Beginners

Directed by Mike Mills (2010) Starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer

Beginners is a very zen movie, which is a little strange considering how sad it is.  It’s just a very relaxed sadness, what it means to feel so disconnected from life, but finding a way back to it.  Oliver (McGregor) describes his life after his father’s death, four years after his father comes out of the closet.  He adopts his dog Arthur and reflects on his childhood, the history of sadness, and falling in love with French actress Anna (Laurent).

It’s weird to call it a quiet film since the soundtrack is very present, but that’s what it feels like.  Most of the emotional tug is subtle, or quirky without being too saccharine.  While Oliver and Anna behave typically over-the-top, it becomes endearing as two damaged people find a viable connection.  For example, they meet at a Halloween party, where Oliver is dressed as Sigmund Freud, carrying around Arthur.  They manage to have a conversation, even though Anna has lost her voice.  And off we go.  Oliver talks to Arthur, pretending that he can hear the dog’s responses (subtitles help us see into his thoughts) and leaves graffiti of “historical consciousness” rather than simple tags.  Anna lives in hotels and empty apartments, doesn’t answer her father’s phone calls, but also thinks that she can hear Arthur talking to her.

The film is cut between straight narrative of 2003 with Oliver’s reflections on life in the 1950s, when his parents got married and how happiness and sadness was portrayed in media.  Static images hang against a black background, or else switch phrenetically as Oliver describes them.  When his father is diagnosed with lung cancer, a quarter appears, later broken up into two dimes and one nickel, then twenty-five pennies as if understanding the term “a quarter-sized lump” can just as easily be broken up the same way.

For awhile, I couldn’t see how Hal’s (Plummer) sexuality fit into the picture.  As a character he joins gay activist groups and passionately tells Oliver about Harvey Milk.  It didn’t seem appropriate to have homosexuality handled in such a political, rather than personal, manner, but it makes sense.  Hal was looking for the community he couldn’t have after forty-plus years of marriage.  He is always determined to have someone to the point where he is worried about Oliver winding up alone because he won’t settle.

It’s a well-made, off-center film that is worth a trip to the local theater.  While it’s sad, it’s also filled with infinite hope.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Directed by Wes Anderson (2004) Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Wilhelm Dafoe

When I saw The Darjeeling Limited, I was really happy that I had finally figured out Wes Anderson’s appeal.  I figured The Life Aquatic would be the same sort of movie, similar in tone and soundtrack, with the fun quirky characters and interesting plot.  Much to my chagrin, The Life Aquatic just wound up as a pretentious mess of celluloid.

I feel like Anderson was reaching too far with the French New Wave references.  I thought that it was nice to have the ship introduced like the factory in Tout va Bien, but I the slightly-off sound effects got on my nerves and I found the dialogue to be awkward rather than clever.  More than that, the film felt awkward and poorly paced for the entire run time.  For every witty line, there was a two to five minute awkward scene to get through.  The performances were fair, and I particularly liked Owen Wilson as Ned, but the over-the-top quirk factor for the cast as a whole was part of way it was so grating.

The high points are the Brazilian Portuguese David Bowie covers and the fact that Henry Selick got a paycheck, but other than that, I don’t have much to recommend about The Life Aquatic.

The Big Blue

Directed by Luc Besson (1988) Starring: Rosanna Arquette, Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno

This movie is weird.  It’s about diving, and possibly something else.  Perhaps, passion?  Or the mysteries of the deep?  But it seems to mostly be about diving and wetsuits.  Rosanna Arquette is funny as Johanna Baker, who cons her company into letting her travel to Sicily so she could follow Jacques (Barr).

Here is the plot: Jacques is the bestest diver, but his father died when he was little.  Enzo (Reno) is the next-bestest diver, but he has become separate from the spiritual…ness of the ocean.  Johanna wants to fuck Jacques, and does– but she can never build a family with him because Ze Ocean, she iz too strong a mistress.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Jean Reno here because, dude I’ve seen The Professional, I know you can act.  I’m not sure why I haven’t hear of Jean-Marc Barr before because he’s really hot (where did your career go sir?).

I can’t say that this movie is a mess, but it is about diving which has to be a take it or leave it topic.  It wasn’t very engaging for me, let’s just say, and we know what’s going to happen for three-fourths of the plot anyway.   Looks nice though, the colors are excellent.  In terms of technical quality, it’s aged very well, but I can’t think of what else to praise about it.

 

The Age of Innocence

Directed by Martin Scorsese (1993) Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

To begin with, I complete understand the love that Daniel Day-Lewis gets now.  In The Age of Innocence, he plays Newland Archer who is engaged to May Welland (Ryder) when he meets her cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska (Pfeiffer).  Because Olenska left her abusive husband, she is an outcast in New York society, but her out-of-step actions intrigue Archer to the point of infatuation.  Ryder seems tailor-made for wearing the costumes in these films, but I remain ambivalent about Pfeiffer’s casting.  She dons a reedy voice for her role as Olenska, but sticks out more from her cast mates by looking, well, too nineties.

Everything about this movie is pretty: pretty costumes, gorgeous set-design, cinematography that uses classic techniques, and best of all, food porn.  Every time there’s a party scene, the camera takes sweet time looking over the food that’s being served, including a long sweep over a table laden with desserts.  More importantly, New York City in the 1870s is beautifully reconstructed, especially for set design and costumes.  It gets high marks in all areas that count the most for costume-flicks.  The cinematography, while it lends great lighting to the food, also works its hands in the most important scenes, such as when Archer watches a boat pass a lighthouse or when he believes that everyone in Society knows about his affair, while a red light flashes on him, then off again.  Actually, all of the colors in the movies turn out fantastic, as if Technicolor has been brought in to make the roses a little more yellow and Olenska’s gown a little more scarlet.

 

I haven’t read the novel by Edith Warton, but with the addition of voice-over, I got the impression that what was being constructed was the novel for the screen, rather than a mere adaptation.  The film feels like an epic on that scale alone, while it becomes punctuated by parties, dinners, and nights at the opera.  The plot develops primarily through letters, which get spoken accounts by the writers, and conversations, which often happen off-screen, since not all of the conversations of-interest happen while Archer’s in the room.  It’s all social intrigue and he-said, she-saw and filial influence running amuck with these rich people, who come to define what the upper class is in Manhattan.

When it came to the denouement, it seemed pretty set in stone.  That’s how these Forbidden Love stories tend to go, although in this case, society had directly prevented Archer and Olenska from running off together, all through the influence of honor and family ties.  I can’t fault May from keeping Archer in New York– she was securing her happiness as much as he would have by traveling– but the epilogue scene in Paris, as an older Archer walks around the city with his adult son (played by Robert Sean Leonard, who just seems made for this sort of role in the early 90s) gave a necessary conclusion to this drama.

 

Holy Rollers

Directed by Kevin Asch (2010) Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, Danny A. Abeckaser, Jason Fuchs

Sam Gold (Eisenberg) is a Hassidic Jew who works at his father’s fabric shop while studying to become a rabbi.  He wants to get married, but his hopes are stymied in the face of his family’s poverty.  When his neighbor Yosef (Bartha) gives him the opportunity to make more money by smuggling medicine in from Europe, he agrees, continuing with the trade even after its revealed that they are smuggling ecstasy.

Sam is contrasted with his friend, and Yosef’s younger brother, Leon (Fuchs), who drops out of the smuggling group when he finds out that they’re bringing back drugs.  Leon is posed as who Sam could be–he’s a better student than Sam and holds no moral qualms when informing their mother what Yosef is doing.  Unfortunately, this hurts the friendship, even more so when Leon gets the blessing to marry the girl who was previously engaged to Sam.  However, come the end of the film, its clear that Leon plays a very important role in Sam’s life, especially when smuggling the ecstasy becomes a crisis of faith.

 

Switching from a life that is determined in creating a separate, conservative religious community to the fast life of girls, drugs, and clubbing, it’s clear that Sam has been thrown into a difficult situation.  He’s strained between the easy money and fun he gets in the new job, while having to hide the details away from his family.  When he’s discovered, it’s complete shame and he is forced out of the community.  The community of his job– having fun with Yosef, experiencing a one-sided relationship with Rachel (Ari Graynor), and convincing others to join the organization– seems like a better option, at least money-wise.  However, when the crisis becomes too much, the most poignant scene is when Sam meets a Dutch Jew on the streets of Amsterdam and prays.

Holy Rollers has an unusual situation from the get-go as a religious minority, but the stresses of familial expectation and money woes makes Sam’s decision to continue understandable, but his eventual return to conservative faith makes for a fascinating watch.  Jesse Eisenberg gives an impressive performance as he leaves his safety zone of nerdy jerks to a character based off a true story.  He plays it honestly, and its a pleasure to watch.

The Hit

Directed by Stephen Frears (1984) Starring: Terence Stamp, John Hurt, Tim Roth, Laura del Sol

Willie Parker (Stamp) has become an informant for the British police.  Ten years after putting a British mobster in jail, he is living peacefully in Spain when Mr. Braddock (Hurt) and his protege Myron (Roth) arrive to transport him to Paris, where he’ll be knocked off.  In The Hit, Stephen Frears creates a quiet thriller out of three–later expanded to four– characters on a car trip, knowing that in the end, one of them will be killer and the other will be killed.

What I noticed immediately– Frears plays with expectations for a thriller, just with the sound.  What is expected to be loud comes off muted, what should be ignored is the loudest noise in the scene.  It matches the tempo of the Spanish-inspired score well as the group makes their way across the Spanish desert.  The scenery is used to its best advantages, softly colored in white and beige, matching the clean suit of Braddock and Willie’s all-white outfit in the heat.  Only a few scenes have the color stand out– when the group is joined, reluctantly, by Maggie (del Sol) in an aqua dress, when they take a break by a lush waterfall, and when blood is splattered on a gas station’s window.

Willie takes his kidnapping in kind.  He expected as much, but also knows that the police will be following them.  Braddock, although a professional, has left behind a trail riddled with accidental murders.  Strangely, that doesn’t seem to be on Willie’s mind much.  He speaks calmly, saying that he’s already accepted death.  Often, he talks to the hot-headed Myron in a joking manner, even when Myron is urging Braddock to just do-in Willie in Spain.

 

Myron, young and on his first assignment, defers to Braddock’s judgment.  He follows his lead, wearing sunglasses to cop a cool attitude, although he is far from professional.  Myron comes off like he was just picked up off the streets, talking loudly and causing problems wherever they go.  However he is not a hard-criminal like Braddock, and spots some mercy for Maggie when she would have otherwise been killed.

Maggie proves to be more complicated than an accidental hostage.  She pretends not to understand English and manipulates Myron in order to stay alive.  Braddock recognizes that Maggie is smarter than she seems, while Willie acknowledges that she is not ready to die just yet.

The Hit is excellent, with a fabulously clear transfer, courtesy of Criterion.  Its an interesting crime pick, full of psychology for the four leads as they are trapped in and around a car.  Frears defies genre conventions, creating a beautiful criminal drama that made its mark in Britain’s film renaissance.

Ponyo

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki (2008) Starring: Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Frankie Jonas

Oh, ouch Netflix Instant only had the dub on Instant Watch.  They really should give options for this sort of thing.  That said, the dubbing here certainly could have been worse.  What I can never understand with studios when doing vocal casting is the weird insistence on using child-actors for acting roles.  That has succeeded maybe once in the history of animation, and that was the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.  I also don’t really understand the need for celebrity casting at all in a film whose marketing is already limited with only select theaters getting it, but WHATEVER DISNEY!  Clearly, you do not have the best decision-making record in Hollywood.

To change gears and shift the focus over to the good things in Ponyo is enormously easy: Studio Ghibli has crafted another little beauty of a film, creating an especially gorgeous underwater world.  Sosuke (Jonas) [SIDEBAR: I'm sooo glad they made sure to pronounce the Japanese names right!] lives in a small seaside community, in a more-or-less self-sufficient house.  When he goes down to the water before school one day, he finds a goldfish and names her Ponyo (Cyrus).  However, by giving her human food and tasting human blood, via a small cut on Sosuke’s hand, Ponyo is able to develop human attributes.  After being re-captured by her father, Fujimoto (Neeson), Ponyo makes a break for it in order to become human, causing catastrophic weather along the coast.

Storywise, it’s certainly not one of Ghibli’s better fare, but since it was described to me as Super Environmentalist, I was pretty surprised to see how little environmentalism played into the plot.  If anything, it was much more subtle and kept in-theme with other products by Ghibli, and it melded nicely with the adaptation of The Little Mermaid fairytale.

It is cuter-than-cute and I was able to write off the weird inexplicable stuff as just that–weird and inexplicable.  Such as when the fish that should be long extinct have resurfaced with the high waters in the second half.  There isn’t really a point to it, besides to show how the waters have begun reclaiming the land.  The animation in those scenes is just so pristine that I didn’t care– leaves on the trees were as visible as the fish floating under them.

The real issue I had with Ponyo was the rushed resolution.  Well, more like all-over pacing issues.  While we’ve got a fairly slow introduction to the characters and the crazy weather inspires a really dramatic car ride, there’s a slow aftermath where not much happens.  They’re on a boat and greet others who are on boats, and it does not seem like the disaster it would be, THEN BAM RESOLUTION!

It’s fun and it’s pretty as hell, but it’s not the best Miyazaki film.

 

Matinee

Directed by Joe Dante (1993)

Starring: John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Kellie Martin

Once upon a time, several years ago, I wandered downstairs one Saturday morning and stumbled upon my brother watching a movie about a movie theater that was full of interactive events.  In one scene, a boy and a girl have their first kiss in a fallout shelter.  The producer and lead actress ride off into the sunset in a white convertible.  I couldn’t remember the title of this movie for a long time, but then in came to me: Matinee. And lo and behold! It was on Netflix Instant Watch.

Matinee stars John Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey, the king of B-Horrors in Hollywood.  His latest films have all had some interactive element to them, culminating in the experience that is “Mant.”

For young horror fan and new kid in Key West, Gene (Fenton), life is a little rough, except when he’s at the movie theater.  His father is in the Navy, forcing his family to move around a lot.  Instead of having close friends, Gene has his monster movies and comics.  It would be tough as it was as another Navy kid in school, but it’s October 1962, and his father’s ship has just been deployed.  The movie handles its depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis so well that the fear of Nuclear attack is palpable, especially for the Florida community.

In contrast, the playfulness of Woolsey’s technology for “Mant” is a relief.  He has managed to rig up the local theater for a full experience, including Rumble-Rama which shakes the theater and convinces the manager that a Nuclear bomb has been dropped, and the local hooligan dressed up in a rubber costume to terrorize the audience.

It’s a love letter to the B-movies from decades ago and the creative means needed to scare an audience in a way that would also distract them from the horrors of the world at that time.  More than anything, it’s a fun movie, one that captures the angst in coming-of-age with humor and sympathetic wink.

 

Big Night

Directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci (1996)

Starring: Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Marc Anthony, Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini, Ian Holm, Allison Janney

As a child from the 90s who comes from a partial-Italian background, it’s sometimes hard to believe that Italian food was an unknown ethnic food at one point in America’s history.  It feels like we’ve adopted so many of the traditional recipes into the daily life–not to mention, growing up with them– that, during the opening scene of Big Night, I was kind of surprised the woman didn’t know what Risotto was. Was she raised under a rock? I kept thinking, watching as she asked for a side of spaghetti, assuming it was eaten with every entree.  But now, it was just the fifties (!) and Italian food was looked on like we look at Indian or Vietnamese now.

Primo (Shalhoub) and Secondo (Tucci) are brothers who have a struggling Italian restaurant.  They immigrated together to earn their piece of the American dream.  While Primo is an excellent chef, he takes so much pride in his cooking that he won’t alter his recipes for the American tastes.  Secondo is more involved with the financial end of the business and carries the stress as they struggle to pay off their debts.  He turns to their successful neighbor Pascal (Holm) for advice, where he learns that the key to success is to give a celebrity dinner.  Pascal offers his assistance in having a famous jazz musician come over.  It is the restaurant’s last chance to stay afloat.

Secondo deals with the business, struggles to commit to his girlfriend Phyllis (Driver), and has an affair with Pascal’s wife, Gabriella(Rossellini).   The women seem to hold together conflicting motives for Secondo.  On the one hand, he has a great relationship with the born-and-raised American Phyllis, but on the other Gabriella is an Italian immigrant like himself, with as much experience in the restaurant business as her husband.  Primo is more concerned with cooking and has a greater investment in his Italian connections in their neighborhood.  He is in love with the florist Ann (Janney), who is patient with his inexact English.

The big party scene is full of food porn, including a delectable Timpano dish and a suckling pig.  It’s a great scene, where friends and reporters have shown up to see the jazz musician.  The dinner ends as if it’s the end of an orgy, with one woman crying because her mother was such a terrible cook.  Speaking of, these movie has some fantastic quotes: “Rape! Rape!  The rape of cuisine!” is probably my favorite, and Shalhoub gives the best delivery.

It had been a Sundance-baby in its day, so if you couldn’t get to the festival this year, I’d give Big Night as a recommendation for some festival-vintage.

The Science of Sleep

Directed by Michel Gondry (2006) Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsborough, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou

This was one of those movies that got hyped up a lot when I was in high school, but ended up on my list of Indie Disappointments.  Michel Gondry creates an interesting premise of a young man who gets his dreams and reality confused while he lives in France after his father’s death.

Gael Garcia Bernal plays Stephane in a tri-lingual role, which is impressive in itself, but he’s given pointedly childish material to work with.  While Stephane is stuck with a job he hates and reluctantly falls in love with his neighbor Stephanie (Gainsborough), he is extremely petulant.  His dreams take place in a TV studio, where he’s the host for a cooking or music or talk show.  He’ll venture into the office of his boss or explore the stop-motion animated world, which is at once a cave.

Gondry crafts the unreality of Stephane’s dreaming very well.  Set pieces tend to fold together while the dream logic is paramount, between what the water is made of (cellophane) and how the dream-characters act.  When Stephane begins to act outside of his dreams, such as leaving Stephanie a letter he wrote while asleep, he gets caught in problems.  Stephane is childish in everything: He hates his mother’s boyfriend and his boring coworkers.  He continues to sleep in his childhood bed even though he’s outgrown it.  Most notably, he keeps up the charade of not-being the neighbor of Stephanie, even after she’s found out.

What’s genuine are the scenes where Stephane and Stephanie share their imaginations.  They’re sweet little sets with a flexible reality as the characters come up with brilliant ideas.  However, these ideas never come to fruition, and it’s the fault of both characters.  Stephane won’t make a move, while Stephanie is reluctant to get hurt.

The dream sequences won me over, but they didn’t make up for the thin, character-driven plot in reality.