Cloud Atlas

Tons of reviews out there already for this, so I’m just going to throw out some random thoughts, with no organization.

* Two words pop up frequently in reviews: “ambitious” and “messy”.  I agree with both, but it’s not as messy as I thought it would be.  The editing between the six storylines is actually handled quite gracefully.

* Soylent Green double reference… clever, too clever, or not clever enough?  I kind of groaned at it.

* Some of the makeup is absolutely astounding (I was shocked at a couple of entries in the ending credits) and some of it is absolutely wretched.  Whoever did Hugh Grant’s “Denholme Cavendish” makeup should be banned from Hollywood.

* I don’t know if the actors-in-multiple-roles thing adds enough to be worth the gimmickiness of it.

* The Wachowskis are incapable of seeing Hugo Weaving as anything but a villain.  Got it.

* Not a lot of subtlety going on here.  Pretty blunt and repetitive hammering of the themes.

* Despite the fact that it felt like the film was climaxing at the two hour mark, I didn’t mind the 40 minutes that came afterwards.  Surprisingly easy to watch.

* Tom Hanks as “Dermot Hoggins” is atrociously bad.  At least it only lasted a couple of minutes.

* Action sequences were brilliantly executed but got a little tiresome and started to feel gratuitous.

* Either Halle Berry is a better actress than I give her credit for, or I’m blinded by her stunning good looks.

* Even though I’m giving this a fairly low score, I didn’t hate watching it.  It’s a ballsy endeavor, for sure.  And at least it’s better than either Perfume or any of the Matrix movies.  I’d even give it another shot someday, but it left me thinking more about how impressive the production was than how the film resonated on any emotional or intellectual level.

Rating: Fair (69)

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TSPDT 2013: Exotica

The stories of four people in the Toronto area.  Christina (Mia Kirshner) is a very young dancer at the strip club “Exotica”.  Eric (Elias Koteas) is the club’s DJ and announcer.  Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a frequent patron, an internal revenue auditor with a troubled past.  Thomas (Don McKellar) owns a pet store and has been smuggling rare bird eggs into the country.  As the film progresses, we learn how their stories are entwined, and how much more entwined they will become.

I’ve seen only one other film by Atom Egoyan, his follow-up feature The Sweet Hereafter, adapted from the Russell Banks novel.  Whereas that film starts with a tragedy and follows the individual character threads from that point, this one starts with the threads and gradually weaves them together to reveal the underlying tragedy.  It’s clever storytelling as Egoyan provides information in a way that never feels like klutzy exposition, and never leaves you scrambling to catch up.  It all unfolds very naturally, and as the relationships develop you find yourself wanting to know more.

Despite the sexually charged atmosphere (and Thomas’s cruising at the ballet), it’s not a film about sexuality.  Nor is it about the commerce of sex, or the financial dealings of Thomas or Francis.  Egoyan is primarily concerned with the comfort and security we need from other people, the vulnerability of leaving yourself exposed, and the complex processing of grief.

It’s an eloquent film with masterful construction, sharp visuals, and flashes of intriguing symbolism (to wit, the parrots).  My only criticism is that the lead performances, with the exception of Kirshner, feel too mannered.  Koteas especially comes off more like a fictional construction than a relatable human being.  I’m not of the opinion that all actors should be naturalistic at all times (I wouldn’t be a noir fan if I was) but there was an artifice to the three male leads that seemed at odds with the humanistic themes of the film.

It’s not a major impediment, the emotional tones of the movie still get through.  People find healing and comfort and companionship in unlikely places, and emotional support can be exchanged like any other transaction.  A thoughtful piece of work.  Rating: Very Good (82)

IMDb

I’ve now seen 997 of the 1000 films in the latest edition of the “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” list.  The exceptions are: Doomed Love (can’t find with English subtitles), The Art of Vision (can’t find at all) and Out 1: noli me tangere (have seen the shortened Spectre version and I’m annoyed that both are on the list, but I will watch if a good transfer becomes available).  I had a notion to revisit all the ones I’ve never reviewed.  However, that amounts to 87 films and I really would prefer to stay focused on my personal watchlist for now.  I may do some of them, but for the time being it’s low priority.

Something in the Air

It’s 1971, and Gilles (Clément Métayer) is a young anarchist, and also an artist finding his voice.  Revolution is messy, with clashing ideologies and lack of organization, and Gilles and his friends participate in unsuccessful, almost random acts of rebellion… jumping into a riot of hazy origin, defacing the high school with vague slogans.  After one of their shenanigans results in serious trouble, Gilles and his friend Alain (Felix Armand) take off for Italy… leaving the innocent Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann) to handle the mess.  With Gilles’s artistic girlfriend Laure (Carole Combes) off on her own thing and out of the picture, Gilles strikes up a loose relationship with the more political-minded Christine (Lola Créton), while Alain hooks up with the American Leslie (India Salvor Menuez).  As they float around discussing politics, their young hearts start wandering towards matters of love, art and identity… and Gilles develops an interest in filmmaking.

This semi-autobiographical film by Olivier Assayas is apparently a companion/follow-up/counterpoint to his earlier Cold Water.  Unfortunately I have yet to see that one, so comparisons and context will not be forthcoming in this review.

I found the film most effective in its portrayal of the French youth revolution.  The French title translates as “After May”, in reference to the May 1968 unrest in that country, a period of intense protest, rebellion, strikes and occupations.  It was a chaotic time of student uprising, and one that fizzled out due to disorganization and lack of a clear, consistent message.  A little Maoism here, some anarchy there, Trotskyism, Communism, Situationism, you name it.  It was a splintered and confusing mess, and the film eloquently articulates how scattershot it all was.  These kids are rebelling, and perhaps with good purpose, but they don’t know what they’re doing and there is no sense of consistent leadership.  It’s no wonder that they all eventually become disillusioned and disinterested.

But it’s not at heart a film about politics.  It’s more a coming-of-age tale, and Gilles learns to focus his energies and talents onto his art, examining and discarding different ideas, filtering out what has meaning to him.  It’s a pretty good performance by first-timer Métayer, a character with some sense of self in need of some direction.  There are also compelling turns by Créton and Menuez.  And I quite enjoyed the soundtrack, featuring some of my favorites, including Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Tangerine Dream, and Booker T and the MG’s.  The movie has a bright, warm look to it, similar to the sunlight that bathes Summer Hours.

Although the rambling nature of the narrative suits the material — both the slipperiness of the politics and the looseness of the characters’ youthful wanderings — it does eventually get a bit tiring.  I was with the film for a good 90 minutes or so, but around that point I started getting a bit restless.  As the kids start to go their separate ways, the fragmentation and disconnect between the scenes becomes more bothersome.  I found myself wishing for a bit more focus, which does eventually come, but there is a section where I was ready for it to be over.

It’s not of one of Assayas’s best… in fact, among the few I’ve seen, I’d rank it as his least impressive.  But mainly because it lacks a certain distinction… it doesn’t feel especially fresh.  But there is some electricity to it (“something in the air”, you might say) and overall is a worthwhile experience, and solid filmmaking.  Rating: Good (74)

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TSPDT 2013: Numéro deux

The “story” of this film involves a husband (Pierre Oudrey) and wife (Sandrine Battistella), their two young children, and a pair of a grandparents.  The husband has problems with impotence and the wife has problems with constipation.  There are various scenarios — an argument over the washing machine, teaching the kids about the birds and the bees — but mostly the film is interesting for its form.  It plays out almost entirely on video monitors.  Usually two monitors… sometimes showing the same thing, sometimes different things, sometimes one is just static.  Sometimes one image is superimposed on another.  There’s also a lengthy opening where Godard free-associates some thoughts while ruminating on the tools of his trade, and expounds on the nature of “the landscape” and “the factory” (terms that come up over and over again throughout the film) and the factories of moviemaking.

The title has several layers of meaning.  Godard says the film is a remake of Breathless (hence, the “number two” version).  It isn’t recognizable as such, but it may be considered a new “first film” for him, taking his cinema in a bold new direction.  “Number two” can also refer to the second video screen.  Or the woman’s role in the home.  Or the bodily function.  Like the film itself, the movie operates on many levels.

Like a lot of Godard, it’s kind of a rambling mess, but I was less put off by it than I usually am by his work.  The structural idiosyncrasies helped maintain my interest, even when I either found the content more of Godard’s same old shtick or I was floundering to find some meaning in it.  There’s an anger and frustration to the film, in the crudeness of the material (numerous references to defecation and rape, graphic sexual imagery) and in the struggle to define a new type of filmmaking.  The political content was not overbearing, I didn’t feel like I was being brow-beaten by a barrage of quotes.

I’m in no rush to see it again, but for once it didn’t make me hate the guy.  Rating: Fair (67)

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Singapore

At the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, Matt Gordon (Fred MacMurray) is hiding smuggled pearls in his Singapore hotel room.  He meets Linda Grahame (Ava Gardner) and the two have a whirlwind romance.  Just as they’re about to get hitched, Matt gets word that the hotel has been taken over by the military in response to an incoming Japanese air raid.  Matt races back to his room but is unable to collect his stash.  When he returns to the chapel, it’s a pile of rubble, and there’s no sign of Linda.  Five years later, Matt returns to Singapore to collect his pearls.  But his hotel room is occupied by a middle-aged tourist couple (Porter Hall, Spring Byington).  And there are other parties interested in the loot, namely the British official Hewitt (Richard Haydn), the underworld figure Mauribus (Thomas Gomez) and his slimy sidekick Sascha (George Lloyd).  As Matt plans his next move, he spots Linda dancing with another man… her husband, Michael Van Leyden (Roland Culver).  Matt attempts to reunite with her, but she says she doesn’t know him.

Borrowing more than a little from Casablanca but distinct enough not to feel like a total ripoff, Seton Miller’s story could use a little more noir punch to it but it’s a decent slice of entertainment.  Likewise, John Brahm’s direction is not as memorable as his work on classics like The Locket or Hangover Square or The Lodger, but he captures some of the exotic flair of the region, and makes the most out of a rather hacky plot device.  And the recurring ceiling fan motif is handled quite nicely.

MacMurray and Gardner don’t have the greatest chemistry together, and although both are fine, they’re not giving it their best.  As is often the case, the supporting roles are more memorable, especially Lloyd’s reptilian, almost Peter Lorre-esque performance, and Culver as perhaps the most complicated character of them all.

It’s a case of not especially great or original material executed well enough to get by.  Brahm, Miller, MacMurray and Gardner have all done better… but you do could a lot worse for 75 minutes of intrigue, regret, yearning, and self-sacrifice.  Rating: Good (71)

IMDb

Unknown Pleasures

Well, I’ll be damned.  Even though I’ve been out of work and have no particular routine, I can still be affected by that Sunday ennui where I’m just not in the mood to write about — or even watch — movies.  So this’ll be the only review for today, and it’ll be a quick one.

The story is about two Chinese friends in their early manhood, Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei) and Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong).  Both are unemployed and, having few prospects, sit around doing not much of anything.  Bin Bin hangs out with his girlfriend Yuan Yuan (Zhou Qing Feng), a student, but most all they do is sit in a hotel room and watch movies.  His mother pesters him to do something with his life.  Xiao Ji tries out to be an actor (for stage plays promoting a brand of beer) and meets the pop star Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao).  After some initial blunders, they strike up a relationship, but not without interference from Qiao Qiao’s gangsterish lover (Li Zhubin).

Like Tsai’s Rebels of the Neon God — or Jia’s own Platform, which gets referenced in the film — this is a film about disaffected youth in a decaying society.  They are caught in between traditional ways and Western influences (Pulp Fiction gets an extensive homage), lacking in opportunities, bombarded with bad news from the television to the point of numbness, and stuck spinning their wheels — in one instance, literally — with no direction and no hope for the future.  The only time they manage to work up any emotion is when they feel frustration.

Jia uses repetition to good effect here, whether in a single moment (Xiao Ji being slapped over and over again by the gangster’s thugs) or in mirroring a previous scene (the kiss that exchanges cigarette smoke).  However, there is also repetition of themes that can get a little tedious.  Some people are bothered by the slow pacing of the film.  That wasn’t an issue for me, but I did feel Jia made his points a little too often.

Still, it’s an interesting film with a few fantastic scenes.  The bleak ugliness of the environments is escalated by the gritty, unflattering video cinematography.  An unsentimental look at a generation floundering for purpose and options in life.  Rating: Good (79)

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Linda Linda Linda (rewatch)

Just some of things I love about this movie:

* Beat Happening posters on the walls of the practice room.  Beat Happening was very popular in Japan, in fact they recorded their first EP there.  Their DIY indie-pop music fits in perfectly with the movie’s musical sensibilities.

* James Iha’s instrumental score.  It’s really good.

* Kyoko suggests they cover the ultra-chipper J-pop band Puffy.  Kei responds, “Are you serious?”

* They discover a tape of “Linda Linda Linda” and bounce around singing into skull-shaped maracas.

* Son’s confused look as she gets invited into the band, and her panicky reaction when she realizes what she’s agreed to.

* The endearingly awkward conversation between Kei and Son at the bus stop… the start of a friendship.

* Nozomi’s little brother walking around repeating, “I’m hot”.

” Son practicing in a karaoke room, building her confidence and getting into it.

* Laughing at themselves after a terrible run-through of “My Right Hand”.

* Takako’s rooftop comic stand/juice bar.

* Son trying to cheer Kyoko up for being late to practice, giving her a playful little neck rub.

* Son’s nods of half-comprehension.

* Nozomi being impossible to wake up.

* The band’s amusement at Kei’s irritation/embarrassment with her ex-boyfriend.

* Son giggling over seeing Kyoko’s underwear.

* Sneaking into the practice room late at night, trying to play quietly and cracking themselves up.

* Yusaku uncomfortably confessing his love for Son, a traditional Japanese rite of passage.  Son’s reaction: “Can I go now?”

* Nozomi makes dinner for the band.

* Son rehearses her stage banter to an empty auditorium… you can tell how much she loves her new friends.

* Kei throws a “beef dart”.

* Kei’s “big hand” dream, featuring The Ramones.

* Moe and Takako stall for time.

* Rinko and Kei reconcile, in a way.

* Kyoko loses her nerve with Kazuya.  Not everything can result in triumph….

* ….but that ending is triumphant in spades.  What a joyous, cathartic moment.

* The smile that never leaves my face from the beginning to the end.  I love these girls.  I love their music and their humor and their problems and their friendship.  I don’t know if there is a better movie about adolescence.  It’s a thrilling, endlessly pleasurable experience spending time with Son, Kei, Nozomi and Kyoko.  Long live Param Maum!

Rating: Masterpiece (97)

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To the Wonder

I was hoping to buck the trend of disappointed reactions to Malick’s latest film.  He’s a filmmaker I hold dear to my heart, and the divisive Tree of Life is one of my favorites, so I felt very much on his side.  So I waited for that transcendent rush of Malickian goodness to wash over me.  And waited.  And waited.  I could feel my eyelids growing heavier.  I was checking the time.  I was, for the first time ever with a Malick film, bored.

Bored with these empty characters.  Bored with Bardem’s sleepy impression of Gunnar Bjornstrand in Winter Light.   Bored with Affleck with his relentless staring off into the distance, interrupted by inexplicable bursts of anger.  Bored with Kurylenko’s endless twirling, dancing, skipping, and for heaven’s sake STOP looking back over your goddamn shoulder.  Yes, it’s so very photogenic when you do that.  But enough is enough.  Honestly, by the end I was starting to laugh every time she did it.

But aren’t Malick’s characters usually on the thin side?  Fair enough, but why do I care so much more about the people in those earlier films than I did for these people?  Maybe it was the voiceover, which — although it does occasionally transmit a sort of eloquence — often feels like leftover bits from ToL.  It’s a phrase that’s thrown around a lot in connection to this film, but it fits… this is bordering on “self-parody”.  How many shots do we need of Affleck and Kurylenko oh-so-tellingly wandering around separate parts of the house?

It is frequently beautiful — I’d say less visually appealing than most of his other work, but that’s quite a record of visual splendor — and there is heart in it.  I may have ripped on Bardem as a second-rate Bergman character, but I actually was somewhat interested in his religious struggles, and how the love of God compares and relates to the love between people.  It just seems like the effort isn’t there.  The film looks like it’s aiming for profound insights and sweeping emotion, but the work hasn’t been done to make those things happen.  I didn’t want to, but I’m afraid I have to jump on this particular bandwagon… it’s the first truly disappointing movie I’ve seen by Malick, and the first I have no desire to see again.  Rating: Fair (65)

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TSPDT 2013: Une histoire de vent (A Tale of the Wind)

In 1988, at the age of 90, Joris Ivens completed his final film.  He had been making movies, many of them documentaries, for a period spanning six decades.  Because the films were leftist and often pro-Communist, he was blacklisted from the United States and even for a time in his home country of The Netherlands.  In this film, done in collaboration with longtime wife and partner Marceline Loridan (a concentration camp survivor who appeared in Chronicle of a Summer), he travels to China in an attempt to film the wind.

Although many of his films (from what I hear, I’ve seen only his lovely abstract short Regen, from 1929) have a political slant, there is nothing didactic or preachy about this one.  It’s a combination of documentary and fantasy, a free-associating mix of essay film, tone poem, ethnography and autobiography.  It defies classification.

Ivens sits in a chair in the middle of the Gobi desert, waiting for the wind.  Because he is asthmatic and functioning with only half of one lung, the wind has a physical metaphorical value to him.  He seeks a martial arts master to learn the secrets of breathing.  There are shots of the wind moving trees and water, shots of windmills.  There are shots of rock formations carved by the wind over centuries, juxtaposed with shots of magnificent sculptures carved by human hands.

That kind of human creative endeavor plays a part as well, as Ivens incorporates his own work into the film.  Standing in front of a giant Buddha with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes, he thinks of the eye of the camera.  He trades one of his early films for a mask of the wind.  He shows footage from one of his documentaries from the 1930′s, depicting the Japanese invasion of China.  He shows himself emerging from the moon of Méliès’s famous short, his own birth as a filmmaker built on those who came before him.

He also tries to film the “Terracotta Army” but after eight days of negotiations with authorities, he’s unable to get permission to shoot for more than 10 minutes from dictated spots.  So he creates his own terracotta army in a charming bit of tableau vivant.  And much of the film is also an observation — without critique or commentary — of Chinese culture.  The martial arts demonstration, the repeated appearances of the “Monkey King” figure, numerous references to Chinese mythology and legend, a scene that fancifully recreates a bustling town square.  There is a love and appreciation for the culture here, largely divorced from political context.

It’s a gloriously playful film, loaded with a barrage of fantastic images.  The music is a lively mix of traditional Chinese folk and Michel Portal’s modern art-jazz (reminiscent of Michael Nyman’s scores for Peter Greenaway).  Sometimes the meanings and associations are elusive, but it never feels like Ivens is trying to stump the audience.  And the freeform construction makes it always fun and pleasurable, with new surprises around every corner.  Rating: Great (94)

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TSPDT 2013: Bangiku (Late Chrysanthemums)

The lives of four former geishas.  Okin (Haruko Sugimura) lives only with her deaf-mute maid.  But she wields the most economic power of any of them, and as a moneylender, all the others are in her debt.  Nobu (Sadako Sawamura) runs a bar with her husband, but can’t afford to have children.  Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa) is an ailing widow, and her son Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Koizumi) is unable to find a job and is involved in a questionable relationship.  Otomi (Yûko Mochizuki) is an alcoholic and a gambler, frequently borrowing money from her own daughter Sachiko (Ineko Arima) and squandering it.

Money is a running motif throughout Naruse’s work, perhaps never more so than here.  Most of the conversations revolve around it.  Sachiko is going to marry an older man because he makes more than the young fellas.  Okin constantly hounds her friends to pay their debts, even coming in Nobu’s house from the back door so she won’t sneak out.  There are discussions about who pays for what.  Several shots of cash.  As Otomi says, “Money is everything.”

But Okin gets little comfort from her financial security and secretly envies the others for their families.  There are two men in her life.  Seki (Bontarô Miake) tried to kill her in an attempted double suicide love pact many years ago.  He shows up again but she wants nothing to do with him (and what does he want from her? money, of course).  The one she longs for is her old flame Tabe (Ken Uehara), a hunky who she lost to another woman.  When she gets a letter from him announcing an upcoming visit, she gets giddy with delight and starts primping.  However, Tabe turns out to be a pathetic, passionless disappointment.

And Tamae and Otomi are ultimately disappointed and abandoned by their own children.  There’s no solace in money and there’s no solace in men and there’s no solace in family.  As they assess their lives now, their time as geishas appears to be their glory days, long behind them.  Naruse’s harsh cynicism once again separates him from Ozu, and there’s little room for sentimentality here.

All of the performances seemed pretty good to me.  Sugimura (especially notable for her work with Ozu, but excellent in just about everything) shines brightest, as a character who seems so mercenary at first but wins some sympathy as the movie progresses.  I quite liked Mochizuki as well, who has to do a lot of drunk acting but pulls it off well.

As usual, I was very glad to see Naruse’s work but still have not developed a strong affection for him.  However, not every director has to be a favorite, and I will continue to seek out more of his films, which are always intriguing or rewarding on some level.  Rating: Very Good (83)

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