Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan
Zelig is a fake documentary about Leonard Zelig: The Human Chameleon. A man who has such an intense desire to be liked that he takes on the characteristics of other people in his environment, including gaining weight, growing facial hair or even changing the colour of his skin if need be. I call Zelig a "fake documentary" and not a "mockumentary" because it predates the original mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap and it shares no stylistic characteristics with Guest films or The Office style TV shows. It is not improvised and has zero talking head interviews. It is not aping fly-on-the-wall documentaries, it is aping historical documentaries. Allen and Gordon Willis impeccably recreate this genre whose primary tools are two classic stimulants: archival footage and professional narration. Casting Patrick Horgan, the voice of dozens of Sherlock Holmes audiobooks, as the narrator, gives the fake documentary authenticity and the film a straight man. Allen plays the funny man and his mannered, nervous speech plays well off Horgan's dry narration. Horgan is delivering monologues for most of the film, but Allen's writing and directing and performance consistently wring laughs out of gags in "historical" pictures, videos and songs.
It can be tough to notice because it's often cloaked in self-deprecation or perfectly-constructed jokes, but Woody Allen is very perceptive about the human condition. His self-deprecation cloaks soul-baring moments in irony, which lessens their emotional impact, but is also true to his characters. Their neuroses are not quirks, but defense mechanisms because the characters are too afraid of saying something honest and direct about themselves without being protected by a veil of cleverness. The documentary framework of Zelig might appear overly clever, but it mirrors Allen's characters; their film is full of winking ironic moments, but the story is still told in a realistic way. The structure allows Zelig to satire documentaries, news media, males roles in society and The Golden Era Hollywood, however Zelig is a minor figure and if his story were told it would probably be told in psych-textbooks and dry black and white documentaries. The commitment to imitating, but not mocking the genre grounds the movie and prevents the pervasive irony from ruining the film's sentiment.
The premise of Zelig seems so broad, like a mediocre SNL sketch, that through the first act I found it hard to believe there would be any insights on human behaviour. However I didn't really care because there are so many great one liners throughout, " I have an interesting case. I'm treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities. I'm getting paid by eight people." "I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women." "The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew, that could turn himself into a Negro and an Indian, saw him as a triple threat." However as the movie progresses it turns into a poignant fable about conformity, insecurity and neurosis. If one tries to fit in too much they lose their unique humanity, if they constantly speak their mind they are boorish and obnoxious: the goal is to find the unattainable golden mean. Similarly Zelig needs to maintain a tonal balance between a legitimate insight on humanity and killer punchlines that threaten to undermine the earnestness that is earned via the original insight. Fortunately Allen's ability to maintain a tonal balance is one of his great strengths and he succeeds in making a wickedly funny, touching, reflection on neurosis and an effective love story.
Showing posts with label 4 Stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4 Stars. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Cabin in the Woods - 2012 - 4 Stars
Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Amy Acker, Kristen Conolly, Anna Hutchinson, Chris Hemsworth
BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND GO SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHT AWAY. YOUR EYES WILL FALL OUT OF YOUR SOCKET IF YOU DISCOVER EVEN ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE FROM THIS MOVIE BEFORE YOU SEE IT
So much of the dialogue surrounding The Cabin in the Woods has been about not revealing spoilers that I feel it has both over-hyped and underrated the movie. The conceit of CitW is hinted at in the opening scene and becomes clear during the first act, from there more layers begin to peel off and we are kept engaged and surprised until the final frame. Since those layers continually peel off throughout the movie, I felt the attitude of spoiler alarmists were too extreme: it's as if they believed that any discussion of the movie revolved around a binary proposition of summarizing the whole plot or dead silence. In my Cyrus review I argued that it is best to see all movies with no prior knowledge and I still agree with that, however I do not think that CitW was so sacred that even daring to mention its premise was blasphemous.
The dissemination of information in modern society has made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it has also made it harder to be legitimately surprised by anything. I appreciate the effort by critics to encourage people to see this film tabula rasa, but the chatter was so overwhelming that I sort of wish I knew the premise going in, instead of being inundated with vague comments about the necessity of a blank slate. The film works best if one is expecting to see a generic horror movie and is surprised by the deconstruction that follows, but a movie written by Joss Whedon that is being coyly discussed throughout the media is ipso facto not a generic horror movie.
I am going to preemptively apologize for ascribing motivations to other critics, but I can't help but think a lot of people protecting CitW were doing so because they are acolytes of Joss Whedon.* I have seen very little of Joss Whedon's work and am generally indifferent towards him, but I doubt other premise-heavy genre deconstructions warranted extreme warnings, partially because they are worse films; I doubt reviews of movies like Phone Booth had similar disclaimers, but I wouldn't have given Phone Booth 4 stars. The chatter is surrounding CitW is not completely unearned, but it's worth noting that the cult of Whedon casts a large shadow.
The initial premise of The Cabin in the Woods is a clever one, there is a giant multi-national corporation that elaborately stages horror movies scenarios using unknowing participants for an unknown reason. It's a good hook for a horror movie and sets the stage for strong genre-deconstruction and film-criticism. There is currently an abundance of self-aware horror movies (there was even a Piranha 3DD trailer before CitW) what makes CitW better than other meta-movies is its execution. The plot is impeccably constructed, the performances are top notch, especially Richard Jenkins, who is a welcome addition in any movie and there is a strong balance between horror and comedy throughout the film. All these elements combined to create one of the funnest experiences I have ever had in a movie theatre and I doubt a little bit of a priori knowledge would change that.
*Sidebar: Can we please stop applying this bullshit underdog narrative to Joss Whedon. He has produced 4 network television series that ran for a combined 300+ episodes, he has a writing credit on Toy Story, Serenity is one of the few TV shortly-lived TV series to ever get a spin-off movie and finally he just directed The Avengers, which will make 800 million worldwide by the time The Cabin in the Woods is available on DVD. He is incredibly successful by any metric and has had several platforms to showcase his wares.
Cast: Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Amy Acker, Kristen Conolly, Anna Hutchinson, Chris Hemsworth
BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND GO SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHT AWAY. YOUR EYES WILL FALL OUT OF YOUR SOCKET IF YOU DISCOVER EVEN ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE FROM THIS MOVIE BEFORE YOU SEE IT
So much of the dialogue surrounding The Cabin in the Woods has been about not revealing spoilers that I feel it has both over-hyped and underrated the movie. The conceit of CitW is hinted at in the opening scene and becomes clear during the first act, from there more layers begin to peel off and we are kept engaged and surprised until the final frame. Since those layers continually peel off throughout the movie, I felt the attitude of spoiler alarmists were too extreme: it's as if they believed that any discussion of the movie revolved around a binary proposition of summarizing the whole plot or dead silence. In my Cyrus review I argued that it is best to see all movies with no prior knowledge and I still agree with that, however I do not think that CitW was so sacred that even daring to mention its premise was blasphemous.
The dissemination of information in modern society has made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it has also made it harder to be legitimately surprised by anything. I appreciate the effort by critics to encourage people to see this film tabula rasa, but the chatter was so overwhelming that I sort of wish I knew the premise going in, instead of being inundated with vague comments about the necessity of a blank slate. The film works best if one is expecting to see a generic horror movie and is surprised by the deconstruction that follows, but a movie written by Joss Whedon that is being coyly discussed throughout the media is ipso facto not a generic horror movie.
I am going to preemptively apologize for ascribing motivations to other critics, but I can't help but think a lot of people protecting CitW were doing so because they are acolytes of Joss Whedon.* I have seen very little of Joss Whedon's work and am generally indifferent towards him, but I doubt other premise-heavy genre deconstructions warranted extreme warnings, partially because they are worse films; I doubt reviews of movies like Phone Booth had similar disclaimers, but I wouldn't have given Phone Booth 4 stars. The chatter is surrounding CitW is not completely unearned, but it's worth noting that the cult of Whedon casts a large shadow.
The initial premise of The Cabin in the Woods is a clever one, there is a giant multi-national corporation that elaborately stages horror movies scenarios using unknowing participants for an unknown reason. It's a good hook for a horror movie and sets the stage for strong genre-deconstruction and film-criticism. There is currently an abundance of self-aware horror movies (there was even a Piranha 3DD trailer before CitW) what makes CitW better than other meta-movies is its execution. The plot is impeccably constructed, the performances are top notch, especially Richard Jenkins, who is a welcome addition in any movie and there is a strong balance between horror and comedy throughout the film. All these elements combined to create one of the funnest experiences I have ever had in a movie theatre and I doubt a little bit of a priori knowledge would change that.
*Sidebar: Can we please stop applying this bullshit underdog narrative to Joss Whedon. He has produced 4 network television series that ran for a combined 300+ episodes, he has a writing credit on Toy Story, Serenity is one of the few TV shortly-lived TV series to ever get a spin-off movie and finally he just directed The Avengers, which will make 800 million worldwide by the time The Cabin in the Woods is available on DVD. He is incredibly successful by any metric and has had several platforms to showcase his wares.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tabloid - 2010 - 4 Stars
Director: Errol Morris
Subject: "The Case of the Manacled Mormon"
Tabloid is the story of Joyce McKinney and "The Case of the Manacled Mormon", it is a story best discovered as one watches the film and I would suggest people watch this movie with as little prior knowledge as possible. Morris manages to get interviews with most of the principles involved in the story, including two exceedingly British tabloid journalists, who touch not only on the specific case, but the nature of being a young tabloid journalist in the gossip-hungry UK.
As an effete intellectual, I am supposed to be dismissive about tabloid stories, but every now and then get sucked into the vortex of a tabloid story. I spent an embarrassingly large amount of 2011 watching the Charlie Sheen meltdown, but eventually I stopped because I was bored. High profile tabloid stories are monotonous, they take years to play out and are constantly reported on. This is why family-members, high school teachers, secretaries and other peripheral players will inevitably get hounded by reporters: tabloids need to find something, anything, to report on. In Charlie Sheen's case the first 15 minutes of his daily free-associative rambling was top-notch lunacy, but following several hours of daily interviews, UStream live chats, twitter rants and assorted ephemera became overwhelming and repetitive. E! True Hollywood Story and other copycats, made me skeptical of a documentary about a tabloid story, but in retrospect these types of stories are perfect fodder for documentaries because a skilled filmmaker can excise all the fat and create a captivating highlight reel.
Errol Morris is one of the few documentarians who can make their movies fun, without interjecting themselves in the middle of them. Morris' career is based around documenting the actions of eccentrics, he is so successful because he respects the humanity of his subjects, which allows them to open up. Morris smartly refrains from explicitly judging the principals and allows the audience to make up their mind via first-hand interviews with McKinney and secondary characters in "The Case of the Manacled Mormon". From the opening credit sequences Morris embraces the pulpy fun of Tabloid through a series of visual flourishes, whether he is panning to a campy cartoon that explains Mormonism or superimposing tabloid headlines over talking heads as if they were onomatopoeia in Adam West's Batman.
Every time I finish a Morris film I am amazed at how his subjects answer almost every direct question honestly: he taps into a natural human inclination to tell the truth when directly confronted with it. Throughout the film there are moments we think McKinney is lying, but we also believe she is so deluded that she thinks she is telling the truth. This film is a must watch for film fans, because Morris as per usual found a captivating subject for a documentary, but it is also an excellent takedown of tabloid journalism. In just under 90 minutes he manages to succinctly and thoroughly condense a story that ran off and on for 30 years that is so captivating because the historical distance eliminates the ephemera that is a byproduct of round the clock coverage.
Subject: "The Case of the Manacled Mormon"
Tabloid is the story of Joyce McKinney and "The Case of the Manacled Mormon", it is a story best discovered as one watches the film and I would suggest people watch this movie with as little prior knowledge as possible. Morris manages to get interviews with most of the principles involved in the story, including two exceedingly British tabloid journalists, who touch not only on the specific case, but the nature of being a young tabloid journalist in the gossip-hungry UK.
As an effete intellectual, I am supposed to be dismissive about tabloid stories, but every now and then get sucked into the vortex of a tabloid story. I spent an embarrassingly large amount of 2011 watching the Charlie Sheen meltdown, but eventually I stopped because I was bored. High profile tabloid stories are monotonous, they take years to play out and are constantly reported on. This is why family-members, high school teachers, secretaries and other peripheral players will inevitably get hounded by reporters: tabloids need to find something, anything, to report on. In Charlie Sheen's case the first 15 minutes of his daily free-associative rambling was top-notch lunacy, but following several hours of daily interviews, UStream live chats, twitter rants and assorted ephemera became overwhelming and repetitive. E! True Hollywood Story and other copycats, made me skeptical of a documentary about a tabloid story, but in retrospect these types of stories are perfect fodder for documentaries because a skilled filmmaker can excise all the fat and create a captivating highlight reel.
Errol Morris is one of the few documentarians who can make their movies fun, without interjecting themselves in the middle of them. Morris' career is based around documenting the actions of eccentrics, he is so successful because he respects the humanity of his subjects, which allows them to open up. Morris smartly refrains from explicitly judging the principals and allows the audience to make up their mind via first-hand interviews with McKinney and secondary characters in "The Case of the Manacled Mormon". From the opening credit sequences Morris embraces the pulpy fun of Tabloid through a series of visual flourishes, whether he is panning to a campy cartoon that explains Mormonism or superimposing tabloid headlines over talking heads as if they were onomatopoeia in Adam West's Batman.
Every time I finish a Morris film I am amazed at how his subjects answer almost every direct question honestly: he taps into a natural human inclination to tell the truth when directly confronted with it. Throughout the film there are moments we think McKinney is lying, but we also believe she is so deluded that she thinks she is telling the truth. This film is a must watch for film fans, because Morris as per usual found a captivating subject for a documentary, but it is also an excellent takedown of tabloid journalism. In just under 90 minutes he manages to succinctly and thoroughly condense a story that ran off and on for 30 years that is so captivating because the historical distance eliminates the ephemera that is a byproduct of round the clock coverage.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Yojimbo - 1961 - 4 Stars
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Eijiro Tono and Tatsuya Nakadai
SPOILERS IN THE LAST PARAGRAPH
"The time is 1860 ...
the emergence of a middle class
has brought about the end to power
of the Tokugawa Dynasty ...
A samurai, once a dedicated warrior
in the employ of Royalty,
now finds himself with master to serve
other than his own will to survive ...
... and no devices
outside of his wit and his sword"
So sayeth the opening titles of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. In those titles, Kurosawa introduces one of the major themes of the movie, the obsolescence of a once noble profession. So it is fitting that as I watched the movie 50 years after its release I was both struck by its mastery and its antiquity. Kurosawa is one of the great filmmakers and it shows throughout the film, but the samurai film, like the samurai belongs to a bygone era.
The plot follows our no-named hero, played by Toshiro Mifune as he tries to pit two rival sides against each other so he can profit from the aftermath. It's a well constructed plot with lots of betrayals, double agents and ambitious gambits. It can be hard to follow all the machinations, but that is the point. The only person in the film who knows what is going on is our hero and even as we see every move he makes, we still don't know what he is thinking. Mifune is an incredible screen presence, he towers over everyone and has the range to play a stoic enforcer and a roguish trickster. Sergio Leone remade Yojimbo as A Fistfull of Dollars and as iconic as Clint Eastwood's performance is as The Man with No Name, Mifune, a shorter man, feels like a more intimidating screen presence. Some of the acting in Yojimbo is hokey to a modern audience accustomed to neo-realistic acting, but Mifune dominates the movie and overshadows some of the broader performances in the film.
As someone who grew up watching both the macho action films of the 80s and 90s and the CGI-fests of the current era, things like poor stage fighting and bad foley work give the movie an amateurish quality. This is an unfair criticism, akin to saying that a Kia Sorento is more impressive than the original Model T, it's especially unfair given how well staged and shot everything else in this movie is. Kazuo Miyagawa's work in this film is brilliant, the shots of rain and windswept streets is some of the best black and white photography I have ever seen. I assume he used a trick like how he famously dyed rain in Rashomon, but it doesn't make the shots any less impressive. The movie contrasts tight shots from people trapped in their houses watching action through shutters with shots of the open area in the town's main street. The shots of the main street are impeccably constructed; we can follow all the action in the background and the foreground with ease and they are still beautifully shot.
In the second act of the film a gun is brought into the town and as one would expect it quickly shifts the power in favour of the party with the gun. Guns are more efficient weapons than samurai swords and unlike swords guns can inflict great damage in the hands of an amateur. In the third act the movie asks, would you rather trust an archaic master or an efficient amateur? I am accustomed to ruthless technical efficiency and use it to my benefit everyday, however in Yojimbo Kurosawa makes an unimpeachable case that the archaic master is the right choice.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest - 2011- 3 stars, 4 stars
Director: Michael Rappaport
Subject: A Tribe Called Quest
Last fall during TIFF I saw the world premiere of Pearl Jam Twenty. I like, but don't love Pearl Jam, which made me one of the biggest PJ haters at the screening. The crowd's energy created a fun movie-going experience and Cameron Crowe got lots of great footage, but it was largely a piece of fan service and didn't try to ask any tough questions. After watching Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest I know how the rest of that PJ 20 audience felt. The Low End Theory is in my all-time top 5 hip-hop albums*, Midnight Marauders is close behind. I can remember listening to Vivrant Thing throughout the 8th grade, before I even knew ATCQ existed and I once traveled to El Segundo just so I could leave my wallet there. This is all to say, that there was about a 0% chance I would dislike this movie, so my rating is split: 4 stars for fans of the band and 3 stars for non-fans.
After watching PJ-20 I described it as a hagiopic and to Michael Rappaport's credit BRL has actual conflict and a strong narrative that isn't "look at how awesome we are". ATCQ was formed while all of the principals were still in high school, despite their youth they became one of the most innovative hip hop bands of all time. While their legacy prevails, their last classic album was released when many similarly aged MCs (I hesistate in calling them their peers) were just getting started. Their third album Midnight Marauders was released before Reasonable Doubt, Ready to Die, Illmatic, Do You Want More?!!!??! and many other seminal east coast 90s hip hop albums. BRL has interviews with Pharrell Williams and ?uestlove who treat ATCQ with such reverence that they sound like The Rolling Stones talking about Muddy Waters, eventhough they were born 3 years and 1 year apart, respectively.
The heart of the documentary comes from the relationship between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. Q-Tip is a musical prodigy, who in one of the films most captivating sequences shows how he bit the drums from Lonnie Smith's Spinning Wheel for Can I Kick It? Q-Tip is someone who will remeber the bass-line from a song he listened to 5 years ago and manage to reincorporate into a new song. Phife Dawg is a funny, affable diabetic-sidekick, who resembles every short yappy sidekick in every movie ever. I would love to grab a beer, smoke a joint or talk to him about sports, but his irresponsibility would become frusturating. Rapparort smartly frames the documentary around the relationship between the two, who were best friends as kids and became the front men of ATCQ for more than a decade. Q-Tip is a perfectionist who has spent many nights working by himself in the studio and became the breakout star of the group. Phife Dawg resents the acclaim Q-Tip has received, while Q-Tip pities Phife's lack of discipline. They are still friends, but as friends grow up they start to value different things and grow apart. BRL is a fascinating oral history of a seminal hip hop band, a touching story about two best friends growing apart and a must-watch for any hip-hop fan.
*For fun in no order
Illmatic
Supreme Clientele
The Low End Theory
Chronic 2001
Hell Hath No Fury
Subject: A Tribe Called Quest
Last fall during TIFF I saw the world premiere of Pearl Jam Twenty. I like, but don't love Pearl Jam, which made me one of the biggest PJ haters at the screening. The crowd's energy created a fun movie-going experience and Cameron Crowe got lots of great footage, but it was largely a piece of fan service and didn't try to ask any tough questions. After watching Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest I know how the rest of that PJ 20 audience felt. The Low End Theory is in my all-time top 5 hip-hop albums*, Midnight Marauders is close behind. I can remember listening to Vivrant Thing throughout the 8th grade, before I even knew ATCQ existed and I once traveled to El Segundo just so I could leave my wallet there. This is all to say, that there was about a 0% chance I would dislike this movie, so my rating is split: 4 stars for fans of the band and 3 stars for non-fans.
After watching PJ-20 I described it as a hagiopic and to Michael Rappaport's credit BRL has actual conflict and a strong narrative that isn't "look at how awesome we are". ATCQ was formed while all of the principals were still in high school, despite their youth they became one of the most innovative hip hop bands of all time. While their legacy prevails, their last classic album was released when many similarly aged MCs (I hesistate in calling them their peers) were just getting started. Their third album Midnight Marauders was released before Reasonable Doubt, Ready to Die, Illmatic, Do You Want More?!!!??! and many other seminal east coast 90s hip hop albums. BRL has interviews with Pharrell Williams and ?uestlove who treat ATCQ with such reverence that they sound like The Rolling Stones talking about Muddy Waters, eventhough they were born 3 years and 1 year apart, respectively.
The heart of the documentary comes from the relationship between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. Q-Tip is a musical prodigy, who in one of the films most captivating sequences shows how he bit the drums from Lonnie Smith's Spinning Wheel for Can I Kick It? Q-Tip is someone who will remeber the bass-line from a song he listened to 5 years ago and manage to reincorporate into a new song. Phife Dawg is a funny, affable diabetic-sidekick, who resembles every short yappy sidekick in every movie ever. I would love to grab a beer, smoke a joint or talk to him about sports, but his irresponsibility would become frusturating. Rapparort smartly frames the documentary around the relationship between the two, who were best friends as kids and became the front men of ATCQ for more than a decade. Q-Tip is a perfectionist who has spent many nights working by himself in the studio and became the breakout star of the group. Phife Dawg resents the acclaim Q-Tip has received, while Q-Tip pities Phife's lack of discipline. They are still friends, but as friends grow up they start to value different things and grow apart. BRL is a fascinating oral history of a seminal hip hop band, a touching story about two best friends growing apart and a must-watch for any hip-hop fan.
*For fun in no order
Illmatic
Supreme Clientele
The Low End Theory
Chronic 2001
Hell Hath No Fury
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Meek's Cutoff - 2010 - 4 Stars
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano
It's hard to write about plotless movies, without feeling like you are spoiling the whole movie, if you mention a kernel of the narrative like "two men named Gerry get lost while hiking" it feels like you told them the whole story. If you say "nothing happens" the viewer is prepared for nothing to happen. Meek's Cutoff isn't Koyaanisqatsi, but for the sake of not giving away too much, all I will say about the plot is that it follows a group of settlers on the Oregon Trail looking for water.
My knowledge of The Oregon Trail stops at the video game, so I can't speak with authority about Meek's Cutoff's verisimilitude, but it does feel real. I have always been fascinated with the minutia of history, but most of the details in historical fiction are reductive and touristy, "oh look at that grog of mead, how quaint". Meek's Cutoff presents a brutal, stunning portrait of how tough it must have been to be an early settler travelling on the Oregon Trail. The premise of needing to find water creates urgency, but is also a nice historical detail, people needed to carry around weeks worth of water in covered wagons, when travelling undeveloped land. Most of the film's verisimilitude comes from showing the daily monotony of these settlers and while watching longshots of pioneers walking next to covered wagons seems boring, the cinematography is awe-inspiring.
For full disclosure, I received an important phone call halfway through the movie and the opinion expressed below might be a function of my fragmented viewing. The first half of the movie is a hypnotic look at the day to day life for these people travelling along The Oregon Trail it was as beautiful meditative experience that reminded me of the best parts of 2001 or Tree of Life. The second half wasn't nearly as strong, Michelle Williams anachronistic character was too empowered for a 19th century women and that caused me to doubt the characterization of others in the film. I think the blustery xenophobia shown by Bruce Greenwood's Stephen Meek was on point, but next to Williams he felt like a strawman created by Reichardt. The above makes it seem like the second half of the movie is bad, it's not. The second half has two excellent set pieces, the cinematography and period detail remain excellent and the ending is something that will and should prompt lots of discussion.
Stray thoughts
-I remember reading an interview with a Deadwood cast member, who was asked to describe the set, he responded with one word "mud", I suspect the cast of Meek's Cutoff would respond with one word "dust"
Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano
It's hard to write about plotless movies, without feeling like you are spoiling the whole movie, if you mention a kernel of the narrative like "two men named Gerry get lost while hiking" it feels like you told them the whole story. If you say "nothing happens" the viewer is prepared for nothing to happen. Meek's Cutoff isn't Koyaanisqatsi, but for the sake of not giving away too much, all I will say about the plot is that it follows a group of settlers on the Oregon Trail looking for water.
My knowledge of The Oregon Trail stops at the video game, so I can't speak with authority about Meek's Cutoff's verisimilitude, but it does feel real. I have always been fascinated with the minutia of history, but most of the details in historical fiction are reductive and touristy, "oh look at that grog of mead, how quaint". Meek's Cutoff presents a brutal, stunning portrait of how tough it must have been to be an early settler travelling on the Oregon Trail. The premise of needing to find water creates urgency, but is also a nice historical detail, people needed to carry around weeks worth of water in covered wagons, when travelling undeveloped land. Most of the film's verisimilitude comes from showing the daily monotony of these settlers and while watching longshots of pioneers walking next to covered wagons seems boring, the cinematography is awe-inspiring.
For full disclosure, I received an important phone call halfway through the movie and the opinion expressed below might be a function of my fragmented viewing. The first half of the movie is a hypnotic look at the day to day life for these people travelling along The Oregon Trail it was as beautiful meditative experience that reminded me of the best parts of 2001 or Tree of Life. The second half wasn't nearly as strong, Michelle Williams anachronistic character was too empowered for a 19th century women and that caused me to doubt the characterization of others in the film. I think the blustery xenophobia shown by Bruce Greenwood's Stephen Meek was on point, but next to Williams he felt like a strawman created by Reichardt. The above makes it seem like the second half of the movie is bad, it's not. The second half has two excellent set pieces, the cinematography and period detail remain excellent and the ending is something that will and should prompt lots of discussion.
Stray thoughts
-I remember reading an interview with a Deadwood cast member, who was asked to describe the set, he responded with one word "mud", I suspect the cast of Meek's Cutoff would respond with one word "dust"
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Caché - 2005 - 4 Stars
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche.
Even if he directed English language features Michael Haneke would never be the most accessible or popular director, but Caché has such a strong premise that it could be (and probably already has been) turned into an mediocre popular found footage horror series, fortunately Haneke puts his own stamp on a strong premise to create an exceptional exercise in suspense. Caché is about a upper-class intellectual french couple (Auteuil and Binoche) who receive an anonymous videotape at their house. They put the cassette in their combination DVD/VCR player and see a still shot of the exterior of their house during an non-specific day in their life. We don't know who is mailing the tapes, what they want or even if they are dangerous, though every thriller ever made has trained us to be afraid of this unnamed messenger ... I realize this sounds a lot like Lost Highway, but any similarities one might see cease to exist by the 10 minute mark.
Binoche and Auteuil are worried about their potential stalker, especially because Auteuil is a minor celebrity, he hosts a public tv show that discusses literature; apparently those exist in France. Binoche's character, Ann Laurent (A Haneke trope not a Lost Highway allusion) occasionally feels like an audience surrogate as she tries to glean information from her husband, but she manages to credibly portray concern for her husband, curiosity about their situation and fear that her husband is lying to her, that we buy her line of questioning. Most thrillers require characters to be stupid out of narrative convenience; one of Caché's triumphs is that even as Binoche and Auteuil act relatively rationally they make limited progress and receive no catharsis. In typical horror movies we know to be scared because the hot girl went into a dark room by herself. In Caché there are no obvious contrivances and our leads tend to act intelligently in such a high stress situation. One would think acting intelligently would lead them out of this situation, but the characters and the audience do not get the catharsis they expect. The stalker feels malevolent and omnipresent, which creates a sense of perpetual dread. Haneke wisely avoids conventional cues that precede horrific events and rarely has more than 3 people in a scene, making us believe a fatal event could happen at any time.
Though surveillance cameras can be invasive, they have a bizarre integrity to them. No one is editing the footage, no one is even moving the camera, the frame has strict borders and it captures everything within them. There is no room for the truth to hide on a surveillance camera. Even basic tasks like fast-forwarding or rewinding show a different reality than what is presented in raw surveillance footage. There is a scene where Auteiul is in the editing room and even his low-budget show can cut out part of another panelist's arguments if they feel it will make a better finished product. A filmmaker could give the audience all the answers his film's world, but they choose how much information they dole out. Caché creates a false sense of integrity through surveillance cameras, we believe what we see in the rigid shots through the film, but Haneke is behind the curtain and he is in complete control.
Spoilers below
I'm pretty spoiler-phobic, so I barely touched on the plot beyond outlining the premise. This movie is also an allegory about how the French treated Algerians, but I can't really touch on that without explaining a lot of the plot/ talking about the last shot of the film. If anyone is actually reading this blog and wants to discuss that in the comments, feel free to comment.
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche.
Even if he directed English language features Michael Haneke would never be the most accessible or popular director, but Caché has such a strong premise that it could be (and probably already has been) turned into an mediocre popular found footage horror series, fortunately Haneke puts his own stamp on a strong premise to create an exceptional exercise in suspense. Caché is about a upper-class intellectual french couple (Auteuil and Binoche) who receive an anonymous videotape at their house. They put the cassette in their combination DVD/VCR player and see a still shot of the exterior of their house during an non-specific day in their life. We don't know who is mailing the tapes, what they want or even if they are dangerous, though every thriller ever made has trained us to be afraid of this unnamed messenger ... I realize this sounds a lot like Lost Highway, but any similarities one might see cease to exist by the 10 minute mark.
Binoche and Auteuil are worried about their potential stalker, especially because Auteuil is a minor celebrity, he hosts a public tv show that discusses literature; apparently those exist in France. Binoche's character, Ann Laurent (A Haneke trope not a Lost Highway allusion) occasionally feels like an audience surrogate as she tries to glean information from her husband, but she manages to credibly portray concern for her husband, curiosity about their situation and fear that her husband is lying to her, that we buy her line of questioning. Most thrillers require characters to be stupid out of narrative convenience; one of Caché's triumphs is that even as Binoche and Auteuil act relatively rationally they make limited progress and receive no catharsis. In typical horror movies we know to be scared because the hot girl went into a dark room by herself. In Caché there are no obvious contrivances and our leads tend to act intelligently in such a high stress situation. One would think acting intelligently would lead them out of this situation, but the characters and the audience do not get the catharsis they expect. The stalker feels malevolent and omnipresent, which creates a sense of perpetual dread. Haneke wisely avoids conventional cues that precede horrific events and rarely has more than 3 people in a scene, making us believe a fatal event could happen at any time.
Though surveillance cameras can be invasive, they have a bizarre integrity to them. No one is editing the footage, no one is even moving the camera, the frame has strict borders and it captures everything within them. There is no room for the truth to hide on a surveillance camera. Even basic tasks like fast-forwarding or rewinding show a different reality than what is presented in raw surveillance footage. There is a scene where Auteiul is in the editing room and even his low-budget show can cut out part of another panelist's arguments if they feel it will make a better finished product. A filmmaker could give the audience all the answers his film's world, but they choose how much information they dole out. Caché creates a false sense of integrity through surveillance cameras, we believe what we see in the rigid shots through the film, but Haneke is behind the curtain and he is in complete control.
Spoilers below
I'm pretty spoiler-phobic, so I barely touched on the plot beyond outlining the premise. This movie is also an allegory about how the French treated Algerians, but I can't really touch on that without explaining a lot of the plot/ talking about the last shot of the film. If anyone is actually reading this blog and wants to discuss that in the comments, feel free to comment.
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