Films I Watched - August, 2008
Submitted by lbangs on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 04:14
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- 8/16 - Tell No One - Coming on strong like a cross of a television crime procedural with Vertigo and North by Northwest, this French feature is savvy enough to take its tasty time heating up. When the first major chase scene kicks in, a simple electronic pulse sends all the coiled tension through the glass. Not every loose end wraps up, but Hitchcock's films were also always frayed at the edges. The twists are rather plausible for the genre, especially when that racing heart turns out to be a tough romantic one. The cast is killer, with the lead actor simply the brightest star in a shining sky. This is that rare beast - a word-of-mouth sensation that merits all its buzzing. *** 1/2
- 8/17 - Vicky Cristina Barcelona - Allen may be old, but he ain't blind. There are countries that have decency laws against allowing two women as beautiful as Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall in the same film. Nope, he is not blind, unlike that doctor in Crimes and Misdemeanors who couldn't see his hand in front of his face or the fact that Woody's world is void of a moral order. He's projecting that same world here, but it now tastes of ripe sensual fruit rather than burnt bitter almonds. Penelope Cruz acts a storm, and Javier Bardem got a haircut and some sleepy bedroom eyes. It all works, if not perfectly or divinely, then quite well all the same, and the father's reasons for not publishing his poetry is the funniest thing I've heard all year. ***
- 8/18 - Tropic Thunder - We don't just laugh at Young Frankenstein; we also admire the detail and love it shows recreating the very genre it is goosing. It serves as both spoof and homage. Tropic Thunder, with its incredibly accurate recreation of pivotal scenes from various Vietnam films and its direction and cinematography redoing the Rambo films better than the originals, rides that same wave to comic perfection. It doesn't stop there, of course. It also spoofs the very system that created the film, twisting Hollywood's nipple so hard that you wonder how a studio pumped a hundred million into such a satire. Stiller acts, directs, and co-writes, leaping directly over any weaker films he's noodled about in and reaching back to fulfill his promising roots in television and his earlier films. This isn't just vapidly silly like the failed Zoolander, it is also very funny. Kudos to the entire cast, including Tom Cruise who provides a surprising share of the fun, especially when getting his groove on. Was it just a few years ago I was complaining that Hollywood forgot how to make comedies? Between Apatow and Stiller, that amnesia's done been cured. Hallelujah. *** 1/2
- 8/19 - The Incredible Hulk - The studio squinted its eyes and used a very dull knife to peel off every hint of psychological subtext or subtlety from this green beast. As a result, about a fourth of the way in, you begin to fear this is simply a movie Peter Jackson did twenty times better in 2005. A few moments offer false hope that you're wrong, but by the time the incredibly moronic finale thuds down to earth (on what looks like the same city block set used in Ghostbusters), you realize this is far worse than you feared. Nobody really escapes looking good, although Hurt hurts far less than Roth or Norton. Fans of big fake guys smashing pixels up should ignore me (as usual). * 1/2
- 8/22 - Local Hero - Once seen, you don’t have to be told this is the major inspiration for Northern Exposure, curly-haired protagonist and all. Before it was Cicely, Alaska, it was a Scottish village named Ferness, and while it has more business satire in place of over-the-top quirkiness (partly thanks to an incredibly fun Burt Lancaster), this is still packed with off-kilter fun. It also shares that alight mystical sheen in which the television series occasionally bathed, adding a poetical beauty to the earthy kicks. One of the best films you’ve never seen, and possibly a favorite of many waiting to happen. ****
- 8/23 - American Teen - A highly staged, over produced documentary follows four Breakfast Club types around senior year, providing mixed results. The princess cliché is boring, shrewish, and nearly without redemption, but the beautiful outcast struggling with stupid boys gets your attention. It is no great secret that high school boys are dumb (note how many morons dump the girl for no good reason), but apparently too many people haven’t caught on to the fact that doesn’t change as they get older. An overwhelming majority of men (I’d wager over eighty percent) are stupid as silt, a reality our culture increasingly encourages. The many Dumb Guys wandering the halls of lockers here are only a few years away from littering office corridors downtown. As an average man who has benefited enormously from the contrast all you Dumb Guys have provided, I have to thank you very deeply. You’ve made my life so wonderful by the simple face everybody compares me with you. Now please stop voting. The movie? Not bad, but not nearly as good as it could have been with a little more realism and a few more subjects as interesting as Hannah. The biggest shock might be that the jock proves more entertaining than the band geek, but only by a smidge. ** 1/2
- 8/23 - Bottle Shock - A long, sloppy script provides the crushing disappointment, which is really sad given the superb work the cast kicks in. Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman usually provide delights, and the direction is adequate, but too many characters simply float on the surface of this stagnant script, at least twenty minutes serve no purpose whatsoever, and the film only breathes toward the end. Too little, too late. I hope the same cast and director score higher with the promising Nobel Son arriving later this year. **
- 8/24 - Man on Wire - Most of us are frankly lazy and stupid, and we are largely stupid because we are lazy. We go to work, eat enough lunch to make us drowsy throughout the afternoon, and watch television until the beer coaxes our eyes shut. On weekends, we get drunk with the same stale people we always hang around until we nearly pass out, and then we start again Monday morning. Philippe Petit represents a far better side of us, a potential so few of us even aspire to fulfill. He’s not perfect; he is borderline manic, and his selfishness isn’t justified by his genius, but he is alive and pushing and not satisfied to be a paperweight in the shuffle of modern life. This documentary is assembled into a perfectly twisted structure, telling you what you need to know when you need to know it, and the story about a man who aims to stretch a wire between the World Trade Center towers and to dance between the structures is glorious, a fairytale of beauty suspended between two huge, boring edifices of the times. It is the cold bracing splash of colorful art slapping against the grey everyday, and it rather thrilling and gorgeous. *** 1/2
- 8/24 - Thank You for Smoking - So many satires have one glaring Achilles heel. The jokes and shrewd observations do not necessarily lend themselves to the narrative demands most studios saddle onto feature films. Here is a great example. The first half of the movie is wicked fun, with Aaron Eckhart perfectly providing the face of modern media, blandly slick and throwing out emotional buzzwords fast and furious while praying you never realize nothing is being said. You don’t have to convince anybody of anything, only spin enough fuzzy yarn around and nobody can see. In a complacent world, blindness guarantees the status quo. Of course, after a twist near the middle, the movie tries to hard to work in a weak plot that doesn’t merit the humor. The ship doesn’t go down, but it certainly loses vital speed. The cast is fun, although William H. Macy doesn’t save an underwritten role and plausibility is hurt a bit since Katie Holmes isn’t nearly as sexy as Maria Bello. Still, even in brief patches, Sam Elliott, J.K. Simmons, and Robert Duvall help any movie, and Rob Lowe slyly steals some of the best scenes. I didn’t see that coming. ***
- 8/29 - Blade Runner - The local arthouse theater showed the Final Cut (no doubt, we'll see a Final Cut: Part II soon) as a midnight movie. There are a few extra seconds here and there, and that's about all I could catch that was different from the previous so-called Director's Cut. Yeah, the whole business is getting silly, and I miss the narration (shoot me) and find the whole he's-a-what twist a bit stupid, but this is still largely the same movie it ever was. The visuals are incredible, the acting works, and the ideas are thought-provoking, even if every passing year leaves me finding some of the symbolism toward the end too over-cooked and obvious. Even with those flaws, I still love this film, but for my money, the original theatrical version is the one to beat. ****
- 8/30 - Hamlet 2- Some times, a movie is a complete mess, with sloppy pacing and a general sense that the driver fell asleep before the semi hit the curves, but it makes you laugh. If a comedy can pull that off, often, all is forgiven. It certainly does not make for a great movie, and it might not even near the best of the genre, but if a comedy works, it works. This works. There are dry patches, there is a tendency to drift, and there is even the sense that the opening hour was hastily built for the finale that is the film’s true raison d'etre, but by golly, enough of the comedy gets you, from the fantastic musical numbers to the delightful (and still beautiful) Elisabeth Shue tweaking herself for laughs. Steve Coogan is a funny man, and many of the ideas here are hilarious. This is a good, not great comedy, and that's enough. ***
Author Comments:
I'll try to start this up again, with slightly stricter ratings...
Ah, leave it to Hulk to break your lucky streak, although I can't say I'm too surprised. Since this weekend's releases just feature a lot of lameness, maybe I can catch up with Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
The Incredible Hulk - why do I listen to friends? Ugh, what a bad movie!
Luckily, my town has some interesting smaller films opening (Man on Wire, American Teen, Chicago 10, and Bottle Shock), so maybe the film week round here won't be too bad...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Wow--Tell No One is quite a treat! The French are really on a winning streak when it comes to thrillers...
Johnny Waco
No kidding! Our countryfolk could learn a thing or two from them.
Ten times the thrills at a tenth of the budget. Hmmm.
Plus, they have all those French women, so...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
"Ten times the thrills at a tenth of the budget." According to my calculations that would be a thrill-to-budget ratio of 100:1 over the American Standardized Thrill-Cost Conversion.
In France they are just called "women." (Or "femme" if you are trés persnickety.)
How do they ever tell between them and the American women, then?
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
They call American women "Royales with cheese."
When they're in a good mood...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs