MEDIA UPDATE: Watching More May 29, 2008

The Fall

It’s true, the movie’s kind of boring. Why? Despite a brilliantly funny child actress playing an injured girl in a infirmary, The Fall simply lacks any forward motion and conviction. We don’t know where it’s going and we don’t care. Lee Pace — however much I adore him — is not a strong lead. He’s depressed about something and lacks the gravitas or viciousness (either would be fine) to make us care. When we do find out what’s his problems are — and what he plans to do about it — we care even less. The problem is trivial and its solution maudlin. Tarsem spends too much time in this world.

His fantasy world is more interesting, but here too, slow editing and an uninteresting storyline plague the plot.

Everything needed to be faster, wittier and much much more provocative. At almost 2 hours, the Fall should have been 90 minutes, with the majority of that time spent in Tarsem’s beautiful but not nearly complex enough or sardonic enough fantasy world.

What’s sad is that there are clearly glimmers of brilliance. There’s an interesting subtheme about the dawn of cinema — specifically “special effects” cinema — that could have been further explored. Still too, some of the characters in the real world had fantasy world doppelgangers. Both characters would have been enlivened with more context and character development.

Isn’t as transcendent as it wants to be, but Mamet smartly bends the conventions of the sports movie — spending more than half the movie explaining how the fighter got to the match. As is typical for Mamet, the dialogue is dense and rapid and the plot slightly convoluted (but flows easily). The makes the movies engaging to watch, distracting you from realizing that not much is happening.

In the end, the themes are familiar: one lone man has the faith to believe in something greater than money or self-gain and has to fight the forces around him — including his wife! — to vindicate his belief in the higher power. Mamet stops at the vindication, cutting off the movie right when it should end: after our hero, up to his neck in crap (a lawsuit, counter-suit, suicide, betrayal, debt) and perhaps his convictions dwindling, realizes his ideals can still empower him.

Chiwetel Ejiofor leaves the film as something of a sex symbol and a more acting cred to boot. I’ll put it plainly: he’s hot.

Indiana Jones

It was entertaining. But I don’t remember the previous ones, I was too young when I saw them. So I have no strong feelings on this. :(

MEDIA UPDATE: Watching May 28, 2008

I’ve seen a lot of movies lately! I’ll roll them out slowly. Here’s two

Baghead (okay I lied. Saw this weeks ago at Philly Film Fest, but it’s coming out in theaters)

Interesting. It’s an interesting film. It does in fact bend genres: mumblecore-like realism, horror, comedy. Problem is, it’s not very memorable. You leave the theater thinking “weird. cool” and then you never think about it again.

But I like the Duplass Bros. They’re taking risks, and that’s great. They’ve assembled a cast — as they did in The Puffy Chair — of almost mostly unsympathetic young people. This time, unlike in the Puffy Chair, we get the pleasure of seeing them freak each other out — and they have nowhere to run! Yes. The Bros. still use to stylistic conventions of mumblecore: lots of close-ups, handheld camera, inane dialogue, to give the movie that realist edge. Dance with the one that brung ya. I’m eager to see how long they will.

I liked this movie. But I thought I would love it. Maybe it was all the critical raving. The words used to describe it “kinetic,” “energetic,” “youthful,” “exuberant,” “fresh,” “savage,” are all true. To that I would add “confident.” Trier clearly had a vision of how he wanted to tell this story: broken in time with the past clear and the future conditional (this and that “would” and “could” happen, his freshest idea). Maybe because it was so confident I hoped for just a little more. My expectations were high.

Part of what blunted my enthusiasm was the focus on male artist angst. It’s just a pet peeve. I don’t really care about the guy who can’t write because his debut novel was too good or the friend who doubts his talent. You got a book deal, shut up, suck it up and live. That these men treat their women badly pushes my buttons even more. Trier is smart enough to add commentary from  women, to hint at what pricks these men must be (in one smart line, a graduate student says: “it must be so hard to have problems in this group”). But the overall lack of perspective suggests Trier actually wants us to love these self-indulgent would-be-men.

Still, the man knows how to work a camera and get pretty subtle emotions to register strongly. In what may be the strongest scene in the movie, the disturbed, post-suicidal Phillipe asks his ex-girlfriend to relive their trip to Paris. He asks her to pose in the exact same way  she did by fountain in a park months earlier. She is disturbed. She has to oblige him — he’s clinically depressed, after all — but the love that grew during their first Parisian trip is gone. She realizes this, but Phillipe does not. Later, she doesn’t even get laid. Am I mean for calling Phillipe a wimp and an asshole?

Anyway, Trier ends the movie with a kind of rosy “would-be” future in which everyone has a girlfriend and is happy. This is the future we doubt will happen, but we suppose Erik (Phillipe’s bff and 1/2 the film’s main duo) thinks it might. This is where the film is smart: young people also think of the future that could be. What actually happens is less important. Too bad I was thinking of the great movie this could have been, instead of the very very good movie it actually was.

MEDIA UPDATE: Watching May 20, 2008

Mister Lonely – Loved it, although I can’t say watching it was always a pleasant experience. The film has a sadness to it, and part of it came with my unease with celebrity impersonators. I cannot imagine living through someone else — but the film has a good way of addressing that unease.

Harmony Korine has a big theme going (note to anyone reading: I look for big themes like squirrels look for nuts) about the ability to improve the world through belief in something bigger than oneself. The movie has two storylines: one about a commune of celebrity impersonators and one about a group of nuns who jump from planes — I’m dead serious. The link between celebrity and religion is an obvious one — celebrities are idols, the new religion, etc. But Korine doesn’t wallow in easy comparisons. Instead, his delicate and virtuoso handling of the nun storyline — mystifying, scary, painful, hopeful — escalates the thematic tension: he has something to say.

The celebrity impersonators, like the nuns, are trying to better themselves through a belief in something (their celebs, their craft, but also each other). They aren’t doing any harm, and they haven’t lost their souls, they’ve just found another use for them. They want to make people happy — they put on a talent show.

What’s sad is the impersonators see themselves as outsiders — yes, “black sheep,” a convenient but important metaphor in the film — they don’t participate in the world, living miles outside Paris. How can you improve the world and encourage togetherness when you are alone? Diego Luna’s Michael starts the film thinking he’s alone, he ends it realizing we’re all together.

The religion here, then, is the world, it’s people, who by merely living show life is worth living. Once Michael learns that the impersonators are not alone in trying to improve themselves, living for something else other than the self, he is finally free. The idols are not the celebrities, “people,” writ large, are the idols. Korine believes in faith, not religion (and the fate of the nuns at the end proves this).  So the message of the movie is simple: believe in each other and we can all “live forever,” as Diego Luna says .

The movie is slow, it demands patience, but some of his scenes are downright brilliant — as many reviewers have noted. You simply have to see for yourself. And sometimes Korine’s choices seem oddball and unnecessary. That may be true. But I’ve never felt so odd during and after a movie. Korine managed to get at themes of togetherness and faith through celebrity impersonators. Freaky, unsettling.

Description and reviews.

Oh yea, I saw Prince Caspian. One word review: Watchable.

MEDIA UPDATE: Watching May 7, 2008

The Visitor: Subtle yet powerful, the perfect post-9/11 movie about New York and America. The storyline unfolds gradually and quietly. A couple — both Muslims, one Senegalese, one Syrian — accidentally get caught living in the apartment of a bored, lonely economics professor (international economics, no less!).  The movie is at its best when it’s dramatizing the subtleties of cross-cultural connections: the street music players of various cultures — Chinese to African — who play for New Yorkers everyday; the (mostly white) New Yorkers listening to the (mostly of color, international) men playing drums in Washington Square Park; the woman who buys the necklaces made by the main female character, Zainab, and to whom, when Zainab says she’s from Senegal, she says, “Oh, I went to Cape Town…” (which is thousands of miles away). But the movie demonizes no one — except implicitly the Bush Administration.

The movie so asks: who are the visitors? The immigrants? Or are New Yorkers/Americans tourists in their own city/country? At the immigrant detention center keeping Tarek, the male half of the couple, posters on the wall say immigrants are part of America and one mural memorializes the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty.

All of this would be overbearing if the film’s editing was not so quiet and steady. The themes slip into your mind before you realize they are there. This is how great movies about big subjects are made.

Tom McCarthy, of the Station Agent fame, does well with the larger narrative. The Station Agent was a charming movie, but The Visitor manages to be charming, insightful and powerful all at once.