Change Your Image
srstolz
Reviews
Billions (2016)
Half baked
On the upside: some superb actiing, and feints at issues (inequality) that sre so bad that even the U. S. media world is beginning to take notice. Plus mmmmmmMaggie Siff mmmm mmm is she single and John Malkovich in totally perfect over the top form as a villain.
Sadly: plot holes you can float a container ship through. Every scene: people walk into a room, and talk, often standing around. Characters appear and vanish for no reason other than the writers were too hungover to know what to do with them. The small details (climbing, motorcycle riding, cooking, financial terms) are ludicrously wrong.
More seriously, the series is basically American corporate propaganda whose message is, let people make money. The consequences of this idea are sadly never examined.
If you want a real obit for the American dream, The Sopranos still does it best.
Museo (2018)
Complex, funny and moving
Two young guys rob Maya artefacts from a Mexican museum, and get caught up in emotional and philosophical quandaries when trying to fence them.
Ruizpalacios takes us directly into meta territory with the opening disclaimer: "this film is a copy of the original events." From there, he takes up questions of value, authenticity, love, duty and of course truth. The film is a philosophical puzzler that's also oddly moving.
Ruizpalacios is gonna be a writer/director to watch.
Revenge (2017)
Butt-kickingly bloody feminist awesome
This fabulous French revenge porn- bloody, perfectly coloured, throbbing to electronica- takes a pretty blonde and turns her into...well...someone capable of taking on not just nasty men with guns, but repetitive self-doubt and some distinctly traditional gender role playing.
Coralie Fargeat does a remarkable job here. The film opens with the world reflected in a handsome man's sunglasses, and then shows us a Lolita. She's not Lola by the end, of course, because handsome man's friends are, well, dicks.
Our pretty blonde thing in proper myth style gets abused, killed, resurrected, remade and mentally rewired. Then it's time for some fun. Saturated colours, some smart editing and some playing with action convention = a 21st century Thelma and Louise but with a better ending.
Brick (2005)
neo-Chandler
Low budget, but very high in script and thought quality, this neo-noir has Chandler's trademarks: wit, its own argot, complexity and a final awful moment of realisation. Great stuff.
Justified (2010)
Fun but poorly-constructed
On the plus side, we have a bona-fide Western, centered around an easy-on-the-eyes cast with some remarkable redneck (and other) villains, loads of zingers a la Elmore Leonard, and some solid plot twists. The Kentucky and other dialects are a marvel, and the female villains consistently interesting.
On the downside, there are zillions of plot holes, loads of hanging threads, and an awful lot of interesting but undeveloped ideas. They seem to have written this season-to-season without a long-term plan.
Upshot: loads of fun, but miles from, say, Breaking bad.
Les démons (2015)
Astonishing
An adult coming-of-age film from Quebec, The Demons is a stunning debut from documentarian Lesage.
The ironically-named Felix is growing up, by which we really mean that he realises that while his world's parameters are stable, the life teeming inside it is anything but.
Going from lacerating irony and tenderness to sheer horror and pathos, the film is subtly paced, with the documentarian's detached eye in delicate counterpoint to the emotional turbulence Felix experiences. Lesage's music is remarkable, almost Lynchian in its suggestiveness and occasional weirdness. Lesage knows how to take his time, the scenes unfolding slowly into often unbearable tension that never resolves into anything predictable.
Like The Dangerous Lives of Altarboys, Lesage's film knows that to go deep, you have to go big. And he does.
Festen (1998)
Lacerating and masterful
A Swedish family gathering-- from ancient patriarch to newborns-- comes under pressure as various family secrets begin to reveal themselves.
Vinterberg's film, in addition to superb acting all around, works because of the Dogme aesthetic. The sometimes jarring hand-held camera, odd lighting and occasionally claustrophobic visuals develop the theme: that the seeming normality of a family's life is wishful, and that the truth is much more complex and fragmented than even those experiencing pain are willing to admit.
As the film moves toward its horrific emotional climax, Vinterberg's camera moves into close-ups, and the graininess increases, its characters' realities slowly crumbling.
Remarkable.
La domination masculine (2009)
THoughtful and interesting
A multi-faceted look at how, in a supposedly egalitarian (Western and post-industrial) world, women are still locked into gender roles and, disproportionately, victims of violence and discrimination.
The film may be unsettling to an American viewer, with its lack of narration, but it lets the people and issues speak loudly for themselves. The main shortcoming here is the lack of context. For example, there are interviews with battered women, and we hear that every three days in France, a woman dies by her partner's hand. Fair enough-- and awful-- but what % of French is this? What % of men die at women's hands? Does all abuse look like what we see int he film? These are minor concerns-- overall, this is a provocative and thoughtful film, and teachers will find interesting stuff to engage students on the film's website.
Ta'm e guilass (1997)
Subtle and profound
An astonishing film, surpassed, as of this writing, only by "And The Wind Will Carry Us." Eschewing famous actors, a soundtrack, special effects, rapid cutting, psychological and back-story explanations of character, marketing, and every other device Hollywood has to offer, Kiarostami confronts suffering, death, and possible redemption.
The protagonist drives around a dusty wasteland, looking for help in committing suicide. Neither a soldier nor a seminary student will help him. A doctor asks him if he is willing to surrender all of the physical and emotional immediacies of life-- "the taste of cherry"-- just to end his unspecified suffering. Crows flap. Maginficent colour bleeds from the sun. The man takes too many sleeping pills and lies down in the grave he's dug, as the sounds of rain and nature, along with darkness, envelope him.
Fascinating is Kiarostami's coda. What does it mean? Does he suggest that what we've seen has been nothing more than the film-maker's visual trickery, and that our emotional investment in the protagonist has been in vain? Has the protagonist become merely an actor? Has there in fact been death and re-birth?
Kiarostami has said that he finds Quentin Tarrantino far more interesting than his films, which he has described as "too forceful." His own work suggests the opposite of the American's work: that the hypnotic rhythms of daily life, verging on boring, open the mind to new possibilities, ones that creep back to us in the days and weeks after a viewing. Kiarostami's films only seem simple and boring, but they resonate the way Tarkovsky and Kieslowki's finest work does.
A Single Man (2009)
Clichéd and empty, but looks pretty
This movie is like its director's mainstay, fashion: looks great but mainly it recycles what has come before. Mr Ford has got his production and lighting DOWN. The thing could be an ad for some kind of 1950s Disney retro community, or a set piece in one of those GQ spreads where they predict the next retro trend (lounge, anyone?) into which they throw a few insouciant models in amped-up thrift threads. And the polluted sunset skies of L.A. are so juicy I wanted to take a big old bite!
Other than that, and other than solid performances from Firth, Moore etc, this film is a mass of clichés. Man has epiphany after life-changing moment? Check. Early 1960s repressive? Check. Crude connections between conveniently-playing news clips and narrator's interior life? Check. Sexual outlaws drinking too much? Check. Older lonely person has mind-transforming moment with young sexpot? Check. For this kind of thing, American Beauty did a much better (and funnier) job.
This is the sort of film you would show to a high-school class: its issues are crude and simply presented, its actors look great, it's got a few good lines, but ultimately there's not much there to think about.
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)
A genre-bender and quite entertaining
This is not really a remake of the 1992 film. Rather it's a German's take on post-9/11 America, wounded and misguidedly noble, bumbling ahead, doing the best it can, hamstrung by its own history. Herzog skewers cop, melodrama and dysfunctional family film clichés, offering us some very very weird takes on karma, payback and the sheer randomness of life. The cast is uniformly excellent, esp. Cage, and New Orleans itself becomes a character-- brooding, weird and often oddly funny. The film's absurdist elements (the recurring lizards, the dog, the "dancing soul") suggest the confrontation of human desires with the reality (or unreality) of chance.
Herzog is in fine form here-- this is a great movie, but not one that will fulfil your expectations.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Inventive but unsatisfying
Tarantino's technically in full form here-- the sly editing, quirky dialogue, subtle suspense, endless film references etc-- but the story is ultimately a hollow revenge fantasy that, like his Kill Bill series, doesn't really add up to much.
Superficially, it's great-- funny, violent, unusual-- but as a revenge story and a commentary on war, it's empty. There are dangling endings, characters minus any kind of depth, an odd lack of any kind of emotional texture to the proceedings. Where Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction perfectly balanced real characters with a witty, unpredictable and allusive story, Tarantino here simply comes off as playing games.
The Hangover (2009)
A good early post-Bush film
After the self-centered yee-haw ride of 2000-2008, America wakes up with a massive hangover, looming doubt about the future, and some confusion about what has just happened. Gambling debts? Whoring? Destroying stuff you can't pay for? Getting mixed up with the wrong people? Stealing? Yup, that's what happens when the American middle class mixes the right amount of tradition and cheap oil-- err, I mean, whiskey and chemicals, as do the characters in this film.
Four guys-- a nerd, his brother (the groom), a teacher and a dentist-- go to Vegas for a bachelor party. Three wake up to find the groom missing. He has been replaced with a tiger and a chicken. Quest/hilarity ensue. The film's main theme might well be that when the social order-- here, marriage-- is followed out of mere obedience to tradition, it is sterile. The film's ending tries to give that order some kind of organic counterpart--the party, and the wedding music-- and largely succeeds.
Fun that's smart, crude and frequently oddly touching. One of the better recent comedies and a fairly new entry in its genre. Take a boy/girl to this one. And, yes, ladies, this *is* what happens at bachelor parties. At least the ones we dream about.
Gran Torino (2008)
Old Men, New World, Timeless Values
The film's theme revolves around the question of what it means to be a man in the modern world, and (it being American) its background question is of course "where does authority ultimately come from?" Eastwood's Kowalski character, the perfect dutiful middle-class American, having put his house and his Gran Torino car into perfect shape (property + car + working for a car company + being vet = Fine Upstanding Citizen), takes on his next reno project-- his young Hmong neighbour Thao, who Kowlaski christens as "Toad" and repeatedly calls "stupid." Which, to be fair, he often is. Kowalski needs to show young Thao what it means to be a man, and he does. From the value of hard work (and the pride that comes from doing it well), standing up for one's principles, having guts, knowing when to trash talk and when to be polite, what it really means to care about family, to of course how (and when) to ask a girl out and knowing who your friends really are, Kowalski teaches Thao that masculinity is principled, compassionate and not easy.
Kowalski is a role model right until the film's final frame. ALthough the ending is a bit pat, the ride is great. From the staggeringly politically incorrect language (half the fun is waiting for what Walk can possibly say next to top his last anti-Asian outburst) to the political and moral questions, this is solid fare. The film avoids cultural stereotypes (no Hmong or immigrant demonisation here) and indeed shows us a vibrant, tough and decidedly non-stereotypical character in Thao's sister.
As a high school teacher, I use this with gr11 and 12 students, many of whom face the same pressures as Thao-- to join gangs, be violent, disrespect women, to have money without working for it-- and the film, much to what I am sure would be Eastwood's delight, gets through to them loudly and clearly. Ultimately, it teaches us an old lesson: the only things in life (and death) worth having are those we honestly work for.
Gomorra (2008)
The fifth great Mafia film
Along with Godfather I and II, GoodFellas, City of God (and many episodes of The Sopranos), Gomorrah ranks among the few films that take the gangster world and turn it into high art.
The film is a profoundly moving study of the low-level soldati and ordinary community members affected by the Camorran Mafia. It convincingly integrates international political questions, environmental issues, subtly moving psychological studies of ordinary characters, horrific violence, philosophical issues of loyalty, values and honour, and above all a totally new (for the Mafia film) cinema verite style of shooting into a magnificent whole.
This film has GoodFellas' and the Godfathers' intelligent examinations of the eerie process whereby many small and justifiable decisions create horrific outcomes counter to what their protagonists want. It looks at how the work culture of the Mafia-- merely, as in GoodFellas, an offshoot of legitimate business-- destroys youth. It directs a few savage shots at the stupider movies in the gangster genre (Scarface). Its setting, an immense public housing complex, is a labyrinthine visual metaphor for the horrific modern interconnectedness of crime and ordinary life.
This is not a "fun" movie like GoodFellas, or a detailed psychological study of one man, like The Godfather or The Sopranos . These, however, are its virtues. The film is ultimately a vicious reminder that the roots of crime, evil and degradation are distressingly ordinary and neighbourly. Magnificent.
Titus (1999)
The best, ever
The only filmed Shakespeare that even comes close is the Lear with Olivier in the title.
Taymor-- who spent some of her youth in Indonesia, and who has lived in Europe as well-- understands the pagan origins of Titus and brings her astonishing visual gifts to bear here. The story is well-known; what juices up this production is the costumery, the very effective juxtaposition of dream imagery with the interior monologues, and of course the superb acting. Taymor uses clothing as metaphors for the characters' emotional and social states of being; her Titus at the crossroads finally unbuttons his uniform when he realises the empty savagery of the world he now inhabits.
The play is ultimately about a world-- the post-Ceasar Rome, Caesar having been both Rome's first dictator and self-proclaimed God-- where humans take on the powers and prerogatives of the Gods, and what happens. It is also a tragedy in that Titus' serially misplaced loyalties cripple him. As loyal and noble, he ruins; as savage, whimsical and vengeful, he redeems.
This film is Taymor's blast at the Bush administration and the early 21st century's Anglo-American idiocy. The themes are all there-- usurpation, law-breaking, subversion of precedent and procedure, warfare, corruption-- and now that we have a more principled (at least in words) Obama, the film's criticism stands out all the more strongly.
Superb-- though not for children.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)
A thoughtful and complex coming-of-age film
Great acting, solid direction and some inventive presentation-- the protagonists re-imagine their lives in terms of comic-book fantasies, and we are treated to some wonderful traditional animation thereof-- are just the start in this complex picture.
The film follows a group of '60s Catholic schoolboys who hatch a plan to play a crazy prank on one of their hated teachers. The plan, of course, goes awry. What is interesting in this film-- besides watching Culkin, Hirsch and Foster working their usual magic-- is the complexity of theme going on behind the adolescent antics. The film looks at the purpose of fantasy, the meaning of faith, the dangers of testing boundaries, the unpleasantness of unfinished business, the nature of God and the question of how one interprets His authority. The question of original sin-- never clumsily and straightforwardly stated-- permeates the film, from Margie's awful revelations to Tim's mischief. The film's real genius is its ability to play with obviously religious ideas without really doing any preaching.
Behind all this, of course, is the Viet Nam war. As America loses its post-WWII innocence at the end of the 1960s, and as the flower-power generation realises that breaking the boundaries that authority sets ultimately breaks much more, so the boys learn what happens when people want to take God's power. When Tim Sullivan tells his teacher that William Blake's poetry is written "simply enough for a child," she responds with "so are the instructions for a handgun."
Accepted (2006)
Crude but thoughtful
A couple of things chafe here-- the sexist and homophobic jokes; the retarded expository trial ending-- but there's loads of good ammo blasted very accurately by Lewis Black and his younger co-stars at the North American educational system, with its emphasis on rote learning, hierarchy and irrelevance.
In this film, a bunch of "rejects" start a fake university which slowly but surely takes on its own life. While on one hand the South Harmon Institute of Technology students are self-described "SH*THeads" who want to do an awful lot of partying, they do manage to organise themselves, build a campus, be political, and above all drop out of the American rat race in which their parents are mindlessly trapped. The film very accurately blasts education-- Lewis Black tells parents "you think your kids are here to learn, to create, to express and discover themselves? Hell no! There is one reason kids go to University...to get a high-paying job! We aren't interested in thinking." The film is sincere and fun, has some good dopey recurring characters, and would actually make a decent film for a high-school film class (the swearing and sex stuff is pretty tame; the ideas are thoughtful). A renter.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Western is most certainly not dead
Cormac McCarthy finally gets a movie worthy of him. Astonishing performances (esp. from Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem) and absolutely masterful cinematography mix with a deceptively simple narrative. Indeed, Bardem at times reaches the level of Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in his character's creepiness. This film is like a much blacker Fargo. The Coens wonderfully use Texan slang ("It's a mess, ain't it?" asks one character, to which Tommy Lee Jones' replies "If it ain't, it'll do till the real one gets here.") for various purposes--building tension, playing with ideas, relieving tension.
McCarthy's recurring question, which was front and center in All The Pretty Horses-- is there such a thing as a meaningful code of honour?-- is tossed around, sometimes casually, sometimes horrifically. His deeper concern-- a mythic interest in what we might call karma, or the inescapable balancing act the Universe makes, or the relentless absurdist logic of obligation-- unfolds through various kinds of horror.
The film's only weak point is its occasional moralising speeches. It is as if the Brothers worried-- as did Coleridge of his speaker's impact int he Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem with more than a few similarities to this film-- that the sheer power of their story would overwhelm its moral concerns. But ultimately this is the Coens at their best.
Inland Empire (2006)
Familiar thematics; much greater complexity both narrative and technical
Lynch is on familiar ground here, echoing what he began on "Lost Highway" and added to with "Mulholland Drive": the interchangeable/mirror-identity trick, in-narrative self-references, the Mobius-strip construction of narrative loops, a re-imagining of time itself (the film presents itself as unfolding memory). Thematically, we are dealing with questions of identity, infidelity, memory and various epistemological problems. However, Lynch goes much further here stylistically than he has before, making very effective use of digital's simplicity (even as his montage and musical mixing reaches new levels of intensity) and making what is surely his most detailed and intricate film yet.
The film has a coherent meta-narrative, and, yes, Lynch does wrap things up (at least formally), but once down the rabbit hole we are taken through a mirrored fun house where it seems as if the film's very images have been sliced and refracted with (and through) shards of mirror. Its recursive structure is at once maddening and entrancing, and at times one feels as if Lynch is trying to one-up himself in the connections department. However, I was much less bored than I had expected to be and honestly cannot say that the film needs editing-- Lynch has gotten to the point, once unimaginable for him, where the appearance of randomness is both welcome and integral to the story.
I hope Lynch continues down this path, but it will likely be commercial suicide. He will have to make another more conventional movie or two to pay the bills, but we certainly must be grateful that he went way out on a limb with Inland Empire.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
not bad but needs an editor
Cohen comes up with some superb scenes here-- the "polite" Southern racists who live on Secession Drive (really!), the wrestling match, and of course the religious scene near the film's end-- but the film is unfocused and often playing for little more than body-humour laughs. Cohen's very thoughtful satire makes the familiar very foreign, but troubling questions remain: skewering people who don't speak English and who have no experience with the uber-irony of Western media (the film's unwitting Romanian village stand-ins for Kazakhstan) lowers the bar hugely, and there is the cardinal offense of attaching a moral to the ending of the film. Fun, but Cohen could certainly do better.