Collapse (Sunday, November 29, 2009) (178)

Collapse is a very interesting and clever documentary by filmmaker Chris Smith about professional gadfly Michael Ruppert. To say that Ruppert is a conspiracy theorist is to miss the point. He thinks that everything in the world is screwed up and has a critical comment on just about every aspect of foreign, energy and economic policy. He is mostly an autodidact, having been an LAPD officer for many years working with the DEA and CIA on drug trafficking. Ever since the early part of this decade, he has been an avid reader of all sorts of journals and published a newsletter on all of his theories.

The film is simply a long and interesting interview with him getting his opinions on a wide variety of topics. Smith uses a very "Errol Morris" style where he shows Ruppert seated and talking with cut-aways to found-footage from old newsreels, cartoons and propaganda films. This feels very much like it could have been made as a chapter in Morris' First Person television series.

Ruppert's basic theory of the universe is that you should not trust government because the it lies and deceives in order to make more money for rich business interests. He says that renewable energy sources are over-hyped as they are either entirely inefficient, not thoroughly thought through or rely too much on a fossil fuel infrastructure. He says we should face the fact that we use oil and will need to remain on oil for a long time to come. He advocates that we are past the point at which we've used up most of the planet's oil reserves, so he foresees the collapse of the world population in the years to come. All of this is rather bleak and sober - but very interesting and hard to argue with.

The style is very nice and effective, with Ruppert at the center of the story, and keeping us interested along the way with all the interesting footage. The score, by Didier Leplae, Joe Wong and Noisola (all three!) is certainly inspired by many of the Philip Glass works composed for earlier Morris works such as The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time.

I like that Smith, in true Morris fashion, does not judge the subject and just lets him speak for himself. It is up to us, as viewers, to make an opinion about Ruppert. Is he full of crap or the smartest guy in the room? Is he a conspiracy theorist or does he really see the plain, unvarnished truth? Should we listen to him or just blow him off as a wacko? It's fun and very interesting.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Wiliam Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Sunday, December 29, 2009) (179)

This film follows in a line of recent documentaries made by children of famous people who are dealing with their parent's legacies. Similar to how Nathaniel Kahn dealt with the troubled history of his father, Louis Kahn, and how Aiyana Elliott dealt with her own absent, but brilliant father, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, here Emily and Sarah Kunstler deal with the legacy of their father, ultra-liberal lawyer William Kunstler.

Kunstler become famous for being the main defense attorney in the trial of the so-called Chicago 7. In that case, he turned the courtroom into a stage to show the world that justice in America is not blind, but totally subjective and relative. From there he went on to fight for the rights of prisoners in New York's Attica State Penitentiary, for Native American rights and a slew of leftist causes in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the film, the two daughters speak directly about how they grew up in an era when their father was past his prime and frequently took cases they disagreed with. The knew very well about his history, but sometimes found it hard to defend his actions to their friends. This is a loving and intimate look at his whole life, showing his growth from a rather typical suburban father and lawyer in the 1950s to a long-haired radical fighter who talked openly about drug use in the 1970s.

We see how he was on the forefront of social change through the years, though, from helping the NAACP with Civil Rights cases in the South in the mid-1960, to defending a political group who burned draft records in the late 1960s to the Chicago 7 trial and on. He was not a passive, armchair critic, but an outspoken voice of change.

Overall, the analysis is interesting and compelling. The style is nice, involving many interviews with his colleagues, friends and past relations as well as footage and court sketches from his many famous trials. More interesting than his own history, is the personal, human aspect of the story. The two filmmakers do a very nice job showing how they began to look at his career with a rather skeptical eye and ultimately came to understand their father as a human being with typical faults and several bad choices. Perhaps it is a bit one-sided and possibly too complimentary, but this is not too much of a problem in this affectionate documentary.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Home (Sunday, November 29, 2009) (180)

This film is one of the very few that I have been to recently just because of the actors in it. All I knew going in was that Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet were the co-stars. They are two of the best French-language actors working today and two of the most powerful actors in any language, for that matter. Huppert's role in Michael Haneke's La Pianiste is breathtaking and Gourmet is fabulous in films by the Dardenne brothers (especially L'Enfant). I got lucky with this film, which is a really fresh and interesting movie, by young director Ursula Meier.

I think the only way to describe the genre of the film is 'absurdist tragi-comedy' (OK, now I feel like an asshole for having written it - oh - it's so French!). The film opens with a weird family living in a home on the edge of an unused highway. Their front yard is the asphalt road and they spread their crap everywhere - beach chairs, inflatable kiddie pools, street hockey goals, clotheslines. They seem like a wild bunch, with three kids and two parents, who all play together, bathe together and love one another.

One day, the government decides to re-open the highway without any warning for the family. A road crew comes in to repave the blacktop and the next day the highway has traffic on it again. From here, the film becomes a wonderfully strange story where the family members go a bit crazy as the car exhaust fumes cause their lives to fracture and worsen. All they do all day is listen to traffic reports on the radio and television a the young daughter performs scientific tests on the air quality.

I guess you could watch the film as a critique on government stupidity or pollution and environmental degradation - but I think that would be missing the point. I think this is a wonderful look at the strangeness of family life and a farce about modernity in general. It is more a stylistic experiment, I think, than a narrative story, in many ways, as the over-the-top but straight-faced tone makes us appreciate the differences between this family and normal people becomes clear.

No surprise, the acting performances are wonderful. Huppert and Gourmet are great, as are their kids, played wonderfully by Adelaide Leroux, Madeleine Budd and Kacey Mottet-Klein (OK, you might never hear of these actors ever again, but they deserve mentioning). The oldest daughter, played by Leroux is out of high school, but seems mostly interested in tanning in the front yard. She's a kid who is much too cool for her family, but still loves them (ah, France, where kids never leave home!). The middle daughter, played by Budd, is serious and clinical, studying the effects the highway is having on the mental and physical health of the family. The young son, played by Mottet-Klein, is joyful and loves the adventure of living where they do, but worried about the breakup of their group.

Meier's style is sarcastic and weird. Moments remind me of films by Emir Kusturica, especially Arizona Dream, and the quirky and wonderful L'Iceberg by Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon with it's fantasy and off-kilter tone. It is also rather sad, dark and gritty at times, which brings to mind the Dardenne brothers' La Promesse. The cinematography by Agnès Godard (who also did a nice job with 35 Shots of Rum this year) is central to the emotional storyline.

This is a small, small movie, that I hope will be released on DVD- though there's a good chance it won't be. I'm a bit upset that the title is so dull (I believe it is the same in French), but it does bring out some interesting associations: "home, home on the rage"; "home is where the heart is"; "home sweet home". It feels like a pure work by Ionesco, following in a long tradition of French absurdism.

Stars: 3 of 4

FANTASTIC MR. FOX: The Film Babble Blog Review

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Dir. Wes Anderson, 2009)

The highly detailed microcosms that Wes Anderson crafts (think the theatrical productions of Max Fischer in RUSHMORE, the family townhouse in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, the cross section of Steve Zissou’s research submarine “The Belafonte” in THE LIFE AQUATIC, et al) fit perfectly into the storybook world of Roald Dahl in this film that more than does its title justice. The stop motion technique may at first glance strike one as primitive in these days of CGI saturation but the results aren't disjointed they're jaunty and full of life.

A slick, quick talking George Clooney voices Mr. Fox, a chicken thief turned newspaper columnist, who secretly returns to a life of crime defying a promise he made to his wife (Meryl Streep). Mr. Fox targets farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean: “One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean” as Dahl described and the film quotes in its opening. Mr. Fox’s son, voiced by Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman, is struggling to be noticed at school when he finds himself in the shadow of his visiting cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) but they bond when getting wind of Fox’s 3 phase heist plan.

With the aid of a wacky opossum named Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky), Mr. Fox pulls off his thieving schemes evoking the murderous wrath of the furious farmers who destroy his tree home forcing Fox and family to plough deep into the earth’s surface to escape. Fox’s tail gets shot off in the initial attack but it does little to discourage his plucky determination and cunning charm. 

The marvelous mix of quirky characters includes Willem Dafoe as a slimy security guard rat, Jarvis Cocker as a human hippy protest singer named Petey, with a few more Anderson regulars - Owen Wilson and Bill Murray as Coach Skip and a badger lawyer respectively rounding out the cast.

Anderson’s knack for setting the beats and tone with an eclectic blend of music from American standards to British rock ‘n roll pays off grandly here with composer Alexandre Desplat’s fine score filling in the rest. The Beach Boys “Heroes and Villains” (from “Smiley Smile” not Brian Wilson’s recent re-recording of “Smile”) works wonderfully in the punchy title sequence as does The Rolling Stones’ immortal “Street Fighting Man” in a chase scene set piece.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is a clever, funny, and fiercely intelligent film. With endearing style and grace it successfully welds the warmth of an old-school children's book sensibility with the hip humor of new-school speaking rhythms. It's the least pretentious and possibly the most accessible of Anderson's ouvre but it's so much more than that; Wes's witty and wise Fox concoction is an instant classic.

More later...

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La Danse - Le Ballet de l'Opera de Paris (Saturday, November 2, 2009) (176)

Frederick Wiseman has made a career of very interesting documentaries with a clinical, dispassionate style. In this film he spends a few months with the Paris Opera Ballet company showing an 'all-access' look at the troupe's creative and administrative process. This is a long film, to be sure - 160 minutes long - but it does not drag much and keeps our interest throughout pretty well.

Wiseman's style is consists of setting a camera in a room and recording what goes on in front of it. There is no commentary and no particular 'director's voice'. It is documentary filmmaking in the Maysles model. It is as pure a document as one can imagine.

Much of the film shows the dancers rehearsing their routines with their choreographers and creative directors. We see at least six different numbers (maybe more - I might have lost track of a few of them) from their early stages through their final productions on stage. The rehearsal spaces, in the cupola of the old neo-Baroque Paris Opera theater, are themselves something wonderful to behold. But more than that, it is fascinating to see how the choreographers work on the most subtle movements of the dancers to change the entire tone of a work.

In addition to the artistic side, we also see the business and management side of things. We see Brigitte Lefèvre, the creative director and force of nature that has her hand in every part of the company from casting to fundraising. She's a tough lady, but clearly brilliant and totally respected by everyone we see (of course they have to respect her on camera because they would be cut if they didn't). In one scene, we see the development committee talking about an event for the 'American Friends' of the ballet, organizing events for the $5,000 and $25,000 donations. (Unintentional laughs result from a comment about Lehman Brothers executives giving money. Ooops!)

Wiseman gives us a glimpse of almost every small part of the production and every small support department. We see a guy vacuuming the boxes and cleaning the aisles of the orchestra, we see the costume designers working on upcoming shows, we see the cafeteria where administrators and dancers eat lunch side by side, we see the union labor discussions. It's all rather fascinating.

What I find especially interesting is the fact that this movie, which really has no particular 'point-of-view' and no directorial 'voice', feels rather strange because of it's nonchalance. That is to say that the film works as a mirror on the current documentary films and how nearly everything I have seen recently has a specific slant - and much of it being outright polemic. When faced with a film like this one, the *unbiased*, document-ness of it feels rather uncomfortable. Am I that corrupted by contemporary directors and their opinions?

For me, this is as much a formal exploration as it is a cinematic experience. The film is basically one scene after another with very little (other than some general chronology) linking one moment to the next. I think one of my frustrations with it is that ends rather abruptly - but it would be impossible to know how else to end it, I guess. It is as if the film is counting upwards with scenes - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. - moving easily from one thing to another. That it ends, say, on 25, rather than 20, is totally fair.

It does bring to my mind similar frustrations I had with Christo's mega-installation The Gates in 2005. That was also a formal exercise, I think. It's scope was breathtaking, but it's execution was sometimes mysterious and hard for me to follow. I had trouble with the fact that the individual gates were different in size and strangely varied different in distance from one to the next. This might have been part of a greater scheme, but to me, it felt too random and unfulfilling.

I get the same general feeling from this film. I recognize it as a beautiful work of art, but there are some editing and pacing decisions that don't totally make sense. But they don't make sense on a more fundamental level than a spot level. That is, I think there might be a big design that Wiseman has for the structure of the picture, but I can't see it and don't know what it is. I can say that I want to know more about the precess and the thinking behind the film - and hope there's more to learn.

I think this is a very beautiful and interesting movie. It might be a bit too long for casual viewing, but it probably is not a film that should be casually viewed. It is might be a bit too serious - but that's the point, I guess. (Like saying a war movie is too bloody or too violent.)

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Me and Orson Welles (Saturday, November 28, 2009) (177)

Me and Orson Welles? Orson Welles and I? Orson Welles and me. Whatever.

It's hard to figure out if this movie was written first and then they cast actor Christian McKay as Welles, or if they looked at McKay and constructed a Welles movie with him in mind. Either way, his resemblance to the young Welles is uncanny and stunning (his resemblance to John Lithgow is also pretty close - so I guess he would have the lead in that biopic as well!). Other than the casting choices, there is not much going on in the movie.

The story is about a high school kid in suburban New York who cuts school and gets a role in the famous Welles-Mercury Theater production of Julius Caesar. That production remains today a grand historical achievement setting the Shakespearean history in fascist Italy. Along the way, the boy, played by teeny heart-throb Zac Efron falls in love with Claire Danes, an assistant in the theater company and gets bent out of shape when Welles seduces her. Danes is still gorgeous and shows herself here to be very good - it's a shame she doesn't work more.

One of the most fun elements of the movie is seeing some of the famous actors of the Mercury Theater. Oh - look there - it's Joseph Cotten; Oh - there's George Coulouris; Hey - there's John Houseman. Overall, the actors cast here look a tremendous amount like the real people they're playing. But that's about all we get from the film. The main point of intrigue, which only comes in around the middle of the third act, isn't all that interesting. It's great to see how the theatrical production came to fruition - but most of what we see is Welles behaving badly and still being a genius (of course he could behave badly because he was a genius - because he had a world class ego and because he knew he was talented enough to get the job done in the end). That's not all that interesting.

One very curious thing is that one of the big points of tension in the story is Welles' belittling treatment of Efron's character. Strangely, nobody ever makes a comment that in 1937 Welles himself was only 22 - only four or five years older than Efron's character. This is very strange, of course, because the whole point of the movie is that Welles is a genius. In this film there is no comment on Welles' age - and he comes off as a man in his mid- to late-30s. There could easily have been a line, like: 'Wow-Welles is so talented and so young!' (This is where everybody over 27 should feel shame that they didn't make one of the greatest films of all-time by that age!)

I generally think director Richard Linklater is an interesting director (though I certainly don't love all his movies). This film, however, feels especially anonymous and almost Disney-Channel-esque (and not just because of Efron). It feels very amateurish and superficial. Like a glossy history of a bygone era, with almost no grit and no psychology to speak of.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Mammoth (Saturday, November 28, 2009) (175)

Mammoth is basically an updated version of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2006 film Babel. Just like how that work followed people at different points on the globe not being able to communicate well with others, this film focuses on people in three locations dealing with difficulty in their lives. In New York City, Michelle Williams is an ER surgeon working night shifts while her Filipino nanny looks after her daughter. Her husband, Gael Garcia Bernal, owns an online gaming site and goes to Bangkok to sell the firm for tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the in the Philippines, the nanny's two young sons deal with life without their mother as their grandmother cares for them.

Similar to Babel, all three stories play out separately and only seldom come into contact with one another. Michelle Williams is very isolated from her daughter because of the hours she works and the hours she sleeps. Her job is high-stress and the costs do not necessarily outweigh the rewards. Gael Garcia Bernal finds himself bored in Thailand as the lawyers work out some details on the purchase deal, so he goes to a tropical beach to where he meets a persistent hooker. The two Filipino boys are sad they can't see their mother more and deal with the dangers of living in their poor city on a daily basis.

Basically none of this film feels fresh or interesting to me. From a stylistic point of view, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson does not bring a lot to the table that we can bite into. The story feels very recycled and there is nothing especially interesting from a visual standpoint. There are a few pop songs used throughout the film and even these are retreads from recent pictures. (One of them, Cat Powers' 'The Greatest', was recently prominently featured in Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights from last year.)

I really like Williams and think she generally gives very nice performances. There is no difference with her work here which is solid and interesting. I do wonder why she seems to only pick the weirdest and tiniest movies to work on, when it seems she could make bigger, more commercial films (considering her Dawson's Creek pedigree). Looking at her career, Brokeback Mountain seems to be the biggest film she was ever in - and she's a secondary character in that. Bernal is good in this film, but his role is so bland he does not have much to work with.

Solid acting, though, cannot solve this movie's problems. It is utterly obvious, vapid and beige.

Stars: 1 of 4

Kassim the Dream (Saturday, November 28, 2009) (174)

This is a small documentary about Ugandan boxer Kassim Ouma who fled to the U.S. after being trained as a child soldier in the civil war in his homeland. The first half of the film shows his training and some of his fights as a young professional boxer in America (still fighting today). He has sheer talent and drive and lots of potential to become a great champ, though his attention is somewhat broken up by the riches that come with his success.

The second half of the film shows him going back home to visit and re-connect with old friends and loved ones. After working with the Ugandan embassy in Washington to get his visa (which was complicated by the fact that the rebel leader in whose army he fought is now the president of Uganda and Ouma has spoken out against his regime), he makes the trip there as a returning hero. Once there he finalizes some loose ends and visits his home village he goes back to the training camp where he learned to kill.

Overall this is a nice movie with a good soul. Ouma is a charming man clearly haunted by his past, but doing well to make a better life for himself and his family. The main problem with it, though, is that director Kief Davidson loses track of the narrative and we end up with two very different movies - one about boxing and one about African child soldiers - with no real historical or stylistic connection between them. He could have cut back and forth between the two narratives and used his achievements in the ring as a foil for the misery he felt as a boy. Instead, we get two unrelated movies that are each less powerful and rather boring.

As I watched the second half of the movie I was reminded of another documentary from earlier this year - My Neighbor, My Killer, about the community truth and reconciliation trials following the Rwandan genocide. In that film, the powerful human message is amazing, but the filmmaker doesn't cut or structure the film in a way that makes for an interesting movie. With that one, I felt that I wanted to like the story (I wanted to love it, really), but I couldn't because it didn't tell an efficient story. Similarly with this one, the story is amazing and Ouma himself is lovable, but I can't help but feel unfulfilled with the result onscreen.

As a sociological case study this is a powerful story, but as a cinematic experience it leaft me somewhat cold. I love the shots of the boxer in an African village street with hundreds of kids clamouring to see him and touch him (reminiscent, of course, of the great When We Were Kings - and now Soul Power, from this summer), but such a set-up is somewhat superficial and trite at this point. I wanted more of a psychological journey from where he started to where he is now. Sadly, I didn't get that at all.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

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The Ugly Truth (Friday, November 27, 2009) (173)

For reasons I can't explain, recently Hollywood producers seem so bored with the romantic comedy genre that they've decided they should freshen up the films by adding a lot of really dirty language and imagery to them. At least that's how it feels with a movie like The Ugly Truth. For reasons I can't explain the dialogue in this movie is totally graphic and dirty, while the story is totally recycled crap.

Katherine Heigl is a local news reporter in Sacramento who is forced into hiring public access gross-out host Gerard Butler. Butler's show is about how men and women are looking for different things romantically - that men are looking to get laid and women are looking for love and romance. Long story short, Heigl gets Butler to coach her to be a better sex vixen as she woos her hunky next door neighbor, but, of course the two of them end up falling in love. (I couldn't have guessed that from the movie poster!)

I don't get the appeal of Heigl. I guess she's blond and has big boobs (though her boobs are totally unmemorable to me), but she has absolutely no personality and doesn't have the prettiest face on earth. I don't know - maybe it's the Gray's Anatomization of America. People in lousy television shows go out and make lousy movies and sad people go to see those movies and - voila! A star is born! (Interestingly, Heigl seems to have been born 45 days before me in Washington, DC where I was also born - so I guess I feel some cosmic connection to her.... no -wait - that's gas.)

Nothing really moves in this story. Butler seems to be a good father-figure to his young nephew, but then that story is dropped by the second act; there's a trite Pygmalion sequence where Butler is teaching Heigl how not to be an uptight nerd with men, but that goes nowhere; there's another trite Cyrano de Bergerac sequence where he feeds her lines when she's out with a guy on a date, but this goes nowhere too. It's sorta a 'throw pasta against the wall and see what sticks' approach to narrative structure. It's as if the writers (there are three of 'em!) collected a bunch of tired bits from other movies and put them in a pot to make stew. You get a bit of this and a bit of that in every bite.

What you also get is a totally sophomoric script and a film with an R rating for no purpose. It would not have been much different with tame dialogue and, say, a PG-13 rating. Just because you have an adult concept (which this really isn't) doesn't mean you have to season it with stupid expletives. Sorry to sound like a prude here, but there's a place for everything - and for a dumb rom com, there is no need for the foul language.

Stars: .5 of 4

The Narrows (Friday, November 27, 2009) (172)

The Narrows is a small film produced and set in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. In it a guy from the mostly-Italian neighborhood works as a livery cab driver for a small-time mobster. When he's not driving the car, he goes to NYU to study photography and sociology. There he meets a cute ritzy girl who has no idea what his life on the other side of the river is like.

The problem is the story never rises above a totally cliche, stereotypical level. The guy's guido girlfriend walks around in tights and high heels, snapping her gum and playing with her overly teased hair and caked-on makeup. His father used to work as a garbage man until he got injured on the job. The mobster boss wears fancy silk suits and sends the guy on runs to pick up mysterious packages. The love interest at school has a sharp tongue and seems to be the first modern woman the guy has ever met. You see, the title not only refers to the geographic area called the Narrows at the end of New York Harbor, but also to the space between the guy's two worlds. Oooooh. Oy vey.

Basically nothing on screen is interesting and the script is terrible with some horrendous dialogue that would make an junior high theater troupe weep. It ends in such a convoluted and ridiculous way that it might as well be the finale to a different movie. Along the way some characters (like the neighborhood girlfriend) are totally dropped and plot points (like the hot-shot neighborhood stud who survives a tour in Afghanistan but might not last in the mafia) become totally forgettable and insignificant. Worst of all, most of the story is told very efficiently in about 80 minutes, but the film runs almost two hours. I can't explain why there are another 26 minutes or what happens in them - it gets really dull and more banal the longer it goes. This is just not a very good movie.

Stars: .5 of 4

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When Helena discovers that she's pregnant and can no longer tolerate her boyfriend's loathing of marriage or his cruel family, she decides to flee.
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Julia Child's story of her start in the cooking profession is intertwined with blogger Julie Powell's 2002 challenge to cook all the recipes in Child's first book.

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A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.

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Ben 10: Alien Swarm (2009) - The storyline of the television movie follows Ben as he makes the tough and somewhat contentious decision to break ranks with his fellow Plumber allies in order to help a friend in need. A mysterious girl in her own right, Elena, a childhood friend of Ben's, hints at an oncoming alien threat to the Earth. As such, Ben Tennyson, along with Gwen and Kevin, lend their super powered instincts (much to the latter two's displeasure) to help Elena in her mission to find her missing father, Validus.

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The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Wednesday, November 25, 2009) (171)

To begin, I must admit that I have not read any of the Twilight books and really have no interest in doing so. Vampires don't really interest me that much as a genre and teeny bloodsuckers might be worse. I did see the first Twilight movie, though, on DVD (is that one now going to be renamed 'The Twilight Saga: Twilight'?) and was surprised that it was pretty OK. I really liked the photography and the blue-green-gray color palette of the film. The acting was terrible, but I thought the story was passable.

This second film loses whatever charm the first one had and works only as a bridge to the next film. I felt like most of the story was narration catching us up on what goes on in this baroque world and what to expect later on. This film absolutely does not stand up on its own and works only in conjunction with earlier or later stories. It is incredibly frustrating as it has no beginning and no end. There are a bunch of stories in it that go nowhere and it feels like a long episode of a teen serial - like an endless episode of Gossip Girl or 90210.

One thing I can't figure out is why Bella, the protagonist, is so beloved when she's just a dark, bratty, sad girl who makes bad decisions and seems incapable of taking care of herself. There might be two scenes with her smiling in the whole film. She seems like a jerk to her non-vampire friends and buzz-kill to anyone around her. When her toothy boyfriend Edward abandons her (for reasons that don't make sense, by the way, to the unread viewer) she falls into a pit of sadness that seems beneath her 17-or so years.

At any rate, left alone, she befriends a local Native American boy ('Look - an Indian boy,' says Cindy Brady) who doesn't go to school, but is a great mechanic. He falls in love with her, but she still longs for her Eddie. Then there's something about how the Native American boys in her town are all gigantic wolves and change from men to wolves when they sense there is danger around. Then there's something with Bella going before a council of aristocratic vampires in Italy or something.

I wish I could say that the stylistic elements that I liked from the first film remained in this one, but they do not. Director Chris Weitz loses track of the style with too much substance. The story is so choppy that we never really stay in any one place for long enough to see any beauty in it. Also, with the vampires out of town, there is no need for the over-cast skies that dominated the first film and allowed them to be able to go out during the day. These clouds led to the lovely muted color scheme of that movie. Overall, the look is pretty anonymous.

I would say the film is anti-feminist and a bad influence for young women, but that might be too late for such a warning. Bella is a totally passive player in everything she does. She makes no choices herself and needs either Edward or Jacob to guide her. When they're not around, she pouts and waits. I don't know if it was screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg or book author Stephenie Meyer who created such a lame and self-loathing character. (OK, Bella, so your boyfriend left for no reason. Pick yourself up and get back to life. You too can be an active participant in your own life!)

This is not a very fun movie to watch. It feels way too long and totally boring if you don't know what is coming next. What's worse is that there is no real discernible narrative and no beginning, middle or end, so it just feels like a collection of unconnected vignettes with no direction. Why it ends where it does is rather curious to me as there is no real resolution at that point. Why it couldn't have ended three scenes earlier, say, is not clear to me. I wish it had ended a lot earlier.

Stars: .5 of 4

The Road (Wednesday, November 25, 2009) (170)

I'm sure it's really hard to make a movie based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. And Cormac McCarthy's The Road is not an easy book to adapt. There is not much of a story to it. A man and his son are on an journey on foot in some post-apocalyptic hell-scape from nowhere in particular to some beach far, far away. Along the way, they encounter a bunch of people who want to kill them, rob them, rape them or eat them. This is a world where suicide is a real option for conscious people, an escape from the terrible bleakness of their lives.

The film by Aussie director John Hillcoat (don't worry, I've never heard of him either) gets this bleakness really well, but that's about all it captures from the book. It is mostly bloodless and boring and never captures the gist of the book.

When dealing with a post-apocalyptic narrative, you can either show how the world ended or just accept that it did end and move on from there. Zombieland recently did this beautifully, simply showing us that at some point in time, zombies took over the world leaving sentient beings to fend for themselves. This film, however tries to explain what happened to lead to where we are now. It suggests that most life on earth died due to some environmental disaster similar to global warming. We see several flashbacks of the man's life with his loving wife before everything went bad, and at different points, characters talk about what happened.

Worst of all, there are terrible voice-overs by the man (From the future? From another dimension? Speaking directly to us?) explaining what he's feeling at different moments. Voice-overs are almost always bad and ill-conceived - I think in most cases they're a sign of lazy filmmaking. It's the director and writer being unable to show us what is happening or what has occurred and needing to tell us directly. I think the point here is to have the man speak in voice overs what the narrator of the book would be telling us - but the narrator of the book was never so blunt or inartful. It just feels ham handed and annoying here.

There is some really shamefully bad directing here. For example, in one sequence they look at a map showing an eastern coast (possibly the Texas gulf coast) and the man tells the boy that they will go to the coast and walk south. Yet, once they get to the beach and continue south, the water is on their right side - meaning it's a western coast. This is basic stuff and bad to get wrong. Either they should get a different map or set up the shot from the other direction so the directional orientation is correct.

But the poor job doesn't stop there for Hillcoat. He manages to get product placement into a movie about the end of the world showing people eating Cheetos and drinking Vitamin Water and Coke. Really?! Vitamin Water survives as long as cockroaches? Really? (I shouldn't get into it, but it is curious to me that the only black man in the film is also a pitiful robber. I'm sure Hillcoat is not racist, but it is curious how almost everybody who survives in this world is white - and almost all of them is treated with more respect.)

The adaptation of the novel by Joe Penhall (again, I don't know him) has so many holes in it, but I think the worst is the way the boy comes out. From what we see, he was born into this world, yet now, around age 8 or 10 or so, he is totally unable to cope with his surroundings.

I would think that children who grow up in certain situations learn to adapt to those situations and take them as a matter of fact in their lives. This boy, however, seems to have grown up in our world and doesn't understand basics of his own (for instance, when you're hiding from cannibals, don't make noise). At one point, the man makes a comment about a Christmas tree to his son - but I can't imagine that the kid has any idea of what a holiday is, let alone what Christmas is. This feels like it was written for our benefit rather than the boy's. This is very sloppy.

Overall, the film is sentimental and boring. I would have much preferred a gritty, scaled-down story rather than the plodding narrative we get here. In the novel, the man and boy are two characters who seem to represent types - they're rather picked-at-random. Their story feels rather universal in the greater scheme of this universe. Here, however, the man and boy are people that we are supposed to care about for their individuality and humanity. This approach might be more appealing to film-going audiences, but I think it misses a big part of the story.

Stars: 1 of 4

AN EDUCATION: The Film Babble Blog Review

AN EDUCATION (Dir. Lone Scherfig, 2009)

It certainly isn’t a “meet cute” when 16 year old school girl Carey Mulligan is offered a ride home from Peter Sarsgaard in his snazzy sports car, but it isn’t exactly a “meet creep” either. Though Sarsgaard has a creepy reputation (his monologue on SNL a few years back was completely about how creepy he can be) here his character is a charming witty Englishman who has the ticket to an opulent new life for Mulligan, one filled with elegant culture and reams of romance. Or so it seems.

Set in a pre-Beatlemania Britain that Mulligan repeatedly calls “boring”, and based on a recently published memoir by Lynn Barber, the story is a simple coming of age one. Mulligan is impressed by Sarsgaard – a man able to charm her parents (a wonderfully befuddled Alfred Molina and a smirking Cara Seymour) into letting her go to a concert and dinner for their first date. 

Sarsgaard then reaches further with overnight trips to Oxford and Paris while Mulligan’s school mates blush with envy and her teacher (Olivia Williams) and headmistress (Emma Thompson) disapprove.

Our pithy protagonist is a bit taken aback when she discovers that her new beau is an art thief and a slick wheeler and dealer involved in blockbusting (the practice of moving minorities into apartments to make old racist women vacate so the apartments can be purchased cheaply), but she’s still soft for Sarsgaard.

As the first solo screenplay written by Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”, “About A Boy”, “Fever Pitch” and their respective film adaptations) one of the best modern novelists working today, AN EDUCATION is tightly written with sharp realistic dialogue and a touching tone. It is, perhaps is a bit too tightly written as the last act has some pat payoffs and all too tidy summations of character’s realizations. 

That doesn't stop it from being a sweet little gem of a movie with great chemistry between the actors and a very satisfying ending. I doubt it will win any awards but I bet it’ll make a bunch of “best of 2009” year end lists. Although, not sure yet if it’ll make mine.

More later...

Visiting The New Varsity Theater On The Verge Of Its Reopening

This Friday, the 27th, the Varsity Theater in downtown Chapel Hill is officially reopening (there was a sneak preview showing of THE WIZARD OF OZ on Sunday night, the 22nd). The theater, which closed last June, has been undergoing heavy renovations so I thought I'd visit and check out just what the new owners - Paul and Susan Shareshian - are doing to restore the theater to its former movie-house glory.



Last Friday, Susan Shareshian showed me around as the carpet was being installed and we talked a bit about the changes they've made and their plans for the theater's future.





Dan: Well, I’m really impressed with the place. It’s got the old fashioned theater look going in the nicest way.

Susan Shareshian: Thanks - we had UNC art students paint those murals on the panels.

D: Those look incredible and the whole place looks so clean.

SS: Yeah, it took a long time to get it like this... to get it free of dust.

D: So what are the Holiday movies you’re going to be showing in December and are they going to be 35 millimeter prints?

SS: They are all going to be original prints. We have “A Christmas Story”, “Polar Express”, “Miracle On 34th Street”, and “Christmas Vacation.”

D: So I see the birthday room is that going to be where the office was before – have you had bookings for that yet?

SS: We do have bookings for not only birthdays but we have bookings for holiday parties – not just for kids but for adults. We also have some private screenings for people who have made films and want a place to show it. At this point, it’s been about a month, it couldn’t be better. 

People are very very excited about it. We’re thrilled. This is all very grass roots, it’s really just Paul and I and our friends and family that are helping us. The goal is on the site to have the calendar so you see what’s coming, also to do advance purchase for tickets.

D: In the theaters how much work has been done?

SS: They are all being re-carpeted too. The chairs are the same, the carpet’s changing, the curtains are new, the moldings are new, and that’s about it. So far. And then in the red theater, the big theater…Paul wants to name them but he can’t come up with good names…

D: So you’ll show the older films in the small theater?

SS: Probably. It depends, “The Wizard Of Oz” we’re going to show in the big theater.

D: When did you decide to take on the theater and make a go of it? Was it right when you heard the theater was going to close?

SS: Yep, and then we had to be really thorough about understanding about how to run a successful theater and what that means. What the distribution companies want and how they work and all that stuff. 

One thing we’re going to do is we’re going to ask “what do you want to see?” I can tell you right now that everybody wants to see “Star Wars”, everybody wants to see “Back To The Future”, so when we show those it’s gonna be busy. 

Then if we pick some that are my favorites we probably won’t be as busy but that’s okay! We’re also going to do some other cool stuff like Wednesday afternoons we’re going to have foreign films for seniors. We’re going to work out deals with senior communities to have them bused here so they can be dropped off. Things like that.

D: Well I’ll definitely be here on opening day.

SS: Good! We’re going to do pre-sales starting on Monday. We’ll be here at the ticket window – I’m going to take the paper off the windows on Monday but leave the paper on the doors until Friday.

D: So you’ll be set up for credit cards?

SS: Yep. Mastercard, Visa, and debit but no American Express.

D: Will there be any differences with concessions?

SS: We're working something out with Sugarland across the street to have desserts and we've been also talking about bringing in a gelato machine. But other than that it will be pretty traditional movie theater candies.

D: The classics?

SS: Yep. The classics.

I was sorry to miss the sneak preview last night which I heard was a rousing success but, like I said, I'll be there this Friday for the Grand re-opening. It's great to see the theater in such great shape and here's hoping that Paul and Susan Shareshian's enthusiasm and drive will help the Varsity thrive for a long time.

More later...