

I also had the niggling sense of seeing this film before, as if some of the Dardennes and Ken Loach's sensibilities had recently snuck down south. Despite these qualms, Thornton's skill as both a director and cameraman are apparent in the beauty of his cherubic main subjects against the cauterized expanse.

"Samson and Delilah" doesn't shy away from the generations of punches the Aborigines of Oz (and other parts of the New World) have rolled with in the guise of these two kids, and if this is the early results of a new generation in native cinema, the future is bright.

Thursday, 22 July 2010

Storm

Storm (2010 dir. Hans-Christian Schmid
Starring: Kerry Fox, Anamaria Marinca, Stephen Dillane, Rolf Lassgård, Kresimir Mikic

***

By Alan Bacchus

If you haven’t heard of Film Movement, it’s one of the more unique film distributors around, an institution as treasured as say, the Criterion Collection. Film festival-goers know that some of the best films are the ones you have no expectations or advance knowledge about, but unfortunately, despite the quality, many of these never see the light again. Well, the mandate of Film Movement is to ensure these films find a home this side of the continent. And through its unique monthly DVD service club every month one of these films comes directly to you.

The selection for June is Hans-Christian Schmid’s Storm, a multilingual German-Dutch-Bosnian-Serbian co-pro which was lauded in Berlinale in 2009, and only now finds its audience in the US and Canada.

The title refers to the aggressive action taken against the Serbian leaders for their genocidal atrocities in the 90’s. Brit Kerry Fox plays Hannah the prosecutor for The Hague’s War Tribunal against a wily Serbian commander, a fictionalized version of Slobodan Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic. It would appear to be a slam dunk until Hannah’s key eye witness perjures himself and then dies in an apparent suicide attempt.

Hope is restored when the sister of the witness Mira (Anamarie Marinca) reluctantly reveals herself to be the real eye witness. Despite death threats and other terrorism tactics against her and her family Mira ponies up the gumption to talk about the atrocities she’s witnessed and take down the war criminals for good.

There’s a distinct Soderbergh/Gaghan neo-political tone which puts itself into the Syriana, Traffic, Michael Clayton brand of thriller. While there's some threats of violence against Mira and covert spy tactics threatening Hannah, the stakes of the film exist in the big picture demand to see the Serbian War Criminals find Justice. Unfortunately we don’t know the Serb too well, despite having the film’s entire opening sequence devoted to his capture.

For good and bad, the pacing and volume is also deliberately muted –establishing its credibility and responsibility to the struggles of the characters’ real world equivalents who to this day continue to exact justice. In an effort not to sensationalize the subject matter it also means external conflict and tension don’t quite reach the magnitude we need to truly feel the cinematic emotional punch of the story. After all its lawyers vs. lawyers as the baddies, who, for the most part are faceless suits pulling strings off screen and in the background.

That said there’s a fabulous lead performance from Kerry Fox which was virtually invisible to the world cinema landscape at large. Hell, she was better than Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, but I doubt Oscar ever crossed any Academy member's mind. The other added attraction is seeing 4 Month, 3 Weeks, 2 Days’ Anamaria Marinca on screen again. She has such remarkable eyes and reactions, and with very little to work with, she, as in her more famous role, is magnetic.

Storm, a 2009 Berlin IFF winner, is now available on DVD from Film Movement. For info about Film Movement Canada’s DVD of the Month Club, click HERE

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Greenberg

Greenberg (2010) dir. Noah Baumbach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mark Duplass, Chris Messina

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Well, I didn’t completely hate the film, which doesn’t exactly make for a quotable recommendation, but after suffering through two thirds of another dreadfully navel gazing idiosyncratic Baumbach comedy/drama, the final act surprisingly moved me from the category of detest to a slight acknowledge of admiration.

There’s no doubt we’re in the internalized emotional world of Noah Baumbach, who makes updated Gen X slacker movies for intellectual hipsters (ie. Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding). This time round he crafts a study of his title character Roger Greenberg (Stiller) who has been released from the hospital for a nervous breakdown (and possibly a suicide attempt). What’s eating Greenberg you ask? He’s forty, with a once promising music career, but now finds himself as a failed artist with a failed relationship who can only make a living as a carpenter. When he arrives in Los Angeles to housesit his brother’s luxurious home in the Hills and their sick German shepherd dog, it becomes the opportunity to reconcile his anxieties with the help of his brother’s flighty assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig).

While we can all relate to some of the career and relationship anxieties in Greenberg’s life Baumbach injects his character with such a self-loathing misplaced by an annoying self-absorption he becomes so unlikeable and unpleasant. Alexander Payne’s Sideways makes for a good comparison. Like Greenberg Paul Giamatti’s Miles suffers from the same ailments but has the ability to turn off his depression to correlate like a regular person. Greenberg wears his self hatred like a badge on his down-filled vest.

Greta Gerwig a veteran of those formerly-labelled mumblecore films is delightful as Florence, a striking beauty demurely hidden behind a dressed down appearance and her character's insecurity issues. Though why she is attracted to Greenberg in the first place is a fabrication too far-reaching for us to understand. It’s the same annoyance I get when Woody Allen casts likes of Winona Ryder or even Diane Keaton or Mariel Hemingway as his romantic co-stars. Manhattan, this is not.

This indulgence of Baumbach’s is the most difficult to hurdle. While Miles in Sideways, could be oddly charming and self-effacing in an attractive way, Greenberg is an annoying shit from beginning to end, causing us to wonder why he was released from the hospital in the first place. The two hook up on their second encounter, and with little small talk or flirting Greenberg kisses Florence and then moves to heavy-petting and oral sex in a matter of seconds. The Florences of this world do not take their panties off for grossly underweight released-released mental rehab patients.

Baumbach’s dialogue and Harris Savides’s observant and unobtrusive cinematography create the same kind of naturalism as in Squid and Margot. Unfortunately the naturalism of tone doesn’t match the ridiculous progression of Greenberg’s relationship with Florence.

As mentioned, the film finally hits its gear in the third act during a rambunctious party of 20 year olds his niece holds at the house. Greenberg is offered and partakes in some lines of coke and turns into a twitchy party monster. Stiller also comes alive believably exaggerating his character’s personality ticks to great effect. As Greenberg bounces about the party and tries to fit in with kids half his age, we finally get to see him in his former glory and why his fall from grace could have caused such severe depression.

And in the end, his dramatic confession to both himself and Florence is cleverly set up and executed. But is it all worth it to be pummelled with pretentious and overly indulgent characters we despise in order to find the heart of the film at the end. I’d say, a reluctant yes.

"Greenberg" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Alliance Films in Canada

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Zombieland

Zombieland (2009) dir. Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Bill Murray

***

By Alan Bacchus

We didn’t really need another self-aware zombie movie. How many times can we redo the same zombie splatter scenes, how many times can a zombie’s head explode before we cease to find it funny? Apparently there’s still more humour to mine from this subgenre. But Zombieland works because it’s barely a zombie movie. Using the familiar post-apocalyptic world of Night of the Living Dead/I Am Legend, director Ruben Fleischer and his screenwriters Rhett Reece and Paul Wernick craft a fun road trip flick with warm characters we want to spend our time with.

For some reason I had missed, all the characters are named after the cities they’re from. First there’s Columbus, a geeky, awkward, type-A Michael Cera type, played by the Cera-like Jesse Eisenberg. He provides the voiceover describing his movements around this wartorn world of zombies which have killed or converted most of the world’s population other than a few pockets of human remnants. Among them is Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a Floridian gun totting hick who drives a surprisingly decent pickup truck, and who picks up Columbus wandering along an interstate. The two couldn’t be more different. Columbus has survived by adhering to his own set of zombie rules, which he describes to us in stylish flashbacks. Tallahassee lives by the seat of his pants, by instinct and always behind a doublebarrelled shotgun or a pair of John Woo-style pistols.

Their nemesis comes not in the form of zombies but a pair of spry and intelligent teenage con artist girls Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Distrustful of the men, the girls steal Tallahassee’s truck and kidnap them before eventually coming to trust them. Columbus, of course, develops a crush on Wichita who plays hard to get.

Their journey doesn’t seem to know where it’s going until it suddenly ends after a zombie shoot out in an abandoned amusement park. But not before the film’s most memorable scene involving a meet-up with actor Bill Murray in his LA home. Regardless of the ineffectual climax, the Bill Murray scenes are so delightful, the movie doesn’t need to go on after they leave his house.

Murray, in real life, is a notoriously difficult man to corral. And so the mere fact that he is in the film is a miracle not to mention playing a zombified version of himself and even donning Ghostbusters gear to play stream crossing with Woody Harrelson. His wicked dead pan wit bests any of the other gags in the film.

Zombieland also has a two good lead performances from Harrelson and Eisenberg to anchor the journey. I had never really liked Eisenberg in Adventureland, nor The Squid and the Whale, and even though it’s the third or fourth time round for the virginal paranoid anxiety role he feels genuine.

Breaking the film down, there’s not much actually going on the film. Other than the Bill Murray scenes, most of the memorable moments come from the title sequence and flashbacks. Luckily stylish excess is not only forgiven, but encouraged in the zombie genre and Fleischer admirably glosses up his rudimentary script with every stylish trick in the book to satisfying effect.

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