possiblyatrout Reviews

The Zero Theorem (2013)

Bad Gilliam

[3/10 · 9 November 2019]

This reminds me more of Idiocracy or that god awful Super Mario Bros movie rather than Gilliam's previous work. Contains none of the claustrophobia of Brazil or the existential dread of 12 Monkeys (although it tries). It tries to tackle weighty issues but does so in such a tired and clumsy manner - the first shot of Christoph Waltz is against the backdrop of a Jesus Christ mural - that nothing interesting ends up illuminated. Even the trademark Gilliam weirdness feels stale. Kind of a mess. Disappointed, because the premise was intriguing.

Throne of Blood (1957)

Mifune Time

[7/10 · 7 November 2019]

There's no better way to spend a Sunday evening then watching Toshiro Mifune run around being a crazy person for two hours.

This film does capture something interesting about feudal Japan (and other ancient societies), about people's belief in the prophecies or even direct intervention of spirits on events and lives. And also the human tendency to self-fulfill such prophecies, especially if they favor us. Which then asks the question of who is responsible for the course of our lives. And on and on and on.

A pretty good Macbeth interpretation. Not my favorite Kurosawa Shakespeare adaptation (that goes to Ran) but still a darn fun movie. Delicious! And Toshiro Mifune is, as always, in his two modes: on the verge of exploding, and exploding. And I wouldn't have him any other way.

To the Wonder (2012)

Better than people think, but demands a lot

[8/10 · 30 April 2019]

There is no plot and very little dialogue. Right off, that turns most people off. But it shouldn't. It's a movie that asks its viewers to surrender to the poetic experience, but the rewards are worth it. It focuses on the aesthetic nature of love, how it looks, how it sounds, how it tastes, how it smells, how it feels, rather than the why or the how. Characters fade in and fade out of the narrative like wisps. Most of the talking comes from the characters narrating what sounds like poetry about love, musings about each other, and bitter resignations of their state. To the Wonder captures the mood of love.

The most transfixing feature about this film is its use of light. Most scenes take place during the day or at dusk and natural light floods the screen. The dances of the silhouettes and light are truly something to behold and appreciate. Terrence Malick is able to harness it in order to enhance the aesthetic quality and themes of his art. Another recurring motif is the use of hands to express emotion. The cinematography will often focus on how the hands rather than the faces, the expressions and the gestures. It is an art film; if it is not approached any other way, you will find something immensely pleasing about To the Wonder.

Oslo, August 31st (2011)

Quiet and Profound

[8/10 · 30 April 2019]

There is a scene in which Anders, the main character, sits quietly in his seat at a diner and listens to the conversations around him, focusing on one group and the next. We aren't sure how this affects him, but he silently walks out and goes to an empty restaurant. On the surface it would seem that Oslo, August 31st is a simple story about a day in the life of a recovering heroin addict, but there is unspoken complexities to Anders as he drifts from meeting one friend to the next over the course of a day: another memory visited, another little wound opened, another reminder about all he's lost. The film and Anders treat each place as not just a location, but as a time. Aside from Anders Danielsen Lie's terrific performance as the troubled Anders, it is the direction that sells this movie. It gives Anders his space, never focusing to closely on him; we are observers, unable Anders as he tries to hold on to what little he has; it is almost like the subsequent events themselves are already a memory, if that makes any sense.

Inside Out (I) (2015)

Brilliant Film for Adults and Children

[9/10 · 30 April 2019]

Pixar did it again. As we follow Riley, an eleven-year-old girl, we learn how exactly her mind works (a big, industrial machine with the control center manned by Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear), her memories and her personality. But one day, following an accident, Joy and Sadness become expelled from the control center. Thus begins the epic journey as the two emotions attempt to return to where they belong, before Riley suffers too much emotional damage.

Knowing Pixar, we all expect the gorgeous animation and the top-notch voice acting, and of course this film delivers, but it has something more. Out of all of the animated films Pixar has put out, and there are many great ones, "Inside Out" has probably the most carefully constructed script of any of them. The dialogue and story are simultaneously both a colorful adventure and an exploration of the thought processes of a young girl. This is probably the greatest film ever about metacognition, yet it is put in terms a child would understand; I left the theater interpreting my thoughts and emotions through the concepts put forth by the animation. Great movie.

Hard to Be a God (2013)

Hypnotic and Disgusting

[9/10 · 30 April 2019]

The narrator explains to us that scientists have traveled to Arkanar, a planet still stuck in the middle ages. The society is regressing and the inhabitants have begun to murder all the intelligentsia, but the scientists are told not to intervene. Sort of like the Prime Directive. After the opening remarks, and aside from a few quips, we move permanently out of the realm of science fiction and into the world that has been created for us as we follow Don Rumata, a scientist disguised as a nobleman, as he wades through this world. And what a world it is. Mud, feces, grease, bile, and blood, are caked on to absolutely everything. Probably one of the greatest works of set design ever. With the roaming camera, it's as if the audience is a part of this diseased world, hopelessly regressing into its vile heart.

Unfortunately, there's a disappointing amount incoherence to the whole narrative. Most scenes would be over before you could piece together what had happened, and then only vaguely at that. The vision, however, of the world that Aleksei German has imagined, is totally unique and inimitable.

Dead Snow (2009)

Nazi Zombies

[8/10 · 30 April 2019]

Zombies in horror movies are base level creativity villains. There were three or four serious zombie films that came out centered around the evilness of man and social entropy, and then the genre has basically spent the last 25 years taking the piss out of itself, because hey, zombies are funny. The story isn't really important here: seven friends go into the mountains for a cabin campout and then zombies start attacking, yada yada ya. I was amused that all the characters got assigned a single trait at the beginning, one likes movies, one likes extreme sports, one's horny, one has big feet, etc. Like we are actual supposed to care for these characters when we know they are only food for the proverbial zombie meat grinder.

Now if zombies are base level creativity villains, then Nazis don't even register on the pyramid. This movie has the double-whammy of tongue-in-cheek by not having just zombies, but Nazi zombies. The only really scary parts happen in the beginning before the whole film descends into campiness, like the creators were planning on making serious horror, but then saw how silly the premise was and threw that plan out the window. And I'm glad they did, because there is something so silly and fun about mowing downs waves of Nazi zombies with a machine gun that you recently mounted to your snowmobile while krautrock plays in the background. These Nazi zombies are even sillier than usual because they insist on engaging in fistfights before eating you. It's just a great Friday night movie to sit around with your friends and laugh at.

All the Light in the Sky (2012)

Natural and Quietly Profound

[8/10 · 30 April 2019]

I always found acting performances about normal people far more impressive than ones about someone insane. Normal people have worries, memories, and flaws. Those are infinitely harder to embody than craziness, which so often acts as a substitute for actual personality. Marie (Jane Adams), the aging actress living on the shores of Malibu, feels natural, feels real. The people feel so organic that when two characters kiss, it's uncomfortable, like I was invading their privacy or something. What might turn some people off is the fact that nothing concrete actually happens. At first glance it just seems like an actress and her niece doing things around their house. But under the surface it's quite a thoughtful story about the prospect of aging, loneliness, and love, about how most doors close in life -- quietly and unknown to us.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Terrific Vampire Story

[9/10 · 30 April 2019]

This is a vampire story unlike any other in cinema. Unlike countless other works of fiction, the vampire here is a complete character rather than a boring movie monster. It is a complete rethinking of the classic vampire story and the creators deserve massive credit for it. It isn't easy to find something novel in a genre that has been sculpted for decades to be formatted in a certain way, but this movie has found it. So because the vampire is a fleshed-out character, when it kills or interacts with other characters, it feels like these decisions and relationships carry some serious weight and some damning consequences for it. In addition, the sleek black-and-white textures set the atmosphere beautifully, with some gorgeous photography -- a beautiful film. Highly recommend.

It Comes at Night (2017)

More Interested in Terror Than Horror

[8/10 · 22 April 2019]

Horror is the fear we experience after something scary has happened; terror is the fear we experience before something scary has happened. It Comes at Night is much more interested in terror than horror. An infection of some kind has spread throughout the world (the details are fuzzy) and two families, having escaped urban areas, are holed up in a cabin in the woods. One of the sons, Travis, has bad nightmares and insomnia. Everyone wears gas masks and gloves and the doors are locked at night. There might be something out in the woods, but it's unclear. I won't say anymore specifics, but by the end of the film not everything is tied up in a neat bow and there are a lot of holes left deliberately open -- it's not a perfect, circular film. This is the type of film where you rush to Reddit to read all the fan theories. There are a couple of jump scares but this movie is more interested in what goes on in our minds when we hear a bump in the night, how we fill all the blanks. There's something wordless and imageless that exists in the depth of our imaginations that's connected to fear -- a movie monster is always less scary once it's on screen and out of our imaginations -- and it's that something that It Comes at Night tries to tap into, and pretty successfully too. It's unnerving.

Faces Places (2017)

Delightful

[8/10 · 12 April 2019]

Agnes Varda is probably the least pretentious and most accessible of the French New Wave directors. Unlike Jean-Luc Godard, who as an artist seems to have calcified recently into his worst characteristics -- pretension, abstraction and aloofness -- Varda seems only to grow more warm and charming with age. And her companion, the street artist JR, with his sheer youthful exuberance and eternal sunglasses, is a terrific counterbalance to her wisdom and reflection. Opposites attract!

JR runs through the Louvre, pushing Varda in a wheelchair, leaping over sofas, in a recreation of the scene in Band of Outsiders when the actors broke the record of running through the famous museum. Varda, while gazing over a herd of sheep, ruminates how the young active lambs on the outside of the circle are the ones leading the flock. And always, the faces. And the places. JR and Varda travel throughout rural France, pasting large photo printouts of people on walls. They talk, they tease each other, they meet interesting people. This movie is a love letter to creativity and art and people. A railroad worker asks Varda why she let JR paste her toes on the side of a train's petrol tank, and the first thing she says is, "For fun."

Jaws (1975)

A Big Fish Story

[9/10 · 10 April 2019]

There's a section in Hemingway's book, Islands in the Stream, where the main character takes the two young sons of one of his friends deep-sea fishing in the Gulf Stream. The older boy hooks a marlin. Hemingway then spends about thirty-five pages describing this battle of wills between the titanic fish and the crew of the boat, describing the angle of the line, the actions of the main character, the younger brother, the skipper, the fatigue of the older brother, and of course the fish. Lots of the passage is reminiscent of The Old Man and the Sea, a book which Jaws is frequently compared to (along with Moby-Dick), but Islands in the Stream is perhaps the better example.

Jaws is all about the shark. It's a movie that can really be divided into two parts. In the first section the shark attacks, there are some bodies, the annoying mayor, and a lot of kerfuffle on Amity Island. I was actually surprised how quickly the movie's passed through it. Then the second section comes, when the characters take to the sea in the Orca, and everything seems to slow down. Like the movie just made a hurried speech and now was taking a deep breath. The second section is where Jaws really cements itself as a classic because, like Islands in the Stream, it's about one thing: catching the fish. Everything from the first act fades into the background; it was all pretext anyway. It's an adventure. I never want to take my eyes off the screen, I just loved every minute of it.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Unputdownable

[9/10 · 10 April 2019]

Unputdownable is a slang term to describe a book that you can't stop reading, it's so good. You've got chores, deadlines, bedtime, but your hands can't stop flipping the page and you don't know why other than you're reading a great book. This is the movie equivalent. I can't really explain why I like this movie; every few years I re-watch it just to make sure my esteem is correct, and it always is. I don't even go for old movies usually, but The Bridge on the River Kwai just gets me, like a joke I can't stop laughing to. Alec Guinness and his British manners in a battle of wills against the brusque Japanese commander? Love it. The bizarre obsession with building the bridge? Love it. The jungle heat, the river? Love it, love it. The ending? Triple love it. It's unpausable!

The Prestige (2006)

What makes a good magic trick?

[5/10 · 10 April 2019]

I like magic tricks. Even as a kid I knew they weren't real, but it didn't stop me from admiring the skill and the how-did-they-do-that moment right after the prestige, the final act of a magic trick. It's a kind of awe. But the success of a magic trick is based on the audience not understanding how what just happened, happened. Every magician knows this, which is why they're wary to reveal how a trick is done.

And that's the problem with The Prestige. The movie is about dueling magicians and is in itself a magic trick. There are twists, double-twists, surprise characters, we don't have all the pieces, or do we, no we don't, yes we do, another twist, and then the end happens -- and Christopher Nolan reveals how the whole narrative trick was constructed, step by step. It's as if a magician just did the most amazing trick you've ever seen and then spends the next ten minutes explaining how exactly he did it. It's disappointing, deflating. Instead of feeling wowed, we feel let down. We could talk about the other elements in the film, like the acting or directing or set design, but all these are subservient to the mystery, and in the end there is no mystery; had the ending been more ambiguous I would've rated this movie higher. I've seen every Nolan film, and this is the weakest by far.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Probably the best war film

[10/10 · 10 April 2019]

The best comparison between The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan I read was a YouTube comment, which said something to the effect of: "Before I went to war, Saving Private Ryan made sense; after I came back from war, The Thin Red Line made sense." Through a rotating cast of characters, mostly American soldiers fighting in Guadalcanal, Terrence Malick shows us what each person thinks about within and of war. Or rather, he shows us what each person would think about if gifted with the voice and ability of a poet. An odd movie comparison is Wings of Desire. Both try to express the poetic reality of people within a certain environment, one in post-war Berlin, one in war-torn Pacific. "If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack," says one soldier. "I want to come back to you the man I was before," says another in a letter to his wife. I loved this film. I loved its beauty, I loved its poetry, I loved its deep feeling for people. I haven't even mentioned the cinematography, which is gorgeous. Or the soundtrack. Or the acting. Everything is terrific. The closest the movie comes to a main character is Jim Caviezal's Pvt. Witt, who quotes Faulkner in the early portions of movie and asks if maybe all men got one big soul. Lovely. I highly recommend to anyone, even people who might not like war films.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

The Invention of Idiocracy

[4/10 · 9 April 2019]

My sister and I watched this in conjunction with another comedy, Idiocracy, and throughout we kept remarking how similar they were. Perhaps because in one, everyone in society is an idiot, and in the other, everyone acts like an idiot. People may not be able to lie, but apparently they also aren't able to use discretion or tact, and this makes it seem as if everyone's had sections of their frontal lobe removed. There's a whole range of plausibility issues here. Can people think a lie? If they can't, how are they able to use their imagination? Is there art? Gervais's character mentions a spaceship; how would they know what a spaceship is? It's better to not ask questions.

On the other hand, The Invention of Lying did amuse me more than Idiocracy -- referring to a nursing home as a "Sad Place for Hopeless Old People" gave me a dark chuckle -- so why did I like this less? Maybe it's because Idiocracy is a better story. There was just too many questions and too many superfluous characters. I still don't know what Louis CK and Jonah Hill were doing there. And so many of the laughs and like expensive furniture in a dilapidated one-room apartment.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Lovely Rita, Meter Maid

[10/10 · 8 April 2019]

Currently this is the top rated movie on IMDb Top 250 -- and has been for many years -- and the reason is that this story can relate to everyone. That's not to say that, like Andy Dufresne, everyone was literally in prison, no, but in a quietly profound way it addresses a fundamental aspect of the human condition that everyone can relate to. Whether it's a housewife who's lived the same day for twenty years, or her workaholic husband who's also lived the same life for twenty years, it seems many people, judging by popularity of the film, consciously or unconsciously see this film as a metaphor for their own lives. Freedom is the issue here. Freedom from monotony, from despair, from death. Freedom to build boats or listen to Mozart or feel the sting of rain on your skin. What Andy Dufresne wanted was what we all want in our quiet moments, perhaps in the evening while we lie in bed, or in the rare instances when we have nothing to do and nothing to distract us. Andy Dufresne is us, magnified. The Shawshank Redemption is a great movie and that's what great movies do: they provide a mirror in which we can see ourselves.