Change Your Image
plainwhiteroom
Reviews
Picture of Light (1994)
Are you cold yet?
Saw it at a friend's cottage on a remote part of Lake Huron (appropriate setting, maybe).At one point during the narration, Mettler talks of how, historically, the first filmed event was of a locomotive, and when it was shown to the public, they ran from the theatre, thinking it was real. After mentioning this, he asks "Are you cold yet?". It's a great line, since he's been showing us frigid, Siberian-like footage of the Canadian North for the last half hour. I liked this documentary a lot, which surprised me a little, as I was highly critical of his more recent "Gambling Gods and LSD". In this film, however, the poetic narration perfectly fits the visuals, as we are constantly bombarded with desolate, lonely images and fantastic shots of the northern lights. Mettler also gets some great interview footage from some of the locals, notably the motel owner and the old Native man and his daughter. The camera shots and angles seem to have more of a purpose here, and the long takes of things like train lights and frost on a window relate directly to the many themes of the film (something I thought did not happen in "Gambling etc"). It's a very enjoyable film.
Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002)
Anyone who says it's great is lying
This film has received tonnes of hype in Canada, specifically Toronto, because the filmmaker Peter Mettler lives here and he's worked with Atom Egoyan. It won best documentary at the Genies or Geminis or whatever the hell you call the Canadian equivalent of the Academy Awards (side note: I guess Gary Sinise was a presenter at the award show this year, and the crowd apparently erupted when he took to the stage. That's how lame the Canadian Movie Award Show is). Also, the film has been written about in Macleans, The Toronto Star, The Globe, The National Post, and countless other rags. EVERY SINGLE REVIEW I HAVE READ HAS GLOWED WITH PRAISE FOR THIS FILM:
"One of the most remarkable features of this or any year"; "Mesmerizing.Hallucinogenic.a documentary that is more dreamlike than any drama"; "Like ingesting Christ in Communion or dropping that first hit of LSD, this movie may change the very essence of your being"; or this gem: "A film trip. A world film".
I offer these snippets of praise, simply because NONE OF THEM IS TRUE. Actually. Well, maybe the last one is, since it was filmed in various locations within the world. And we had to walk to the theatre, so I guess it was also a film trip. Like a field trip, but to a film.
The documentary is 3 hours, and I've read that it originally clocked in at 55 HOURS. To which the distributor, Alliance Atlantis, said "That's a tad too long". So he edits it down to 3 hours and by God, he could have easily chopped off another 90 minutes or so. I said to Kerri as we left the theatre, "Even Eliot had an editor when he wrote The Wasteland".
What Mettler did here was take a camera with him while he was on vacation in India, Switzerland, Las Vegas, Monument Valley and Toronto (?) and filmed different things he saw. So it's like a journey, a personal journey that weaves in the topics of gambling, gods.....and uhh, LSD. Have you ever filmed cool stuff when you were on vacation? Me too, so let's get together some time and we'll splice it all together willy-nilly like, and then shop the result around to see if there are any takers. K?
There are parts of this film that are pretty remarkable, many things I've never seen before on celluloid. I will never forget such scenes (the little boy getting his head shaved with a straight razor; the Christian God-In near the airport in Toronto; the interviews in Switzerland with the former junkies; the final shot of the child chasing the camera). I will also never forget the truly juvenile, substandard camerawork throughout much of the film. I can't tell you how many times the director had the handicam shots aiming at the ground or at such an angle as to make the viewer wonder if he actually knew the camera was on. You know all those boring home movies you've seen where the cameraperson forgets to turn the record button off? THERE WERE SEVERAL MOMENTS LIKE THAT IN THIS FILM, and it was funded by Telefilm Canada, among others. AAARGH! I wanna pull my hair out over this film. I swear. Edit your movie, Peter! I understand what you're trying to do, but it doesn't work very well, sadly.
Annoying point #2: the director himself narrated the documentary at various points, since I guess he thought there was going to be the need for some kind of verbal guidance. So he interjected with poignant little things like "I see a thought. But how do I show you what I cannot see?" Or something like "I soon realised that the film was making itself, and I was a subject in this blah blah..." good lord someone get me the hell out of here before I puke all over the guy in front of me who came alone and probably writes for the entertainment section of the UofT student newspaper. We don't need the narration, Peter. It cheapens the film and it is ultimately unnecessary to tell us your silly silly thoughts.
I could seriously go on and on, and maybe I will later. So maybe the documentary was successful, since it got me and my friends talking. For all the wrong reasons, mind you. The thing is, I cannot understand how so many educated people who have supposedly seen a lot of films and who should have some kind of film background could actually shower this film with such praise. I want to walk up to Brian Johnson of Macleans (who works in my office building, so this could actually happen) and say "Come on, you must know that the film wasn't actually that good. You must understand that it was difficult to sit through at points." I wish that people would just tell the truth, without having some other mandate.
When the film ended, nobody clapped. Nobody cheered. It was eerily silent. And not because it was "mesmerizing" or "hallucinogenic", but because - I think - everyone was baffled at how unbelievably mediocre and/or bad it was (truly!) after hearing about how unbelievably amazing it was.
I personally know four people who walked out before it ended.
Suspiria (1977)
This film is gorgeous
Some have said the acting sucks, the effects are crap and the editing is bad. Whatever, the bottom line is that Suspiria is one of those films that influenced tonnes of people, but of course never got the recognition it deserved. It's the only Argento film I've seen, and it completely blew me away. When a film has so much to offer in terms of originality (set design, lighting, camera angles, etc) then it's worth sitting through so-called bad acting. Who cares that some of the dialogue seemed stilted? You think Scream or Armageddon was filled with believable situations and dialogue?
Suspiria IS creepy, and it doesn't need to be obvious, like way too many horror movies are these days. The scene at the beginning with the taxi driving through the forest sets the tone. You know this is not going to be a typical horror film. And it just gets better and better. I walked away from Suspiria thinking I just went to the coolest art gallery in the world.
It's so easy for us to accept the big movies, and all the redundancy and staleness of them, since these are the movies that fill the giant multiplexes. But when you see a film like Suspiria, you know you're viewing something totally unique, and no matter how much you may want to criticize it, you must be able to appreciate Argento's vision and realize Suspiria's importance.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Leaves nothing left to our imaginations
Ultimately, I really don't care that people liked this film. I'm simply surprised that they did. I took a couple of film courses in university, and I love movies, but I'm not a professional critic, nor do I make my living in the movie production business. That said, IT BLOWS ME AWAY THAT FILM CRITICS ACTUALLY LIKED A.I. enough to give it 3, maybe 4 stars (if not more). I can drain all bias and personal preference from my being, and STILL I can tell you all that A.I. is a bad film. It's silly and pointless when it tries to be deep and meaningful. Spielberg spells everything out for us so there's no way we could possibly be confused. Or, more accurately, there's no way we can ponder the questions posed in this movie, because ALL THE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED FOR US. Is nobody allowed to complain about Steven Spielberg movies anymore? This movie was unbelievably excessive without reason. It could have been so much better than it is, and I'll bet you a million dollars that Spielberg thinks so, too. When the movie ended in the theatre, nobody clapped or made any gesture about the film, other than a few people in the audience who went, "Booooo". I would love to get a chance to speak to one of these film critics and ask, "Since film criticism and critiquing is your line of work, how can you honestly say that A.I. was a 'fascinating' movie?" It's like an art dealer trying to tell me that that Velvet Elvis I picked up off the guy in the mall parking lot is brilliant and ground-breaking.