Change Your Image
bluefire-6
Reviews
Particle Fever (2013)
An extremely well conceived, tight documentary on an exciting but challenging subject: the nature of human discovery
I generally evaluate films on their technical direction and production values, not necessarily their deep meanings -- because as a student of film and a video producer, I know how subjective those "deep-meaning" criteria can be.
I found this film to be an exciting, well-crafted, exceptionally well-edited and sound- designed production. No one in the audience seemed ready to drop off as is so often the case with documentary features. Instead, the director's timing was precise and the arc of the story very well formed. But there was much more happening in this movie below the surface.
The Hadron Collider is as one figure in the film indicated, the largest machine ever constructed by human beings ("machine" being meant as a mechanical unit, not a network like the Internet -- although even the Internet was essential to the successful use of the Collider, to distribute all of the data generated to various locations where it could be processed and analyzed). The drama of its conception was left a little vague, but from the time that construction began to the time it was used to look for the Higgs Boson, the characters involved are well portrayed and their motives thoroughly probed -- in an amazingly short time!
The physics behind the quest for the "God Particle" are not all that hard to understand and besides, the film does a great job of simplifying even further so that anyone with a basic high school education should be able to follow the story and its implications.
I particularly enjoyed the "main" characters, some of the key thinkers whose speculations as physics "theorists" fired the imagination of physics "experimentalists" who are driven to test the others' speculations. The give and take between the two communities gave the film its energy and tension. I hope there will be sequels following down the next round of experiments, to take place in Sweden, where an even bigger collider is being built -- and also the physicists, how their lives are turning based on the results gotten from this unique, massive exploration of the fundaments of existence itself.
PS PARTICLE FEVER is not all youthful, bubbly energy and joyful discovery. The stories of the older physicists, facing their retirement from the field possibly without ever finding elusive answers to questions they posed decades earlier in their lives, was real hankie material -- and for good reason. In the field of particle physics, like other achievement-driven/self-promotional professions, it's not how smart you are but when you're smart, if luck is on your side and you timely get noticed, validated, and lauded. Miss the mark, and you may be relegated to obsolescence even if your mind is still active and your ideas large. Fortunately in this case, most of those with long-ago aspirations have lived long enough to have their ideas tested and thus learn their truth.
Interesting how personal meaning and the meaning of the universe -- or multiverse, according to one theory tested by the Collider -- are so intertwined. And which really is the more important, a question about which there is no easy answer.
See this film, you will emerge glad for the experience, with big questions yet to be answered.
Branded (2012)
A great political and cultural satire and allegory
I was curious when I saw this movie listed on Netflix in the "Science Fiction/Fantasy" genre. Hardly. This is a political and cultural satire and allegory, a couple levels higher than Man Men. It could easily elude viewers bringing to it more literal expectations. The idea that the world is a conspiracy of brands isn't an entirely new one. Fifth Sense explored this theme in film and even earlier, Heinlein in his classic novel, The Man Who Sold the Moon. But Branded additionally gets into the contradictions of capitalism and communism, and their similarities -- especially total control in each case of the cultural milieu and the social conversation. Very heavy, especially the depiction of Belarus as a single well-integrated ad. The same could be said of the United States of America. Maybe even more so.
The film's production qualities are excellent and the acting universally superior. I will recommend this film to all my friends who have the intellectual capacity for its appreciation.
Before Midnight (2013)
I didn't buy it this time.
The acting was fine, the scenery lovely, but the lack of a narrative this time -- as opposed to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset -- started to rankle about 45 minutes in. Plus, people don't endlessly converse. They sit in quiet. They go off on chores, often separately. And they don't talk about the same issues endlessly, over 20 years. It was exhausting and at the same time, the conversation was cliché-ridden to the max. Lastly, Greece is still beautiful, but it is suffering mightily -- yet for all we know, it's still pastoral, home to modestly wealthy people living in beautiful retirement settings. We still know nothing about the main characters' respective homes in Chicago and Paris, except what little they tell us. All in all, much ado about nothing.
The format has grown thin as the film's characters and its audience have grown older. The scripted conversation hasn't matured. It hasn't become more sophisticated or more real. It's still two 20somethings working out their youthful angst, only 20 years later with kids involved (somewhat, their presence almost ghostly). Plus, everyone in the Western developed world can remember with warmth their first loves and the disappointments, but not their 40s. Those were less certain times. The characters' predicaments are not necessarily our own in that period. I couldn't get into those portrayed in the film.
Still, the lengthy film was over quickly enough, which is a tribute to the reality of the conversation per se. I left bemused, wondering if there will be another when the characters are in their 60s. I doubt it. If nothing's been resolved by then, a sequel would unimportant.
I'm Still Here (2010)
The first film I've ever walked out on. And I felt good doing it.
This was the first and only movie I have walked out on before it finished. And I felt good doing it. Better after putting some mileage between it and my partner and me.
I suppose I could explain the sheer fatigue this movie induces -- I fell asleep twice in the first half-hour -- with a technical critique of the over-driven sound, the under- and over-saturated color, the crazy camera work, the spasmodic editing, and the acting/non-acting/maybe-acting?.
I find myself somewhat at a loss, however, to convey to the reader who hasn't seen this film how such continuous, unrelieved chaos can result in boredom. But by minute 30, I was checking my watch, somewhat concerned that on screen it was still just November 2008 with a whole calendar year yet to go. By minute 45 my partner and I looked at each other, mutually sighed, and then she and I walked out. Note: no one else had left the theater by that time. What art-film stalwarts, we remarked in the lobby. Only, where was the art?
I'm getting pretty tired of these self-indulgent cinematic autobiopics and faux-exposes by a small circle of the over-privileged entertainerati. They give a bad name to filmmaking when the arts are already under extreme attack. They teach nothing, they emote nothing, they are nothing -- except a way to rope us into being innocent victims to a murder: our murder, as the audience.
We want restitution: Joaquin, give us our twenty bucks and an hour of our lives back.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
A superb film!
Excellent on every dimension: story, direction, acting, cinematography, score, editing.... This is a faultless film that combines humor and pathos to tell one proud man's story and to comment on the futility of war as it has become, total and without glory. Roger Livesey's and Deborah Kerr's performances are top notch as are those of the supporting cast.
Of particular interest is the Technicolor presentation. My partner thought it was colorized, but in fact the subtlety of the coloration is incredibly fine. I would have thought the film a painting if the action didn't move.
There is a specialness to this film that sets it apart from the typical wartime British film , a kind of matter-of-fact solidity combined with lofty idealism and framing them both, humorous irony. COLONEL BLIMP is a filmic triumph, and timeless.