Disney/Pixar
This has been a weird year for going to the movies in Britain. It seems that films distributed this year are either earth-shattering blockbusters or tiny little films – local films for local people, you might say. The usual Hollywood-focused distribution pattern was present and correct, although French and German do play in London, and Italian cinema seems to be getting stronger by the minute. For new faces, Johanna Wokalek stormed the screen in "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" before holding our gaze in "North Face;" she is definitely a talent to watch. As for British film, regrettably the maxims which make smaller British films normally such a bore and larger ones too Americanized to feel truly homegrown remain true. Fortunately the continued worldwide success of actors such as James McAvoy, Ray Winstone and Kristin Scott Thomas enables the industry to hold onto its vibrancy and importance.
Continue reading “Triumph of the Spirit, Human or Mechanical” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Better Things (2009)
The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival
A no-budget, edgy first feature is becoming de rigeur for British directors looking to get noticed, such as Paul Andrew Williams's "London to Brighton" and Vicky Jewson's "Lady Godiva." Duane Hopkins has been just as brave with his first feature "Better Things." Its world is rural England, its cars and back bedrooms, hospital waiting areas and train platforms. Spaces are cramped and stifling. Most of the characters are young heroin addicts, but a few others are their grandparents. The intercutting between everyone's problems is subtle, and silent. There is little dialogue in the film, and less music. The emphasis on nature shots – grass waving in the wind, a car parked by a field, clouds in a gray sky – show a debt to the work of Terrence Malick. It doesn't sound appetizing, but the film builds with quiet power to an ending mercifully free of cliché.
Continue reading “Cider Without Rosie in the English Countryside” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sugar (2009)
Fernando Calzada/Sony Pictures Classics
Some might find baseball the most boring of American sports to watch on television (it could have been the most boring of any, but British television airs both snooker and darts), so any movie about baseball automatically has an uphill climb. Previous successes such as "Field of Dreams," "Bull Durham" and others which don't star Kevin Costner have raked the sport over pretty thoroughly. But Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who co-wrote and co-directed "Sugar" and so refreshed the teacher-student genre with "Half Nelson," found an equally interesting new angle in this film. The eponymous hero (Algenis Perez Soto, making his movie debut) is a Dominican on contract to a training camp for the Kansas City Royals. Since Sammy Sosa made his name, we've all been dimly aware of the baseball fever which exists in Latin America, so it's interesting to learn what life in like for these young men. What makes "Sugar" really special is its focus on a young man who gets what he wants, only to realize it's not what he wanted after all.
Continue reading “Field of American Dreams” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Market (2008)
The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival
"The Market" is set and filmed in eastern Turkey and Azerbaijan, a part of the world most Americans and Brits have never given a moment's thought. Films in these settings are always interesting, as they provide a little glance into a world most of us had not previously been aware of. What Ben Hopkins – a Brit who has built his film career in the less-explored settings – has made is a small social commentary on capitalism's impact on how people interact with each other. Despite the freshness of its setting, the film's main ideas are pretty used goods.
Continue reading “Morals for Sale” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Blindness (2008)
Ken Woroner/Miramax Films
In an unidentified, multi-ethnic city, people start going blind. The first man is waiting at a red light when he finds he can no longer see. Another man (Don McKellar, who wrote the screenplay) offers to drive him home and then steals his car. When the first man's wife appears, she takes him to a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who goes blind the next morning when he wakes up next to his wife (Julianne Moore). The other people in his waiting room (including Alice Braga and Danny Glover) are separately brought to a quarantine unit and held under armed guard. Eventually, everyone is blind, in the whole city and maybe the country. Everyone except Ms. Moore.
The author of the book on which "Blindness" is based, José Saramago, recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. The director of this film, Fernando Meirelles, was Oscar-nominated for his first international success, "City of God." The five main actors in this film are among the most garlanded and respected working in the industry today. And yet "Blindness" never takes off. This is because of a failure of imagination at the very source.
Continue reading “Impaired Post-Apocalyptic Vision” »
MOVIE REVIEW
North Face (2008)
Majestic Filmverleih
"North Face" can pass as a horror film. It takes place over a short mountain climbing expedition, which doesn't much sound like fun. There is something tall you can fall off of. There is no easy way to get up without nearly slipping and falling to your death. There are things like rocks and avalanches which can drop on you. Your ropes can cut your hands, your gloves can get lost so you get frostbite, you rest where you can without hot food or a place to lie down and you can't fall asleep so you don't freeze. Some vacation! So the drama of "North Face" is there just in the premise. But the 1936 setting means the climbers are working in the same type of clothes we all have laying around at home – one of them wears a flatcap, for pity's sake – and there is no high-tech solution to their basic problems.
Continue reading “An Alpine Triumph of the Will” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Goodbye Solo (2008)
Travis Van Sweden/65th Venice Film Festival
I have not seen either of director Ramin Bahrani's previous two films, "Man Push Cart" and "Chop Shop," but I have read an endless list of raves about them both. Mr. Bahrani can't seem to step wrong. In his first two films, he shot in New York on real locations using non-professional actors with whom he'd worked closely in rehearsal for months before shooting. So even though my local video store doesn't carry either one, I was really looking forward to "Goodbye Solo" and my personal discovery of this great new talent. I left the cinema not quite sure if I'd seen what everyone else has.
Continue reading “Another Taste of Cherry” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Karen Ballard/Columbia Pictures
James Bond is suffering an identity crisis. The series – which began with 1962's "Dr. No" – has always had its ups and downs, not least the changes of lead actor. Despite 22 installments of varying quality and silliness, the franchise has always bounced back, mostly unscathed by the changing times or the parodies and imitators which have also filled our screens. Then came Bond's greatest adversary, 2002's "The Bourne Identity," in which Matt Damon picked up a pen and changed permanently how violence could appear on screen. What was previously stylized or intentionally amusing now looked dated and ridiculous. EON Productions, which controls the series, has been running scared ever since. Based on "Quantum of Solace," Bond has yet to find himself.
Continue reading “The Bond Identity” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Three Blind Mice (2008)
The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival
There are three admirable things about "Three Blind Mice": Firstly, the use of language. It's not just that this is an Australian film where the accents are mercifully closer to "Flight of the Conchords" instead of "Kath & Kim." It's the fresh banter, the overlapping arguments, the repetitive light conversation and the way the characters argue. Secondly, the staging. This is an obviously small-budget film, clearly made with little money, on real locations, and filmed wholly at night; but for once, these restrictions enable cleverness and freedom, and don't box the movie in. Thirdly, Matthew Newton – who wrote, directed, and starred – has done something which many big cinematic players can only hope to achieve: "Three Blind Mice" is not about what it's about. Three compelling reasons to see this most excellent film.
Continue reading “Of Mice and Men” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)
Constantin Film
Bloody hell – that about sums up the life of a terrorist on the run, whether today or in post-war Germany. The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, orchestrated a reign of terror from the early 1970s to really not very long ago. Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtrau, the boyfriend in "Run Lola Run") liked to smash things up, while Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck, the heroine in "The Lives of Others") was the respected lefty journalist who crossed over into terrorism under the thrall of Baader and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek, the sensible friend in the under-appreciated "Aimee & Jaguar"), who provided the theoretical justification. These three very real people gave up their children and any semblance of a normal life so they could – and I find myself unable to sum up what they wanted to achieve in a polite little sentence. What they really wanted to do, under a whole heap of fancy justifications, was fuck shit up.
Continue reading “New German Film Picks at Yet Another Old National Scab” »
