4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days: The Romanian abortion film, set in the days of Ceausescu's dictatorship. Made in a naturalistic style, handheld camera, something close to real time, following a girl trying to arrange an abortion for her friend. For all the political implications of it, it's really more like a Val Lewton film. A series of threats that don't, in fact, exactly materialize - lots of dead ends, hints and threats, but none come about - and most of the threat is suggested, but stated. The girl walking throught he dark city at night, looking to get rid of the fetus - complete with a Lewton bus - a dog jumping out from behind a dumpster she considers... which I suppose conveys the dread and paranoia, the routine horror, of the period as well as anything could.
Michael Clayton: Mistaken in some circles for a legal drama or a message picture, but in fact, a clean and well made neo-noir. George Clooney as Clayton, fixer at a law firm, broke, in debt to the wrong people, with a history of gambling and other bad behavior, and two brothers, one a drunk, one a cop: it's a classic set up. Clooney sets off to rescue a colleague who goes off his meds at a depo in the middle of a long horrible case - the man eludes him, and trying to get him back reveals all to our hero... I put off seeing it, fearing a Hollywood image picture, but in fact it is another fine genre piece, like so many of last year's films. Not among the very best - second tier - better than Before the Devil knows you're Dead, not as good as No Country for Old Men or The Assassination of Jess James (etc.). Clooney, of course, is wonderful - Tom Wilkinson is called on to ham and does. Tilda Swinton has a thankless role that she somehow pulls to near life (close enough for the Oscar, I se.) Sidney Pollack plays the same guy he played in Eyes Wide Shut, explaining it all to the hero...
Diary of the Dead: another zombie picture, this one presented as a shot on the fly documentary. A student film crew and their drunken teacher drive across Pennsylvania, fighting off zombies, sometimes with the help of people they meet along the way... It's okay - reasonably good zombie film, with silly pretentious blather about technology. Shawn of the Dead was better across the board, and it's hard to come up with more after that...
Witnesses: Latest Andre Techine film, set in 1984-85: a young man turns up in Paris, living with his sister in a hotel, which is really a brothel. He is gay, and soon he meets a nice older guy while cruising - before long the older man is squiring him around town, though without sex. The older man is friends with a couple, Emmanuelle Beart and her husband, an Algerian cop: it isn't long before the cop and the kid are having a wild affair. Then the kid gets AIDS, and things unravel. And go on. Techine does a nice job with this situation - especially after the boy gets AIDS, the other characters take turns accusing one another of things - selfishness, martyrdom. He handles it well - they attack one another, but Techine shows us enough to know that what they say isn't fair - but is a bit fair: none of them know the others as we do; but all of them miss things about themselves. Overall, a solid, well acted ensemble piece.
Be Kind Rewind: I certainly wanted to like this. I liked the last two Gondry films (even if one is a Kaufman film) - this one sounded fun. But in fact - it's lame. It's - what is it? It's strange - a big budget Hollywood extravaganza dedicated to the joys of low-tech filmmaking, low tech art. Though that's just where the ironies start: take the fact that contemporary technology, DV and computers and YouTube, make this kind of low tech filmmaking easy - making a film, any kind of film, on videotape? holy cow - that was work. That's harder than making a film on film!
The Band's Visit: one of the many foreign films jobbed out of a chance to win an Oscar, in this case because it was mostly in English (the common language of its Israeli and Egyptian characters). Not quite the tragedy that excluding 4 Months... or Persepolis or whatever was. Not a bad film by any means, but basically sentimentalized Kaurismaki, in the desert... Complete with a band, funny clothes... Chet Baker?
Taxi to the Dark Side: Nothing special in the filmmaking, but then again, the subject does not allow it. Almost pure talking heads - but the story it tells is devastating. The story of torture in America, under the Bush administration, taking as its departure point the story of a taxi driver names Dilewar, arrested in Afghanistan and basically beaten to death in custody. From there it moves on to the rest of the sordid mess - Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, etc. And the Bush administration's continued campaign to get torture accepted. In Afghanistan and Iraq the administration behaved as perfect swine: they push for harsher interrogation methods, more intelligence (without much interest in whether the intelligence is any good), while insulating themselves from responsibility. They create the systems and the implication that harsher methods are allowed, without clarifying the rules - so when soldiers on the ground do something like at Abu Ghraib, or what happened to Dilewar, the soldiers take the fall. The administration creates pressures that lead to the soldiers abusing people, but in a way that they are never, officially, taking orders. At this point, noting the essential cowardice of the Bush administration is nothing new, but here it is again.
Still Life: Jia Zhang-ke's film set in the three gorges area of China. The film is split in two - a man and a woman come to town each looking for a lost spouse: he stays and works, she searches around, delivers her message and leaves. I can't really do justice to Jia Jiang ke in 3-4 sentences so I won't bother trying.
Paranoid Park: Latest fro Gus Van Sant - a skateboard kid goes to paranoid park, a skateboard park - bad things happen. What? Van Sant circles the story, around and around, as the kid writes about what happened, thinks about it - nicely done, almost a fugue state, really... Van Sant leaves us with the kid in suspension - what will he do what will happen? Probably not quite a match for Van Sant's other 00's films, but a fine work anyway.
The Band's Visit: one of the many foreign films jobbed out of a chance to win an Oscar, in this case because it was mostly in English (the common language of its Israeli and Egyptian characters). Not quite the tragedy that excluding 4 Months... or Persepolis or whatever was. Not a bad film by any means, but basically sentimentalized Kaurismaki, in the desert... Complete with a band, funny clothes... Chet Baker?
Taxi to the Dark Side: Nothing special in the filmmaking, but then again, the subject does not allow it. Almost pure talking heads - but the story it tells is devastating. The story of torture in America, under the Bush administration, taking as its departure point the story of a taxi driver names Dilewar, arrested in Afghanistan and basically beaten to death in custody. From there it moves on to the rest of the sordid mess - Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, etc. And the Bush administration's continued campaign to get torture accepted. In Afghanistan and Iraq the administration behaved as perfect swine: they push for harsher interrogation methods, more intelligence (without much interest in whether the intelligence is any good), while insulating themselves from responsibility. They create the systems and the implication that harsher methods are allowed, without clarifying the rules - so when soldiers on the ground do something like at Abu Ghraib, or what happened to Dilewar, the soldiers take the fall. The administration creates pressures that lead to the soldiers abusing people, but in a way that they are never, officially, taking orders. At this point, noting the essential cowardice of the Bush administration is nothing new, but here it is again.
Still Life: Jia Zhang-ke's film set in the three gorges area of China. The film is split in two - a man and a woman come to town each looking for a lost spouse: he stays and works, she searches around, delivers her message and leaves. I can't really do justice to Jia Jiang ke in 3-4 sentences so I won't bother trying.
Paranoid Park: Latest fro Gus Van Sant - a skateboard kid goes to paranoid park, a skateboard park - bad things happen. What? Van Sant circles the story, around and around, as the kid writes about what happened, thinks about it - nicely done, almost a fugue state, really... Van Sant leaves us with the kid in suspension - what will he do what will happen? Probably not quite a match for Van Sant's other 00's films, but a fine work anyway.
CJ7 - latest Stephen Chow film - he plays a poor man who sends his kid to a good school, though the kid is bullied and not too well suited for it. Then he brings him a toy from the dump which turns out to be an alien from the planet Cute. The film is also very cute, and intermittently charming and funny,but not up to Chow's best. It has a couple moments, yes - Chow is at his best when he's most unhinged, and this one stays pretty securely fastened, but there is a fine dream sequence, as the kid and his alien space dog take vengeance on the brats at school... Otherwise the sentiment tends to overpower the wit, though it is still reasonably entertaining.
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