Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, USA, 2013, 90 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
Gritty tales of
revenge are all too common in cinema, but veteran cinematographer Jeremy
Saulnier’s directorial debut puts a refreshing spin on this type of story by
constantly demonstrating that the vengeful party (Macon Blair) is completely in
over his head in his pursuit of the backwoods clan who murdered his parents. Blair never becomes an unstoppable badass,
but remains a meek everyman even when he’s committing acts of horrifically
graphic violence, which makes the action unbearably tense even as it gives the
film a moral dimension usually lacking in revenge plots. It’s like the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984) or Fargo (1996), but without the ironic
distancing and with a more effectively streamlined narrative. B
A Field in England (Ben Wheatley, UK, 2013, 90 min.)
Viewed on DVD First
Viewing
Ben Wheatley is one
of the most exciting talents in modern horror, largely due to his skill at
unpredictably mixing in elements from other genres – which makes it all the
more disappointing that his latest is a generically trippy psychedelic
nightmare that feels too slavishly indebted to decades-old head films to be
truly avant-garde. The black and white
cinematography is excellent throughout, and the inevitable druggy freak-out at
the climax is sharply edited, but the film is mostly a bore. C
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One (Francis Lawrence, USA, 2014, 123 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
For all its glossy
blockbuster showmanship, this still feels less like a proper feature film than
it does bonus content linking last year’s surprisingly strong Catching Fire to the upcoming Mockinjay – Part Two. C
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland, 2013, 80 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
Before taking her vows in a 1960s Polish
convent, a young novitiate nun’s (Agata Trzebuchowska) faith is tested by a
road trip that brings her into contact with her bitter communist aunt (Agata
Kulesza), the music of John Coltrane, and the revelation that she is a Jew
whose parents were killed during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Director Pawel Pawlikowski tackles heavy
themes in a disarmingly tender and gentle way, putting the focus on the
semi-comic developing relationship between his mismatched lead characters
rather than forcing any broad statements about religion, politics, or the
Holocaust. Pawlikowski wisely lets his
incredible black and white imagery do most of the talking, and in Trzebuchowska
he found the year’s most mesmerizing camera subject. B+
Noah (Darren Aronofsky, USA, 2014, 138 min.)
Viewed on DVD First
Viewing
Darren Aronofsky
approaches the Biblical tales of Noah the same way that Peter Jackson dealt
with The Hobbit: expanding on a simple story by filling in the
missing details, adding context from related texts, and turning brief textual
passages into vividly detailed action scenes.
The results are messy, with serious ruminations about faith sitting next
to shots of giant rock creatures getting pelted with flaming arrows. Imagine simultaneously watching The Last Temptation of Christ (1987) and
Waterworld (1995) and you’ll have a
good idea of this film’s tone. The
various creative agendas only gel in one scene (a psychedelic montage detailing
the Christian Creation myth), but it’s bracing to see a rare example of the
Bible treated without kids gloves in a major Hollywood production. The filmmakers certainly deserve credit for
ambition even if they mostly miss the mark.
C+
Nymphomaniac, Volumes 1 & 2 (Lars von Trier, Denmark, 2014, 240 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
Lars on Trier’s latest
provocation is thankfully not the “porn film with movie stars” that it was
rumored to be. Instead it’s the
cinematic equivalent to Kanye West’s Yeezus
– an insane collision of high art and bad taste that is sometimes frustrating
but always fascinating. Though
ostensibly the life story of a sex addict (Charlotte Gainsbourg in the present
day, and Stacy Martin as a young woman), the film also functions as an obtuse
autobiography of its controversial writer-director. The film is drowning in references to von
Trier’s career, with allegorical nods to his Dogme 95 movement mixed with
flagrant remixes of shots, scenes and plot elements from his other works, but
the story is compelling enough for non-fans to follow along. The story is structured as a conversation
between Gainsbourg and a mild-mannered intellectual (Stellan Skarsgard,
blatantly standing in for von Trier’s critics) divided into eight chapters,
with each section boasting its own tone and style. As a result, the film is (perhaps inevitably)
uneven, but the rambling style keeps it from ever being boring. In fact this is in some ways von Trier’s
funniest and most conventionally entertaining film to date despite its extreme
content and length. Two standout scenes
– the epically sarcastic meltdown of the wife (Uma Thurman) of one of the main
character’s conquests, and a shot where a confused Gainsbourg is framed in
between the huge erect penises of two men arguing in an untranslated African
dialect – are as funny as anything I saw anywhere this year. B+
Paradise Alley (Sylvester Stallone, USA, 1978, 107 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
The success of Rocky (1976) allowed Sylvester Stallone
to make his directorial debut with a production of one of his earlier
screenplays, about a poor Hell’s Kitchen family who try to get rich in the
professional wrestling business. Rocky successfully combined classical
Hollywood storytelling with Neorealist grit, but Paradise Alley’s artistic priorities are much more awkwardly
balanced. At various points the film is
a slice-of-life, a hokey melodrama, an awkward comedy, a showcase for grimly
violent squared-circle action, and a blatant vanity project for its
writer-director-star, but Stallone never commits to a tone. The in-ring sequences were choreographed by
legendary NWA Heavyweight Champion Terry Funk, but they are filmed in a
surprisingly flat manner by Stallone, who has since become a skillful director
of visceral action. C
Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, USA, 1959, 75 min.)
Viewed on DVD Latest
of Many Viewings
Disney’s version of Charles Perrault’s classic fairy tale
was considered a critical and commercial disappointment when it was released in
1959, but today it looks like another sterling example of the studio’s knack
for combining expert craftsmanship and genuine charm. It’s true that the titular character and her
loving prince are fairly bland lead characters, but so much screen time is
devoted to the colorful supporting cast of drunken kings, bumbling fairies, and
one of cinema’s most memorable wicked witches that it seems pointless to
complain. The gorgeous hand-inked
animation is spectacular even by Disney standards. B+
Snowpiercer (Bong
Joon-ho, South Korea/Czech Republic/USA/France, 2013, 126 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
The tired post-apocalyptic thriller gets a fresh spin in
Bong Joon-ho’s wildly energetic film, loosely adapted from a series of French
graphic novels. In the wake of a new ice
age, the surviving members of the human race live aboard a gargantuan train powered
by a perpetual-motion engine, forever circling around a world-wide track. Poor citizens live in dirty, cramped quarters
in the back of the train while the wealthy live in relative comfort up front. One dissident (Chris Evans) from the back of
the train hatches a plan to assassinate the train’s mysterious leader, and the
film follows his increasingly gory and surreal rebellion all the way to the
engine room. The level of eccentric
detail on the train set recalls dystopian classics like Brazil (1985), and the many action set pieces become increasingly
deranged as the action heads toward the front compartments. The breakneck pacing eventually becomes
exhausting, and the social commentary never gets past the surface level, but
this is still one of the most fun and ambitious action movies of the year. B
Under the Skin
(Jonathan Glazer, UK, 2013, 108 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
Jonathan Glazer’s hypnotic puzzler takes a fairly rote
sci-fi premise – an alien (Scarlett Johansson) seduces and kills lonely men
before circumstances cause her to begin feeling human emotions – and craftily
sidesteps its clichés by embracing a boldly surreal, borderline non-narrative
approach. Few films in recent memory
have been as purely cinematic. Daniel
Landin’s richly colorful cinematography and Mica Levi’s nervy string score work
in perfect harmony to keep the viewer simultaneously entranced and off-balanced,
just like one of Johansson’s victims. B+
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