Movie Round Up

Been a while, hasn't it. Okay - it's been a relatively full few weeks, so - here goes....

Breaking News *** - Johnny To film, opening with what looks deceptively simple - a longish crane shot that just keeps going, as the story takes off and never really stops... It starts in the middle of the story and just keeps going - it's about cops orchestrating a hostage standoff for the media, but it's the structure that is really post-modern - there's no context - no backstory, no sense of the cops or crooks as characters, the bare minumum of connection between one set piece and the next.... Add some extreme stylization of the characters and acting, and the mounting weirdness, especially at the end, which starts to sneak into Takashi Miike territory.... It's a pretty neat film....

Friends With Money **1/2 - 4 friends - Jennifer Aniston, Frances MacDormand, Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener - one has no money (Aniston), one has too much (Cusack), the other two are in the middle. They all have their troubles. Aniston's character sort of organizes it - her story arc brings us in and takes us out - though everyone gets reasonably well resolved on screen. It's funny, smart, maybe a bit too obvious, but solid anyway - a kind of low-key American Naruse film. There are worse things.

Lucky Number Slevin ** - exceedingly clever crime caper picture with Josh Hartnett as a schmoe (if not a shmoo) caught between 2 crime bosses, at the mercy, somehow of Bruce Willis, though he bangs Lucy Liu... much confusion and misdirection, but the promise that it will All Add Up, which it does, effectively enough.

Pitfall *** - Hiroshi Teshigahara film about a sad-sack miner who gets whacked by a gentleman in white gloves - who turns out to be hatching a scheme. As cleverly plotted as Lucky Number Slevin, but without having to Explain It All at the end. It's interesting - it's Techigahara's first film, and while he's already got most of the elements of his extreme stylization here, it's applied to overtly political (and intricately plotted) material - an odd effect. Disruptive, beautiful and strange throughout - with Teshigahara's usual 60s collaborators, written by Kobo Abe and scored by the magnificent Toru Takemitsu.

3 by Laura Mulvey: Amy!; Frida Kahlo & Tina Modetti; Disgraced Monuments - three rare short films by Laura Mulvey, the film theorist.... Amy! is about Amy Johnson, an aviator in the 30s who flew from England to Australia, to great acclaim. Very stylized, pointedly significant, but interesting enough.... The Kahlo and Modetti film was made in conjunction with an exhibition of the two artists' work, and is structured as such: slide shows and voiceover, in a conventional enough analysis of their work. Plus some clips of Modetti's Hollywood film work (she was an actress) - and (color) home movies of Kahlo flirting with Diego Rivera (though in fact - said Mulvey - she was in the process of divorcing him, and having an affair with the man shooting the footage. So things might not be what they seem.) Finally, Disgraced Monuments is a TV documentary about the ruins of Russian monuments after the fall of communism. Interesting stuff, lots of discussion about the political and economic facts of artistic life under communism - the vagaries of Soviet iconology (how Stalin changed Lenin's program of creating monuments to the heroes of ocmmunism and progress into a cult of personality, first for Lenin, then Stalin himself - then, after Stalin died, how all the Stalin statues were taken down and replaced with Lenin's, Lenin Lenin everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Some haunting images - crumbling factories and studios full of Lenin heads; a park with several great communists standing, sitting, plopped on the ground, in a kind of temporary exhibit - haunting - they stand like exhibits in a zoo, out of context, brought down to earth, crammed in together as if they were in a holding cell. Fascinating.... Mulvey herself was present, answered questions, talked about these films mostly... It's kind of a shame she couldn't have gone over to the Brattle and given a talk on Baby Face - Stanley Cavell was in the audience - they could have both gone ot the Brattle, seen Baby Face, said a few words. That would have been a treat. Instead, you're stuck with my thoughs on Babs - in the next post...