Zelma Cutout
MOVIE REVIEW
My Love Affair With Marriage (2022)
For a movie that was never officially distributed, “Sita Sings the Blues” has had an incredible influence. “Sita Sings the Blues” combined uncombinable things into a work of beauty: director Nina Paley’s lousy marriage which fell apart between San Francisco and Trivandrum, a Hindu myth about the mistreated wife of a prince, and the jazz-era songs of Annette Hanshaw (the cost of the rights to which meant the movie was released under a creative commons license, instead of regular copyright). There is no way that movie should have worked and yet all the pieces somehow melded together perfectly. Did I mention it was animated? “My Love Affair with Marriage,” a Latvian-Luxembourgish coproduction shown at the Tribeca Festival, uses the same template to tell a similar story. A woman’s romantic relationships in a strange and alienating society with a heavy mythic past are explored through animation and commented on with voiceover and song, but it’s unfortunate the overall effect is less powerful, possibly because the songs were composed for the film instead of a serendipitous back-catalog discovery. They are sung by a Greek chorus of winged bird-women (the band Trio Lemonade: Iluta Alsberga, Ieva Katkovska and Kristine Pastare) who hammer home the life lessons Zelma (Dagmara Dominczyk) learns growing up in the U.S.S.R. Writer-director Signe Bauman also added a highly original twist – Zelma’s story is narrated by Biology (Michelle Pawk), as in the literal and differing neurons in her body which are fired up every time she experiences an emotion. But this unusual combination of narrative choices unfortunately depersonalize a very personal story.
Continue reading “Marriage Minded” »
Erik Aavatsmark/Vertigo Média
MOVIE REVIEW
Pioneer (2014)
Norway’s natural environment was a big factor in “Insomnia,” Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 debut in which Stellan Skarsgård struggles with a murder case and the extended daylight hours, and comes off worst on both counts. It’s at the heart of “Pioneer,” too — the director’s new film set in the early 1980s — right at the moment when exploitation of the North Sea oil lying offshore is about to alter the country from top to bottom. Part paranoid conspiracy thriller and part blue-collar procedural, it maneuvers deep-sea diver Petter (Aksel Hennie) into position as the fly in the ointment for those awaiting Norway’s transformation into one of the world’s richest countries. They duly set about removing the irritant obstacle; a plot whose fidelity to real events hinted at in the credits is hard to judge, but whose broad authenticity for those caught up in the transformation at the time would seem tough to deny.
Continue reading “Pipe Dreams” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Avatar (2009)
WETA/20th Century Fox
James Cameron doesn’t make movies. He makes events. And “Avatar,” which comes hyped with a much speculated upon budget of around $500 million and the wonders of the filmmaker’s stereoscopic 3-D camera system, is perhaps his biggest yet.
With great power comes great responsibility — as another big-budget icon noted — and great responsibility brings the weight of enormous expectations. Well, ignore the bad buzz spurred by the mediocre first trailer and forgo your cynicism. The movie works spectacularly well, providing a vibrant experience on par with those provided by the legendary blockbusters of Hollywood’s past.
Continue reading “King of the 3-D World” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Save Me (2008)
First Run Features
Shot poorly and infused with too much melodrama, “Save Me” largely resembles one of those reductive message movies better served on Lifetime than the big screen. Badly acted, summarily unconvincing and filled with genuinely creepy characters, watching the picture often becomes an ungainly chore. Still, within the absurd milieu, director Robert Cary and the film’s three screenwriters pursue a thread of thematic honesty that keeps the picture functional, although it never avoids seeming very amateurish.
Continue reading “Straighten Up and Fly Right” »
