January 2008: 15 Mini Reviews
January 27, 2008
The last fifteen films I’ve seen.
Atonement (’07): Beautifully photographed and designed adaptation of the famous Ian McEwan novel from Joe Wright, who uses the same Stedi-cam tracking shots to tell this tale of separation and war as he did with the Jane Austen adaptation “Pride and Prejudice”. In the leads, as lovers separated by a vicious lie, and WWII, ‘Pride’s’ Keira Knightly and James McAvoy are appropriately attractive and tragic, but it’s young Saoirse Ronan, as Knightly’s jealous 13-year-old sister who tells the game-changing fib, that steals the first half of the movie with her curious eyes and lively imagination. The adaptation suffers from the fact that the main characters aren’t together enough in the beginning for the full weight of their separation to be properly tragic in the end, but minor storytelling faults aside, the film is perfectly crafted, with a five-minute tracking shot during the evacuation at Dunkirk that’s already the stuff of legend.
Drunken Angel (’48): Akira Kurosawa explores one of his favorite themes, the elder and the disciple at odds and as one, in this landmark post-war production that past censorship despite its depiction of disease, poverty, and a bustling black market economy. Takashi Shimura is the titular hero, a boozing doctor who treats hot-headed Yakuza Toshiro Mifune for tuberculosis, but the two personalities clash in a ghetto that is symbolized by a giant cesspool at its center, a triumph of production design on a Toho back lot. Kurosawa has stated that he felt like this was the first time in his career that he had made a film entirely his own, with little interference from either the Japanese government or the occupying Americans (the extras on the Criterion disc, a TV documentary and Donald Richie’s informative commentary echo the same), and that being said, it would immediately lead to a string of masterpieces, starting with “Stray Dog” the following year and “Rashomon” the next, that would make him Japan’s most famous and world revered director.
The Motel (’06): A well observed, little seen independent film about a chubby 13-year-old Chinese-American boy struggling through puberty, loneliness, and poverty, helping his cold and distant mother run a dirty, off-road Motel somewhere in Southern America proliferated by drunks, prostitutes, and unemployed rednecks. A short film at less than 80 minutes, filled with vignettes that explore what it’s like to be awkward and lonely in a desolate surrounding, but with a humanism and sense of humor to curb the suffering of our hero’s growing pains.
Man Push Cart (’06): Director Ramin Bahrani borrows the neo-realist style of his native Iran for this spare New York story, about a Pakistani immigrant (Ahmad Razvi) working a pushcart in the Manhattan rush hours, living hand-to-mouth on whatever extra is leftover after cart maintenance. There is a story here, Ahmad was a pop star in Pakistan, but the death of his wife led him to New York, where he’s just another foreigner laboring cheaply to service the natives, while fringe contacts he makes turn out to be one dead end after another, lending a sort of sad pathos to what is essentially a portrait of a hard working man in a foreign, unforgiving land. This film is raw and difficult, one blow after another, and when the cart gets stolen we begin to tread on De Sica territory, ala “Bicycle Thieves”, but it never pretends to be anything but downbeat realism, and for that it’s true in every single frame.
Superbad (’07): One of my favorite films of ’07 gets better with additional viewings, especially on DVD, where the laughter of a full audience doesn’t trip on the next joke, and with the subtitles on one can truly appreciate the genius of its incredibly profane dialogue. Though to be fair, it’s not just a crude sex-obsessed teen romp, coming from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, it has a kind of sweetness in the friendships, and in that final scene, as Jonah Hill’s Seth and Michael Cera’s Evan go their separate ways with their prospective new girlfriends, you get the bittersweet sense that even the closest of childhood friendships, eventually, become just part of your pre-adulthood past. Of note on the 2-disk DVD is an on-set video diary featurette, as well as pre-production table reads, showing that the production of this hilarious film was probably as fun to make as the final product is to watch.
Un Flic (’72): Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film before his premature death of a heart attack, this nominal cops-and-robbers saga boasts the director’s signature style; cold, precision, contemplative, existential, though you get the feeling that he’s done it all before, better, in “Le Cercle Rouge” two years prior. Alain Delon stars as a detective investigating the daytime robbery of a bank that left two people dead, unbeknownst to him that one of his closest friends, nightclub owner Richard Crenna, is the mastermind behind the heist. The opening heist scene is textbook Melville, as is a second switcheroo scene aboard a sleeper train, despite the use of obvious miniature helicopter and train models, and though it’s apparent that Melville never invests enough in these characters to make us like them, the final showdown between Delon and Crenna, with love interest Catherine Deneuve beside, wraps up the complexity of the friendship (and plot) nicely.
My Brother’s Wedding (’83): A realistic portrait of family life and friendship in an L.A. ghetto, about a loafer (Everett Silas) who has to decide between being the best man at his snooty brother’s wedding, or being a pallbearer at his hoodlum best friend’s funeral, held coincidently on the same afternoon. Director Charles Burnett, whose earlier “Killer of Sheep” charters similar territory with less of a plot, has an unmistakable ear for urban dialogue that could only come from someone who grew up in and around these very surroundings.
Waitress (’07): Jenna (Keri Russell) makes a mean pie, but that can’t mask the unhappiness in her life, pregnant and unable to escape her deadbeat husband, until a handsome new doctor (Nathan Fillion) comes to town and ignites a passion in the pie-maker unexplored for years, in this colorful comedy/drama that was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival last year. The first of last year’s three unwanted pregnancy comedies, and arguably the most banal of the three, writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelly (who was murdered before the film saw any success) nonetheless infuses the sketchy and clichéd plot with a bright color palate that matches Russell’s wonderful performance, and if this film (along with ABC’s “Pushing Daisies”) doesn’t send you to your local pie-hole for a piece of strawberry cheesecake, than you sir have no adventuresome appetite.
There Will Be Blood (’07): Daniel Day-Lewis dominates this strange and fascinating masterwork by Paul Thomas Anderson, about the psychological rivalry between a ruthless self-made oilman and an enterprising young faith healer in turn-of-the-century California. Day-Lewis is absolutely spellbinding as Daniel Plainview, who mines the land of Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) promising a five thousand dollar gift for the young preacher’s new church, but despite making millions on the oil, Plainview withholds the donation for shear spite, he hates people, especially Eli, and finds contempt in the bogus powers he claims to posses. As directed by Anderson, his first true panorama of American morals since the even weirder “Magnolia”, the film devolves from a story about pioneering capitalism into a chamber piece featuring two very different men and their verbal gamesmanship, culminating in an epilogue that is as bizarre as the first two hours are grandiose and complex. This is a difficult film, but the filmmaking fires on all cylinders, calling most specifically on “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” for inspiration, and in Day-Lewis’ performance, we have a man so fueled with hatred for his fellow man, and himself, that the spoils of his many millions are wasted on his palpably crippled soul.
The End of Summer (’61): Less than two years away from his death, Yasujiro Ozu made one of his most honest films about family and age, concerning various sisters (including Setsuko Hara and Yoko Tsukasa, from “Late Autumn”) struggling to keep their elderly, wandering father tied down as they get their own lives in order. The father, played by Ganjiro Nakamura, is a silly creation, stealing off to an old mistress from the war days who humors him with tales of a daughter he thinks is his, while the children are frustrated and sympathetically portrayed, suggesting that as his life grew shorter, from “Tokyo Twilight” in ’57 on, Ozu began to favor youth over age, capturing that which had personally left him many years ago.
My Darling Clementine (’46): John Ford’s most intimate western, reworking the legend of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most iconic of all western tales, into a film about the death of the Old West, where gunfights and drunken gambling dens give way to outdoor church socials and spotless barbershops. Henry Fonda gives one of his most affecting performances as Earp, a cattle rustler who takes the job of Marshall at Tombstone after Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) ruthlessly kills his youngest brother, striking up a rivalry/friendship with the dying gambler Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), who himself has fled west running from demons that haunt his very existence. The film is unconventional in the sense that it cares less about the big gunfight, or for that matter, the rivalry with the Clanton’s, than it does about the smaller communal moments, like Doc’s helping an old actor with Hamlet’s monologue, or the famous church dance beneath Monument Valley’s gorgeous blue sky, suggesting that for all it’s lawlessness and injustice, there was a heart and soul to the settlers of the west, and of anybody, a visual poet like John Ford could bring out their best.
Hairspray (’07): Some stories get better the second or third time around, as evinced by this rousing third telling of John Waters’ 1988 comedy, based on a Tony winning Broadway musical, about a portly young high school girl who takes her love for dance, and a local teen dance television show, and uses it as a platform for igniting social change in a segregated 1960’s Baltimore. The songs, including the brilliant opener “Good Morning Baltimore” and the lovely four-way duet “Without Love” are all gamely sung by a very talented, star studded cast, including newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Waters’ heroine Tracy Turnblad, current heartthrob Zac Efron as her paramour, John Travolta in a woman’s fat suit as Edna Turnblad, and a career invigorating, still sexy Michelle Pheiffer as the villainous Velma von Tussle. Count this, along with “Once” and “Sweeny Todd” as marking a banner year for big-screen musicals.
Monsieur Hire (’89): After twenty years and nearly a dozen films, the great French director Patrice Leconte finally found international acclaim with this psychosexual thriller, about a lonely tailor (Michel Blanc) who falls in love with the woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) he spies on from his bedroom window. That’s a strange premise indeed, but when the woman starts returning his affections, in a dangerous game of sexual yearning and humiliation, we begin to understand Monsieur Hire and his sad little life, making the inevitable downfall at the finale all the more tragic. In the best Hitchcockian manner, this film is all about what it means to be watched, and to be the one doing the deed, and if ever there were a more suitable metaphor for the voyeuristic participation of watching a movie, I don’t know one.
Ratatouille (’07): Given the landmark visual effects of this instant classic from Pixar and their best writer/director, Brad Bird, I was hoping the DVD would have an extensive behind-the-scenes documentary, or at least a director’s commentary track, as bonus features, but instead there is a simple 15-minute piece contrasting Bird’s directing style with that of master chef Thomas Keller’s kitchen ethic. But, I still hate to say anything bad about this film, and the DVD does feature a few lengthy deleted scenes with commentary, and a hilarious new short, “Your Friend the Rat”, which switches brilliantly from one form of animation to the next telling the storied history of the rat, so, even if we do have to wait for a deluxe edition to get a commentary track and a making-of documentary, just revisiting this wonderful film, hands down the best animated film of last year (one of the best films of the year, period), is a scrumptious treat.
How Green Was My Valley (’41): Winner of the 1941 Best Picture Oscar, John Ford’s touching adaptation of the famous Richard Llewellyn bestseller is one of the great director’s most accomplished films, though beautiful cinematography by Arthur Miller, art direction by Nathan Juran, uncannily turning the hills of Malibu into a Welsh mining town, a pared down screenplay by Philip Dunne, and a gorgeous score by Alfred Newman, each man a master craftsman of the studio era, helps distinguish it as a true collaborative effort. It’s hard to single out any one of the numerous legendary performances here, telling the story of a poor, loving family in a mining town that has its fair share of injustice and labor troubles (coming after “The Grapes of Wrath”, Ford and Darryl Zanuck yet again dip into pro-union territory; gutsy for pre-war American cinema), but 12-year-old Roddy McDowall’s performance as the film’s protagonist, the youngest of seven siblings, always strikes me as true and honest, perhaps the greatest child performance of all time. Film history sometimes shines a negative light on this film simply because it beat “Citizen Kane” at the Oscars, one of the silliest of all the silly knocks on a movie, for if any film from 1941, a peak year in the Golden Age of cinema, was going to upstage newcomer Orson Welles and his often distant, cold masterwork, it was this film; a tragedy of both stunning warmth and sadness, made by America’s finest living film director of the time.
by Adam Suraf