I've been falling behind a bit here, largely because every time I sit down to write about what I've seen, I'm hit with the fact that I've got a backlog of three movies I really didn't like, and I lose all of my enthusiasm. So - in the interest of clearing the decks and hopefully getting me back on track, I'm just going to list the films in question here, without any further explanation.
An Education
Lone Scheyfrig, 2009
3/10
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Stuart Paton, 1916
2/10
Octopussy
John Glen, 1983
3/10
And that's that. Let them never be spoken of again.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
23. The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow, 2009
A month in the life of an impulsive bomb expert (Jeremy Renner) in Iraq.
Certainly not the best movie of the year, but as Best Picture winners go, it's at the upper end of the curve. There really isn't much of anything that I can complain about with this movie - performances are strong, the technical aspects are impeccable, it's well-paced. I guess the only reason I don't rate it higher is that it never really comes fully to life - there's some sort of indescribable spark that is missing. I do suspect that a second viewing may change my mind on this point. Still, I haven't had a second viewing, and based on how I feel now, I have to say that that missing spark means it's less than the sum of its parts - but the parts are strong enough that less than the sum is still pretty good.
7/10
Kathryn Bigelow, 2009
A month in the life of an impulsive bomb expert (Jeremy Renner) in Iraq.Certainly not the best movie of the year, but as Best Picture winners go, it's at the upper end of the curve. There really isn't much of anything that I can complain about with this movie - performances are strong, the technical aspects are impeccable, it's well-paced. I guess the only reason I don't rate it higher is that it never really comes fully to life - there's some sort of indescribable spark that is missing. I do suspect that a second viewing may change my mind on this point. Still, I haven't had a second viewing, and based on how I feel now, I have to say that that missing spark means it's less than the sum of its parts - but the parts are strong enough that less than the sum is still pretty good.
7/10
22. A Serious Man
A Serious Man
Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009
Larry Gopnick's (Michael Stuhlbarg) life falls apart in a myriad of hilarious fascinating ways, including blackmail, drugs, divorce, and a tornado (sort of).
Not my favorite of this year's best picture nominees (that would be Up), but damn close. A Serious Man continues the Coens's comeback streak after their mid-decade slump, and is probably the best of the three newest works (the other two being No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading). It's a thoroughly depressing story, told in a ridiculously hilarious way. Everything that happens to Larry is horribly painful, but it's too funny to really hurt. This is all embodied particularly well by Fred Melamed's performance as Sy Abelman, who is stealing Larry's wife away from him. With the demeanor of a self-help guru on Quaaludes, he spends more time trying (in a very awkward way) to help Larry though this oh-so-troubling time. His bizarre speech patterns and uncomfortably extended physical interactions easily steal the show out from under everyone else.
8.5/10
Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009
Larry Gopnick's (Michael Stuhlbarg) life falls apart in a myriad of hilarious fascinating ways, including blackmail, drugs, divorce, and a tornado (sort of).Not my favorite of this year's best picture nominees (that would be Up), but damn close. A Serious Man continues the Coens's comeback streak after their mid-decade slump, and is probably the best of the three newest works (the other two being No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading). It's a thoroughly depressing story, told in a ridiculously hilarious way. Everything that happens to Larry is horribly painful, but it's too funny to really hurt. This is all embodied particularly well by Fred Melamed's performance as Sy Abelman, who is stealing Larry's wife away from him. With the demeanor of a self-help guru on Quaaludes, he spends more time trying (in a very awkward way) to help Larry though this oh-so-troubling time. His bizarre speech patterns and uncomfortably extended physical interactions easily steal the show out from under everyone else.
8.5/10
21. Modern Times
Modern Times
Charles Chaplin, 1936
A factory worker (Chaplin) goes mad, gets accidentally involved in politics, goes to jail, falls in love, tries to get a job, and other loosely connected things.
After making two attempts with Chaplin, I think I'm going to have to accept that he's just not for me. Modern Times, near as I can tell, is a series of barely-related vignettes that each serve as little more than an excuse for Chaplin to mug for the camera and do a silly walk. I feel kind of bad saying this, and I do worry that I might be missing something, but my impression is that he's essentially the Jim Carrey of his generation. Even when he comes up with something interesting, like the automatic feeding machine, the "comedy" stretches out for so long that it just becomes tedious.
2/10
Charles Chaplin, 1936
A factory worker (Chaplin) goes mad, gets accidentally involved in politics, goes to jail, falls in love, tries to get a job, and other loosely connected things.After making two attempts with Chaplin, I think I'm going to have to accept that he's just not for me. Modern Times, near as I can tell, is a series of barely-related vignettes that each serve as little more than an excuse for Chaplin to mug for the camera and do a silly walk. I feel kind of bad saying this, and I do worry that I might be missing something, but my impression is that he's essentially the Jim Carrey of his generation. Even when he comes up with something interesting, like the automatic feeding machine, the "comedy" stretches out for so long that it just becomes tedious.
2/10
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
20. Shutter Island
Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese, 2010
A US Marshall (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a tragic past and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the disappearance of a patient (Emily Mortimer) from an insane asylum built on a remote island, miles out to sea. Things, as you might expect, are not as they seem.
When someone has been making movies for as long as Martin Scorsese has, it can often lead to stagnation, boredom, and irrelevancy. But it can also create a unique mix of confidence and competence that, when married with a more experimental and even playful style, can create an effect powerful enough to steamroll even the most egregious narrative weaknesses into submission. So it is with Shutter Island.
. . . that's an awfully florid way to put it. Let me try it again, more simply: Shutter Island has a bad problem with its climax, but the movie is so well made it kind of doesn't matter.
The problem with Shutter Island is inherited from the novel it's based on - basically, the whole thing is predicated on a very familiar twist at the climax, which is overexplained to the point that it becomes inexcusable. The twist lies at the heart of the story - you can't really go without it, but Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis have managed to mitigate the problem. First, they eliminated the one bit of twistiness that I found the most troublesome (avoiding spoilers, I'll just say it involves the names of two little boys). Second, the scenes that follow it have been slightly tweaked to carry much more emotional weight than they did in the book, so things end on a high point. Third, they avoided treating the twist as a twist (at least to whatever degree was possible), by presenting it bluntly, calmly, and matter-of-factly, and by foreshadowing things to a much greater degree than the book.
The most important thing they did, though, was make sure that the rest of the movie was strong enough to make up for it. The cinematography, sound design, and especially the editing combine to create an atmosphere that's tremendously unsettling without being off-putting, particularly during the extended dream sequences. Yes, they do tend to run on longer than they should, but I would hate to lose even a second of them. The actors deserve special notice as well - many of them manage to create a strong impression with only one or two scenes. Of the main cast, Mark Ruffalo deserves special mention for a deceptively nuanced performance that may seem flat until you know what to look for.
Part of me wants to hate this movie. The bigger part of me loved it.
8.5/10
Martin Scorsese, 2010
A US Marshall (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a tragic past and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the disappearance of a patient (Emily Mortimer) from an insane asylum built on a remote island, miles out to sea. Things, as you might expect, are not as they seem.When someone has been making movies for as long as Martin Scorsese has, it can often lead to stagnation, boredom, and irrelevancy. But it can also create a unique mix of confidence and competence that, when married with a more experimental and even playful style, can create an effect powerful enough to steamroll even the most egregious narrative weaknesses into submission. So it is with Shutter Island.
. . . that's an awfully florid way to put it. Let me try it again, more simply: Shutter Island has a bad problem with its climax, but the movie is so well made it kind of doesn't matter.
The problem with Shutter Island is inherited from the novel it's based on - basically, the whole thing is predicated on a very familiar twist at the climax, which is overexplained to the point that it becomes inexcusable. The twist lies at the heart of the story - you can't really go without it, but Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis have managed to mitigate the problem. First, they eliminated the one bit of twistiness that I found the most troublesome (avoiding spoilers, I'll just say it involves the names of two little boys). Second, the scenes that follow it have been slightly tweaked to carry much more emotional weight than they did in the book, so things end on a high point. Third, they avoided treating the twist as a twist (at least to whatever degree was possible), by presenting it bluntly, calmly, and matter-of-factly, and by foreshadowing things to a much greater degree than the book.
The most important thing they did, though, was make sure that the rest of the movie was strong enough to make up for it. The cinematography, sound design, and especially the editing combine to create an atmosphere that's tremendously unsettling without being off-putting, particularly during the extended dream sequences. Yes, they do tend to run on longer than they should, but I would hate to lose even a second of them. The actors deserve special notice as well - many of them manage to create a strong impression with only one or two scenes. Of the main cast, Mark Ruffalo deserves special mention for a deceptively nuanced performance that may seem flat until you know what to look for.
Part of me wants to hate this movie. The bigger part of me loved it.
8.5/10
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