David Chase’s overly nostalgic and dull trip down memory lane has us yearning for the acid flashback version of Oliver Stone. Not Fade Away is so dominated by its pop music touchstone it crushes any attention to character and story.
Showing posts with label 2012 Films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012 Films. Show all posts
Monday, 6 May 2013
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Silver Linings Playbook
This is a unique speciman, a rare ‘comedy’ which garnered significant Oscar consideration, and yet, doesn’t quite feel like any comedy we’ve ever seen before. Such is genius of David O Russell to create a comedy which doesn’t rely on gags but a palpable feeling of energy from the subject matter as heavy as psychological disorders such as bi-polarism.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Killing Them Softly
Andrew Dominik’s small scale crime saga, an uncomplicated story of a heist of a poker game and the hit man hired to track down the perpetrators, exists mostly as an exercise in style. But under Dominic’s superlative vision, the formal beauty of its imagery and his stone cold emotional tone is inseparable from the story. And look out for the best supporting performance of the year that won’t get recognized, James Gandolfini as a prostitute-addicted self-destructive hit man.
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
The Intouchables
This French hit, the story of a rich paraplegic white man who forms an unlikely friendship with an unrefined black caretaker/assistant is the stuff Stanley Kramer movies, TV after school specials, a number of politically correct 80’s sitcoms or perhaps even a cinematic version of the McCartney/Stevie Wonder song, Ebony and Ivory. That said, the dated racial and class characterizations and on-the-nose sentimentality are evened out by the genuinely warm and authentic performance trump of Omar Sy.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Taken 2
“Listen to me very carefully” the catchphrase of sorts for Liam Neeson’s immensely successful action film alterego Bryan Mills, the security guard loner and over-protective father who finds himself embroiled in international human trafficking gangsters, serves as Neeson’s call-to-action, jumpstarting each of these pictures into the high octane, truly pleasurable everyman actioners.
Monday, 21 January 2013
Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelow’s sprawling Bin Laden hunt picture is a spotty affair, a film sectioned off into often disjointed segments over the course of ten years only finding it’s rhythm in the final 30mins or so. The rivetting climax is a masterwork of military procedural execution, easily smoothing over the rocky 2 hours which came before it. Zero Dark Thirty thus resounds as both a conversation piece and a rip-roaring action film.
Friday, 18 January 2013
Samsara
Samsara, another the eye-popping cultural visually essay, shot in high gloss 70mm with Fricke's trademark pristine compositions and dizzying time lapse photography, is even more sumptuous and satisfying than 1992's Baraka. With such a huge canvas it's impossible to be subtle with this picture, so critiquing any of it's heavy-handed theme or statement making is an exercise in futility.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Dredd
Under the guidance of British filmmakers outside of the Hollywood meatgrinder there’s some excitement that the sophistication and intensity of the alterna-comic would translate better to cinema. Unfortunately good intentions go awry here, as Dredd suffers badly from dull heroes, dull villains, and an over confidence in its own cold, detached ultraviolence.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Best of Cinema 2012
There are some familiar and unfamiliar titles on this list. Despite the chosen order, I could easily rearrange these films. The fact is, there wasn’t one film that stood out from the rest. Instead, the commonality between all these pictures is a certain 'boldness', often telling familiar stories in unconventional ways, or in the case of Goon and The Hobbit executing its genre to perfection.
I’ve kept the list only dramatic features as I could have populated this list with a number of superlative documentaries – see my top docs at the end of this list.
I should also say that this list did take into consideration other lauded ventures such as Holy Motors, The Master, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, Lincoln, Life of Pi etc. Unfortunately I have not yet seen Zero Dark Thirty or Amour, so in a couple weeks this top ten list might become a top twelve list. But for now, here’s the most memorable films of 2012 from Daily Film Dose:
Monday, 31 December 2012
Django Unchained
Django Unchained is Tarantino at his most grisly, brutal, but also straightforward, a film made for instant satisfaction but little resonance. Tarantino’s pulp slavery-era Western is certainly in line with QT’s current fetish for grindhouse-worthy cult-cinema. While Django Unchained is more Inglourious Basterds than Death Proof, there’s a strange feeling of emptiness not present in both Kill Bill and Basterds. That said, I don’t think three hours have ever gone by faster for me in the cinema.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The critical tepidness to this picture is astounding to me, the newest Hobbit film a natural extension to The Lord of the Rings trilogy is in fact a better film than any of the three original, critically acclaimed, and Oscar winning films. Peter Jackson miraculously manages to find the same pulse of the original series but hangs his startling visuals and impeccable fantasy action filmmaking skills onto a stronger and more accessible story as well as casting his characters with stronger actors./
Pitch Perfect
An overachieving cinematic version of A Capella version of Glee, significantly 'straighter' and minus the television earnestness, but also piggybacking on the show's unique self-awareness that removes the silliness of its premise.
Monday, 24 December 2012
Lincoln
The comparison has already been made but indeed Lincoln plays a historical episode of The West Wing, a modest affair considering the canvas of American history at Mr. Spielberg's disposal. By the story of Lincoln, admirably is confined to the two month period or so in which he sought to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, with most of the conflict involving the political dealings it took to secure the two thirds House vote. With Spielberg histrionics kept in check, the only misstep is the needlessly long running time, and at times overly verbose Tony Kushner dialogue.v
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Flight
Robert Zemeckis’s return to live action filmmakers makes for one of the year’s most pleasant surprises. Denzel Washington’s achingly honest portrait of an alcoholic anchors what turns out to be Zemeckis’ most modest film to date (mostly) without the special effects razzle-dazzle he’s been known for. A couple of heavy-handed moments, and a bloated running time not withstanding, it’s one of the most satisfying films of the year.
Friday, 7 December 2012
Life of Pi
A cinematic Moby Dick of sorts, Ang Lee’s celebrated adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel is indeed an incredible high seas adventure film of one man's battles against the power of the ocean and a beast. The technical achievement of rendering the isolation and conflict between an Indian boy and a hostile Bengal tiger aboard a lifeboat on the Indian Ocean is out of this world and worth the price of admission. Bringing this boat down, though not sinking it, is the sloppy and awkward bookend scenes in the present, a storytelling challenge which unfortunately Ang Lee and all the money given to this film just couldn't solve.
Thursday, 29 November 2012
The Bourne Legacy
I admire Tony Gilroy’s desire to depart from the Paul Greengrass methodology, that is the hyper-intense speed-fueled filmmaking which made the last two Bourne movies so memorable. Though both films were written by Mr. Gilroy, as director he opts for a consciously morose and patient style of film. Impatient audiences expectating the Greengrass thrill ride will be uncomfortable with the languid opening act, 35 minutes or so of quiet CIA-speak between politico-heavies and the sparse action before the rip-roaring finale.
The Bourne Legacy (2012) dir. Tony Gilroy
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacey Keach
By Alan Bacchus
The lengthy opening act features very little action, instead establishing Jeremy Renner’s character, Aaron Cross, as another agent, like Bourne brainwashed by another black-ops mission to be a stone-cold killer. Instead of the amnesia-induced Treadstone operation, Renner is brainwashed through a series of ‘chems’ – drugs which control his emotions, temperament, intelligence and fighting skills. And while Bourne runs amuck in the previous films, Gilroy doubles back to show how the CIA wonks move to dispose of the other assassins who might just go wild like Bourne. Of course, when Renner’s character is targeted he fights back and embarks on his own globe-trotting adventure.
Cross moves from the desolate and zen-like serenity of Alaska to Washington where he saves Rachel Weisz as Mart Shearing, a chemist who supplies him with the chems, from assassination. He then moves on to Manila where he and Shearing seek out the manufacturing plant of the chems to save Cross from shutting down into death. The baddie orchestrating the action from afar is Edward Norton, commanding the action much like Straitharn in the previous films from the ultra high-tech CIA surveillance rooms at home.
On the ground Cross is missing a main foe, other than the roll call of counter-assassins that attempt to take him down. Late in the film the introduction of an Asian super-assassin, another chemically enhanced soldier, attempts to create a climactic showdown, which unfortunately materializes into nothing particularly dramatic. Gilroy and company keep the action quick and sparse, saving his energy for the final 20 minutes, a superbly choreographed motorcycle and running chase scene through the streets of Manila.
There’s no doubt Tony Gilroy’s overtooled plotting fails this film, and the potential of having this Jeremy Renner film run parallel to the previous two Matt Damon films is intriguing. Unfortunately it never works, or it is never fully realized. In fact, the brief appearances of characters from the previous films, specifically Joan Allen’s character Pamela Landy and David Straitharn’s Noah Vossen, as well as Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney and Corey Johnson, only distract us from the main action.
The Bourne Legacy is not a bad film, and without knowledge or preconceptions based on the previous three films, under any other circumstances this would be a terrific stand-alone thriller. Unfortunately, we do have expectations and inevitable comparisons we can’t get out of our minds – such is the nature of tentpole sequel filmmaking. But I do believe there’s still potential for the series with Renner as the figurehead. The producers just need to engage us with the pace and intensity of the Liman/Greengrass films.
The Bourne Legacy is available on Blu-ray from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
***
Monday, 26 November 2012
Nobody Walks
I admire Tiny Furniture and some of Girls, but the art-brat characterizations and New York hipster conflicts of the Lena Dunham world arguably overstay their welcome in episodic form. But in cinema her voice is most effective. As written by Dunham, this quiet and seemingly trite and trendy indie picture surprisingly turns into a deft examination of the powerful force of female sexuality and the fallibility of the male libido.
Nobody Walks (2012) dir. Ry Russo-Young
Starring: Olivia Thirlby, John Krasinski, Rosemary DeWitt, Justin Kirk
By Alan Bacchus
Martine (Thirlby) is an attractive gal, a film director working on her own massively pretentious B&W art film about insects. Her work is less important than her demeanor. Early on when she arrives in L.A. we see her flirting with her seat partner and then vigorously making out with the stranger in the parking lot. She denies his desires for a quickie and goes on her way.
This scene, and the whole film for that matter, is shot with an observational, realist style which admirably misdirects to the very strong thematic statement, the idea of the four women in this film representing four stages of a woman’s sexual awareness, and the exploration of the powerful psychological effects on libidinous ID-powered men.
Martine arrives at the guest house of Peter (Krasinski) and Julie (DeWitt) and their two kids to live and sound edit her film with Peter. Martine’s unconcious sexuality is an immediate attraction to Peter, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Julie. Though while acting as a therapist for an egotistical film director, (Kirk) Julie herself is on the receiving end of sexual advances from her client. It's the same with Julie’s 16-year-old daughter Caroline, who is taking Italian lessons from a brazenly forthright Italian tutor.
The plot turns when Peter gives into Julie’s coy advances and has sex in the house. For Martine it’s just some casual sex, quickly forgotten. But for Peter it’s more, which causes his rational mind to unravel. Meanwhile, the events of Julie and Caroline run parallel to Peter and Julie’s issues, as the feminist themes admirable connect all these characters.
Director Russo-Young establishes a quiet and anti-dramatic tone early using familiar indie aesthetic tools. The film features grainy but rich and textured super 16mm format, grab-it-and-go b-roll footage of Los Angeles, and a melancholy ambient soundtrack by Fall On Your Sword (Lola Versus, Another Earth). While many of these American-indie relationship dramas, including Dunham’s own Tiny Furniture trend towards the esoteric and introspective to the conflicts of the characters, Russo-Young and Dunham leave us with a surprisingly bold feminist statement and a film which resonates as deep as any of the post-Mumblecore pictures.
***½
Friday, 23 November 2012
Holy Motors
Curiosity seekers interested in this picture because of its hyped-up reception at Cannes, as well as descriptions by smitten critics such as ‘exhilarating’, ‘completely bonkers’ and ‘balls-to-the-wall crazy’, will likely be disappointed. That is unless you’re willing to completely give in to Leos Carax’s exercise in inane randomness. But from these eyes, the general acceptance and praise of this film must have Mr. Carax laughing his ass off, having fooled overly analytical critics into thinking that Holy Motors is any good.
Holy Motors (2012) dir. Leos Carax
Starring: Denis Levant, Edith Scob, Kylie Minogue, Eva Mendes
By Alan Bacchus
There’s much in common with David Cronenberg’s Cannes inclusion, Cosmopolis - the idea of a man driving around the city in a limousine and engaging in deliriously surreal encounters with minimal overt purpose. There was a semblance of a narrative, theme and purpose in Cronenberg’s film, but in Holy Motors the joke seems to be on us.
As much as I could gather, Oscar (Denis Levant) seems to be some kind of actor or Lon Chaney ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ whose agenda for the day includes nine appointments, each one a surprise to him and us. As such, it’s an episodic work, a film divided into these nine or so (I didn’t really count) scenes.
Driving him around the city is an older woman, Celine, who serves as some sort of shepherd for Oscar, aiding and serving him in his duties. Going by the title, there’s a religious metaphor at play with Oscar perhaps being some kind of angel moving in and out of people’s lives.
Each of the sequences is like a random mélange of writing. Early on we see Oscar turn himself into an old bag lady, panhandling on the street. Nothing becomes of this scene. For his second appointment he turns himself into a troll out of The Lord of the Rings, runs amuck stealing and eating flowers from the gravestones of a cemetery, and then invades a fashion photo shoot, bites the fingers of an innocent bystander and kidnaps Eva Mendes, taking her to an underground lair to show her (and the audience) his erect penis. Nothing pays off from this scene either. Later on, Oscar turns himself into a domestic family man, seemingly returning to his home to be with his wife and child. Only later do we realize his family is a pair of chimpanzees.
Holy Motors fails for me not because of the obliqueness of the big picture connection (this I can accept) but because the individual scenes are impenetrable, each one a free association of inane cinematic rambling. Even David Lynch at his most beguiling can satisfy his audience with individual set pieces or moments of drama and cinema.
The only two vignettes to cherish in this picture are the motion capture interpretive dance sequence featured in much of the publicity and advertising of the film, and the inspired intermission musical sequence featuring Oscar and a band of accordion players filmed in one long take. Everything else is a bore of monumental proportions, the Cloud Atlas of European art films.
**
Monday, 12 November 2012
Skyfall
Perhaps the best action scene ever in a Bond film is a remarkable hand-to-hand scrap in a Shanghai high rise, elegantly shot in silhouette with a colourful neon advertisement in the background. It’s short but indicative of director Sam Mendes’ admirable modus operandi – brevity, judiciousness and evocative imagery – which help make Skyfall the most cinematic of all the Bond films.
Skyfall (2012) dir. Sam Mendes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Naomi Harris, Judi Dench
By Alan Bacchus
We finally have an exciting director at the helm. With that said, it comes after a series of increasingly disappointing pictures since Mendes’ celebrated American Beauty, so we can’t help feel the perception of his involvement as an attempt of career rejuvenation. Well, it worked. There’s an added skip in Mendes’ step, as he delivers a film with all the energy and aggressive action, as well as a sense of the cinematic, that is missing in every other Bond film.
The idea of using only adequate technical directors to helm these now 23 Bond movies always irked me. Why did it take so long for the MGM and EON production team to realize film was a director’s medium, not a producer's? Tom Cruise, as producer of the Mission Impossible films, knew this. I guess the reasoning was that the franchise was bigger than the director, and that an auteur vision could scramble their money-making formula. The one-off success of Casino Royale notwithstanding, this ignorant view has resulted in a franchise continually stymied for creativity and freshness.
Long gone is the usual opening circular frame of the gun’s viewpoint that traditionally opens these movies. Instead Mendes cuts right into his first action sequence, the theft of the film’s maguffin, a stolen file listing all the MI6 names and their aliases (not unlike the stolen NOC list in Brian De Palma’s Mission Impossible). As 007 chases the villain through the streets of Istanbul, it’s all monitored and controlled from London’s MI6 office via satellite surveillance. The end of the sequence sets up the film’s central premise, Bond as a rogue agent outside the comfort zone of the tech gadgetry we’re used to seeing – an organic, grassroots Bond, if you will, with only his wit and guile as his weapons.
This concept plays out in several forms throughout the film – at first working as a missing agent presumed dead; then after a devastating terrorist bomb, which destroys their building, the entire department is forced to work in a WWII bomb shelter with Cold War-era tools; and lastly in the third act a retreat of sorts to a completely threadbare Bond, as he confronts his enemies in a Straw Dogs-like siege in isolation.
Mendes’ employment of one of the world’s best cinematographers, Roger Deakins, is another signal of the reboot mindset of this Craig-era Bond. Casino Royale had already discarded most of the bubble-gum elements of the Brosnan Bond. But under Deakins' visual guidance we finally have a film with some memorable evocative imagery.
The Shanghai action scene is most memorable, but Deakins' underwater imagery and the fog shrouded field chase in Scotland are emotional and haunting. And almost every action scene is directed with seemingly in-camera reality. Though there were hundreds of personnel credited with CG effects, for the most part computer effects were invisible to my eye – an admirable production constraint considering the ‘anything’s possible’ abilities of today's CGI.
The final act is also an inspired climax. After a tremendous gunfight in downtown London, Mendes and his writers turn the film inward, engineering a smaller scale actioner, a confrontation which recalls the dramatic finale of High Noon or Witness, or as mentioned, Straw Dogs – references that complete Mendes' wholly cinematic Bond film.
***½
Thursday, 8 November 2012
The Sessions
Good intentions both help and hinder this now celebrated story of a polio-stricken man, also a virgin, who hires a sex surrogate to learn the ways of sexual intercourse. It’s a feel-good affair from start to finish celebrating the triumph of one’s mind over one’s body, as well as the empowering nature of the sexual act. But what you see is what you get. Lewin’s simple, uncomplicated approach to the narrative is admirable, as he declutters the scenery, but it also feels staid and unmemorable.
The Sessions (2012) dir. Ben Lewin
Starring: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Annika Marks, W. Earl Brown, Blake Lindsley, Adam Arkin
By Alan Bacchus
Over John Hawkes’ filmography the familiar character actor seems to be characterized by two contrasting faces: the snarling hillbilly psychotic exemplified by startling turns in Martha Marcy May Marlene and Winter’s Bone, and the sympathetic ne’er-do-well as in The Perfect Storm or Contagion. As the emaciated polio victim, also a romantic poet bound to live horizontally on a gurney, Hawkes is most certainly the latter to the extreme, but he has never carried a picture before and he achieves this admirably.
Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, inspired by a real person who authored the novel How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man’s Quest for Independence and was the subject of an Oscar-winning Short Documentary. His dilemma is simple; he’s never had sex and wants some. Other than the physical deficiencies, his faith would appear to be his complication. As a devout Catholic he’s constantly in confession and seeking advice from his minister, played by William H. Macy, who looks like he just stepped off the set of Shameless to appear in this. Macy’s role as the sounding board for Mark is too obvious. The religious conflict of sinning by fornicating outside the role of marriage is glanced over for humour, but nothing else in this relationship truly challenges him.
As the surrogate Helen Hunt is endearing. Initially she plays the role as sexual mentor with clinical detachment but she eventually succumbs to Mark’s romantic charms. Hawkes plays the awkwardness, fear and elation of his first sexual acts with the utmost integrity and realism. While not as explicit as the film has been made out to be in the press, it’s Helen Hunt’s comfort as an ‘older’ woman on camera in full nudity and the verbal expression of the stage-by-stage details of sexual intercourse that are most salacious.
In the background, the conflict from Hunt’s husband who feels threatened by Mark’s emotional attachment feels overly engineered, and the comic banter between Mark’s doting and conservative assistant and the motel manager, who is enthralled by the idea of a sex surrogate, only generates a mild smirk or two.
Unfortunately the drama in this unique situation is entirely on the surface. But The Sessions coasts remarkably far on the precise casting choices and the awkward but fulfilling sex education.
***
Subscribe to:
Comments
(
Atom
)