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Au revoir les enfants (1987)
Better than most French movies
French movies are almost always too slow and boring for American audience tastes. While cinematography is important, French movies are often criticized for their overindulgence in angles without dialog. Finish a French movie and ask yourself, "What did I just watch?" Often times, the only redeeming part of French movies are the actors and actresses who are more than willing to remove their clothes for the audiences.
So how can a 20-year-old Au Revoir Les Enfants keep contemporary American attention? With an amazing script, realistic portrayals of childhood, different perspectives on world history and viewer created tension waiting for heartache as it looms on the horizon.
The story follows Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) leaving Paris after Christmas Break to return to his Catholic boarding school. A new student, Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejtö) joins his class and quickly demonstrates modest intellectual superiority over arrogant Quentin. Refusing to adopt a formulaic childhood movie friendship (animosity, followed by one person helping the other and then a flowering and transcendental relationship), Quentin and Bonnet seesaw between appreciation and apprehension. True to life, there is no single event that cements their friendship and instead several experiences grow the two closer together.
The setting takes place in occupied France during World War II, which is a situation ideal for exploring the sheer range of human experience: trust and betrayal, love and hate, fear and courage, hope and hopelessness. However, the film doesn't try to do overextend itself and simply concentrates on the children. In fact, most of the situations that occur are not understood by Quentin. While he's sitting in class and the camera shows a German soldier asking to confess outside the window, he doesn't even look up from his school work. Then when his math class continues underground after an air raid siren, he nonchalantly ignores the teacher's lesson and reads a different book. When the lights flicker, the children act excited; when the teacher starts praying, the children follow out of habit instead of fear. Even though the audience has evidence the story occurs sometime during the occupation, the only way we can identify the precise year is near the end when the math instructor mentions the start of a Soviet offensive. And since that signals somewhere around six months before Paris is liberated, the hope for a happy ending looms somewhere in the future.
The film proceeds somewhat direction less for a long time. This allows tension to flow from the audiences expectations that something should happen soon, although we're not sure what or how. We mostly watch boys enjoying a sheltered life, oblivious to the dire state of world affairs. The voice over at the end is especially memorable because the free-flowing story has no buildup to a climax and we only recognize that we witnessed the climax when the voice over starts. As the German officer continues calling names, we are led to believe the movie has led us to the names called. But it doesn't – the events are mostly over.
While it can be tedious watching a French movie tiptoe from one isolated incident to another, Au Revoir Les Enfants is absolutely amazing. Seeing children in movies that behave like children (naturally we're not surprised when students relentlessly harass the new kid) authenticates the experience of the characters far beyond the less believable golden heart child befriends new kid and receives rewards for their kindness. Witnessing world history from different eyes will hopefully serve enough interest to consider watching this movie yourself. - Erik Hagen
Killers (2010)
Not really worth the damn, but those stars look GOOD!
What's the best thing about this movie? Our stars look GOOD. That's it. Maybe that's too harsh. OK, Killers starts off as a cute romantic comedy, but once the killing starts, the movie just lost me and the end is just off.
Ashton Kutcher as Spencer Aimes is hot, hot, hot and sweet and manly and all that stuff. Katherine Heigl as Jen Kornfeldt plays the role she plays so well in her other movies, and she looks great too. Past that, I wasn't impressed with much of anything else.
A friend of mine that edits some of my reviews told me once to make sure I included information so the reader would know I watched the movie. I don't think that's necessary here. I just want the point to get across that this is useful as a date night movie, but not much more.
I'm not quite sure if the directing is off, or the screenplay was just off. Maybe it happened in editing. The transitions between France where Spencer and Jen fall in love, to their married life, then to Spence's past coming back to kill him, well, there were none. Maybe that's the reason for a lack of enjoyment. Gwen Bishop
Into the Wild (2007)
Modern and human
I'd heard some good things about this movie, as a matter of fact, a LOT of good things, but I was never ready to watch it. I ended up finding it at a pawn shop for a few bucks, watched it, and was thoroughly impressed. I could easily watch this one more than once.
Based on a true story, with permission from Chris McCandless' (Emile Hirsch) family, Sean Penn writes and directs a story about a young man trying to figure out life. Seems like more and more Americans are doing the same thing no matter their age, so Penn has a story that several generations can relate too.
Chris leaves home after graduating college, tells no one where he's going, and leaves or destroys all his personal belongings along the way – except what he needs to survive. Making his way out west with only his backpack, he has many great "human" adventures along the way to his final destination, Alaska. His human connections are fantastic because he is truly connecting with the people he meets. There are no issues about time, money or social standings. The people he meets along the way are as true and rich in character as he is.
This is not a feel-good movie, this is a thought-provoking movie that will really have you questioning your personal lifestyle and what it really means to be human. Young Hirsch is completely believable and I'm seeing a few Oscars in his future. Gwen Bishop
Burn After Reading (2008)
Light and funny spy movie
Every once in a while, there can be some value re-exploring movies since different contexts may yield new reactions. Comedies involving espionage often stupefy characters and situations and then build humor out of dumb and one-dimensional characters doing dumb things. Burn After Reading tries a different route by using intelligent characters, but crafting situations so full of confusion and panic that bad decisions become the only options.
The plot opens with Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) demoted from his CIA analyst position to a less prestigious career. In anger, he quits with a few choice words to his boss. His wife (Tilda Swinton), dissatisfied with her marriage and engaging in a long-term affair with a U.S. Marshal (George Clooney), copies financial records in preparation for divorce. Most likely by accident, she also copies classified documents that are discovered by gym employees played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand. Their attempts at blackmail set most of the movie's events in motion.
The comedy for Burn After Reading shines from the character's confusion and the audiences' understanding of the whole picture. When the gym employees first contact Cox about the classified documents, Cox has no idea that anything is missing. In his anger, he assumes the blackmailers broke into his house to steal his memoir. Since Cox refuses to pay $50,000 for his memoir, the gym employees take the classified documents to the Russian embassy and attempt to sell the information. While seeming like a good idea, the absurdity and silliness of trying to sell classified information to the Russians is manifested by the other characters' disbelief. Cox's profanity-ridden tirades, serving to remind the audience how outlandish the whole situation becomes, keep the audience laughing at a plot that superficially should be serious.
A second source for comedy is U.S. Marshall Harry Pfarrer's growing paranoia. Since he's sleeping with the wife of a CIA Agent, he jokingly believes the CIA follows him at the orders of Cox. As the plot continues building, he notices cars following him and men in suits with sunglasses. Suddenly his original joking proposition doesn't seem too unbelievable. The audience knows that Cox doesn't direct the tails, by laughs at the paranoia as Pfarrer suspects everyone as a possible spy.
Burn After Reading is not the gem of Coen Brothers comedy – that spot is probably best reserved for The Big Lebowski. However, spy thrillers seem to come along several times a year and keeping a smart satire in your movie collection to watch after the most recent manifestation of Salt or The American helps foil the absolute seriousness of the paranoid-action-spy-thriller genre. Erik Hagen
Greenberg (2010)
A modern romance?
What a strange little movie.
Not in a bad way per se. I believe the writers and director put together a very believable modern day romance.
Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) has just come out of a mental institution. He's not evil or scary, just a little "off." And not off in a big way. He's just confused, like most everyone else these days. Roger travels cross country to house-sit for his brother while he and his family are on vacation. The family's sitter, family assistant, whatever you want to call her, comes by to check on things. This is their first meeting.
Apparently Roger is attracted to Florence (Greta Gerwig), but it's hard to say because there is no big emotional change in him. Or her for that matter. Throughout the movie it's difficult to discern whether they are attracted to each other, or if they are just lonely.
Florence also has her issues. She generally chooses the wrong guy and inevitably gets hurt by them. And although Roger is not particularly nice to her, for some reason she is still drawn to him despite the 15 year age difference.
Roger's best friend Ivan Schrank (Rhys Ifans), bottles up most of his anger toward his friend until the end of the movie when they actually speak their mind to each other.
You see Roger slowly progressing during the movie to some sort of decent human being, but it's hard to like him or feel sympathy for the most part because of his self-centeredness and self-loathing. This is a candid look at modern relationships and how complicated they can be when everyone has issues and/or baggage. It's realistic, not particularly a date movie. The characterizations are good, drawing you in and giving you an opinion about each person.
There are some slow parts and at times you'll get tired of hearing Ben Stiller whine about his problems, but this is definitely a movie where his acting talent shines through. Gerwig, still a new face appearing in her first move in 2006 (LOL), made a big impression on me with this role.
Probably the most frustrating part of the movie is the end - there is none - so be prepared to think "that's it?" Gwen Bishop
Oldeuboi (2003)
You will want to watch more than once
South Korea is enjoying a historical-first exporting of culture to the West. Americans have long been importing European culture, but with so much noise coming from the South Korean wave, now is the perfect time to take a look out east. And, as an introduction to a large library of outstanding Korean movies, Park Chan-Wook's 2003 thriller Oldboy will exemplify 21st century Korean art.
The storyline for Oldboy is hard to discuss without spoiling too many twists. On a random night, the protagonist Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik) is kidnapped outside a phone booth. He's then held in solitary confinement for fifteen years, receiving daily meals and arbitrary hair cuts. The day of his fifteenth year in prison, he's released and immediately starts investigating who imprisoned him and why.
The plot, while interesting, is not what gives this film the strength to survive a market saturated with thrillers. This movie is very smart for what one would expect in a thriller genre and carries many messages about revenge, violence, redemption and the ability to forget. When Oh figures out the reason for his incarceration, why is he dissatisfied? And even more poignant, why is the audience dissatisfied? A viewer expecting to turn his or her brain off as soon as action starts will probably miss what makes this such an amazing movie.
Oldboy's action sequences serve more purpose than to get the audience's heart pumping. Park Chan-Wook does an amazing job using action to reveal character motives and internal struggles. During one unedited scene, Oh battles through a hallway filled with gangsters wielding blunt weapons and knives. He isn't stronger, faster or better trained than any of his opponents, but instead fights on pure rage. At one point, Oh is stabbed in the back and falls to the ground while everyone surrounds him and assumes he's dead. Instead of something over the top, Oh does the only realistic thing that can be done at that point and uses a hammer to crush the feet of a few people around him. Frightened, his enemies jump back, giving Oh enough room to recover. The scene ends not when everyone is dead or unconscious, but instead the gangsters just don't want to fight. Oh staggers out, unpursued, because nobody wants to continue fighting a frothing caged animal.
Many critics comment on the violence in Oldboy. There is plenty of violence; enough for Quentin Tarantino to fall in love with the film and assist in awarding it a Grand Prix of the Jury at Cannes. But much of the violence occurs off-screen and in the head of the audience. During one scene, while Oh tortures someone that was in his path, the viewer sees less blood than any scene in Saw or The Expendables. But many will find themselves wincing since imagination fills in the rest of the details.
This is a movie that viewers will likely rewatch. Except for a few gems, this summer has been lackluster in memorable films. The best way to end summer is to grit your teeth and read some subtitles (the movie is dubbed in English, but the speakers can't capture the same level of emotion), and take a look at how artistic and wonderful the thriller genre can be in the right hands. Erik Hagen
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
Worth watching, if you can stomach the brutality
Set in rural Texas in 1952, The Killer Inside Me is based on a book written by Joe Thompson in the same year. A word of warning: This movie is quite disturbing.
Casey Affleck plays Lou Ford, a serial killer who doesn't show any potential for violence until a very attractive prostitute shows up in town (Jessica Alba). She enjoys a little pain with her fun. This is NOT the disturbing part. Ford also has a long-time girlfriend Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson) who has no clue what he's really like until it's too late.
The disturbing scenes in the movie are the beating deaths of both ladies. If you are in any bit squeamish of seeing physical abuse, you either should skip this movie or at least cover your eyes. It's brutal. The movie, as a whole, is slow, but not really in a good way. Where there should be more character development during the dialog, there is none. There is almost no character development for the women in his life, which almost makes it difficult to feel any kind of attachment during the brutal beating scenes.
Affleck's whiny and gravelly voice adds more irritation to the slow progression of the movie. Obviously, he slowed everything down to portray his Texan character, but it's almost too slow. His character seems more like a half-wit instead of a true sociopath.
Sociopaths are known for blending in, so his half-witted character makes sense, but there are a few scenes that also don't ring true for sociopaths. Ford has flashbacks to his old babysitter who also enjoyed a little rough play. Then, after he believes he's killed his lover, he remembers the fun he had with her. First, sociopaths are born not made, it's a medical condition in the brain; second, sociopaths have no conscious, so he can't love anyone. I completely understand how this could have made it in the book, but more than 50 years later, the screenwriters really should have made a few creative allowances to portray him more accurately.
The overall look and cinematography are great. Colors are bland and dry, just like we assume rural Texas would be and the angles are clean. Costume and set are dead-on, or at least really close for a period movie. I did spot a modern Budweiser glass bottle though. The Killer Inside Me is worth a glance if you can handle the brutality.
As a consolation, the ending at least will leave you sort of happy that Ford gets what he deserves. Gwen Bishop