short film reviews, criticism, and occasional musing.

Monday, May 18, 2009

The Long Goodbye (1973, USA)

I’m a pretty big Robert Altman fan, but this was the first time I’d seen The Long Goodbye, one of the weirdest of his early films. Altman and Leigh Brackett take Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe out of the 1940s and plop him down in the middle of 1970s Los Angeles. In this, Marlowe could have become an obvious throwback – driving a vintage car, wearing a suit and tie, striking matches off any available surface – but in many ways, he fits right in. He doesn’t seem to mind the pseudo-lesbian topless convention having an eternal party in the apartment down the way (even going so far as to spot them for some brownie mix), but what’s more obvious is that his selective amorality seems to suit the scene almost perfectly. Sure, Marlowe makes a lot of noise about proving the innocence of a friend accused of murder, but mostly he lopes about with no clear direction or drive, becoming embroiled in another, only later related, case simply because there’s a pretty blonde at the center of it, and maybe no one else called that day. Even though the end of the film asks more questions than it answers, the whole thing just feels right, kind of like a shaggy dog story about a man who’s just . . . well, despite appearances (and aren’t they everything in L.A.?), maybe he IS the man for this time and place. Maybe L.A. has always been poison.

Stroke of genius, casting Elliott Gould as Marlowe – who could possibly seem more out of place in a free love L.A. than a crotchety Jew from Brooklyn? If it was Altman’s intention to make the inhabitants of greater Los Angeles look like assholes, well – he couldn’t have picked a better partner for the job. For all the mentions of his “nice face”, it’s obvious to everyone, even the super-weirdoes like Sterling Haydon’s alcoholic writer and Mark Rydell’s psycho mob boss, that Gould/Marlowe looks like he just doesn’t fit in around here. Stay out of Malibu, indeed.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Limits of Control (2009, Spain/USA/Japan)

If Ghost Dog didn’t make it clear, Jim Jarmusch is pretty much obsessed with Le Samourai and the other gangster noirs of Jean-Pierre Melville. The Limits of Control takes all the markers of the gangster film – the stoic protagonist (who could possibly be more stoic than Issach De Bankole? I think the man changes expression precisely twice in 116 minutes), the shady dame, the secret messages, the empty city streets – and breaks them into the smallest pieces imaginable. Unfortunately, this structure ends up so attenuated that it's unable to support Jarmusch’s existential narrative, as the endless repetition of verbal and tactile cues starts to wind down the road to nowhere. There’s some good stuff here – I like how the majority of Control takes place in the sun-drenched streets of Spain, rather than midnight Paris or lonely L.A., and some of the monologues that De Bankole’s character solicits from his co-conspirators (including an awesomely-costumed Tilda Swinton, as well as John Hurt and Gael Garcia Bernal) are quite lovely. There’s also an exquisite flamenco sequence, so much so that it actually elicits a smile from De Bankole. But the film generally lacks the sense of humor and character that pull Ghost Dog and Dead Man out of monotony. With those elements reduced to nearly nothing, there’s not much else to do than sit back and watch Christopher Doyle’s gorgeous cinematography, which is aided by a Boris’ strong score. The material itself, at least in this form, might have been better served as a short film.

Monday, May 11, 2009

I’m Not There (2007, USA)

It doesn’t always make obvious sense why certain Netflixed movies linger on top of the T.V. console for weeks and weeks. I’m Not There is a perfect example – an unseen movie by one of my favorite directors, about one of my favorite musicians, featuring some pretty great actors. But it took me over a month to finally sit down and watch Todd Haynes’ Dylan flick. Sometimes, I don’t want a film to disappoint. Other movies just have to wait for a particular mood, and there are those that seem like they’ll demand a great deal of me as viewer. I’m pretty sure that I’m Not There speaks to each of these.

The closest analogue to I’m Not There in Haynes’ catalog is probably Poison. Maybe Poison mashed up with Velvet Goldmine. As in Poison, Haynes uses multiple types of filmic styles – and he’s a masterful stylist, as anyone who’s seen Far From Heaven would probably agree – to grasp at some particular themes. Like Goldmine, these themes include identity, fame, the creative spirit, and the public versus the private self. However, I’m Not There has a great deal more ambition than either of the prior films, probably more so than any film Haynes has made to date. This has its benefits and its drawbacks – he’s able to draw some fascinating performances from the likes of Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the underused Ben Whitshaw, and he also creates a sensibility about the myth of Bob Dylan that feels quite real. On the other hand, the film often feels awfully heavy-handed, like the director is straining to make a point, and it also suffers from a length I don’t think it quite merits. I’ll also throw five somewhat bizarre and possibly terrifying words at you – David Cross as Allen Ginsberg. Yep.

In any case, even though I’m Not There didn’t always feel right to me, it was quite often hypnotic, and I can’t say that it does anything but enhance Haynes’ reputation as one of the most interesting contemporary American filmmakers. Every five years or so, I’m excited to see what’s come out of his brain this time around.

Star Trek (2009, USA)

I must admit that while I’m not a huge Trek fangirl, I do love pretty much anything Shatner-related, and I did watch a hell of a lot of TNG when I was young. So the idea of a J.J. Abram’s restart interested me a lot – I wasn’t particularly worried about the uber-franchise being ruined (more on that below), because I’m not terribly invested in it, and I thought that it might make for one of the better summer blockbusters, if handled well.

I’m so happy when I’m right. The Star Trek reboot is pretty damn rad. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are respectful of the mythology without being slaves to it, and the result is a well-thought-out origin story that might end up having legs of its own as a spin-off franchise. The casting is generally very good – Chris Pine impressed me by playing Kirk as Kirk, not as Shatner playing Kirk, and Zachary Quinto (in his very first film role) makes for a solid Spock. Less impressive was Karl Urban’s McCoy, who must have attended the Jack Nicholson School for Elocution, though the line readings seemed to smooth out as the movie got moving. Simon Pegg is a particular coup as Scotty, and I liked the beefing up of Zoe Saldana’s Uhura character, though I thought John Cho’s Sulu was given short shift. (Lots of Chekov, though. I liked Anton Yelchin, but wouldn’t it have been a bit more inspired to spin things completely around and make him Arab, or something? Just kidding.)

Less impressive was the big baddie – Eric Bana was almost completely lost in make-up, and his dialog was generally weak. He seemed created to serve the plot and to do little else. Also, I’ll be interested to see if there will be a J.J. Abrams project in the near future that doesn’t deal with A) time travel, or B) daddy issues. Quibbling aside, Trek is fun, gorgeous (all that money certainly ended up on the screen – dig the huge angry metal jellyfish!), blows things up real good without getting carried away, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. An excellent kickoff to the summer of 2009, and hopefully to a few more well-made movies.

Speaking of taking yourself way too seriously, about an hour into my screening, right after a pretty big plot point unfolds, a middle-aged woman in the row ahead of us started speaking in her outside voice about how the movie had just ruined the whole Trek universe, that things weren’t as they were in the original arc, blah, blah, blah. Annoyingness aside, I thought to myself – who cares? If a few things need to get rearranged or rethought in order to create interesting, propulsive filmmaking, well – I really doubt Roddenberry would care. The spirit of the series is intact, so what’s the point in getting bent out of shape over how things get from point A to point B? (However, I did like it how the film essentially told her to shut her trap a half hour later. Oh, J.J. – you and your space-time continuum wackiness.)

Friday, May 08, 2009

Sita Sings the Blues (2008, USA)

Sita Sings the Blues is writer/director/producer/editor/pretty much everything else-r Nina Paley’s semi-autobiographical take on the Hindu Ramayana. It’s an audacious combination of at least five different animation styles, as Paley weaves four primary threads together – sketchily-drawn moments from her real-life break-up with husband Dave, three comical Balinese shadow puppets narrating segments of the Ramayana, a Sita-heavy Ramayana done in the style of Hindu popular iconography, and a computer-generated vision of Sita and Rama where Sita sings the tunes of 1920’s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. Along the way there are some obvious parallels between the story of Nina and Dave and that of Sita and Rama – journeys, betrayal, self-sacrifice and abandonment – as well as some cheeky takes on the vagaries of Hindu myth (I particularly liked the bit where the shadow puppets argue about the spelling and pronunciation of various names) and common sites in the battle of the sexes.

For the amount of animation and subject matter that Paley crams into Sita, I was often shocked that the bulk of it works as well as it does. With the exception of one sequence after Dave dumps Nina, the different visual styles work well together, and Paley is smart to update the narrated and iconographic segments with contemporized language, while also imbuing the computerized song sequences with multiple layers of visual puns and strong characterizations – Sita is Betty Boop-ized, Rama looks like a thick-skulled college jock, and Hanuman gets gorilla DNA. Though the wrap-up is a little bit of a let down, it’s hard to quibble with what Paley has accomplished with Sita Sings the Blues. Sucks to be Dave.