The Artist (2011) - % % % %

This is such a lovely movie.
Leave it to a French director to re-create the joy of classic Hollywood, silent-cinema with enough modern twists to keep it fresh and interesting.

Joyous is the one word that keeps coming to mind, and that shouldn't be surprising since there's an adorable Jack Russell Terrier in nearly every scene, let alone every shot.

The film follows the fall of a silent era star and the parallel rise of a new 'it' girl and then they fall in love. Singular periods of darkness and an interesting examination of the loss of purpose when faced with creative failure and loneliness keep the film from being too fluffy and generic. And the finale wraps the challenges and sadness up with a glorious bow and dancing! It's delightful!

Hunger (2008) - % % % % %

This may be the best English language film I've seen in years.

"Hunger" is about hunger, literal and figurative. It tells stories surrounding the 1981 hunger strike in the prisons of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The many sides of hunger are present in these men's lives, starting with the simple breakfast of a guard, readying himself for his day at work, to the extremes of starvation experienced by the prisoners. There is the metaphorical hunger for freedom and the aspiration to greater lives desired by the IRA members, as well as the gnawing, aching growl which pervades everyone's existence at the prison.

I was unprepared for how beautiful and thoughtful this film is. It is brilliantly directed, by British artist Steve McQueen (not that Steve McQueen), with extraordinary intention throughout.

As an audience member, I feel I must warn some potential viewers that parts of the film are stomach churning. I do not think that one should turn away from any part of the human experience, especially since this is not a documentary and the thin veil of illusion ought to be enough to protect an audience from true trauma. But as I get older, I do occasionally wish I could extricate certain images and experiences from my mind. "Salo" often comes to mind. "Hunger" does not contain anything too violently graphic for contemporary audiences, but it may be upsetting to those with weak stomachs. Prison apparently may lead men to be resourceful and to use their basic materials in graphic ways to reject the means of their imprisonment. It's raw and the thought of it makes my eyes water.

I want to memorize the film. The shots are precise and potent. It's reminiscent of Antonioni in the framing, creating a feeling of alienation and abstraction from observing crumbs on a napkin or a car door opening. The times of the film are ominous and the direction draws out the violence and trauma implicit in every moment. Camera movement is judicious and, when used, infuses an operatic and hallucinatory tenor to the scenes.

I can't say enough. I feel like attempting to review this film and do it justice would involve spelling out every single frame of the film.

The acting is amazing. Michael Fassbender is so potent and charismatic that even in a near death state, practically comatose, he compels the viewer to observe the slightest movements of his facial muscles and the pace of his breathing for signs or indications of what he's thinking and experiencing.

Bravo, Steve McQueen. When I saw your Turner Prize winning piece, I never imagined you would develop such an extraordinary prowess with the medium. Bravo.

Hereafter - % % %

Why was this movie made?

Is a film deserving of three stars because it's well-made, well-directed and shot, and well-acted? But lacking in convincing me of its need to exist?

I suppose this film was intended to delve into the pessimistic resistance to an after-life by a skeptical society created by a man approaching the end of his life. Clint Eastwood, who directed and produced and composed the music, was 80 at the release of this film in 2010. He is approaching his end-time and has an extraordinary career recently capped with two Oscar wins for directing suspenseful adult dramas about murder, human sins, redemption and guilt, "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby". In interviews he compared this to a French film, and perhaps that explains why one of the three interwoven stories of the film is centered in Paris. This is the story of a French journalist who has a near-death-experience in a tsunami in south-east Asia, a twin boy who loses his brother and Matt Damon, a psychic who can't come to grips with his ability to communicate with the dead.

I credit this film for taking a premise I hold with enormous skepticism, a psychic who has visions when he makes psychical contact with others, and getting me to empathize with the character and suspend disbelief for the sake of the plot. But every time the film moves to another story, I am reminded that I don't understand why this film exists.

The French journalist experiences a great deal of resistance to her pursuit of the story and writes a book about the conspiracy to resist information about near-death-experiences and the possibility of an afterlife. In conjunction with the Matt Damon story, in which he has difficulty sustaining a regular life because of his ability's forced intimacy, and its physical and emotional strain upon him, the film seems to indicate the perspective that it's hard to deal with death but cruel to resist its presence in our lives. And yet, the issue of an afterlife feels unnecessary to this point. It feels hokey.

Furthermore, the other plot line involving the sweet boy who's twin brother dies in a car accident is extremely pitiful and feels designed to elicit the most pity possible from the audience. His mother is addicted to heroin and can't really take care of the boys. After his brother is beset by bullies while picking up their mother's methadone prescription, he escapes them by running into the street. The surviving brother is the shy one who depended on the gregarious other to make decisions. He is shy and must be placed in foster care while his mother goes into rehab. And his brother's funeral is short and his foster parents put a second bed in his room so that he can feel closer to his dead brother, who's cap he now wears. The character is out of a Dickens novel. He's played by a boy with saucer eyes, pale skin and weak shoulders. It's all too much. Of course he tracks down Matt Damon to talk to his dead brother and begs him to come back because he can't be alone. 

It's overcompensating for the resistance that the audience may have to the idea of an afterlife and it can't. Perhaps there is an afterlife. Many, many people think so. But if this were a film about death, and the ramifications of just death, it would be nearly the same film. It's not a persuasive film. It's more philosophical than that. Yet it never drew me in enough for me to apply the film to my own life. Perhaps I haven't lived enough or am not old enough to really consider my own mortality. Or perhaps I have considered it enough to think that an end to life without a hereafter is an important motivator to seize the present and that a hereafter in which we are floating with our loved ones isn't appealing enough to find comfort in. I prefer the idea that we just end. Life stops and there is nothing after death. It's also a kind of relief to think that this is all there is and there is an ending. An after-life is only interesting if such a story were appealing. This timeless, floating with our loved ones sounds a lot like retirement to me, or a really good Christmas or family reunion.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - % % %

The joy of watching a gorilla attack a helicopter makes up for many of the unfortunate missteps of this prequel to the 1968 original, 'Planet of the Apes'. This film will still be enjoyable for those who aren't familiar with the original, but there are numerous hints and lines referencing it which will seem odd and out of place in this new film.

The Rise imagines how the Earth may come to fall into the hands of super intelligent chimps and gorillas through animal testing. It does make an interesting argument that, as Frida Pinto's superfluous character repeatedly makes, one can't or shouldn't control everything. And yet, this is a profoundly anti-science argument that none of us can accept because obviously we all benefit from immunizations and cell phones and so on. Rather than treating this film as a philosophical equal, it's best to discus it as nifty fantasy made possible by CGI.

And while this film is made possible by remarkable CGI, it isn't made good by it. I never once forgot that the chimp, Cesar, adopted and experimented on by scientist, James Franco, was CGI and I never really felt that much for him. As he enters his adolescence, he stops being cute and becomes sullen and grumpy, not helping me to empathize with the character. It's an interesting coming-of-age story and a father-son drama, but these fall apart upon closer examination.

Franco's character raises this ape from infancy, but doesn't quite seem to fully embrace the fathering role he claims. It made me confused at times when he was able to walk away from his son so easily, and to me this is the main problem with the resolution of the film.

But the plot is interesting and Cesar's road to adult independence is very well crafted. Kudos to the several listed screenwriters, the team that brought us 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle'.

Basically this film is carried by the awesomeness of a bunch of monkeys kicking ass. They smash up several buildings and take over a San Francisco street, tearing up parking meters and hurling them through cop cars. And then they ***SPOILER ALERT*** move to the climax on the Golden Gate Bridge, which is pretty awesome. Like I said, a gorilla attacks a helicopter. It's fantastic and super cool. ***

Aside from that, the characters aren't engaging, the plot is interesting and then it's over. Sure, I'm maybe rethinking how the animals are sourced for testing and certainly may make a donation to a chimp sanctuary, but I'm not willing to go back to a world rampant with polio because of this movie. It doesn't really engage enough.

***SPOILER ALERT***The director pulls so many punches, having the apes spare human lives over and over again, although certainly some people were killed when they charged the police line on the bridge, but also with Franco. It's the director's choice to keep his character from having a greater emotional bond with Cesar. Franco's father dies in his arms and he remains stoic. My father broke down repeatedly the day his mother died and he's hardly a warm and fuzzy guy. It's terrible for a parent to die and it's also incredibly painful to say goodbye to a child, let alone to leave them in a prison or in a forest as they move to reclaim the planet. It's emotional, but Franco plays it strong and it just feels like a lost opportunity. ***

This film is interesting because of the very rational fear that all humans have of very strong animals. We are only in our position in the food chain because of our ingenuity and linguistic skills. We would very quickly be defeated by a stronger species if they ever gained such abilities. It'd be an amazing site to behold, too. And that's the only reason this film gets three %s rather than the two it otherwise would deserve. It's a good premise and the plot is well executed, but the characters are weak and the direction waters down the drama and excitement too often to keep it from being truly terrifying. Too bad. The end of human domination of the planet should be scary. Petrifying, in fact. Instead it's just kinda nifty. Too bad, indeed.

Tangled - %

Disney's 50th Animated Feature is major tragedy. The animation quality aside, the film epitomizes all that is generic and shallow about the current studio. The plot is acceptable but the characters are cloying and obnoxious. The dialogue is some of the worst attempts at humor I've perhaps ever seen. Ever.

The central 'prince charming' is repulsive. In theory, through getting to know the princess, Flynn sheds his macho, smarmy charm and accepts his real self. We barely see any evidence of his sincere self and the oily, sociopath that he starts out as is so excessive and nauseating that it is impossible to shake through the weak resolution. It's not enough that he admits his real name is Eugene. It's not enough that he is willing to die in order to break the spell trapping his princess. It's a good turn, but the first guy we meet is so gross that there's little to engage the audience into caring about him.

The princess Rapunzel is pretty vacant and has very little personality. She's spunky in defending herself, but perhaps it's just naivety, really. She likes to paint and her best friend is a chameleon. That's it. Her naivety supposedly charms a bar full of medieval thugs in a hot second. It doesn't make sense, although it does set up the only good sequence in the film, a musical number about the dreams of ogre-like ruffians, including an odd little old man in his underwear dressed like cupid. That's so weird that it's wonderful.

And Pascal, the chameleon, is cute for sure. But how on earth does a chameleon end up in a tower in the middle of somewhere in Europe?

According to wikipedia, there are chameleons in Spain, so is this film set in Spain. It sure doesn't look like it at all. France or Germany perhaps. As opposed to a film like 'Princess and the Frog', with its embrace of a particular culture and time, 'Tangled' is a mish-mosh of fairy tale ahistorical associations. It's so vague as to be un-engaging and generic.

And the villain is the woman who kidnapped Rapunzel at an early age and raised her as her own, played by the talented, Tony-award winning, Donna Murphy.

Even though we, as the audience, know this, it's hard to want Rapunzel to hate the only person she's ever known and to want her to hate the woman she calls mother. It's too complicated psychologically for such shallow fare. And how is someone who has lived her entire life alone in a tower with three books, one window, and a chameleon so socially capable? It's an impossible leap of faith for any adult. The original Grimms Fairy Tale is dark and tortured, allowing for such leaps of faith, whereas a chipper Disney film just can't support such psychological murkiness or fantastical flights of fancy.

The animation is very impressive. The textures of fabrics and natural items like trees and leaves is very true to life. But this makes the slapstick violence and absurd physics of, for example, a man flying over a castle wall and landing on the saddle of a horse without injury too much to bear. There are just so many ridiculous slapstick head-bonks with a cast iron skillet and crotch kicks and leaping and landing without injury that I became irritated with the physical absurdity.

There is a whole sequence in which Rapunzel tries to shove the unconscious body of Flynn into a wardrobe but his floppy body keeps falling out, often on his face. He's unconscious because she's hit him in the head twice with a cast-iron skillet. Yeah. That's hilarious. I love Warner Bros. cartoons of Wile E. Coyote falling off cliffs, but the set up of emotionally connecting with the characters prevents me from giggling when they are tortured. The story doesn't need such stupidity and if these are meant to reinforce the fantastical setting, in reality they serve to push the audience out of the film with their absurdity.

It's a wreck and I sure hope no child develops their ideas of beauty, love or romance from such a crummy, poorly executed film. Bleck.

To Live and Die in LA (1985) - % % %

I decided to watch this hoping for some light and unchallenging '80s fun. The opening credits' style amused me and then I was informed that the soundtrack is by the band Wang Chung. 'Oh, yes,' thought I, 'this will certainly be goofy fun, at least.' The opening titles included the expected shots of smog-ridden LA, but also odd moments of women dancers baring new-wave/tribal face paint in a slightly erotic manner. 'Excellent,' thought I, 'the 80's in LA possessed such a strange style. How marvelous!'

On a more serious level, I was curious about the performances of Willem Dafoe and John Tuturrow as the bad guys and the director, William Friedkin, who hasn't made a very good film since this, but who, in the '70s, directed 'The French Connection' and 'The Exorcist'.

The plot doesn't distinguish itself until the last half hour, following a base-jumping 80's Secret Service agent, played by William Petersen,
whose partner gets murdered investigating a counter-fitter, played by Dafoe. Dafoe plays an artist who lives in a fancy post-modern home with his nearly naked, exotic dancer girlfriend where he burns his other creations, oil paintings, if he doesn't approve of them. He's some oil-painting sociopath who makes a mean faux greenback.
Not much of a villain, but then Petersen isn't much of a hero. He's a protagonist, for sure. He's determined to avenge his partner's murder and he uses his lover/confidential-informant to get information to catch him in a sting, while threatening her to have her probation revoked. Real classy. So he comes off like a scum-bag with contemporary eyes, but then the plot thickens. His determination to catch Dafoe leads him to wrangle his new partner, a young and seemingly-noble John Pankow, best known as Pauly's best friend, Ira, on 'Mad About You'. They can't get enough money from the secret service to make a buy from Dafoe so they decide to hold up a diamond smuggler and ***SPOILER ALERT*** inadvertently kill an FBI agent. The chase following the murder is fantastic and makes the movie worth watching on its own. Pankow starts breaking down and is totally freaking out because not only has his crazy-thrill-junkie partner gotten him to rob a diamond smuggler and use the stolen money to make an unauthorized buy from a counterfeiter but he has murdered an FBI agent. Upon attempting to make the final buy and arrest Dafoe a serious plot twist threw my mind into a tail spin. This twist is actually so good, I won't say any more. I've probably said too much already. You should see the movie. ***


I'm so surprised by this plot twist. I was enjoying the strange world created by the film. It took some suspension of disbelief, but I was enjoying the Wang Chung and Petersen's athletic careening through LA. But the twist made me sit up and pay attention. And then, in a major crisis of traditional plot, a beautiful and glorious scene emerges, full of fire and moral confusion. The film truly captures and relates the Film Noir crisis of moral ambiguity into a universal setting. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Instead of being lured into the darkness by a criminal mastermind or a beautiful, sexy woman, nor by accident or fate, the tragic hero is lured there by an arrogant, confident, handsome epic hero who sweeps poor Pankow up in his scheme for glory, vengeance and just order. And then he is face to face with Dafoe amidst his burning art studio. Engulfed by flames, Dafoe asks Pankow why he didn't try to stop Petersen when he knew it had already gone much too far. 'Because you couldn't turn in your partner.' Pankow is distracted by his moral crisis and the flames leaping about them. and Dafoe beats him to the ground. Just as Dafoe is about to set him on fire with the shredded counterfeit money, Pankow shoots him and he's engulfed by flames.

The film ends with Dafoe's attorney watching home sex movies of Dafoe and his girlfriend. This girlfriend leaves with her new girlfriend, another exotic dancer from the club, played by 'Frasier''s Jane Leeves.
Pankow goes to Petersen's lover's apartment and accuses her of setting them up to kill the FBI agent. He tells her that she's working for him now. She flashes to thinking of sex with Petersen and then cue the Wang Chung and credits rolling over industrial LA at sunset.***

Much of the movie is clumsy and flat, but the plot twist alone makes this well worth watching. The '80s fun cushions the stilted acting, plodding procedural scenes and the totally pointless plot line with Tuturro. Petersen is great fun playing this agent with unrestrained machismo, contrary to his fairly similar role in Michael Mann's 'Manhunter' from the following year.


And while this movie has an interesting moral core, it is still a bit ridiculous with contemporary eyes. The female characters are mannequins roaming about with the lure of sex trailing from their emaciated limbs. They are as relevant to the plot as the furniture. A group of black gangster associates of Dafoes are absurd stereotypes and four of these muscular thugs are defeated in hand-to-hand combat by a painter (Dafoe) and one other white dude in a puffy green army jacket that reminds me of neo-nazis. Stupid. And it's oddly gory. Several people get shot in the head and each time the film cuts to a quick close-up of their head, center screen, with a bullet hole in their face. Kind of fun, but it tells you the maturity level the film is aiming for. Then again, no one is watching this movie to see respectful portrayals of anyone. Watch it for the kitsch and the noir fun of the myth of LA in the '80s.

Sister Kenny (1946) - % %

Why are biographic films so terrible? "Sister Kenny" is the heroic tale of an Australian nurse, played by Rosalind Russell, who discovers an unorthodox treatment for polio. Kenny is noble and resolute. Early in her life she considers leaving nursing to marry, but the children command her attention. She is practically made of granite. Her methods meet extreme resistance from doctors, all men, embodied in one figure, Dr. Brack, a mean old buzzard who dismisses her because she doesn't have a medical degree, reserved solely for men.

It's interesting to learn about the evolution in the treatment of polio, but as a film this is terrible. Kenny is clearly an excellent person from the beginning and Russell plays her as a stoic champion. She does attempt to exude humility and passion, but each of these deviations from the stoic quality serve to exaggerate her saintliness. It's a waste of time. There's no drama. Even as she stands up to the medical establishment, it isn't a real argument but rather a bombastic declaration of her greatness against an argument better elucidated an hour earlier in the film. It's repetitive and uninteresting. It is remarkable that the real Elizabeth Kenny faced so much resistance and it does remind me that medicine is not an exact science, but full of tradition and prejudices. The real Sister Kenny had a remarkable life and her story holds interest for history lovers, but the film makes this groundbreaking woman seem wooden.