My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Monday, January 30, 2012

When Silents were Golden: The Artist

It's a great idea and a great stunt, but in my view "The Artist" is no great movie. I think the challenge of trying to tell a story through the vehicle of a silent movie is worth taking on, but in some ways I think it would have been better had the story been anything but a story about a silent-movie star who's shoved to the margins by the arrival of sound in movies. Sure, it's a nice bit of Hollywood nostalgia, but ultimately The Artist not only looks old fashioned - shot in stunning b/w, in 4:3 screen dimensions - but it feels old-fashioned and, frankly, a little boring, at least in regard to the pretty limp plot. Yet it has some real moments and some real strength: not only the cinematography but the design (I loved seeing the old-fashioned credits at the top), great acting by Jean Dujardin and his co-star Berenice Bejo, with her huge eyes - amazing how they can convey so much in silence, without really over acting or vamping, as so many silent stars did. Among the really excellent scenes: the opening sequence in which we start out watching a silent action adventure, pan back and see the audience watching, then reverse perspective and see the actors behind the projection screen also watching; three or four takes as a director tries to get a dance scene right, but each take revealing more about the two lead characters and their chemistry, a dream sequence in which we hear actual sound, rather than soundtrack, for the first time in the film, Bejo dancing with Dujardin's sports jacket, Dujardin spilling whiskey on a zinc-top bar - and others. These great scenes stay in you mind, but great moments don't make a great film. In its essence, The Artist is pretty much the kind of campy melodrama typical of the silent era. Silents were golden, but I'll take the talkies.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Nasty Girl: It couldn't happen here, could it?

"The Nasty Girl" is a very obscure (at least to me) German film (1989) that is strikingly relevant today - director Michael Verhoeven's account based apparently loosely on facts of German high-school student who wins an essay contest with an exploration of life in her town during WWII, revealing many connections to Nazism and to the execution of Jews - and she pursues this matter on through college and early marriage, and pays a great price - attacks by neo-Nazis, ostracism, broken marriage. The movie, however, has a light even jaunty tone - done somewhat as a narrative told by the woman from her 30s or so looking back on her experiences - her childhood shown in b/w with lots of high comedy of life in convent school, many of the scenes done in high expressionist style (e.g., her visits to the archives, she talks to a man at a desk against a painted backdrop of library shelves) so that the movie at times looks more like a filmed play or perhaps hearkens back to films like Caligari - very visually imaginative and inventive in style. The girl/woman herself very spirited and bright-eyed - all this keeps the film from becoming depressing or grim, despite its moments of sadness and danger. I could not stop thinking of the brave young girl in Cranston (R.I.) who sued her school district to get the high school to remove a prayer banner and has paid a tremendous price, as the adults in the community have viciously criticized her (one pol actually on air memorably called her a "vicious little thing" - sound like "The Nasty Girl"?), leading to a climate where fellow students feel it's OK to threaten her - a terrible and shameful moment for my state and for all who cherish our freedoms. Nazism? Couldn't happen here, could it?

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Bob Dylan redeems the otherwise forgettable Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

There's one reason, maybe, to go back and watch Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garret & Billy the Kid," and that's the startling performance by a young Bob Dylan as a slow-witted would-be gunslinger - and also to enjoy the Dylan musical score, including some instrumental passages, some rarely heard songs, and the classic (composed for this movie) Knockin' on Heaven's Door. As to the movie, in its day it was considered extremely violent - seen today it looks goofy and fake compared with the violence we see in so many shows, e.g., The Wire - but that said, despite the obvious fake blood, there's an incredible almost absurd amount of shooting and fighting, all "choreographed" really well, you can't help but be impressed by Peckinpah's ability to bring this off - but in the end, why did he? And why would anyone put up with it? After about 10 minutes of watching the blam-blam-blam of bullets hammering into walls, doors, animals, people - I thought Peckinpah must have been a truly disturbed guy. So we didn't watch through the whole movie (I'd seen it years ago), but checked out some of the funny Dylan scenes, such as his first words: Who are you?, Garrett asks. That's a good question, says Dylan (called "Alias," I think). The greatest scene of all is when Garrett protectively wants the baby-faced Dylan out of the way when he blasts away at a few guys, so he tells Dylan to take an inventory of the country store. Garrett's shooting is punctuated by Dylan's ingenuous recitation: beans, beans, succotash, quality salmon, beef stew! This scene alone redeems the movie.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Is Breaking Bad Shakespearean?

Someone on the radio was talking about the greatness of Season 4 of "Breaking Bad," particularly the last several episodes, and he said these episodes are practically Shakespearean. That overstates the case by a wide measure - go back and read or see a production of Hamlet of King Lear and then tell me whether Breaking Bad or anything on TV measures up, even though I believe that if Sh. were alive today he would write for series television, which offers the greatest possible range for a brilliant writer to use and explore his or her talent and vision - O, for a muse of fire! - but Breaking Bad Season 4 is highly entertaining, very tense, some finely crafted dramatic scenes, and a deepening sense of the character and the complexity, even the sinister aspects, of Walter White (Bryan Crandall) in particular but also his partner in crime, Jesse (Aaron Paul). The ending, like the end of Season 3, is puzzling and eerie and mysterious and will have you talking and thinking back and trying to figure things out. I would say that, as with many high-drama series that carry a plot over several seasons the final episodes of the season are a little too tied tight to the mast of plot mechanics: a lot of strings to draw together, random plot elements to explain, etc. The plotting that moves the season to its conclusion is a bit preposterous, once you think about it (which you don't while watching) - in fact it depends on so many unlikelihoods that it could never play out in reality as it does on the screen - but we, or at least I, am very forgiving because of the high entertainment value and the building depth and complexity of the characters that creator Vince Gilligan has mastered over the course of 4 seasons, and I eagerly await the 5th.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Inside Baseball: Moneyball's good, but the A's still aren't

Baseball fans will definitely enjoy "Moneyball," even if it's - like practically every American studio film these days - about 30 minutes too long, but will others like it, too? Probably to a degree. It's strength is the inside look at baseball management, seen through the lens of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), GM of the struggling Oakland A's, who enlists help of young tech whiz baseball scholar (Jonah Hill) to use stats to make the team the best it can be with limited $. I didn't know till after watching it that Aaron Sorkin was one of the writers, but the whole way through I was thinking about Social Network: both films are about insider/corporate/executive life, lots of scenes of bargaining and so forth around a table, both build a hero who's against the system, smarter than everyone else, a bit of a loner. In some ways, Moneyball is even the better picture - it's a nice twist on the old baseball/sports yarns that the victory at the end is partial and ambiguous. Sorkin's dialog is always good; Pitt has become a better actor with almost every film, though I think the script makes him too heroic/flawed, doesn't fully acknowledge that his theories are a bit crackpot and that he needs some kind of expertise from his scouting corps to run a ballclub. Some pop psychology stuff seems very thin, and his relation with daughter shoe-horned in it seems to give movie wider appeal (won't work). Jonah Hill excellent in one of his first (?) serious roles. I loved all the inside baseball stuff but not sure of its veracity - I would doubt that a GM makes a trade on the basis of a 20-second phone call, with no consultation - but snap decisions like that do add to the pace of the drama.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

A few notes on the excellence of Breaking Bad Season 4

Nearing the end of Season 4 of "Breaking Bad," and will post on the completed season, but have to make a note here along the way about the extraordinary quality of this season, the writing especially. I've posted before about the writing in this series, but Season 4 is especially strong - no series on TV has used extended monologue as effectively as Breaking Bad - and in almost every episode there is a long scene in which characters truly open up in ways that are very moving and unexpected - and that feel very natural, true to life. Early on in Breaking Bad I had so much trouble buying the unlikely premise of s science teacher diagnosed with cancer who embarks cooking meth to provide for his family - but as the series has moved along the premise has become just a given and I have come to accept the characters and to come to know them. And I just think the whole program has gotten more sure-footed with time: Walter White/Bryan Cranston of course makes the show with his understated, deliberate style - that conceals an incredibly wide range of emotions and expressions. The secondary characters are also very good and by and large grow beyond "types"; though they're not as well-rounded as the characters in the great Sopranos or The Wire, some of the characters (particularly Cranston's wife Skylar/Anna Gunn) seem to have a life of their own beyond the confines of the script. Season has a lot of humor and - especially in the episodes toward the end of Season 4 - a lot of dramatic tension as well. So I have joined the chorus of critics in praise of the excellence of Season 4 of BB.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Less would be more: If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise

There are great scenes and great moments in Spike Lee's HBO documentary "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise" (Part 1), but great moments no matter how many cannot make this a great movie. In fact, it's a mess of a movie - Lee never edits his material and never shapes his material, so what you have in this two-hour first part (!) is a confusing mash-up of materials: starts off as a celebration of New Orleans post Super Bowl victory, so it looks like a celebration of the spirit of a city. Then we pick up on a # of people who were in Lee's previous much-stronger documentary, When the Levees Broke - a where-are-they-now five years later. Then lots of reprise from previous doc. Then looking at some of the NO residents in exile. Then some contrast between the recover in N.O. and in Mississippi. Then some attacks on FEMA for not following through. Then a look at some rebuilt houses, particularly a project that Brad Pitt has led and championed. Lots of interviews with current-day N.O. and Houston politicians (and one with "Brownie) - aside from the lack of focus, there's no evident chronology or organizing principle among these many elements. Going back to N.O. for an update is a great idea, but the very qualities that made Levees a strong 4-part documentary - a clear point of view and a solid sense of time and place - are completely lacking here; this ought to be a one-hour special - less is more.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The darkest version of humanity ever filmed: Robert Bresson's Au Hasard, Balthazar

"Au Hasard, Balthazar" is something like the anti-War Horse: in this case Robert Bresson's 1966 b/w film about a donkey in a tiny rural French town, (spoilers coming) the course of its life, from when it's weaned from its mother and bought for a little farm to its death in field, shot while being used to smuggle goods across the border. Like WH, AHB is episodic, tracing a course in time by following the life of a working animal - but AHB is simple, stark, orchestrated only by a Schubert piana sonata not by orchestrated crescendos. It's much better - but also very difficult and difficult to like: there is not a single human character in the movie who is in any way likable. There is so much cruelty to this animal, and so much cruelty within this tiny provincial town - Bresson's is the darkest version of humanity I've ever seen on film with the possible exception of Peckinpaugh and he was probably nuts. Even the bleakest Holocaust film has at least some elements of hope, of struggling against evil - but not this one. So what's going on? As you watch, it's evident that the film is in some way symbolic or allegorical, but Bresson's too smart to make these images blunt and obvious: I think we're meant to see the donkey's life as like ours, like a human life - we all go through suffering and pain, and things happen that we can't understand - in other words, our understanding and perception of god and the cosmos is no different from a farm animal's perception of human life: we see and feel a deity in only the most blunt and uncomprehending ways as we move through the course of our life - tiny occasions of kindness, but then suffering, frights, abuse that makes no sense to us but fits into a bigger picture beyond our comprehension and perception.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

A movie that grows on you, scene by scene - Tuesday, After Christmas

The Romanian film "Tuesday, After Christmas" is a classic example a film that grows on you, gets better scene by scene as it gradually draws you in, and ends up being a very fine portrait of a marriage in decay and the idiotic decisions made by a young husband who thinks he can leave his wife for a much younger woman - and learns the truth. It's a totally uncompromising film - and a difficult film, hard to like because the central character are not winning or charming, but a completely honest and direct and therefore impressive movie - very few scenes, almost no exteriors, each scene guite long, dialog-dominated, almost always filmed by a single camera from a fixed position - can remind you maybe of Cassavetes or even Ozu - starts with a very long scene of the young (30ish) husband and the girl, naked (nothing's hidden) on a bed, talking playfully, and through their talk we gradually learn who they are - that he's married with a daughter - and that's the way the movie unfolds - each scene gives us a bit more information, and we put everything together just as if we are a witness to these many conversations, there's no exposition and no narrative structure imposed from outside. There is an arc to the story, however, that peaks when the husband confesses his infidelity, and then we get several long and powerful scenes of the deluge - the wife goes from shocked silence to tearful, violent outbursts, and finally to curt and clipped and very angry control: she kicks him out, he pretends to be hurt but he's such a snake and a fool and he expects her to be thankful that he's confessed, and then we see him moving into the girlfriend's tiny apartment, it looks like a dorm room, and we know and he knows - though nobody says anything - that this will never work, that he's cut off from his family and he will soon be alone.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

One of the world's greatest works of art

Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is definitely a pleasure to watch and to ponder and my only regret was that I was unable to see it in 3-D - it's a documentary about cave paintings discovered in France in the mid-90s and the subject of intense study by teams of archaeologists and others, but not open to the public and rarely seen under any conditions till now (the more famous cave paintings are also closed to the public at present) - I'd always "pictured" the cave paintings as done on a flat surface but as Cave makes clear they are on curved and textured surfaces of a limestone cave, and the artists used the full spatial environment to create these works. One of the "rooms" in the cave, containing many extraordinary drawings of horses, seemingly in motion, is described rightly as one of the world's greatest works of art. These drawings were done about 32,000 years ago - but the style is so deft and sophisticated and sensuous - it's hard to believe they're not hoaxes (tests have proven they're legit). Who were these artists, and why did they make these drawings - and what did our ancestors do in these caves, over thousands of years? Were they shrines? Did they realize how extraordinary these works were and would be, then and in the future? In all of the work, in 1300 feet of cave space, only one depiction of a human being - why did they draw only animals? Nobody can definitively answer these questions, but it's almost a religious experience to examine these drawings, and Herzog rightly lets his camera linger slowly over each image.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Puzzled about Charlize Theron's character in Young Adult: sick, psychotic, or just sad?

Screenwriter Diablo Cody made her rep with Juno, where she created a teenage girl who thought and behaved like a world-weary 35-year-old bitch and now, in "Young Adult," she (and dir. Jason Reitman) have built a movie around a world-weary, 35-year-old (37, actually) bitch who thinks and behaves like a teenage girl. The movie did hold my interest, but for at least the first half of the movie I kept thinking that Charlize Theron, though excellent as an actor, was far too beautiful for the part: woman who's ghost-writing a series of YA novels and gets tired of her work (oh, the woes and tribulations of being a professional writer!, or screenwriter?) and inexplicably and suddenly takes off from her dreary Minneapolis apartment to go back to the small Minn. town where she grew up - OK, the vary basic premise/starting point for many, many movies and books - but the twist here is that she's determined to win back her h.s. boyfriend, a new dad/recent first-time father. Gradually, we come to see how terribly sick and crazy Theron's Maevis is - an alcoholic and cruel, destructive, nasty person. I began to accept that in her time of trouble she'd go back to her hometown, to relive the glories of her youth when she was the town glamor queen, and where people still believe that she's a big-city success. But would she truly be so interested in winning back her totally conventional h.s. boyfriend? No - but she might be interested in destroying his life, if she's truly insane. The movie pushes us to the edge of that cliff - but doesn't go over the line, so I'm left feeling puzzled about Theron's character. Is she nuts or needy or nasty? Sick or psycho or sorrowful? Movie doesn't clarify. What it does do, unfortunately, is largely adopt the POV of Theron's Maevis: though her life isn't so great, we are also meant to see that the small town (named Mercury) is a miserable place inhabited by contemptible people: her parents who refuse to recognize her illness, the thugs who bear a young man nearly to death because they think he's gay, and others. A movie that will hold your attention but that leaves me feeling troubled by its uncertain sense of character and by its haughty disdain for the conventional lives of others.