Jacques Audiard's A Prophet is a magnificent film rich in texture and visual elements as well as a beautiful story of trust, faith, devotion and deception.
The film opens with Malik, a young North African man arriving at a prison complex in Northern France. It seems he's gotten in a fight with cops and is now going to serve six years. Quickly the Corsican mob, who run the underworld in the prison, task him to kill a man who is going to be a witness against them in a trial. He does this and begins to gain their trust.
Malik is indeed Muslim and speaks Arabic, but was raised in a foster home, so he is just as comfortable around white folk as he is around Arabs. He becomes a right-hand man for the mob boss, Cesar Luciani, and begins to take on more and more responsibility in the gang.
He is given a one-day parole ostensibly to help with his rehabilitation, but instead of going to the garage where he's supposed to work, he runs a job for Luciani and gets paid handsomely for it. While out, he begins his own drug running ring and builds street capitol with the criminals inside and outside the prison gates. He then has to navigate the complicated waters of being a servant and member of Luciani's gang as well as being the head of his own burgeoning enterprise. (Note to self: if you ever go to jail for a violent crime, try to do it in France where you not only get fresh baguettes every day as part of your meal, but you get one-day furloughs while serving. Not too bad!)
Technically the film is beautiful. It is shot mostly in chronological order with several dream and fantasy sequences cut into the middle. Malik grows to rely on a phantom of the man he murdered for Luciani as his cellmate and moral foil. The photography by Stephane Fontaine is gorgeous, frequently using natural or available light inside the prison. This is especially powerful in suggesting to us the smallness of the spaces and the intimacy they have with one another and with their own thoughts.
The dream sequences are even more gorgous, using slow motion, masked frames and other visual tricks. Sometimes it's not clear if what we're seeing is inside Malik's head or if it's narration by Audiard. Either way, these elements are central to understanding of Malik's journey. Alexandre Desplat's beautiful score is sometimes violent and sometimes sublime, but fits perfectly with the action onscreen (and how nice to see him not only doing big Hollywood movies, but French films as well!)
The central germ of the story is a very old one about fathers and sons. Malik seems to have no father figure in his life and takes to Luciani very easily. Luciani sees Malik as his heir, despite their ethnic differences, but is naturally a cold, hard man. He hates that Malik is using the protection he offers for his own private business, but he also hates that Malik is showing that he might want something other than what he wants for the kid. He is a man who has lost control of his empire, and his one last hope doesn't care about it.
It is beautiful how Audiard does not show us the big picture until the very end of the film, keeping us guessing about exactly what everything means in the short term. It seems that Malik is merely a very capable employee with his own hopes for self-promotion, but his sometimes insignificant actions add up to a glorious total. It is never clear whether he is incredibly lucky or brilliant and conniving with plans from the beginning. Either he is able to play the chess game six moves ahead or he is able to capitalize on opportunities as they fall at his feet. Regardless, he is a totally fabulous, smart character who frequently questions the morals of his own actions.
The script, by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain (based on an earlier screenplay), is intricate, complex and beautiful. It plays like a long novel with wonderful little characters and audacious power shifts.
The acting is also remarkable led by relative newcomer Tahar Rahim as Malik. He moves elegantly from timid and scared boy simply trying to survive, to smart and confident junior team member, to grown agent of his "father's" business and his own as well. Niels Arestrup as Luciani is also marvelous as the sad, dark gangster who is seeing his life's work fall apart. He had previously worked with Audiard in The Beat My Heart Skipped, as the abusive father, and does an even better job in this role.
This film is basically perfect. It has a beautiful story with a wonderful script, a fabulous cast and a gorgeous matter-of-fact style dotted with elegant artistic moments. This is what every film should hope to be. Intricate but not confusing, simple but not trite, beautiful but not overdone.
Stars: 4 of 4
27 Şubat 2010 Cumartesi
26 Şubat 2010 Cuma
Good Cop/Goofy Cop
COP OUT (Dir. Kevin Smith, 2010)
"It's a homage." So says goofy rubber faced plainclothes cop Tracy Morgan of his unorthodox interrogation methods to his partner of 9 years, a stonewalling yet smirking Bruce Willis.
These methods are going to be familiar to anyone who's ever watched 30 Rock - Morgan does his patented crazy shtick. As Willis watches through a one way mirror, Morgan freaks out their suspect by yielding a gun and yelling movie quotes like "they call me Mister Tibbs," and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" even going for "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"
Willis, in his definitively detached manner, says: "I never saw that movie." If that sounds funny to you, ignore the rest of this review and go see this movie - more such supposedly uproarious self-aware referencing awaits.
Cool, now that those people are gone I can tell the rest of you that this is one painfully unfunny film. Though it wasn't written by Kevin Smith (the screenplay is by Robb and Mark Cullen) it feels like it was in the worst way - at Smith's most hammiest and hackiest. It strains with every cut to elicit laughs, but cringes are what result from this tired and truly tiresome material.
What there is of a premise involves Mexican gangsters headed by Guillermo Diaz, Seann William Scott as an annoying thief, and a stolen baseball card worth 80 thousand dollars. The card belonged to Willis, who was hoping to use it to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) dream wedding. Otherwise Smith regular Jason Lee as Willis' wife's smarmy new husband will pay for it and humiliate him. Ho hum.
Morgan meanwhile deals with his wife's (Rashida Jones) possible infidelity with a neighbor by placing a nanny cam in a teddy bear in their bedroom. So both cops drive around Brooklyn from one poorly constructed plot point to another bitching about these hardships while barely creating an audible chuckle from the audience.
One of the only inspired elements present is the soundtrack. It was a savvy move to employ famed electronic composer Harold Faltermeyer to do the score. His "Axel F"-ish waves of synthesizer and jaunty rhythms work better than anything else in the film to capture the genre aesthetic.
A new Patti LaBelle song ("Soul Brothers") accompanying the end credits also hammers home the 80's mindset. You're better off sticking with watching Morgan on 30 Rock from which he even does some of the same lines ("you're sweet like bear meat") and renting HOT FUZZ if you haven't seen it. Now there's a sharp satire of the buddy cop action movies.
COP OUT is a lot like Morgan's misunderstanding (and mis-pronouncing) the word "homage" - it's not a send up or anything close to a fresh take on the formula, it's just formula.
More later...
"It's a homage." So says goofy rubber faced plainclothes cop Tracy Morgan of his unorthodox interrogation methods to his partner of 9 years, a stonewalling yet smirking Bruce Willis.
These methods are going to be familiar to anyone who's ever watched 30 Rock - Morgan does his patented crazy shtick. As Willis watches through a one way mirror, Morgan freaks out their suspect by yielding a gun and yelling movie quotes like "they call me Mister Tibbs," and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" even going for "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"
Willis, in his definitively detached manner, says: "I never saw that movie." If that sounds funny to you, ignore the rest of this review and go see this movie - more such supposedly uproarious self-aware referencing awaits.
Cool, now that those people are gone I can tell the rest of you that this is one painfully unfunny film. Though it wasn't written by Kevin Smith (the screenplay is by Robb and Mark Cullen) it feels like it was in the worst way - at Smith's most hammiest and hackiest. It strains with every cut to elicit laughs, but cringes are what result from this tired and truly tiresome material.
What there is of a premise involves Mexican gangsters headed by Guillermo Diaz, Seann William Scott as an annoying thief, and a stolen baseball card worth 80 thousand dollars. The card belonged to Willis, who was hoping to use it to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) dream wedding. Otherwise Smith regular Jason Lee as Willis' wife's smarmy new husband will pay for it and humiliate him. Ho hum.
Morgan meanwhile deals with his wife's (Rashida Jones) possible infidelity with a neighbor by placing a nanny cam in a teddy bear in their bedroom. So both cops drive around Brooklyn from one poorly constructed plot point to another bitching about these hardships while barely creating an audible chuckle from the audience.
One of the only inspired elements present is the soundtrack. It was a savvy move to employ famed electronic composer Harold Faltermeyer to do the score. His "Axel F"-ish waves of synthesizer and jaunty rhythms work better than anything else in the film to capture the genre aesthetic.
A new Patti LaBelle song ("Soul Brothers") accompanying the end credits also hammers home the 80's mindset. You're better off sticking with watching Morgan on 30 Rock from which he even does some of the same lines ("you're sweet like bear meat") and renting HOT FUZZ if you haven't seen it. Now there's a sharp satire of the buddy cop action movies.
COP OUT is a lot like Morgan's misunderstanding (and mis-pronouncing) the word "homage" - it's not a send up or anything close to a fresh take on the formula, it's just formula.
More later...
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Shutter Island || free download dvd movies
Shutter Island (2010) - TSync
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It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister.
Shutter.Island.TELESYNC.XviD-MENTiON
It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister.
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The Art of the Steal (Friday, February 26, 2010) (17)
This is a documentary about the Barnes Foundation outside of Philadelphia - arguably the greatest single collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works of art in the world. Founder and creator Albert C. Barnes gathered the works in the early 20th Century and was widely mocked by the Philadelphia establishment at the time for buying what was then considered to be bad art. He then set up his foundation in a suburb of the town, in Lower Merion, for students and scholars and made a point of not allowing it to be loaned or toured.
After Barnes death, the bylaws of the foundation kept the rigid structure he had set forth, but left its board in the control of Lincoln University, an under-funded Historically Black College in Philadelphia. Over the years as the collection aged and its building began to need work, money was needed.
Richard Glanton, then president of the board, decided to raise money by breaking the bylaws and touring the collection around the world. He then got in a ridiculous battle with the neighbors over what he perceived to be a racist slur. A big lawsuit followed that drained even more money from the Barnes coffers.
In the end, the foundation was out of money and looked to Philadelphia for help. Everybody in the city wanted to move the collection and everybody had a reason why Barnes' vision of a collection out of town for research and not profit was outdated and unsustainable. Ultimately with court approval, the foundation was able to raise $150million and allowed to move inside the city and out of sleepy Merion.
Almost none of this story and none of the film is fresh and new. It has been told many times in newspaper and magazine articles and Internet reports. I've read the story at least twice. The filmmaker, Don Argott, not only recycles old material, but he's incredibly one-sided with the story. He paints Glanton and politicians like Ed Rendell as villains and a handful of board members or former associates as heroes.
It's not totally polemical because it does interview the opposition and give them their time to make their points, but not totally fair either. It's a very one-sided argument, but seems almost too lazy and uninspired to be venomous. Overall the story itself is wonderfully Shakespearean in nature (a great collection put together by a controlling king that is then essentially sold off by his careless princes) told in a one-sided fashion.
The elegance of the story - especially that the Annenberg Foundation which was created by one of Barnes' biggest enemies is now the white knight arriving to save the day - is all but lost in the midst of the blame being slung around. It is not nearly as interesting as it could be and Argott deserves blame for this. In the end, this is a very decent movie, but not at all a great one.
Stars: 2 of 4
After Barnes death, the bylaws of the foundation kept the rigid structure he had set forth, but left its board in the control of Lincoln University, an under-funded Historically Black College in Philadelphia. Over the years as the collection aged and its building began to need work, money was needed.
Richard Glanton, then president of the board, decided to raise money by breaking the bylaws and touring the collection around the world. He then got in a ridiculous battle with the neighbors over what he perceived to be a racist slur. A big lawsuit followed that drained even more money from the Barnes coffers.
In the end, the foundation was out of money and looked to Philadelphia for help. Everybody in the city wanted to move the collection and everybody had a reason why Barnes' vision of a collection out of town for research and not profit was outdated and unsustainable. Ultimately with court approval, the foundation was able to raise $150million and allowed to move inside the city and out of sleepy Merion.
Almost none of this story and none of the film is fresh and new. It has been told many times in newspaper and magazine articles and Internet reports. I've read the story at least twice. The filmmaker, Don Argott, not only recycles old material, but he's incredibly one-sided with the story. He paints Glanton and politicians like Ed Rendell as villains and a handful of board members or former associates as heroes.
It's not totally polemical because it does interview the opposition and give them their time to make their points, but not totally fair either. It's a very one-sided argument, but seems almost too lazy and uninspired to be venomous. Overall the story itself is wonderfully Shakespearean in nature (a great collection put together by a controlling king that is then essentially sold off by his careless princes) told in a one-sided fashion.
The elegance of the story - especially that the Annenberg Foundation which was created by one of Barnes' biggest enemies is now the white knight arriving to save the day - is all but lost in the midst of the blame being slung around. It is not nearly as interesting as it could be and Argott deserves blame for this. In the end, this is a very decent movie, but not at all a great one.
Stars: 2 of 4
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24 Şubat 2010 Çarşamba
Serious Series Addiction Part 2: Pedaling Through Lost
Last month I wrote about my New Year's resolutions of getting more exercise and watching all 5 seasons of The Wire. In addition to finishing that excellent show that absolutely earns its status as one of the best television series ever, I pedaled on my exercise bike to The Prisoner (the 60's one) and continued the long haul that is Lost.
We got a Roku - a digital streaming device that hooks up to our TV to broadcast Netflix Instant titles - for a wedding present last year and I've found that it's ideal for viewing full seasons of shows like Lost. Otherwise dealing with getting the many discs in the mail would be a hassle and I might've given up on the show during some of its lame story threads.
The exercise bike helped to get through the convolutions and highly implausible patches by my pedaling harder as if I could speed up the show when it got too stupid.
Seasons 3, 4, and 5 I quite enjoyed after the ups and downs of the first 2 seasons. A time loop episode involving the character Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) was a lot of fun and the Dharma Initiative in the 70's storyline had many merits as well.
I got through all 5 seasons a few episodes into the current season 6.
I had the shows recorded on our DVR but somehow the premiere episode was recorded over. Luckily it's available on Hulu (doncha love how many resources we have these days?) so I was able to watch it on my computer in my office. I really missed being able to pedal through it though. I thankfully watched the remaining ones back on the bike.
Now that I'm caught up and can watch the final season in real time I can get back to seeing and writing about movies, but since this has been a down period for film (as it always is this time of year) I'm already looking for a new show to pedal through.
Any suggestions?
More later...
We got a Roku - a digital streaming device that hooks up to our TV to broadcast Netflix Instant titles - for a wedding present last year and I've found that it's ideal for viewing full seasons of shows like Lost. Otherwise dealing with getting the many discs in the mail would be a hassle and I might've given up on the show during some of its lame story threads.
The exercise bike helped to get through the convolutions and highly implausible patches by my pedaling harder as if I could speed up the show when it got too stupid.
Seasons 3, 4, and 5 I quite enjoyed after the ups and downs of the first 2 seasons. A time loop episode involving the character Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) was a lot of fun and the Dharma Initiative in the 70's storyline had many merits as well.
I got through all 5 seasons a few episodes into the current season 6.
I had the shows recorded on our DVR but somehow the premiere episode was recorded over. Luckily it's available on Hulu (doncha love how many resources we have these days?) so I was able to watch it on my computer in my office. I really missed being able to pedal through it though. I thankfully watched the remaining ones back on the bike.
Now that I'm caught up and can watch the final season in real time I can get back to seeing and writing about movies, but since this has been a down period for film (as it always is this time of year) I'm already looking for a new show to pedal through.
Any suggestions?
More later...
21 Şubat 2010 Pazar
20 Şubat 2010 Cumartesi
Eyes Wide Open (Saturday, February 20, 2010) (16)
Aaron, and Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem, walks to the door of his butcher shop. On it he removes a sign announcing his father's death. He goes into the shop, takes out the old meat in the freezers and begins to clean up and get back to work. He's a sad man, but it's not clear if this is because of the loss of his father, his sad life with a loving, but nagging wife and a bunch of kids who don't listen to him or some sort of midlife crisis.
After a few minutes a young man walks to the door and asks to use his phone. This is Ezri and he says he's studying at a Yeshiva nearby (Aaron tells him he thinks that particular one closed a year earlier). It seems Ezri has secrets and has come to this neighborhood to hide or get away from his past.
Aaron soon hires Ezri and puts him to work, showing him how to be a kosher butcher. Soon, young men from a Yeshiva come to tell Aaron that he has to fire Ezri because he's "unholy" and a "sinner". It seems that he was kicked out of his school for being gay and having sex. Over a period of time, the two men become very close and ultimately they have sex. For Aaron this is a revelation and brings untold amounts of joy into his life. The problem, of course, is that the Orthodox community he lives in (not to mention Aaron's wife) does not want Ezri around and Aaron is loathe to kick out his lover.
Like many recent Israeli films I've seen recently (My Father My Lord, Lebanon, Beaufort), this film is wonderfully simple and straightforward. Director Haim Tabakman does a beautiful job making very efficient and tight movies with some very powerful imagery. Here the story is very small and quiet. The story is not about the butcher coming out as a big flaming queen, but slowly falling in love with this interesting young man. The sex scenes between them are very short and gentle, but convey the point in a short time span (whereas most Western directors would probably hover over them in bed and make the scene more dirty).
I really like the use of color – or use of no color here. Clearly we associate Orthodox Jews with black and white, but the butcher shop is totally stark white and there’s a washed-out quality to everything we see. It makes you appreciate later when Aaron confesses to his rabbi that Ezri brought him back to life. There’s clearly a visual significance to this.
I think the script, by Merav Doster, has some problems in it, most notably how Ezri shows up out of nowhere and ultimately recedes back into nothingness rather all of a sudden (well, after he's beat up, but he seems to not fight back in a lame way). It was a bit too random and a bit too writerly for me. I like the humanity and naturalness of the story, but these parts felt a bit forced. I guess Aaron and Ezri were living an amazing dream and when physical violence came into their lives, they knew it was time to end it.
I'm very interested in how the Orthodox characters here are seen as very close-minded, clinical and unloving. There's a sense that Ezri is a rather "free spirit" and that he can be a good Jew and be gay. The community doesn't really know that anything has transpired between the two men, but just don't like Ezri because he's gay and seen as a sexual threat. In many ways these Orthodox people could stand in for any conservative religious group on the planet. Maybe this is a bit sweet and precious, but it works nicely here, I think.
Stars: 3 of 4
After a few minutes a young man walks to the door and asks to use his phone. This is Ezri and he says he's studying at a Yeshiva nearby (Aaron tells him he thinks that particular one closed a year earlier). It seems Ezri has secrets and has come to this neighborhood to hide or get away from his past.
Aaron soon hires Ezri and puts him to work, showing him how to be a kosher butcher. Soon, young men from a Yeshiva come to tell Aaron that he has to fire Ezri because he's "unholy" and a "sinner". It seems that he was kicked out of his school for being gay and having sex. Over a period of time, the two men become very close and ultimately they have sex. For Aaron this is a revelation and brings untold amounts of joy into his life. The problem, of course, is that the Orthodox community he lives in (not to mention Aaron's wife) does not want Ezri around and Aaron is loathe to kick out his lover.
Like many recent Israeli films I've seen recently (My Father My Lord, Lebanon, Beaufort), this film is wonderfully simple and straightforward. Director Haim Tabakman does a beautiful job making very efficient and tight movies with some very powerful imagery. Here the story is very small and quiet. The story is not about the butcher coming out as a big flaming queen, but slowly falling in love with this interesting young man. The sex scenes between them are very short and gentle, but convey the point in a short time span (whereas most Western directors would probably hover over them in bed and make the scene more dirty).
I really like the use of color – or use of no color here. Clearly we associate Orthodox Jews with black and white, but the butcher shop is totally stark white and there’s a washed-out quality to everything we see. It makes you appreciate later when Aaron confesses to his rabbi that Ezri brought him back to life. There’s clearly a visual significance to this.
I think the script, by Merav Doster, has some problems in it, most notably how Ezri shows up out of nowhere and ultimately recedes back into nothingness rather all of a sudden (well, after he's beat up, but he seems to not fight back in a lame way). It was a bit too random and a bit too writerly for me. I like the humanity and naturalness of the story, but these parts felt a bit forced. I guess Aaron and Ezri were living an amazing dream and when physical violence came into their lives, they knew it was time to end it.
I'm very interested in how the Orthodox characters here are seen as very close-minded, clinical and unloving. There's a sense that Ezri is a rather "free spirit" and that he can be a good Jew and be gay. The community doesn't really know that anything has transpired between the two men, but just don't like Ezri because he's gay and seen as a sexual threat. In many ways these Orthodox people could stand in for any conservative religious group on the planet. Maybe this is a bit sweet and precious, but it works nicely here, I think.
Stars: 3 of 4
Shutter Island (Saturday, February 20, 2010) (15)
It has been a very long time since Martin Scorsese made a great movie, and also a long time since he made even a good movie (I guess one could argue for The Departed or Gangs of New York - but I thought both were only OK and mostly derivative of earlier stuff of his). Shutter Island falls into a growing category of his recent films: terrible movies.
The story is about Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio)a U.S. Marshal in the 1950s who is called out to the eponymous island, an insane asylum and jail, in the Boston Harbor where a violent woman criminal has broken out of her cell mysteriously. Somehow, though it's not clear what exactly he's doing there, he is supposed to find her on this isolated island he's never seen before (because the guards who know the island well are unable to do it).
We find out that Daniels' wife and kids were murdered recently and the man who did the job is on this island behind bars. Daniels also doesn't know his brand new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), who just started in his department the morning they start the case. The bald-headed doctor on the island, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) is super weird and mysterious too. Oh, and it's foggy and rainy the whole time - because sunny and clear wouldn't be scary enough.
As Daniels tracks the missing woman around the island, he becomes more concerned that the inmates are being mistreated with electro-shock treatments and begins to question his own sanity. He has flashbacks to his time in World War II when he liberated a concentration camp and found out about some of the electro-shock experiments the Nazis had done to some of Jews. Oh - and one of the doctors on the staff of the hospital is German. Blah, blah, blah.
It's hard to imagine a cast of such talented actors (DiCaprio, Ruffalo, Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer) could all put out such consistently bad work throughout this film. All around the acting almost not serious it is so overdone. That Marty didn't see this is shocking to me; that he would direct actors this way is also shocking. And then they all struggle with the Boston accent. I think Leo is a very good actor, but I don't think he has the chops for accents the way some actors do. He's very naturalistic and organic and he struggles with the accent here as much as he did in Gangs of New York.
The script by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the Dennis Lehane book is a freaking joke. (I've never heard of her, but I see she was a producer on Avatar, so she has *that* going for her and hopefully she's made enough money from that that she won't ever have to work again... Oh, God I hope so!). It jumps back and forth between the present and the past and a fantasy world that it's almost impossible to figure out. Then it twists so many times - and not all that unexpectedly - that you end up getting a very different movie than you started with (like The Sixth Sense meets the Bird Man of Alcatraz). What's worse, the twists are telegraphed three scenes before they happen so it's impossible not to see them coming before they do.
(I would also like to say here that of the three Dennis Lehane books that have been adapted to the screen - this one, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone - it surprising to me how good and how bad some of them are. In order, Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck is the best, Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, is very OK but not worth the Oscar attention it got, and this turd is the worst. So you have Affleck is better than Eastwood who is better than Scorsese... I never would have believed that!)
This film is directed terribly. I don't know how it's possible, but Marty has clearly lost something. The dubbing is terrible so you can hear when looped in dialogue is clumsily spliced into certain spots. In the few scenes where blood is seen, it looks like Marty went to the Hammer Studios makeup department and got some ketchup to spread all over the place (a big change for a man who used to deal beautifully with blood - in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Goodfellas). There also seems to be no control on the story or the script. It goes on for at least 30 minutes too long, running 2 hours and 18 minutes. There is absolutely no need for this last 18 minutes, but it should be even shorter than that. What ever happened to a nice 112-minute movie, Marty?
There is nothing good about this film whatsoever. It is boring, totally trite and totally confusing. The acting, directing and writing is terrible. I guess the photography by Robert Richardson is nice, but I thought it was generally too cliche (grays and blues outside and blacks and golds inside - boring). Somewhere in the middle of the film, maybe in one of the many Nazi flashbacks, I strongly considered walking out because the story was going nowhere and I the twists coming down the pike were uninspiring. I stuck with it, but now I'm considering whether that was a good way to spend those 70 minutes of my life. I'm not sure it was.
Stars: .5 of 4
The story is about Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio)a U.S. Marshal in the 1950s who is called out to the eponymous island, an insane asylum and jail, in the Boston Harbor where a violent woman criminal has broken out of her cell mysteriously. Somehow, though it's not clear what exactly he's doing there, he is supposed to find her on this isolated island he's never seen before (because the guards who know the island well are unable to do it).
We find out that Daniels' wife and kids were murdered recently and the man who did the job is on this island behind bars. Daniels also doesn't know his brand new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), who just started in his department the morning they start the case. The bald-headed doctor on the island, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) is super weird and mysterious too. Oh, and it's foggy and rainy the whole time - because sunny and clear wouldn't be scary enough.
As Daniels tracks the missing woman around the island, he becomes more concerned that the inmates are being mistreated with electro-shock treatments and begins to question his own sanity. He has flashbacks to his time in World War II when he liberated a concentration camp and found out about some of the electro-shock experiments the Nazis had done to some of Jews. Oh - and one of the doctors on the staff of the hospital is German. Blah, blah, blah.
It's hard to imagine a cast of such talented actors (DiCaprio, Ruffalo, Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer) could all put out such consistently bad work throughout this film. All around the acting almost not serious it is so overdone. That Marty didn't see this is shocking to me; that he would direct actors this way is also shocking. And then they all struggle with the Boston accent. I think Leo is a very good actor, but I don't think he has the chops for accents the way some actors do. He's very naturalistic and organic and he struggles with the accent here as much as he did in Gangs of New York.
The script by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the Dennis Lehane book is a freaking joke. (I've never heard of her, but I see she was a producer on Avatar, so she has *that* going for her and hopefully she's made enough money from that that she won't ever have to work again... Oh, God I hope so!). It jumps back and forth between the present and the past and a fantasy world that it's almost impossible to figure out. Then it twists so many times - and not all that unexpectedly - that you end up getting a very different movie than you started with (like The Sixth Sense meets the Bird Man of Alcatraz). What's worse, the twists are telegraphed three scenes before they happen so it's impossible not to see them coming before they do.
(I would also like to say here that of the three Dennis Lehane books that have been adapted to the screen - this one, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone - it surprising to me how good and how bad some of them are. In order, Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck is the best, Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, is very OK but not worth the Oscar attention it got, and this turd is the worst. So you have Affleck is better than Eastwood who is better than Scorsese... I never would have believed that!)
This film is directed terribly. I don't know how it's possible, but Marty has clearly lost something. The dubbing is terrible so you can hear when looped in dialogue is clumsily spliced into certain spots. In the few scenes where blood is seen, it looks like Marty went to the Hammer Studios makeup department and got some ketchup to spread all over the place (a big change for a man who used to deal beautifully with blood - in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Goodfellas). There also seems to be no control on the story or the script. It goes on for at least 30 minutes too long, running 2 hours and 18 minutes. There is absolutely no need for this last 18 minutes, but it should be even shorter than that. What ever happened to a nice 112-minute movie, Marty?
There is nothing good about this film whatsoever. It is boring, totally trite and totally confusing. The acting, directing and writing is terrible. I guess the photography by Robert Richardson is nice, but I thought it was generally too cliche (grays and blues outside and blacks and golds inside - boring). Somewhere in the middle of the film, maybe in one of the many Nazi flashbacks, I strongly considered walking out because the story was going nowhere and I the twists coming down the pike were uninspiring. I stuck with it, but now I'm considering whether that was a good way to spend those 70 minutes of my life. I'm not sure it was.
Stars: .5 of 4
SHUTTER ISLAND: The Film Babble Blog Review
SHUTTER ISLAND (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2010)
"You act like insanity is catching", federal Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) quips to the Deputy Warden (John Carroll Lynch) while being shown the grounds of Shutter Island, the contained electronically secure mental hospital for the criminally insane.
It's a welcome one-liner as the introductory build-up to DiCaprio and his new partner Mark Ruffalo's entry is one of the most overwrought openers in Martin Scorsese's career. The score pounds in an over the top progression of fearful crescendos as the men enter the complex.
Once the uber-melodramatic music eases off we are led inside to meet and greet Dr. Cawley (the always ominous Ben Kingsley) and the premise: a female patient has gone missing and the facility is on lock-down. Kingsley cryptically explains: "We don't know how she got out of her room. It's as if she evaporated, straight through the walls."
With a stern look that keeps his worry brow constantly a-worryin', DiCaprio, still using his Boston accent from THE DEPARTED, has another agenda. 2 years ago his wife (Michelle Williams) died in a house fire and he believes the pyro-culprit is a patient hidden somewhere at the hospital. A World War II vet (the year is 1954), DiCaprio is also full of conspiracy theories about secret experiments and mind torture going down at the hospital - the presence of a German doctor played by Max von Sydow particularly sets him off - as hallucinatory visions of his wife and the horrors he experienced at war haunt him around the clock.
Based on Dennis Lahane's bestselling 2003 novel, SHUTTER ISLAND has a supremely effective first half. The second half falters because I believe many folks will see the end coming from miles away - I actually had an inkling of the conclusion when seeing the trailer months ago. The reveal is wrapped in exposition and once DiCaprio and the audience figures it all out, the film lingers too long.
However this doesn't completely ruin the movie. The dream/flashback/whatever sequences are beautifully shot recalling David Lynch's surreal palette.
DiCaprio's visions always have something falling and floating in the air around him. File papers, snow, and ashes fill the screen along with DiCaprio's angst. It's not the best film that DiCaprio and Scorsese have made together in their decade long collaboration (that would be THE DEPARTED), but it has a lot of strong searing imagery going for it, even if the narrative isn't as layered as it would like to be.
Acting-wise, it's Leo's show. Despite the solid supporting cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Hayley, and Ted Levine), Dicaprio carries the movie spending considerable chunks of the film alone with his demons. By this point, his 4th film under Scorsese's direction, he's not just an actor going through the motions; he's an embedded yet impassioned piece of the scenery.
By comparison Ruffalo comes off like he's playing a gumshoe in a Saturday Night Live sketch. So it's half a great movie - half is an absorbingly creepy character study, half a formula thriller frightening close to well trodden M. Night Shyamalan territory.
But half a great Scorsese movie is still a vital movie-going experience, you understand?
When speaking of Scorsese in an interview a few years ago, Quentin Tarantino said: "I'm in my church, praying to my god and he's in his church, praying to his. There was a time when we were in the same church - I miss that. I don't want to do that church."
In one of SHUTTER ISLAND's most powerful shots, Scorsese mounts a DiCaprio Dachau death camp recollection that blows everything in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS away. Sorry Quentin, but Marty's is the church I want to attend.
More later...
"You act like insanity is catching", federal Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) quips to the Deputy Warden (John Carroll Lynch) while being shown the grounds of Shutter Island, the contained electronically secure mental hospital for the criminally insane.It's a welcome one-liner as the introductory build-up to DiCaprio and his new partner Mark Ruffalo's entry is one of the most overwrought openers in Martin Scorsese's career. The score pounds in an over the top progression of fearful crescendos as the men enter the complex.
Once the uber-melodramatic music eases off we are led inside to meet and greet Dr. Cawley (the always ominous Ben Kingsley) and the premise: a female patient has gone missing and the facility is on lock-down. Kingsley cryptically explains: "We don't know how she got out of her room. It's as if she evaporated, straight through the walls."
With a stern look that keeps his worry brow constantly a-worryin', DiCaprio, still using his Boston accent from THE DEPARTED, has another agenda. 2 years ago his wife (Michelle Williams) died in a house fire and he believes the pyro-culprit is a patient hidden somewhere at the hospital. A World War II vet (the year is 1954), DiCaprio is also full of conspiracy theories about secret experiments and mind torture going down at the hospital - the presence of a German doctor played by Max von Sydow particularly sets him off - as hallucinatory visions of his wife and the horrors he experienced at war haunt him around the clock.
Based on Dennis Lahane's bestselling 2003 novel, SHUTTER ISLAND has a supremely effective first half. The second half falters because I believe many folks will see the end coming from miles away - I actually had an inkling of the conclusion when seeing the trailer months ago. The reveal is wrapped in exposition and once DiCaprio and the audience figures it all out, the film lingers too long.
However this doesn't completely ruin the movie. The dream/flashback/whatever sequences are beautifully shot recalling David Lynch's surreal palette.DiCaprio's visions always have something falling and floating in the air around him. File papers, snow, and ashes fill the screen along with DiCaprio's angst. It's not the best film that DiCaprio and Scorsese have made together in their decade long collaboration (that would be THE DEPARTED), but it has a lot of strong searing imagery going for it, even if the narrative isn't as layered as it would like to be.
Acting-wise, it's Leo's show. Despite the solid supporting cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Hayley, and Ted Levine), Dicaprio carries the movie spending considerable chunks of the film alone with his demons. By this point, his 4th film under Scorsese's direction, he's not just an actor going through the motions; he's an embedded yet impassioned piece of the scenery.
By comparison Ruffalo comes off like he's playing a gumshoe in a Saturday Night Live sketch. So it's half a great movie - half is an absorbingly creepy character study, half a formula thriller frightening close to well trodden M. Night Shyamalan territory.
But half a great Scorsese movie is still a vital movie-going experience, you understand?
When speaking of Scorsese in an interview a few years ago, Quentin Tarantino said: "I'm in my church, praying to my god and he's in his church, praying to his. There was a time when we were in the same church - I miss that. I don't want to do that church."
In one of SHUTTER ISLAND's most powerful shots, Scorsese mounts a DiCaprio Dachau death camp recollection that blows everything in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS away. Sorry Quentin, but Marty's is the church I want to attend.
More later...
19 Şubat 2010 Cuma
Phyllis and Harold (Friday, February 19, 2010) (14)
This is an interesting, if unsuccessful, personal documentary by writer/director Cindy Kleine - who happens to be the wife of Andre Gregory - about the relationship of love and hate between her parents.
More than being about both Phyllis and Harold, though, it is really the story of her mother, Phyllis before, during and after her father, Harold. She tells the story of two people who got married probably when they shouldn't have and stayed together for more than 50 years because that was what people did from the 1940s through the 1990s. They certainly loved each other, but fought constantly the whole time they were together. But this fighting was not typical marital disagreements - it was vicious, hateful, angry fighting.
For many years, Phyllis had an affair with a man she worked for as a secretary in the 1940s and never forgave Harold for taking the bliss she felt in that affair away from her. Harold was a hard-working dentist who always provided for the family, but was always emotionally distant and never totally aware of his wife's hopes and desires.
This is a fascinating concept, I think, that hatred can be as much a binding agent in relationships as love. If this were a scripted narrative drama, it would be a very interesting idea. Sadly the format for the film feels very cheap and undermines the greater message of the film. Kleine uses terrible and unnecessary animated elements to transition between elements of the story, but these come off as looking cheap. Most of the film is shot on what seems to be a digital home movie camera (with lots of old Super 8 footage cut in) and it gives a less-than-serious quality to the picture. A bad score underlines this feeling as well.
Mostly the film is interviews with Kleine's parents, friends, sister and some biographical background. We see how once Harold dies, Phyllis is almost re-born as a young woman again, free to make her own choices (until her age reminds her that her body is not as young as her mind).
Overall there is a lot of interesting material here, but it comes off as poorly executed and badly written. There is a way of framing a fly-on-the-wall documentary so it follows a particular story. What we get here is a nice structured, opening
and then a more and more cloudy resolution to the story with no denouement or ending.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
More than being about both Phyllis and Harold, though, it is really the story of her mother, Phyllis before, during and after her father, Harold. She tells the story of two people who got married probably when they shouldn't have and stayed together for more than 50 years because that was what people did from the 1940s through the 1990s. They certainly loved each other, but fought constantly the whole time they were together. But this fighting was not typical marital disagreements - it was vicious, hateful, angry fighting.
For many years, Phyllis had an affair with a man she worked for as a secretary in the 1940s and never forgave Harold for taking the bliss she felt in that affair away from her. Harold was a hard-working dentist who always provided for the family, but was always emotionally distant and never totally aware of his wife's hopes and desires.
This is a fascinating concept, I think, that hatred can be as much a binding agent in relationships as love. If this were a scripted narrative drama, it would be a very interesting idea. Sadly the format for the film feels very cheap and undermines the greater message of the film. Kleine uses terrible and unnecessary animated elements to transition between elements of the story, but these come off as looking cheap. Most of the film is shot on what seems to be a digital home movie camera (with lots of old Super 8 footage cut in) and it gives a less-than-serious quality to the picture. A bad score underlines this feeling as well.
Mostly the film is interviews with Kleine's parents, friends, sister and some biographical background. We see how once Harold dies, Phyllis is almost re-born as a young woman again, free to make her own choices (until her age reminds her that her body is not as young as her mind).
Overall there is a lot of interesting material here, but it comes off as poorly executed and badly written. There is a way of framing a fly-on-the-wall documentary so it follows a particular story. What we get here is a nice structured, opening
and then a more and more cloudy resolution to the story with no denouement or ending.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
The Princess And The Frog || free download dvd movies
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A modern day retelling of the classic story The Frog Prince. The Princess and the Frog finds the lives of arrogant, carefree Prince Naveen and hardworking waitress Tiana crossing paths. Prince Naveen is transformed into a frog by a conniving voodoo magician and Tiana, following suit, upon kissing the amphibian royalty. With the help of a trumpet-playing alligator, a Cajun firefly, and an old blind lady who lives in a boat in a tree, Naveen and Tiana must race to break the spell and fulfill their dreams. Written by The Massie Twins
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Legion || free download dvd movies
An out-of-the-way diner becomes the unlikely battleground for the survival of the human race. When God loses faith in humankind.
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16 Şubat 2010 Salı
Taking On The RED RIDING Trilogy
This set of 3 feature length films based on David Pearce's semi-true crime novel series "Red Riding Quartet" is currently playing in limited release theatrically and is available on IFC Films On Demand.
RED RIDING: 1974 (Dir. Juliam Jarrold, 2009)
This first "episode" starts off with an air of a British ZODIAC, but a darker prism of power is revealed beyond the smoky newsrooms and seedy cop dives as the film reaches its brutally unsettling conclusion.
In "The Year Of Our Lord" 1974, wet-behind-the-ears yet arrogant Yorkshire journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) sums up the scene as he arrives at a press conference:
"A little girl goes missing. The pack salivates. If it bleeds, it leads, right?" When the girl in question is found murdered Dunford makes the connection to similar crimes involving children committed in the same area in the years before. Like a classic film noir caper, there are many competing plot-lines for our intrepid reporter.
A fellow scribe (Anthony Flanagan) has files full of proof of police corruption, the land where the girls were found is owned by a menacing local mogul (Sean Bean) who has plans to build a major shopping complex there if he can get rid of squatting gypsies, and, the icing on the cake, Dunford has just begun an affair with the mother of the most recent missing girl (Rebecca Hall).
The grim wasteland of the English countryside in the mid 70's is the perfect backdrop for this study - not of serial killings, but of the twisted knots in the fabric of society that naive newbies like Garfield's Dunford get tangled in with little hope of struggling free.
Despite getting roughed up by thug cops on the take, Dunford routinely mocks his elders, but the suave cunning Bean posits that he and the rookie reporter are a lot alike: "We like to fuck and make a buck and we're not choosy how."
Although it doesn't quite earn its TAXI DRIVER-ish climax, RED RIDING: 1974 is a compelling piece of cinema with a minimum of artsy touches and depth to its grit. Despite director Jarrold employing few gratuitous period flourishes it could be mistaken for an actual 70's era thriller - one that's as concerned with the darkness itself as much as what lurks in it.
RED RIDING: 1980 (Dir. James Marsh, 2009) MAN ON WIRE Documentary film maker Marsh helms this second installment which centers on Paddy Considine as Investigator Peter Hunter being brought in on the case of the Yorkshire Ripper in, again, as the title ominously tells us "The Year of Our Lord" 1980.
Hunter believes that one of the murders, the girl from the first film, wasn't committed by the Ripper. It muddies the waters that one of his team (Maxine Peak) is a former colleague with whom he once had an affair. It also impedes the investigation that seemingly every policeman on the force opposes Hunter for reasons that become shockingly clear in the second half.
RED RIDING 1980 takes its time getting going but when it does it becomes a Hell of a potboiler and, perhaps, the strongest of the trilogy. Considine anchors the film admirably, convincingly descending from confident determination to a mode of desperate obsession. The film itself is sturdier than its predecessor especially as its pace tightens with Marsh displaying a palpable mastery of tension.
RED RIDING: 1983 (Dir. Anand Tucker, 2009)
"This is the North - where we do what we want!"
This phrase is repeated throughout these films as both a declaration and a warning to outsiders, but its full impact is not really felt until this concluding chapter - or maybe that's just the power of repetition.
While the first one was seen through the eyes of a journalist and the second the eyes of a police detective, the third has 2 protagonists - a public solicitor named John Piggott (Mark Addy) and returning character Detective Superintendent Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey). Each is on the opposite end of the case making their way into the murky middle.
The loose ends of the first 2 films are tied up competently here but there's unnecessary usage of stylistic abstraction present. The sex scenes in the series before had a perfunctory feel to them but here they're completely stitched in with no passion present.
Only the spare moments of violence have visceral energy and those don't come off as effectively as in the previous chapters. Though Morrissey effectively personifies repressed stodginess, the 2 leads aren't strong enough to guide us through the subdued action which drags down the pace.
It's certainly possible that these 3 films could've been much better if tightened into a single epic movie, but maybe we'll see how that well that works out if Ridley Scott takes on an Americanized remake (yes, I know he's British).
All 3 RED RIDING films are worthwhile but the first 2 are the essential ones - the third provides resolution. Oddly, only the first one has English subtitles. Since this helps a lot with the heavy accents, it's a pity that the others don't follow suit.
Yet even with the matter of some impenetrable dialogue and though the films' total running time of over 5 hours makes taking in the whole trilogy into a bit of a slog - it's a mostly satisfying slog.
More later...
RED RIDING: 1974 (Dir. Juliam Jarrold, 2009)
This first "episode" starts off with an air of a British ZODIAC, but a darker prism of power is revealed beyond the smoky newsrooms and seedy cop dives as the film reaches its brutally unsettling conclusion.
In "The Year Of Our Lord" 1974, wet-behind-the-ears yet arrogant Yorkshire journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) sums up the scene as he arrives at a press conference:
"A little girl goes missing. The pack salivates. If it bleeds, it leads, right?" When the girl in question is found murdered Dunford makes the connection to similar crimes involving children committed in the same area in the years before. Like a classic film noir caper, there are many competing plot-lines for our intrepid reporter.
A fellow scribe (Anthony Flanagan) has files full of proof of police corruption, the land where the girls were found is owned by a menacing local mogul (Sean Bean) who has plans to build a major shopping complex there if he can get rid of squatting gypsies, and, the icing on the cake, Dunford has just begun an affair with the mother of the most recent missing girl (Rebecca Hall).
The grim wasteland of the English countryside in the mid 70's is the perfect backdrop for this study - not of serial killings, but of the twisted knots in the fabric of society that naive newbies like Garfield's Dunford get tangled in with little hope of struggling free.
Despite getting roughed up by thug cops on the take, Dunford routinely mocks his elders, but the suave cunning Bean posits that he and the rookie reporter are a lot alike: "We like to fuck and make a buck and we're not choosy how."
Although it doesn't quite earn its TAXI DRIVER-ish climax, RED RIDING: 1974 is a compelling piece of cinema with a minimum of artsy touches and depth to its grit. Despite director Jarrold employing few gratuitous period flourishes it could be mistaken for an actual 70's era thriller - one that's as concerned with the darkness itself as much as what lurks in it.
RED RIDING: 1980 (Dir. James Marsh, 2009) MAN ON WIRE Documentary film maker Marsh helms this second installment which centers on Paddy Considine as Investigator Peter Hunter being brought in on the case of the Yorkshire Ripper in, again, as the title ominously tells us "The Year of Our Lord" 1980.
Hunter believes that one of the murders, the girl from the first film, wasn't committed by the Ripper. It muddies the waters that one of his team (Maxine Peak) is a former colleague with whom he once had an affair. It also impedes the investigation that seemingly every policeman on the force opposes Hunter for reasons that become shockingly clear in the second half.
RED RIDING 1980 takes its time getting going but when it does it becomes a Hell of a potboiler and, perhaps, the strongest of the trilogy. Considine anchors the film admirably, convincingly descending from confident determination to a mode of desperate obsession. The film itself is sturdier than its predecessor especially as its pace tightens with Marsh displaying a palpable mastery of tension.
RED RIDING: 1983 (Dir. Anand Tucker, 2009)
"This is the North - where we do what we want!"
This phrase is repeated throughout these films as both a declaration and a warning to outsiders, but its full impact is not really felt until this concluding chapter - or maybe that's just the power of repetition.
While the first one was seen through the eyes of a journalist and the second the eyes of a police detective, the third has 2 protagonists - a public solicitor named John Piggott (Mark Addy) and returning character Detective Superintendent Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey). Each is on the opposite end of the case making their way into the murky middle.
The loose ends of the first 2 films are tied up competently here but there's unnecessary usage of stylistic abstraction present. The sex scenes in the series before had a perfunctory feel to them but here they're completely stitched in with no passion present.
Only the spare moments of violence have visceral energy and those don't come off as effectively as in the previous chapters. Though Morrissey effectively personifies repressed stodginess, the 2 leads aren't strong enough to guide us through the subdued action which drags down the pace.
It's certainly possible that these 3 films could've been much better if tightened into a single epic movie, but maybe we'll see how that well that works out if Ridley Scott takes on an Americanized remake (yes, I know he's British).
All 3 RED RIDING films are worthwhile but the first 2 are the essential ones - the third provides resolution. Oddly, only the first one has English subtitles. Since this helps a lot with the heavy accents, it's a pity that the others don't follow suit.
Yet even with the matter of some impenetrable dialogue and though the films' total running time of over 5 hours makes taking in the whole trilogy into a bit of a slog - it's a mostly satisfying slog.
More later...
14 Şubat 2010 Pazar
VAMPİR İMPARATORLUĞU İZLE
Daybreakers (Altyazılı)
Tür: Aksiyon , Bilim Kurgu , Dram , Fantastik , Gerilim , Korku , Macera
Tür: Aksiyon , Bilim Kurgu , Dram , Fantastik , Gerilim , Korku , Macera
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13 Şubat 2010 Cumartesi
Act of God (2009) (Saturday, February 13, 2010) (222)
I was very excited to see this documentary when I first saw the trailer for it. It tells the story of lightning and people who have been hit by lightning and how it changes them. Visually it looked stunning with lots of dark landscapes punctuated by bursts of bright bolts. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal does a wonderful job of showing mother nature at her most shocking and surprising (sorry for the pun).
Through the film we meet several people who have survived direct strikes or who were in groups of people that were hit and they are some of the few survivors while their friends perished. There is an interesting existential question asked here about why each person was hit and whether there's a greater meaning to the experience. We see some artists, including Paul Auster (OK - writer, artist - whatever), who talk about how the electric experience help to shape who they are today.
Unfortunately the structure of the movie is rather loose and episodic, so it gets rather boring as we move from one story of a lightning strike to another, to another, to another. There should be more big-scale form to the film that might make it more interesting. Lots of credit should got to cinematographer Nick de Pencier for the beautiful images, but, alas, that's about all that works well here.
Stars: 1.5 of 4 stars
Through the film we meet several people who have survived direct strikes or who were in groups of people that were hit and they are some of the few survivors while their friends perished. There is an interesting existential question asked here about why each person was hit and whether there's a greater meaning to the experience. We see some artists, including Paul Auster (OK - writer, artist - whatever), who talk about how the electric experience help to shape who they are today.
Unfortunately the structure of the movie is rather loose and episodic, so it gets rather boring as we move from one story of a lightning strike to another, to another, to another. There should be more big-scale form to the film that might make it more interesting. Lots of credit should got to cinematographer Nick de Pencier for the beautiful images, but, alas, that's about all that works well here.
Stars: 1.5 of 4 stars
11 Şubat 2010 Perşembe
THE LAST STATION: The Film Babble Blog Review
THE LAST STATION
(Dir. Michael Hoffman, 2009)
(Dir. Michael Hoffman, 2009)
Considering his fine lengthy career, it's amazing that the distinguished actor Christopher Plummer has never before been nominated for an Oscar. Well, here as Leo Tolstoy in this mostly strong historical drama about the famed Russian author's final days, Plummer simply could not be ignored by the Academy.
He and his much celebrated co-star, Helen Mirren as Tolstoy's acidic wife Sofya, both scored nominations which I believe many audiences will find are well deserved. The imprint made by their volatile chemistry will last long after Awards season hype was died down.
Opening titles tell us that Tolstoy is the most acclaimed writer in history and other things we could easily Google, and the ending features ancient footage of the real man - an inescapable cliché of seemingly every biopic - but in between is an emotionally complex examination of a stubborn man's ideals.
These are no ordinary ideals you understand - this is a man who is thought by multitudes to be a genius or even a holy figure. “You think he’s Christ!” Mirren exclaims in exasperation at one of many points. “I don’t think he’s Christ,’’ responds Tolstoy’s doctor (John Sessions). “Christ is Christ. I do believe he’s a prophet, though.’’
Mirren believes that a society of sycophants is forming around her dying husband with the moustache twirling
McAvoy relishes his position enough to let his celibacy slide when another Tolstoy disciple (Kerry Condon) slips into his chambers, but the real titillation comes from Plummer and Mirren playful bedroom banter.
In the company of others, Mirren is an angry defensive verbally abusive animal; alone with her venerated husband she is infested with an infectious silliness. She is truly a woman in love – in all its irrational selfish glory.
This all makes the last third of the film all the more painful. Plummer and his loving entourage travel by train across country ostensibly so the great man can get some final peace away from his wife. His final destination - that of the title – is soon surrounded by concerned citizens and guarded by his followers. Mirren tries in vain to get through them but as the saying goes, that train has long left the station.
Like last year’s brilliant BRIGHT STAR, which dealt with a dying John Keats, THE LAST STATION is concerned with the limits of love and literature. It has a sort of reserved passion boiling under its Masterpiece Theater/Merchant Ivory-ish surface that sizzles when Plummer and Mirren share the screen. The movie suffers sorely when they are absent as Giamatti has a one note villain role and McAvoy’s romantic subplot is tiresomely typical.
That those and other shortcomings can be overlooked is testament to the purity of Mirren and Plummer’s performances. In Plummer’s case it’s nice that the Academy finally took notice.
More later...
9 Şubat 2010 Salı
EJDER KAPANI İZLE - KENAN İMİRZALIOĞLU
Abbas (Uğur Yücel)
Akrep Celal (Kenan İmirzalıoğlu)
Ensar (Nejat İşler)
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Akrep Celal (Kenan İmirzalıoğlu)
Ensar (Nejat İşler)
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8 Şubat 2010 Pazartesi
NICK NOLTE: NO EXIT - A Nutty Choppy Bio Doc
NICK NOLTE: NO EXIT (Dir. Tom Thurman, 2008)
"I thought this was going to be a bit of a lighter interview. You know, something more... mainstream for 6 year olds?" - Nick Nolte at the beginning of this film.
The "bio doc" genre has been overflowing lately. It seems like every other celebrity in existence is the subject of a standard career summation complete with footage and anecdotal evidence. But when putting the gruff cantankerous actor Nick Nolte in the spotlight, director Tom Thurman decided to try something new with the format.
Thurman set up a casually dressed Nolte at a desk in a studio with a television monitor aimed at him. On that monitor is previously recorded video of a dapper Nolte (in a nice matching hat and dress jacket) asking questions. That's right - Nolte interviews himself.
It's an odd but intriguing idea which seems to pay off at first. Nolte gets defensive at times in his replies yet says startlingly insightful stuff like: "My ego is a very limited petty individual. Rather jealous - an asshole basically." He sums the whole situation up at another priceless point when he states: "Every interview is a lie."
Thankfully it's not just Nolte on Nolte - a roster of his friends and fellow co-workers appear to sing his praises including Ben Stiller, Alan Rudolph, Jacqueline Bisset, F.X. Feeney, Mike Medavoy, Barbara Hershey, and Paul Masursky.
Bisset, Nolte's co-star from his first major film THE DEEP, humorously offers: "I think DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS he must have enjoyed enormously. Nick likes to get dirty."
Speaking of getting dirty there's Nolte's infamous celebrity mug shot which comes up more than once. It's one of the film's only legitimate surprises when Nolte reveals: "That is not a mug shot. You see any numbers? You see that wall? It's a hospital wall." He goes on to explain that the arresting officer, who was a fan, asked if he could get a Poloraid. Nolte said "I'll do the shot if you share the money with the rest of the guys." As for his disheveled appearance: "That's the way I looked in THE HULK."
Unfortunately despite these insights, this is a rambling often sloppy portrait with no clips from any of the films discussed and no chronological structure. We have to do with movie stills with no dates given and this loss of context denies the documentary a satisfying arc.
Skipping back and forth through Nolte's filmography with many notable movies not being mentioned at all means that somebody only familiar with the man from TROPIC THUNDER or Comedy Central reruns of 48 HOURS would have little inkling of the full spectrum of his work.
The film also suffers from feeling overlong even at a paltry 74 minute running time. Reflections on acting methods are tossed aside for close to incoherent spiritual philosophy which can't help but appear drunken.
Nolte is a fascinating rugged thespian whose model looks long ago morphed into the leathery weathered visage that later period films like AFFLICTION and THE GOOD THIEF have made good use of, but this wacky interview gimmick doesn't do his legacy any favors.
A throw-away curio that only hardcore Nolte fans will get something out of, NO EXIT could be dismissed as a "nice try" if only Thurman and his subject had tried harder.
Post note: This film hasn't been released on DVD yet but is available via Sundance Selects On Demand.
More later...
"I thought this was going to be a bit of a lighter interview. You know, something more... mainstream for 6 year olds?" - Nick Nolte at the beginning of this film.
The "bio doc" genre has been overflowing lately. It seems like every other celebrity in existence is the subject of a standard career summation complete with footage and anecdotal evidence. But when putting the gruff cantankerous actor Nick Nolte in the spotlight, director Tom Thurman decided to try something new with the format.
Thurman set up a casually dressed Nolte at a desk in a studio with a television monitor aimed at him. On that monitor is previously recorded video of a dapper Nolte (in a nice matching hat and dress jacket) asking questions. That's right - Nolte interviews himself.
It's an odd but intriguing idea which seems to pay off at first. Nolte gets defensive at times in his replies yet says startlingly insightful stuff like: "My ego is a very limited petty individual. Rather jealous - an asshole basically." He sums the whole situation up at another priceless point when he states: "Every interview is a lie."
Thankfully it's not just Nolte on Nolte - a roster of his friends and fellow co-workers appear to sing his praises including Ben Stiller, Alan Rudolph, Jacqueline Bisset, F.X. Feeney, Mike Medavoy, Barbara Hershey, and Paul Masursky.
Bisset, Nolte's co-star from his first major film THE DEEP, humorously offers: "I think DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS he must have enjoyed enormously. Nick likes to get dirty."
Speaking of getting dirty there's Nolte's infamous celebrity mug shot which comes up more than once. It's one of the film's only legitimate surprises when Nolte reveals: "That is not a mug shot. You see any numbers? You see that wall? It's a hospital wall." He goes on to explain that the arresting officer, who was a fan, asked if he could get a Poloraid. Nolte said "I'll do the shot if you share the money with the rest of the guys." As for his disheveled appearance: "That's the way I looked in THE HULK."
Unfortunately despite these insights, this is a rambling often sloppy portrait with no clips from any of the films discussed and no chronological structure. We have to do with movie stills with no dates given and this loss of context denies the documentary a satisfying arc.
Skipping back and forth through Nolte's filmography with many notable movies not being mentioned at all means that somebody only familiar with the man from TROPIC THUNDER or Comedy Central reruns of 48 HOURS would have little inkling of the full spectrum of his work.
The film also suffers from feeling overlong even at a paltry 74 minute running time. Reflections on acting methods are tossed aside for close to incoherent spiritual philosophy which can't help but appear drunken.
Nolte is a fascinating rugged thespian whose model looks long ago morphed into the leathery weathered visage that later period films like AFFLICTION and THE GOOD THIEF have made good use of, but this wacky interview gimmick doesn't do his legacy any favors.
A throw-away curio that only hardcore Nolte fans will get something out of, NO EXIT could be dismissed as a "nice try" if only Thurman and his subject had tried harder.
Post note: This film hasn't been released on DVD yet but is available via Sundance Selects On Demand.
More later...
7 Şubat 2010 Pazar
The Book Of Eli filmi - Denzel Washington
Başrollerdeki Oyuncular:Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Michael Gambon, Ray Stevenson.
FİLMİ İZLEMEK İÇİN BURAYA TIKLA.
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