The first interviewee, Jess, is a leathery 64-year-old they found in Needles, CA (a town I'll forever associate with Snoopy's brother Spike) who tell us "I ain't proud of anything except just being alive."
]]>As much as, these days, there's satisfaction to be had in watching anyone on the lending side of mortgages get thrown around the house by an invisible monster, it's not Christine's siding with finance over sympathy that gives the movie its gratifyingly mean edge -- it's that she's is a moral equivocator, a milquetoast lass who spends a lot of the film pretending her firm stances aren't anything but. She could have bought more time for Mrs. Ganush (a go-for-broke Lorna Raver, in what has to be one of the least vanity-friendly roles of all time), but didn't, and yet pleads that the decision belonged to her boss, a claim that doesn't impress the Lamia, the infernal spirit summoned to plague her. (Metaphysical question: If elderly gypsy women have the power to send people to hell, does that make them... God?) She's a vegetarian whose objections over animal sacrifice last as long as it takes her to find a knife and her track down her kitty, a formerly fat farm girl who's ashamed of her background, and a would-be winsome victim who becomes shrill when no one can come to her rescue.
One of the great satisfactions of "Drag Me To Hell" -- and, buoyantly batty without the millstone of "Spider-Man 3"-style operatics, it has many, including an ongoing gag-inducing gag in which Mrs. Ganush ends up spewing vile on Christine's face in their every encounter -- is that its heroine has to grow a spine and acknowledge both the extent of her culpability and the fact that it still hasn't warranted the shit she's gotten stuck with, but that to pass the buck would mean to put someone else in the same undeserved spot in which she found herself. It's a transformation with more to it than just that of a winsome girl learning to stand up for herself.
Quentin Tarantino's a great writer of dialogue, and no one's more convinced of the fact than Quentin Tarantino. The ratio of talk to action -- not gun fights or explosions, but just people doing stuff -- in "Inglourious Basterds" is, generously, nine to one. Again and again, characters sit down over drinks (whiskey, champagne, milk), and the stakes may be high, but the conversations are meandering and lengthy, and no matter how clever they may get, they end up defeated by their own pace and their writer's inability to let anything go. Even the opening scene, a confrontation between Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a French farmer hiding a Jewish family which is supposed to be a slow build of tension and dread, is derailed by digressions about rats and nicknames. The film's two hours and 40 minutes long, and could be shorn of an hour just by picking up the tempo.
One of the reasons "Inglourious Basterds" is so dialogue-laden is that at least half the scenes are there just to introduce and show off a character. Here's Landa, whose abilities of detection have earned him the sobriquet "The Jew Hunter." Here's Lt. Aldo "The Apache" Raine (Brad Pitt), getting ready to lead a squadron of Jewish Americans on a secret mission to terrorize Nazi's and take their scalps. Here's Sylvester Groth playing Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, with Daniel Brühl playing Frederick Zoller, a war hero who's starring as himself in Goebbels' new film, and who's fallen for French cinema owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), actually a Jew in hiding whose family was slaughtered. Here's Sgt. Donnie Donowitz (Eli Roth), "The Bear Jew," beating a Nazi officer to death with a baseball bat; here's Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), British film critic turned agent; here's Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), German actress and Allied spy, and here are Mike Myers, B.J. Novak, Julie Dreyfus and Samm Levine in smaller roles. By the time that's all out of the way, the film pretty much just skips to the end, a succinct orgy of violence and destruction that's not sufficient payoff for everything that came before, even if Hitler gets, with minor historical inaccuracy, shot in the face dozens of times.
Despite the title and billing, it's Laurent and Waltz that have the largest roles. The Basterds really don't get the majority of the movie's focus and the varied characters generally don't have much opportunity to interact -- "Inglourious Basterds" is an "assembling the crew" film that doesn't allow its crew to hang out on or do much, and if you want to nitpick, Laurent's character would have achieved what was accomplished by the time the credits roll all by herself, making the whole international intrigue angle superfluous.
There are still plenty of crackerjack shots, from a "Searchers"'s quote to a camera following rapidfire exchanges between interrogator, translator and interrogatee to the grandiose up-in-flames finale, with a lingering movie projection shimmering across the smoke, the screen long gone. And the music is, as always with Tarantino, exhilarating. But I wouldn't even call "Inglourious Basterds" minor Tarantino -- it's flat-out tiresome, and from a commercial perspective, incredibly dicey. If this is the pony the Weinstein Company has picked, well, bless 'em, because it's hard to see this one pulling in crowds once word gets around.
]]>Bellocchio does neither the character nor the actress any favors in making Dalser's passion such an amour fou -- in the first few scenes, she falls instantly for the future Il Duce when, at a Socialist meeting, he gives God a five minute window to prove his divine existence by striking Mussolini down. She tracks him to a protest, and beds him the scene after, without the two having exchanged a word. At the theater, he watches the screen while she watches him, adoringly; later, she sells all of her things, including her store and apartment, to help fund his new newspaper. He's more in love with war ("War! War! War!" they sing on the soundtrack and blaze on the screen) and furious political ambitions. As played by Filippo Timi, Mussolini is a stylized character -- he's Mussolini -- and in that early time Dalser seems so too, the pair in their black-clad overheated clinches recalling nothing so much as Gomez and Morticia Adams, romancing amidst operatic film flourishes and archive footage. It's weird, but it has potential -- alas, soon Mussolini fades from the screen, though his presence looms off it, and "Vincere" becomes the would-be woeful tale of Dalser's persecution. By then it's far too late to be asked to invest in her as a suffering martyr to history -- she's been drawn as scary and a bit genuinely crazy, not to mention maddeningly delusional about Mussolini's coming to retrieve her and oblivious to how unwise her continued shouting about her connection to him is when he's denied her existence, refused contact and has her continually surveilled. Unfortunately, "He Just Not That Into You" would not be published for decades.
]]>Roger Ebert called "Kinatay" the new "worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival," succeeding the original cut of a certain road/blowjob feature. That's a bit strong. Director Brillante Mendoza is just convinced that ideas must equal difficulty -- and so, with last year's "Serbis," the theater itself had to be the main character, the teeming human dramas it sheltered deliberately, coyly captured only in oblique fragments. With "Kinatay," the problem is more that the ideas aren't that good, unless you want to take its protagonist, a callow kid who can't look away as things get more and more unpleasant, as a stand-in for the audience. In which case, maybe you're meant to do what he never manages to and walk away -- the film gives you plenty of opportunity to, and plenty of people did.
]]>Costello enlists the help of three hitmen (To regulars Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Lam Suet and Lam Ka Tung) he serendipitously meets when a job brings them to his hotel hallway, and from there lifetime loyalty is as easy as the exchange of a wad of euros, some spaghetti and manly bonding over weaponry. "They killed your daughter's family, we killed your enemies, now we're best friends," Lam Suet's character summarizes at one point for the benefit of anyone who arrived late. There are two singularly stupid-smart gun battles, one in the woods as the full moon peeks in and out of the clouds and the other in a garbage dump, with hoards of Triad enforcers sheltering themselves by rolling giant blocks of compressed garbage in front of them. Costello and the hitmen communicate in their common language, English, with which they're different degrees of uncomfortable, but Hallyday looks like waxwork in the same unblemished suit from scene to scene and acts just as impassive -- his role is chiefly to stand, imposingly -- so the awkward dialogue delivery isn't discordant. Late in the game, Costello's briefly mentioned brain damage comes into play, and he has to navigate, "Memento"-style, with polaroids and notes, leading to a farcical but bloody climatic showdown. The sloppiness is part of the fun, though it's adds up to less than the sum of its parts. To's better at deconstructing than deference.
]]>Despite initially setting up a conflict between faith and physically mandated murder, "Thirst"'s major contention becomes one between Sang-hyun and Tae-joo, who's been the punching bag/slave of the woman who raised her when her parents abandoned her as a child, and who was married off to the woman's cherished, sickly son as soon as she was of age. Tae-joo is irresistible to the newly awakened Sang-hyun, and she sees in him an escape from the life to which she's been chained. Victims in Park Chan-wook's films often prove themselves to be just as ruthless as their oppressors when given the power, and as a vampire, Tae-joo has no problems killing anyone she feels like snacking on. The ramp up to Grand Guignol is a steep one, and "Thirst" becomes just a stylish shriek in its final third. Stylish, at least, is something Park has always done well. Coherence and emotional appeal, less so.
]]>"Taking Woodstock" is halfway a melancholy and incomplete-feeling family drama -- Imelda Staunton plays Elliot's miserablist harpy of a mother and Henry Goodman his depressive father. Elliot martyrs himself, giving up what one would think was a happier life as an interior decorator in New York to move home and help his folks, though he doesn't seem to like them very much. He's not a hippie, but they need the money, and so he approaches Woodstock Ventures to offer up his family's property, and, when that seems insufficient, leads them to a local dairy farmer named Max Yasgur (played by Eugene Levy). The rest is history, or more accurately, legend -- "Taking Woodstock"'s glasses are beyond rose-colored. Everything attached to the festival is magical: festival co-creator Michael Lang is magically zen, a random hippie couple provides a magical acid trip, Liev Schreiber arrives as a magical transvestite who feeds Elliot's parents brownies that have their own magical qualities. And Elliot learns to love his own damn magical self, in the end striking out on his own. The latter fraction of the film, for all its endless era cliches, or because it hits so many of them, is thoughtlessly pleasing to watch. Woodstock -- the idea of it that now lives in our common memory as assembled from footage and films and songs and accounts -- exudes its own gravitational force, and it's undemanding to imagine that in temporarily bringing together half a million people for all that peace and music, it helped one gay Jewish 30-something man rediscover joy and life. Yup, totally undemanding.
]]>Dishes are also thrown, songs are performed in drag, poetry is splashed on screen, there's a razor attack and a fair amount of explicit sex, mostly between the men -- yes, yes, defiant and brave and so on. But while Lou Ye does valiantly attempt to showcase a subsection of mainland Chinese life that's simply not put on screen, he never raises his characters out of their flatly assigned roles, and some, like Luo Haitao's girlfriend Li Jing, are really just doleful ciphers, their dramas impossible to invest in, a lot of sound, fury and shower scenes, signifying nothing.
]]>And the adventure that follows -- the movie, really -- is great, a trek that ties in elements from those grounded first few minutes to things fantastical and otherwise, like a jungle landmark called Paradise Falls; a pudgy, talkative Wilderness Explorer trying to earn his "assisting the elderly" badge; dogs with collars that translate their thoughts aloud and a legendary giant bird. And there are brilliantly sequenced bits of action (something Pete Docter of "Monsters, Inc.," sharing director credit here with Bob Peterson, seems to excel at), and Carl encounters his old idol and finds a new lease on life. But it none of it equals that sublime, bittersweet non-adventure of a start. None of it, save the moment when Carl unleashes hundreds of balloons and pulls his house up by the foundations, leaving the men who'd come to take him to the retirement home behind, a scene of giddy delight. That it's in 3-D, the little house winding its way between modern city buildings and passing flocks of birds, is only an enhancement. 3-D's a novelty because it's been, for the most part, treated as such, but "Up" is without jarring made for the medium moments, and would work just fine flat. The 3-D only makes the animation a little more rich, a little more alive, but those aren't qualities Pixar's lacked yet.
]]>They're kicking off with a short film showcase on May 15th on the roof of the New Design High School. Among the features they have planned: Zachary Levy's doc "Strongman" on May 30th, Cory McAbee's musical-western space comedy "Stingray Sam" on June 6th, Ben Steinbauer's Sarasota prize-winner "Winnebago Man " and Lynn Shelton's "Humpday." You can find the full line-up so far here.
"Racing Dreams" was already lauded with a jury prize for Best Documentary -- the rest of the awards, which were announced on Thursday, are listed below.
World Narrative Competition
Best Narrative Feature: "About Elly"
Best New Narrative Filmmaker: Rune Denstad Langlo for "North"
Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film: Ciarán Hinds in "The Eclipse"
Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film: Zoe Kazan in "The Exploding Girl"
Best Documentary Feature: "Racing Dreams"
Special Jury Mention: "Defamation"
Best New Documentary Filmmaker: Ian Olds for "Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi"
New York Competition
Best New York Narrative: "Here and There"
Honorable Mention: "Entre nos"
Best New York Documentary: "Partly Private"
Short Film Competition
Best Narrative Short: "The North Road"
Best Documentary Short: "home"
Special Jury Mention: "The Last Mermaids"
Student Visionary Award
Winner: "Small Change"
Special Jury Mention: "Oda a la Piña"
Adapted from Swiss writer Alain de Botton's rather precious best-seller "On Love," "My Last Five Girlfriends" plays like a revved-up "High Fidelity" without the delayed coming of age. The film snaps, quick cut, from one clever visual bit to another -- a stuffed elephant offers distracting commentary during a hook-up, a framing device imagines Duncan's life as a theme park, with each girl given her own themed ride. It's entertaining, but it all has the unmistakably flat feel of a (admittedly clever) TV sitcom, the segments skimming through what Duncan understood about each girl, half reminiscence, half therapy session. Patricks is likable as a lead and a narrator, but the film is written so insistently from Duncan's point of view that he seems a perpetual victim, none of his would-be loves emerging as flesh and blood.
]]>There's a medical motivation to its mildness. Ivy (played by up-and-comer Zoe Kazan), "The Exploding Girl"'s focus, has epilepsy, and while it hasn't interfered with her leading a normal life and going to college -- the film takes place over a summer break at home in New York -- it has made her cautious and controlled, striving to subdue any outburst of strong feelings that might set off a seizure. Over a series of seldom returned phone calls, her college boyfriend throws her over for his high school sweetheart, while her childhood friend Al (Mark Rendall), who clearly pines for her, is starting to also consider other girls. These are small strains, sure, but in the film's ultra-intimate scale, they tower.
Cinematographer Eric Lin's camera takes in Ivy from afar in public, through doorways at parties and over shoulders on crowded subways, but in private drifts inquisitively close to Ivy's pensive face. "The Exploding Girl" sustains the sense of a breath being held, but the tension it tries to generate is dissipated by the wateriness of its characters, Ivy a blue-eyed blank, Al puppyish, both paralyzingly nice and neither interesting enough to be worth an investment in the possibility of their coming together.
]]>