JackBenjamin Reviews

Against All Odds (1984)

Solid suspense

[7/10 · 5 September 2009]

This is a solid, well balanced suspense thriller. The plot is intricate and nicely weaved, the acting is excellent, dialogue is tight. Since it's based on a film of the noir era (which I haven't seen yet) it adopts a lot of those traits but appropriates them for an era that's a little freer with sexual expression. Like Body Heat, and a few others of the '80s, it's always interesting to see that genre developed.

The characters are nicely fleshed out; all have tangible motivations and all evoke a degree of sympathy form the viewer, which is hard to do.

Some of it hits you as a little over the top, especially a few of the locations and the dated score, and it won't change your life, but overall it's a well executed film.

Cold Souls (2009)

Being Paul Giamatti

[6/10 · 30 August 2009]

If a movie's objective is to be clever, that cleverness has to be original. The acting here is great. The cinematography and direction are also expert. But it's really a soulless film. Soulless is the respect that bad acting is soulless -- it's hackneyed and refurbished.

Being John Malkovich was a dagger in our eyes, and Charlie spawned an entirely new style of writing with it. Cold Souls is pretty much a carbon copy. Both films center on actors playing themselves caught in a sort of alternate reality that's only marginally different from real reality. The difference is some tapping into a supernatural level which is exploited, clumsily, for money. Even Strathairn and Orson Bean mirror each other as quirky proprietors. There's a quest to change who you are, become literally someone else, and then at the end to return to your original self.

It's a shame because there's a lot of good material to be mined here, but so little of it is. Barthes had a chance to go in a new direction, because the seed is good, but she lacked the spark that Kaufman has, which is what makes him such a genius.

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

Deluded

[6/10 · 30 August 2009]

This was fun, and a pretty well done ensemble piece, but it made me mad. If I were a woman I'd be even more mad. Why is almost every woman in this movie so passive and disempowered? Why doesn't Jennifer Connolly's character get mad when she hears about her husband's infidelity? Why is Ginnifer Goodwin so clueless and beholden to these awful men? Scarlett is the only empowered one, but she's just out to advance her own career. Drew Barrymore is clueless. Jennifer Aniston should have given that ultimatum a long time ago. The film makes men look like a-holes, but it make women look even worse. Fun, but not very true to life. Also, you can tell it's told from the female perspective because no man ever considers "pore size" when evaluating female attractiveness.

Also, this is Baltimore right? Where are the black people? If an alien watched this movie he would assume Baltimore is an upper middle class, entirely white city that's about 60% straight and 40% gay. Total delusion in just about every way.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Basterd within the Basterd

[9/10 · 24 August 2009]

I thought this was brilliant. Tarantino is a wonderful stylist. He captivates with perfectly framed shots, rich colors, a choreographed camera eye. These scenes dance around like a leaf in the wind, slow, steady, then swooping in a direction you couldn't predict, much like the story does.

He seems to be getting a lot of flack for his mistreatment of history. Wasn't "Pearl Harbor" more egregious? Wasn't "World Trade Center"? I think Jews -- and I am one -- will get a lot of pleasure from watching this movie. A lot.

The real genius here though is the crafting of the story. Five acts, each seemingly unrelated until they slowly converge and meet at the end, in, of all places, a movie theater. QT is always self-referential, his films are always self-aware, but this one more than most. The top Nazis are caricatures. Goebbles is a diva with a poodle. Hitler is a guffawing baboon. The film within the film is the type of film that QT is perennially accused of making. So here we are, us, watching these idiots laugh and cry at this moronic movie about empty, brutal killing as we, us, laugh and cry at QT's movie about empty, brutal killing. A slap in all our faces. And it feels great.

Tarantino is the real basterd. He basterdizes history, he truncates morality, he throws away formula, killing off whichever characters caprice seems to want. His morality is cinema. That's his shrine. That's his sacrificial temple where the battle between heaven and earth takes place. The film is maybe 5% action and violence, 95% suspense. Wonderfully crafted suspense. He dismisses rhythm in favor of chaos so you forget what you've been attuned to expect from a movie, and once your eye starts wandering in this wilderness of un-expectation he hits you with whatever he wants.

Brad is the top-billed, but I doubt he has the most dialogue. Waltz is the real star of the film, and behind that, Tarantino the scribe and Tarantino the director.

Behind each movie screen is a pile of combustible film reels waiting to consume us. QT has lit the fire behind this one. I loved it.

The Queen (2006)

A Royal Waste

[5/10 · 26 March 2009]

I was in England when Blair was elected. The sentiment was very much the same as it was in the U.S. when Clinton came to power, a young, vital man ushering in a new age of idealism and renewal (I'm convinced now that we'll have this once every 20 or so years until the end of time, or elections). It's interesting to note that Peter Morgan is now working on a Bill Clinton script.

I didn't love this film though. Thought Mirren was good, thought the same of Sheen. I was disappointed by the Frears/Morgan commentary on the DVD. I expected a little more from two very intelligent men.

It's hard to grasp as an American how consumed British culture is with royal goings on. It's an integral part of their ethos, so maybe that's why the film didn't completely grip me. I found most interesting the notion of the decline of civility and "quiet dignity" in favor of the loud, raw truth of liberalism.

Elizabeth II is an intriguing figure and I wish some other aspects of her life and the life of her country were explored. She lived through WWII, stood watch as Britain transformed from empire to commonwealth, oversaw its decline into relative global impotence. She watched as it appropriated elements of American pop culture and liberalism which shook her existence to the core -- this woman is a relic, a symbol, a grotesque waste of money. I wish Frears/Morgan had addressed these issues more than the family dynamic, which barely held my interest.

Raging Bull (1980)

Rage that Drives the man

[10/10 · 26 March 2009]

I love films that not only survive over the years but that seem to adapt and change over time. It's really me changing as viewer but the film is so organic, if done right, that it has the appearance of a life of its own.

Having now gotten past the story, on this my 20th or so viewing, I've noticed the overarching thematic achievements. First is Scorsese's ability to capture the authentic energy of NYC. Not only that, but the energy of a certain era and ethos. It's not romanticized like it is in Goodfellas, at least not as much, and it's mimicked perfectly by Scorsese's cinematic energy: fast cuts in hectic places, slow motion where our eyes would linger or where memories would take form, and of course bottled, intense, volcanic acting.

LaMotta's rage is the subject of the film. It's what drives him to excel at his sport and it's what leads to the dissolution of every important relationship in his life. His rage is the gravitational center of his character. He's a bulldozer, not very complex beyond a layer or two, but that's the point -- he was an animal. A jealous, ambitious, self-righteous, bilious man who could never reconcile his family with his career and who never realized his misgivings until after the fact. Any lesser actor might not have been able to drive the film forward like DeNiro does, or to find that perfect blend of rage and tragedy after realization.

M (1931)

Watch Over the Children

[10/10 · 24 March 2009]

This movie is so rich in depth and meaning. It tackles so many important themes and treats even that examination as a mystery, revealing the primary message only in the last line.

The startling thing is how we are drawn into a film that doesn't have a main character. It's a composition in which the eye is batted back and forth between citizens. But Lang isn't telling a story from these perspectives necessarily; rather, we are the protagonist, the viewer. We explore, probe, move from character to character, group to group. We probe, sneakily, all the architectural turns, transitioning like a mind does from one scene seamlessly to another. We move in spurts toward characters as they have realizations of truth, as if we're the truth they're trying to grasp. We pass through sets of eyes along the way assuming a particular character's perspective, possessing him until we abandon him and move on to another. We intercut between the pols and the syndicate -- because the society is our object, not a single man, not a single group, and we are the subject.

It's hard not to relate this to our experience the past eight years: a fear consumes an entire society, there is an object of that fear but it's beyond our grasp and our understanding, and it makes shameless, impassioned vigilantes of us all.

But, like I mentioned above, I think the real mystery is the theme. So many are examined: who committed the murders?; how best to catch the villain?; what's the best way to deal with him, should we trust justice or is there a higher justice not the law? And Lang only reveals the answer at the very end: watch over the children. And children should not be taken entirely literally.

Nosferatu (1922)

Horror

[9/10 · 23 March 2009]

The images in this film are deeply frightening. Modern depictions of the vampire, at the behest of the studios no doubt, are of handsome, charming gentlemen who, even when they shift at night to monster form, retain grace and appeal. Nosferatu is a horror.

I think the best way to approach art is, in Harold Bloom's terms, to read it outward from within. There's a danger in trying to see a work in a social context because you're starting from a false focal point, one you've yourself ordained as critical. That said, I think it's hard to read any film that came out of 1922 Germany outside the context of WWI. One of the most meaningless, mindless, devastating events in human history, and Murnau is very much the Nosferatu who rose from the grave to tell the tale of those undead, survivors in a changed world -- after all, how could life ever have been the same after the war; no, it must assume some new, unspeakable, unnatural and abominable form.

The meek beast notwithstanding, other memorable images for me include that establishing shot of the ship at sea (I don't think I've seen this imitated since, which is surprising); the clever intercutting of Ellen's sleepwalk with the trolling vampire a sea away; the shadow of his clawed hand crawling up her nightgown; the reverse negative of the frantic carriage; the fast-motion current of the nighttime river; the extreme longshot of the townspeople chasing the scarecrow (and Murnau's clever use of the iris to simulate a gargantuan setting sun) -- all images that play with the notion of time and how it manipulates nature and vice versa, which, to me, is the most intriguing aspect of the vampire myth.

In Bruges (2008)

Moral Code

[8/10 · 23 March 2009]

I think playwrights tend to keep their theater chops even when trying to write something cinematic. Usually I dislike the effect -- a static camera and a single setting -- but for a film about two souls stuck in purgatory it works well.

All three central characters are immersed in a morality not totally alien to convention, but just slightly askew (which McDonagh matches nicely by creating a world that's slightly askew too). Ray, Ken, and Harry all acknowledge that the death of the child was wrong, but the question preoccupying the film is how to atone for the sin -- Ray and Harry are Old Testament, eye for an eye guys; Ken is a New Testament scion, he believes in penance and potential for renewal.

Harry and Chloe are the gods of the story. Chloe in that she sells drugs to the film stars and then to the real stars, her influence permeating both worlds, providing the bridge between the two. Harry is the disembodied voice commanding and directing until Ken defies him and he takes corporeal form in the third act. It's a n episodic film, mainly in respect to Harry's plot line, which reinforces the fact that these souls are on a journey.

The miniature (pun intended) film within the film is a great self-referential touch -- Tom DiCillo would be especially proud. In the end, the main players are appropriated by that film and the two worlds merge.

The dialogue is melismatic and spicy and perfectly delivered by three top-notch performers.

Atonement (2007)

Mind of a Writer

[8/10 · 22 March 2009]

At the heart of each movie is the screenwriter, sometimes in collaboration with a novelist (pre-ordained studio junk notwithstanding). There are too many poor attempts at post-modern self-reference in film, but there are also too many critics trying to dig up that post-modernism where it never had primacy.

But this is a wonderful example of it done right.

As a natural writer Briony views ambiguous events in her childhood and shapes and directs them according to the compass of her craft (writers do this into adulthood, normal people stop in adolescence). Everything after the rape scene is her invention, and it adds a rich level of viewership watching and knowing that these characters' fates are entirely in the hands of a child. The narrative takes turns of its own, all originally conjured by a jealous mind (which all writers possess). A mind that couldn't accept reality as it was, no matter how ambiguous (all reality is), and so had to change it.

Halfway through though she overcomes that jealousy within her own story by abandoning her authorship and adjusting her own character to the mold of the people she's damned: by becoming a nurse like Cecelia, and giving up "her place at Cambridge to do something practical" just like Robbie. This is her real atonement: damning herself to the loveless life she created in others' names, a monastical sort of atonement. Giving her victims a fairy tale ending is just another side of that.

Some of the meta-narrative highlights that stand out for me are Robbie's dreams which occur in reverse slow motion, almost as if he's trying to undo the weave that he's been written into. The recurring imagery is wonderful and like a detailed rug it reminds us of the repeated patterns that make up the whole (submersion in water is probably the most critical for lots of reasons). I think all these images and themes coalesce in the single-shot sequence at Dunkirk, a remarkable shot -- ferris wheels, dying horses, drunken soldiers, repressive authority -- all icons of childhood or dying childhood, all at a critical point in the plot, all on a beach in which our hero is stranded, just as he is in the story.

It's no accident that the seed of this narrative tree is discovery of sexuality, the moment all real writers hear the starting gun.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Psychology of God

[9/10 · 19 March 2009]

I saw this movie when I was very young and knew little about Christianity. So I wasn't confused, disturbed, intrigued by the major modifications of the myth. I saw it as a valid world.

Now, many tens of viewings later, one thing I'm marveling at (this time around) is how well Scorsese creates a world in which God is pervasive and expectation of the Messiah is palpable. God is the gluten that binds all aspects of his world. Today, that gluten has dried and weakened, parts have fallen off of the whole; in what remains God is vestigial, still other aspects show only his fingerprints. One test of a truly great work of narrative art, I think, is creating an entire universe that exists as some tangent to the one we know, then populating it with dynamic characters, breathing life into it. Scorsese-Schrader-Kazantzakis achieve this here.

Something else that makes this such a unique exploration is how it probes the psychology of God. I can't think of another film that does, at least not as metaphor or allegory. But if you're like me and believe that God is a fabrication devised and developed by humans, it suddenly becomes a very potent thing to question His psychology, his motivation, his weaknesses, his aspirations, his complexities -- what does it say about us? Why is he tempted by a mortal life? Why does he fight his nature by breaking holy laws? What is he seeking? By trying to understand the nature of God, this film asks many wonderful questions about humanity.

Those characteristic Scorsese smash cuts, creative camera moves, all those affectations that suit his gangster films so well, are given a new dimension with this subject. This might even surprise the director himself who in his commentary of Barry Lyndon seemed astonished by Kubrick's bravado in using a zoom lens in a Victorian drama -- the effect he claimed shouldn't suit the period, but it does suit the film. Last Temptation is a success in the same way. Scorsese mustered his own audacity and merged contemporary technique with an ancient story, and integrates the two incredibly well. I suppose Zack Snyder does this too, but 300 is an action film. This is a probing meditation on spirituality. Very bold (or maybe he just couldn't break habit).

As for the the mise-en-scene (which a moronic film professor of mine once criticized), there is nothing glorious or Godly about it (punctuated especially by John the Baptist preaching in a bleached out, nearly dried up riverbed). The land is barren, awaiting the seed. It's a world in which you need a God to believe in beauty, since it's nowhere to be seen. I wasn't around 2,000 years ago, thank God, but I imagine a remote Roman outpost, with a heterogeneous stew of cultures, races, cults, religions looked a lot like this (minus all the white faces).

One last thought I'm struck with on this viewing is how wonderful Harvey Keitel is. The controlled energy of his Judas drives the plot by pushing Jesus to continually question himself. He is the muse.

The Barbarian Invasions (2003)

History

[8/10 · 19 March 2009]

Decline can be beautiful, or it can be horrifying. Edward Gibbon's notion was that the Roman Empire was an organic thing and like any other it is born, grows to maturity, declines, and dies. Arcand -- like Remy -- seems to have a historian's eye when viewing the journey of life.

I saw this right after watching Decline of the American Empire and find it impossible to separate the two. The characters in the former are sparkplugs, intellectual sponges, heirs of Dionysus. Here, they are seasoned, sound creatures who have achieved peace with age -- except for Remy.

Like a true historian, Remy cannot die in peace until he passes his knowledge he's accumulated on to his heir. This is the foundation of civilization: the continual accretion of achievement, the building of a collective consciousness. Remy's life would have been a waste had he died and severed his link to posterity. And his son would have lived an emptier life without lessons learned from his father. When they reconcile, the torch is passed peacefully, almost religiously.

This really is a beautiful, touching quilt of characters weaved over, under, around one another. It's rich with narrative color, and the chemistry between the actors is palpable. Most significantly, it captures the beauty and enormity of life, which is a rare thing for a film.

The Decline of the American Empire (1986)

Empire of Sex

[7/10 · 19 March 2009]

Edward Gibbon would be proud.

Arcand crafts a wonderful narrative here with four main elements: The men talking, the women talking, men and women together, and flashbacks. The men are philanderers, obsessed with sex, cooking a decadent meal, teaching the youth their unholy ways. The women are just as obsessed but with nominally different sensibilities. Notice how they're working out the whole time, concerned with body, sustaining life, attracting men.

When they come together of course decorum is king, and only through flashbacks do we get punctuations of truth.

This is a very good movie and a pleasure to watch. Arcand manages to write with a playwright's ear and a film director's brain. But, without Barbarian Invasions it really is an incomplete experience.

Jesus of Montreal (1989)

Artist as God

[9/10 · 19 March 2009]

I don't know enough about Catholicism or Qeubecor culture to comment intelligently, so I'll keep this focused on the wonderful treatment of storytelling.

The Passion has been told and retold for decades and has lost its public appeal. A modern adaptation is needed to connect to a new audience. For a story to take hold of a culture it has to be felt in the spirit of the players, who must to some extent become the art they portray. The artist in many ways is God of his world. He creates, reshapes the world according to his own vision -- his own image. The best art opens and turns outward from this and reshapes the world that consumes it. Shakespeare, Mozart have achieved this.

These players do the same thing with the added layer of having to reinterpret the words of an actual God (the irony is that this reinterpretation is closer to the original than the Jesus these Quebecors have known -- after thousands of generations of theological telephone, the message has been distorted).

Daniel is consumed by his character, possessed, literally taken over. Much like Jesus the man was consumed by Jesus the supernatural being. Jesus's words, too, changed the world. As far as treatments of artist as God and manipulator of his world, this is one of the best.

(And -- Arcand maintains this theme wonderfully in The Barbarian Invasions by having the same priest, also played by Pelletier 15 years later, still seeking to commercialize and monetize the art spawned by his religion.)

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

Even Herzog Started Small

[6/10 · 19 March 2009]

I don't quite know what to make of this film. I might have to watch it again to see if ideas coalesce. Herzog, if nothing else, makes you think while you watch the images move. His dramas are so stylized that you almost have to approach them from a tangent, stealthily, which is how he seems to view life.

There's no main character to focus on here. Instead we focus on the society and how it functions. It seems that full-grown people are treated like Homeric Greeks treated the Gods: indifferent observers, manipulators of fate. But the dwarfs play God, too. They seem indifferent to any life deemed less significant than their own. They destroy the nature surrounding them. They seize the devices of their Gods (the car, for example) but are left unable to find and appropriate any usefulness in them.

I can't figure out why Herzog chose dwarfs (little people) as the subject of the film, other than to take what would have been a very different picture and give it a good dose of quirk. Since this, we've seen Living in Oblivion, In Bruges, and countless others point out the silliness of this conceit with some sharp self-referential wit. I hate to be critical of Werner Herzog, a man who (after watching his documentaries especially) obviously possesses a gentle, probing soul and a deep intelligence, but I just couldn't quite discern this.

The best guess I have on the first viewing is a nihilistic view of God vs. man vs. beast. To some extent we are all three at any given point.

The Road (1954)

Pebble to sand

[9/10 · 18 March 2009]

There's a wealth of things to comment on but I'm sure most of them are already covered. So I'll mention the few that struck me most.

One is the narrative perspective. Up until mid-third act, I thought this was Gelsomina's story. But then comes Zampano's abandonment. To be in keeping with the film to point, Fellini would have had her fall asleep and wake to find money in her hand and the trumpet by her side. Instead we see it from Zampano's perspective, and after he abandons her the story is firmly his.

With this in mind, the movie shifts from a story about either Gelsomina or Zampano, and becomes a narrative tracing the path of loneliness. It attaches to and follows each character for a time until exhausting that soul, killing it, and moving on. Much like the nuns who move from convent to convent avoiding attachment to worldly things; Zampano avoids this too, and leaves a trail of spiritual debris in his wake.

The film is nicely framed by three encounters on the beach, each representing the narrative shift -- Gelsomina; then Gelsomina and Zampano; and finally Zampano alone. Every pebble has a purpose. But if enough time (seawater) passes over the pebble it will be crushed, lose its identity and its meaning. In the end he is crying, clutching the pebble's waste.

Cinemania (2002)

Obsession

[7/10 · 5 December 2008]

And I thought I had a problem.

I guess obsession is the same no matter what the object is, and many documentaries have dealt with that theme, but obviously this one is much more of a meta-doc.

What I wonder is, are these people so dysfunctional because they continually go to movies; or do they go to movies because they're dysfunctional? There's something really disturbing if the former is the case -- that we consume movies and TV (more than we should) and the result is this deterioration of the mind and total disconnection from society. Are these people examples of over-consumption taken to its logical extreme? Do most of us have the exact same pathology but just watered down?

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Earthly Illusion

[8/10 · 26 October 2008]

This is wonderful. At first, the cinematography jars. The camera is tremulous, almost journalistic. But unlike any other film I've seen that tackles this time period or these or similar events, this one transmits a truth and realism -- real people, real disease, real earth and water and animals -- not a romanticized ideal. Malick's efforts, for example, are beautiful, meditative, but you don't watch his movies with your feet on the ground. I can't recall a single shot in this film that didn't look like it was filmed at eye-level.

The reality of the cinematography is essential to realizing the point of the movie -- their journey, their drive to conquest, their justification of it, is an empty shell.

The appointed leader of the expedition is abdicated, so Aguirre appoints a figurehead while reserving power for himself (a la Dick Cheney). These men proclaim laws, claim land, proselytize, speak of purpose and mission, but there's no substance to any it. They're just an effete body of men on a raft floating aimlessly -- morally and physically.

The message is that the Spanish monarchy is just as bereft of probity and purpose as the self-appointed leader of this mission. The laws he writes overnight are as depraved as the Old World laws that have stood for centuries. And the spoils of a fictional city of gold are just as illusory as those of the New World.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Life-changing

[10/10 · 24 October 2008]

Not many filmmakers can get me out to see a midnight showing on opening day, but Charlie Kaufman is one.

This is a remarkably touching film that explores a life devoted to art, the nobility/delusion of that life, how art and life merge, inform one another. It's about the pace and pathos of life, the battle against loneliness, the beauty of second chances, and so much more.

What kind of world do we live in? A world that we construct based on experiences we've had. A world in which our character is defined as much by what other people tell us to think than by our own originality. A world in which other people constantly play us and re-interpret our choices, sometimes right and sometimes wrong. A world that's entirely constructed by us but is based on materials we've picked up along the way.

In Kaufman's universe it's the real world that's surreal, that breezes past, that co-opts our children, bastardizes our language. In the real world we get boils on our skin, blood in our gums, tremors in our leg. In the real world therapists finish our sentences for us and our children grow up to be whores. But in the world of art we're healthy, we age gracefully, we have time to construct our ideas, re-interpret our words, look at ourselves from different angles at different times in different places; we're able to study the people we're surrounded with, get them right, eventually. In one way or another these themes permeate all of Kaufman's movies. Malkovich questioned the self -- who's the puppeteer pulling our strings. Adaptation blurred life and art. Eternal Sunshine was about the inevitability of our individual condition despite whatever manipulations we undergo/impose.

In Synecdoche, Caden can't seem to master life so he re-creates it, immerses himself in his creation, explores his condition, tries to right wrongs, and traps himself in a world that is actually more free than the one he's escaping. He lives this illusory life while the world crumbles outside. And in the end he becomes a player, playing himself, like others have, taking direction from a higher authority (but who is someone he actually cast... nice comment on religion by Charlie). In the end he's left with an empty shell, like we all are.

This is meta-fiction at it's most emotional. Like Nabokov, the best in the literary world, Kaufman's other movies perfect the mechanics of self-reference but stop short of evoking real emotion (except by appreciation of their genius), but this is a work of art that impresses so much on both intellectual and emotional levels. Vlad, Shakespeare, etc. all would have been proud. (BTW, was Caden's moon title idea a reference to "Pale Fire"?)

Charlie deals with love in a more complete and touching way than I think I've ever seen. Caden's real life marriage is heartless, but the right girl has been there all along, waiting with his ticket. Same theme as Eternal Sunshine, second chances, doing what's in your heart despite the inevitable imperfections. It takes time, and more than one opportunity but he's trying, always trying, to get it right, to make things a little better.

Few movies actually make you look at the world differently when you leave the theater. This was one for me. Hopefully Charlie will never let anyone else direct his scripts again.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)

Collective Movement

[7/10 · 18 October 2008]

I didn't notice a single close-up in the entire movie. This sort of film-making is disquieting at first, but the eyes adapt to it, and it works thematically. It establishes a collectivity among the characters. They don't function as individuals (as stars), but together as part of an ensemble, a movement. They're interpreted not on their own terms but in terms of the landscape, the town, etc., each of them a part of something bigger.

The concept of war played out remotely is interesting. The British are unwitting cogs in the machine, unaware of why they're fighting. There's a frightening sense of disconnect between the general revolution and the small happenings in this town. It's an interesting look at the phenomenon. All wars are a part of something bigger. The only time we see the actual source of conflict is when they watch the newsreel -- a nice cinematic touch.

The camera is tremulous, it moves precariously. The dialogue is beautifully crafted. The acting is wonderful. The picture seems perpetually tinged with gray-green, and that Irish feel that a storm is always coming persists.

The character development isn't great. Cillian's transformation seemed forced, rushed. The only arc that really develops is the character of the collective resistance. That's the protagonist of this movie, not any single player in it. Very cleverly done.

La Notte (1961)

The Postmodern World

[7/10 · 18 October 2008]

When this came out, postmodern literature was hitting its prime. Nabokov, Beckett, etc. Pontano says he knows what he wants to write but is struggling with how to write it. We wonder if he even cares about art at all or if it's just a mechanism for him to get women, or to feel important.

Love is dead. We go from island to island of affection, mindless of the substance, just searching for the next pleasure. This is confirmed in the end when Pontano doesn't recognize something he'd written a long time ago. There's no artistic identity, no purpose. Do we all die like Tommaso, disconnected from friends, family? Pontano's notion of the intellectual is as an obsolete hermit, and one who considers taking a PR job -- the soul is dead in the modern world. I'm sure this is what Antonioni was struggling with.

The use of architecture is wonderful. The staging shows beams intersecting human interaction, reflections in windows offering different angles, ghosts of the postmodern world. Figures receding into shadows, emerging into light. The opening descent is a reflection of the city in one of its bodies, as all the bodies in this film are just reflections of one another, in decline.

In the end they leave the convoluted architecture of the house and emerge into nature. But the nature turns out to be a golf course. We're all trapped in the world we've crafted.

Platoon (1986)

Simplistic Morality

[7/10 · 18 October 2008]

The theme is the same as Apocalypse -- the tenuous existence of justice in war. But the treatment is very different. Where Apocalypse was about the insanity of war, this is about the pathos and the beauty of it. Both involve thoughtful men (and both Sheens) who journey through war's landscape and come out alive on the other end, transformed. Charlie develops wisdom and pathos. Martin's transformation is from one type of dysfunction to another. My gut tells me the latter is truer to life, but then again Stone is real veteran.

Elias is Christ. "He's a water walker," "he thinks he's Jesus F-ckin Christ," his arms are outstretched as he dies for everyone else's sins. Barnes is his antithesis, the machine of war. He's (nearly) invincible, with an independent justice, but a system nonetheless. The ultimate message is that the purveyor of these two is a spineless bureaucrat from officer training.

But war isn't a morality play. Good and evil are relative, there is no standard coordinate plane from which to judge right and wrong. Oliver Stone knows this, but he still gives us the simplistic treatment. Apocalypse makes no mention at all of good or evil, just the diseased system and everyone's roles in it. Kind of a David Simon world, but rotting. I prefer that version. This one evokes the same tender emotion that Barber's music does -- beauty in a tragic world. But Apocalypse probes the depths.

W. (I) (2008)

Apotheosis of Inanity

[8/10 · 17 October 2008]

Kubrick originally intended Dr. Strangelove to be a serious anti-war drama, but during the writing process came to the realization that the subject was so absurd it could only really make sense as a comedy. Mutually assured destruction was the cold war battlefield. It made both perfect logical sense and absolutely no sense at all. Stone presents us with the same scheme here. He tries to explain something in terms so simple that you're left contemplating real world complexity as distant unrealtity.

Bush's feet are perpetually surrounded by banana peels. Just go to youtube to see his greatest hits. But in an effort to make something more than a highlight reel, or a psychoanalysis, Stone's real message here is that underneath the jokes, the absurdity, idiosyncracies, is an unspeakable tragedy. I think he almost accomplishes it. Time will ripen this film.

It actually has a lot in common with "Nixon." First, the narrative structure. We jump from the planning of the war back to various landmarks in his personal development, and back again. The third act shows what happens when past and present collide -- when ambition, insecurity, and mediocrity meet chance, nepotism, narrowmindedness, simplemindedness, and a mental napoleonic complex. The other similarity with Nixon is the all-star cast. They're great, but the fact that they're all deep-set in our cinematic unconscious gives these characters a sort of surreal, caricaturistic feel. It's an odd effect, one that the studio was thrilled with, but I think it makes an interesting point.

It's going to take several viewings for this to sink in, and an honest opinion on its artistic merits will probably take a few years distance from this awful era. Stone said in a recent interview that he's disappointed the three Vietnam movies he made haven't better informed us scions of a tragic policy. Sadly they haven't. Our mental muscle memories are too short. This is why reading Howard Zinn is shocking. It shouldn't be, but alas we forget. We always forget.

A woman behind me in the theater whispered to her husband, "don't laugh." "But it's funny," he said. "No, it isn't," she told him.

Comedy may be Stone's next logical attempt to explain a tragic world. Not sure we'll learn any lessons from it, except that all of us are as stupid as we are smart. All of us.

Body of Lies (2008)

Two Dimensions

[6/10 · 17 October 2008]

This is relatively standard fare, and I'd hoped for more from this team. But there is one very potent concept touched on, and it's in the way Ridley uses the medium itself to express his disdain for all of us.

My most disturbing personal memory of the Iraq war is watching the first attack on TV. I did nothing to stop it. I stood by and watched as if it were any old fall drama. And that's what it was, to me and to most Americans. They marketed the war to us like network execs... "Watch a campaign of shock and awe" -- and we did. Like catatonics.

And until we count the balance in family lost, safety forfeited, dollars lost (real dollars, not funny money), the war means nothing to us. We're a complacent people who see two dimensions when there are so many more. And today, we experience life more on these two-dimensional surfaces than we do in three. Computers, TVs, movie screens. A replacement for reality. Almost an assembly manual for modern reality.

So, here Ridley plays the game with us, and shows us how horrifying this this modern world really is. Russell is the American mastermind. He runs the war on a giant monitor, much like a film director sitting in an editing room, deciding what goes where, who stays, who goes. He watches it unfold with frightening apathy, entertained, as if it were all inconsequential; and we, the audience, detest him for it. It's reality anaesthesized into unreality -- that's the real lie.

But the joke's on us because here we are again, watching a giant screen ourselves, delighting in the explosions, the chases, gunfights, the bone fragments, bulletholes, smashed fingers -- yet again we're entertained by a disconnected world that has no direct bearing on our lives. Not until our friend's bone fragments are lodged under our own skin. Russell does an exceptional job as the gluttonous couch potato, a.k.a., the audience.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Things Happen

[10/10 · 17 October 2008]

The best movies are the ones you can watch over and over and learn something new from every time. It empowers us as viewers to play an active creative role -- the movie becomes an organic form, shifting under different lights, constantly assuming new shape. Kubrick is the best at this. The Coens are up there too.

The narrative model here is like Fargo. A tangential crime is committed, but is part of something bigger. The cop picks up that trail and pieces things together, going slowly from tangent to body. The cop is always one step behind us (the viewer), but he's wiser, because he knows the world. He's our Virgil, and our conscience, and this is a very clever narrative device. The sheriff's voice carries us through the action, sets it up with his voice over, seals it at the end, and dots the arc with milestone tales which weave their way into the fabric of the master tale.

The visuals. The expansive landscape shots are beautiful, but beauty isn't enough. They reinforce the contrast between heaven and earth (or hell, depending on your cosmology). The camera moves slowly, contemplatively in all directions, probing. Jackson Pollack is everywhere -- the granular landscape dotted with shrubs; the deer's blood spattered on the dirt plain; Chigur's blood on the sidewalk; blood sprayed on the wall, shower curtain; even the buckshot in Llewlyn's shoulder and Chigur's leg. There's an affinity here with the amorality of modern art, and Pollack's notion of chance (let the paint fall where it may).

Chance. Brutality and love are two sides of the same coin, and our lives can be defined by either. But the chance here isn't arbitrary -- Llewelyn makes a decision to go bring the Mexican water (if he didn't, he would have lived happily ever after). The choices we make establish the chances we encounter. Life is not a blind road. "Ed Tom" and "Anton" are aurally indistinguishable (good/bad, cop/killer, two sides of the same coin)... they both drink from the same milk bottle. Their TV reflections are similarly vague. What is it that makes a cop and cop, a killer a killer? What brings us to those states? Tommy Lee Jones only plays one role, but this is one of its best incarnations. Javier may go down as one of the greats. Brolin has come a long way since Goonies.