short film reviews, criticism, and occasional musing.

Monday, November 24, 2008

JCVD (2008, Belgian/Euro)

Jean-Claude Van Damme is having a really, really bad day. He’s broke, Steven Segal just beat him out for a role, and it looks as if he’s about to lose custody of his daughter. What’s a guy to do? Rob a post office?

What?

JCVD has a lot going for it – an inventive story, a star who’s willing to laugh at himself, and some pretty decent jokes. However, it seems as if the filmmakers have been spending a bit too much time studying the films of Michael Haneke and Charlie Kaufman – they want to go down the self-referential rabbit hole, that much is obvious, but they lack the chops. The movie lurches from action to comedy to melodrama without ever gaining a real sense of cohesion. Van Damme is game for all of it, and he shows skills here that I’ve not seen from him before, most likely stemming from some of the more autobiographical elements of being the biggest washed-up star Belgium has ever seen, but the tonal lurches do a disservice to him and to the story. In the hands of a more assured or experienced director, JCVD could have been a knockout. As it is, it’s a fitfully entertaining film, one that might end up giving Van Damme another shot at Hollywood.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Brief Encounter (1945, UK)

I’ve long had a weakness for epics, and so I’m no stranger to the films of David Lean. However, until now I hadn’t seen any of his work prior to the late 50’s/early 60’s. Brief Encounter isn’t really epic in the way that Lawrence of Arabia or A Passage to India are, unless you consider it to be a strictly emotional epic. One night at a train station, Laura (Celia Johnson) and Alec (Trevor Howard) meet, and then meet again by chance the following week. Their affair is framed and told in Laura’s imagination as she strives to make sense of the few weeks the two spent together.

To be frank, I loved Brief Encounter. It’s a perfectly pitched film – every part rings true, from the hemmed-in interiors that Laura and Alec inhabit, to the mirrored affair between two train station employees and the perfectly neat and circular narrative. Lean can’t be thanked for all of this, of course, but Encounter might be the culmination of his partnership with Noel Coward, and it’s Coward’s snarky wit that pops up now and again to break the emotional and structural tension.

The affair itself is poignant in its very ordinariness. Laura and Alec are quite obviously in the throes of a middle-age crisis, vaguely dissatisfied with their lives of routine (one of my favorite bits has Laura remarking on her appreciation for the subtle charms of the pharmacist’s shop), though Laura’s motives are more obvious than Alec’s. He seems to me to be something of a slippery character, and I can’t quite decide if his motives are pure and his impulsiveness just the mark of a classic rusher-inner, or if he actually might be something of a cad. All the same, their escape into one another provides the perfect counterpoint to dull lives and uninspiring futures, no matter how quickly the whole thing plays out.

Just an FYI for anyone in Chicago – the Siskel Center is doing a two-month Lean retrospective, and if you haven’t seen some of the later films (particularly Lawrence) on the big screen, take the opportunity. Seeing it at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles a few years ago was something of a transformative experience, though I must have seen it at least three or four times before that. The Siskel screen may not be as impressive, but it certainly beats whatever size television you might have.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006, German/French)

How do you make a movie about the sense of smell? Then again, how do you write a book about same? Patrick Suskind did a pretty excellent job with the novel Perfume, but Tom Twyker stumbles a bit in its adaptation. It’s overlong, which is a shame, considering that Twyker and his screenwriting partners condense the excellent first and second parts of the book to focus more on the less compelling (at least in my opinion) final third, making it much more of a pedestrian murder story. However, the choice must have been something of a bind for the filmmakers, as the last act is certainly the most cinematic part of the story.

Casting Ben Whishaw (pretty much the only thing Brideshead Revisited had going for it) as the sociopathic Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was a smart move, but it’s such a difficult role that he sometimes seems to be doing little more than reacting to the various olfactory set-ups that Twyker runs him through. And Dustin Hoffman as a 18th century Italian perfumer? Really? Who thought that was a good idea? Casting issues aside, Prefume is beautiful to watch, though the sheer grossness of Enlightenment-era Paris never quite gels with all of the gorgeous visuals. Suskind managed a great deal more with words on the page.

Quantum of Solace (2008, UK/USA)

Some critics have been quibbling with the fact that Quantum of Solace does away with some of the hallmarks of a Bond film – but it’s not as if Bond hasn’t changed with the decades. Connery Bonds were very different animals than Brosnan or even Moore Bonds, and not just because they had different leads. If Quantum gives us a leaner, meaner Bond, that’s partly due to the set-up of the story (niftily, though occasionally confusingly, beginning only hours after Casino Royale ends) and partly because that’s what big action films do these days. Casino had its fair share of adrenaline, too, though it was certainly more leisurely and had greater depth than the sequel. Quantum packs six action sequences (not counting a number of minor fights) into a running time just over an hour and a half. They’re pretty spectacular, particularly the opening car chase and subsequent foot pursuit, but I do find myself hoping that Bond slows down a bit in the third installment. Though anyone complaining about the lack of Bond trademarks in Quantum must have missed the pretty slick Goldfinger nod.