I hereby nominate Viggo Mortensen for Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards.

Not being a real writer, i feel reluctant to blame my lack of blogging for the past month on writer’s block. I was hesitating and desperately trying to find an angle, something to latch on to, in the various films i have watched during this period, but nothing came. The sweet but bland The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), the original but ephemeral Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the annoying and commercial Twilight New Moon (2009), and even the cult and cerebral Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), all left me with no inspiration to write.

But The Road….well, The Road just completely threw me off my chair. I am still reeling from the experience of watching this film. Amazing acting, beautiful beautiful cinematography, gorgeous soundtrack and poignant and sparse dialogue. And sad. So sad.

I never read Cormac McCarthy’s Pullitzer Prize winning novel, so i am not constrained by the usual novel-to-film adaptation discussions. I can not evaluate how good of an adaptation this film is, or whether it is too literal to the novel or not. But i can judge, as far as your humble blogger can judge, that John Hillcoat, the director of The Road, has done a magnificent job at telling this desolate and somber post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive in a world that pretty much no longer exists.

I wanted to incorporate one of the two trailers for the film with this post but as i watched them again, i felt that they both dumb the film down considerably and that they do not do justice to the essence of the story. This film is not about action, survival, cannibalism or about the end of the world. Instead, it is about what makes us human and about the beauty of life, and i dare say, the beauty of parenthood. As the father of a 2.5 years old son, this movie touched me on a level deeper than most of the films i have watched in my life. The usual post-apocalyptic and horror movies aside, which should not be compared to The Road, the film reminded me of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s eerie The Return (2003) and of Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, both great and surreal works in their own ways.

Benjamin Button is a weak entry in the otherwise very impressive resume of David Fincher. The man who built his well-deserved reputation with edgy, post-modern and existential thrillers decided to go the epic love story direction and ended up suffocating us in a bath of sucrose for almost three hours.

Every year, the Academy Awards surprise us by nominating and even awarding mediocre films for reasons that have more to do with politics than with quality. While i have yet to see Frost/Nixon and The Reader, i can already say that Benjamin Button had no place being nominated this year for best film.

The Curious Case tells the story of a man who ages in reverse. A beautiful and interesting concept (the film is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald), which Fincher unfortunately fails to turn into a consistent and solid experience. Some moments are touching, mainly when BB is either very old or very young, but everything in between (when Brad Pitt is being Brad Pitt) is filled with cliches, strange editing, poor acting and just feels amateurish and predictable. Fincher tried something new but stretched himself too far. In addition, the film’s length could have been cut by at least one hour and no substance would have been missed. On the contrary, it would have made the film stronger. Directors should only go for epic length if they are 100% sure they can fill it with quality, and not with cliches and cheap sentimental rubbish. For example, skip all that Forest Gump stuff with the mad captain as well as most of the scenes between Blanchett and Ormond. These scenes were excruciatinlgy bad and tiresome: how many times have we seen this set up before, the old woman telling her story to her mystified daughter and who miraculously manages to hang on until the last sentence has been read?

As i have stated before, i enjoy Brad Pitt when he plays a certain kind of role. But BB is not one of these. Here, he is back to his stoic worse, the type of performance we have seen from him in Meet Joe Black and Seven Years in Tibet. Cate Blanchett looks a bit confused throughout the film and her voice as an old woman was so grueling to listen to that i knew from the start i was going to have problems with this film. Tilda Swinton and Faune Chambers, on the other hand, provide welcomed moments of relief.

Perhaps The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not as bad as i make it sound. It is afterall somewhat entertaining, the cinematography deserves a nod, as do the Make-Up and Costumes. And perhaps i am letting my disappoinment with Fincher get in the way of a fair appraisal of the fillm. But when even my wife, who is much more of a sucker for these types of films than i am, finds faults with it, then at least one thing is clear: this is not the Oscar-worthy film that some have talked about.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2007 Montreal film festival, this directorial debut by Nic Balthazar deserves credit for creating an interesting experience for about 80% of the duration of the movie. Unfortunately, he throws it all away at the end with a cheesy feel-good ending that feels very poorly handled.

BenX is the story of a young man who suffers from Asperger Syndrome, a milder form of autism. Bullied at school, unable to ‘blend in’ and to socially relate to his peers, his principal means of interacting, and really, of existing, is by immersing himself into the game Archlord (Overlord) where he becomes the character BenX and where he has the freedom to do what he can not do in ‘traditional’ reality. Although he has a good friend in the world of Overlord (Scarlite), his increasing inability to deal with life prompts him to contemplate ways of commiting suicide.

BenX is not a small challenge for a first time director. Taking on autism, school bullying, teenage angst, and the influence of the internet and of video games on our lives and on how we interact with each other, is indeed a tall ordeal. Balthazar manages pretty well on the whole, although his sometimes hectic cuts and camera movements can feel overly eager and ambitious. The acting is solid enough but nothing more. And the script holds together decently until the last part of the film, at which point it falls apart in ambuiguity and clumsiness. Overall, a respectable film that nonetheless still feels too often like a first time effort.

Novels are notoriously difficult to adapt successfully to the screen. It is not so much a question of whether the visual language of cinema can tell more or less than the written word but rather that it does it in a different way, touching on different connection points to our emotions and intellect. Most people who have read a novel and watched a film based on that novel end up usually disappointed as there is little chance that a film will be able to entirely re-create the world that the written word can sometimes open to us. But great appreciators of cinema will know when the writer and director of a film have succeeded in utilizing the power of the moving image to best interpret and render the essence of a novel. Not necessarily to literraly and faithfully adapt it, but to transport the meaning, intention and atmosphere in the best possible way, based on the possiblities of the cinematic medium.

That is not to say that all novels can be turned into films, nor that it should always be attempted. Especially when the essence of a novel is closely dependent on a very particular style of prose (little punctuation and lack of quotation marks around dialogue) and when the author (a Nobel prize winner) specifically removes many traditional frames of references such as character names and cultural and geographical points of idendification to enhance the power of his message. In short, Fernando Meirelles should probably not have attempted to turn José Saramago’s influencial novel into a film.

Blindness tells the story of how humanity suddenly loses its sight. One by one, the nameless residents of an unnamed city become blind and must learn to live with one another under extreme conditions of chaos and lawlesness (and of course, of blindness). One woman, played with usual consistency and intensity by Julianne Moore, retains her sight and is confronted with the question of what it means to be the one who sees in the kingdom of the blind.

Watching as many movies as i do means that i get exposed to a lot of different styles and cinematic experiences. And through my emphasis on ‘Sci-Fi’, i get my fair share of the disturbing and the unnerving. But that did not prepare me for how tough of a film Blindness is. I found the film so disturbing, and unfortunately at times, so cheaply disturbing, that i had to stop halfway through it to take a break. Saramago and Meirelles illustrate our collective spiritual blindness and lack of empathy by using examples of the absolute worst evil that Man can do. For about one hour, we are subjected to scenes of human degradation that reach a level of such intensity that one can’t help but wonder if the point couldn’t have been made equally as well without resorting to such extremes. I personally found some of the scenes insulting and even perverted.

Yet, there is something haunting about Blindness, something that stayed with me long after the film was over. No longer anger but rather fascination and curiosity towards a message which, although cruel, offers a glimmer of hope and presents the possibility that we as humans have a choice, the choice to learn how to live with one another and to create a better world for all.

Along with Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes must be the most talented English director to have emerged on the Hollywood scene in the past 10 years. When he is not directing for the stage, Mendes is busy coming up with thought-provoking and beautiful films such as American Beauty (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and now Revolutionary Road.

This latest one is perhaps Mendes’s most accomplished film to date, although its intensity and lack of warmer characters may prevent it from ending on many critics’ top ten lists. It has certainly not been that warmly received by the general public, probably due to its disconcerting tension and forcefulness. It is also likely that many people might have found a bit too much of themselves in the Wheelers, this couple that self destructs under the weight of unfulfilled dreams.

If American Beauty may have seemed a bit tame at times in its depiction of a conservative middle class mentality, placing accessibility before depth, Revolutionary Road tries its best to detach itself from any such notion by creating a bleak and uncompromising film that just keeps hitting you in the stomach until it really hurts. DiCaprio and Winslet (Winslet won several awards for this role) are terrific, a younger version of Burton and Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Although a very different couple from the one played by Burton and Taylor, DiCaprio and Winslet work so well of each other that their passion and agony become ours. The characters they play may not be the most likeable human beings but that certainly did not keep me from understanding them and from identifying with some of their desires and fears. I suspect many people of a certain age will find a little bit of themselves in what the Wheelers go through, and if that is not the case, then these people are either very lucky, uninterested or too afraid to look too deeply into their own life. Clearly, none of these three things is conducive to appreciating this great movie.

Revolutionary Road should have been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It is a tragic and depressing film, beautifully told and remarkably well-made. It is not for everyone’s taste but it is powerful cinema.

Something happened about 10 years ago. Oliver Stone, who had been one of North America’s most interesting and provocative directors in the 80s and early 90s, suddenly started making boring and average movies. Any Given Sunday (99), Alexander (04) and World Trade Center (06), all felt like the work of a director who had run out of ideas, and out of rage. Perhaps wounded by the constant scorn of critics and by accusations of a lack of patriotism, Stone has turned to facile cinema to continue funneling his political ideas. Unfortunately, the result is a far cry from what he used to be capable of.

His latest film is something not often seen in this medium: the biography of someone who is still alive. This represents quite a challenge as the film must compete in the reader’s minds with the information and knowledge they already have about the person being portrayed, information which is current and much more relevant than if the subject had been dead for 30 years. And if in addition that person happens to be the most hated man in the world over the past eight years, the level of complexity rises even further for the filmmaker and his screenwriter. But that obviously did not stop Stone from wanting to try to tell the story of George W. Bush and how this little insecure man went from alcoholism and skirt-chasing to the highest post in the world.

Regular readers of this blog will know that i hold much contempt for George W. Bush and that i am always very much in favor of exposing his lies and deceit. I have posted several times before about excellent documentaries and filmmakers who have done their best to show the world the damage the Bush administration has done and the amount of corruption and illegal activities it has engaged in. But W. does little to expand on this great work. Instead of confronting the viewer with the brutal truth of Bush’s lies, idioticism and corruption, this fluffy romanticization attempts to be fair and to show Bush, as an idiot yes, but as an idiot who grew up in the shadow of his brother and who was constantly seeking the approval of a distant and critical father….

W. ends up being just like a nice Disneyland ride. Move over Pirates of the Caribbean, here comes W. the ride. Here is George getting pissed during his Yale fraternity induction. Over there is George working in an oil rig. And look over there, it’s George meeting with Rumsfeld, Condy, Powell and Cheney. Don’t they look like nice muppets, all these actors chosen because they resemble so closely the actual protagonists (with the exception of Rumsfeld who looks like the odd piece in the puzzle)? Whether they all act well or not becomes irrelevant, as their actions and manners are made to resemble exactly that of these politicians whom we have come to know so well because we have watched them so often on TV. How can these portrayals compete with the real thing, how can they not appear as wax puppets playing out a script when we have all already been bombarded by videos and cartoons and images of Bush and Cheney and of their every mannerisms? To make matters worse, too many fairly well-known actors have been chosen to play these politicians, creating an even further distinction between the reality of W. the film and the reality of W. as we have acquired it individually over the past 8 years of ‘living’ with him. It is no longer a question of Cheney playing Cheney but of Richard Dreyfuss playing Cheney playing Cheney. As i have commented on before regarding Bobby (06), i consider using too many well-known actors in one film a risky proposition that very few filmmakers can pull off. The effect is simply too distracting and it adds a clear level of superficiality to the experience.

Which brings me to my last point. The above could have worked, perhaps, if Stone had stuck with one direction in his film. Is W. a parody, is it a bit comic, is it serious, didactic, pedagogic, entertaining, a criticism, an apology, a fair portrayal…? W. is confusing because it seems to want to be all of this. But by the time the end credits start to roll, one has every right to feel confused and to wonder what that was all about.

Another film to be filed under the ever-popular Snow & Disturbing category. But in the case of Let the Right One In, the constant dreary and eerie atmosphere is not just a stylistic exercise applied to an already troubling story, but rather a simple reflection of certain aspects of everyday life in Scandinavia or in any other northern region of our planet. An entire winter in such as country as Sweden is not for everyone’s taste: only a few hours of sunlight per day, constant cold temperatures and few possibilities for social activities outside…unless you are a cold-blooded vampire, in which case it might in fact be just the perfect place…

But Let the Right One In is not just another vampire film. This is a very serious vampire film, not necessarily interested in scaring us as much as in showing the realities of what it might entail to be a vampire, especially if you are a 12 year old.  The film is a coming of age story with a provocative insight into the fragility of 12 year olds, an age at which various influences will decide the course of the years to come.

Minimalist, slow, disturbing, nicely shot. well acted, Let the Right One In is a stimulating and enjoyable film that does the vampire genre much justice.

A compelling look at one of the most influential bands of the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Shot in beautiful black and white to reflect the dreary working class atmosphere of north-western England in that period, Control focuses on Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division who committed suicide at the age of 23.

I used to idolize Ian Curtis in those days and had I watched Control back then, I may have been disappointed to discover that he was a simple human being who could not handle life’s difficulties. As a teenager who worshiped Joy Division, I had assumed that Ian Curtis was some kind of God who had a master plan to embrace darkness and death, an anarchist who had decided to live on the edge of life. But it turns out that this was not the case. Curtis struggled to come to terms with the increasing popularity of Joy Division and continued with his job as a social worker during much of the early days of the band’s success. He also could not reconcile his conflicting emotions towards the two women in his life: his wife and his mistress. In the end, he chose death instead of choosing either of them, although he decided to end his life in the home that he still shared with his wife.

Watching Control today has given me a renewed interest in the singer, albeit one which is based on his human traits, including his weaknesses, rather than on his iconic status.
Directed by Anton Corbijn, an accomplished photographer and music video director, Control is a very powerful film that should be of interest to anyone who loves music and who is interested in learning more about a band that has influenced so many others since.

How to do justice to the memory of one of America’s greatest politician is a question that Emilio Estevez must have asked himself countless times while planning his movie Bobby. Unfortunately, it appears that he didn’t find a satisfactory answer.

Bobby is built on an interesting, albeit increasingly overused, premise: to capture the last 24 hours of Robert F. Kennedy’s life through the eyes of several people who have only one thing in common: they will be present during Kennedy’s last speech in a Los Angeles hotel during that ill-fated night of June 6th, 1968. Estevez mixes their lives, stories and beliefs with real footage of Kennedy on the campaign trail, as he spreads his message of hope across America.

One of the early problems with the film is that this dozen or so of lead characters are all played by more or less well-known stars, and one can’t help but to start wondering who else is going to pop up next. The viewer becomes trapped in this overabundance of celebrities and begins to watch the stars themselves rather than the characters they portray. In addition, some of these familiar and pretty faces (my god, they were all so pretty in 1968!) happen to be very average actors and actresses, resulting in characters that are simply tedious to watch and enjoy, and in scenes that simply feel too much like they were built for a celebrity to fly in for the day and recite a few lines and express their liberal penchant by simply being there and by appearing in a film about Robert F. Kennedy. Using so many stars effectively is a difficult undertaking and intertwining their stories in a way that is compelling is even more complex. One can’t blame Estevez for trying to be Robert Altman (or to a lesser extent, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) but one can certainly fault him for failing and for only being able to come up with a result that is as mediocre as Paul Haggis’ Crash (2004).

But what comes out as the single biggest problem with Bobby is that it is an avalanche of cheap and democratic sentimentalism. Estevez tries so hard to capture the impact that Kennedy had on people in 1968 (which begs the question as to why Estevez decided to focus mainly on all these white pretty people, instead of attempting to show Kennedy’s impact on the poor and blacks – the couple of so-called Latinos and Blacks in the film do not feel believable at all. Their comportment and attitude feel to me much more late 20th century than late 1960s) that he can only use amateurish tricks such as showing us people who got into an argument reconciling to the words of Kennedy and to the required late 60’s soundtrack. Oh, you just had an affair? That’s ok, now that I hear Kennedy and how he will change America, I forgive you. Oh, you just got shot, you racist pig? Even though I fired you this morning for being a racist and even though I strongly dislike you, let me make sure that I am the first one in the room to help you as you lay on the floor. In summary, let us all suddenly become better people and embrace as we listen to the message of Robert F. Kennedy. Can someone please pass the soap?

The real footage of Kennedy is actually the most interesting and emotional part of the film. Kennedy was destined to be a greater man than he already was. His vision, his youth, his honesty, his idealism, all had the power to change America and to make a real transformation in issues such as civil rights and racism, the environment, and social justice. He truly believed in the possibility of a better world and seemed untouched by the usual constraints and pressures of the military and business establishments. How much he would have achieved is another question but there is little doubt that America would probably be a different place today had he not been assassinated and had he been elected, instead of Richard Nixon…

André Bazin once stated that various aspects of the Western allowed it to identify with the essence of cinema. Writing in the 40s and 50s, Bazin saw in the classic Western films of that period a simplicity in morality and a reformist style that resulted in a genre that had no reason to excuse itself for its black and white, good and evil, and more or less accurate portrayal of an important period in American history. He also noticed a progression within the genre but his death in 1958 did not allow him to witness an even further evolution throughout the 60s and 70s. How interesting it would have been to know his assessment of what the Leones, Peckinpahs and Altmans did to the Western genre.

Personally, I believe they did it a lot of good and infused it with a much-needed dose of realism and freshness. I recently surprised a Cinephile friend of mine for stating that Red River (48) had left me unimpressed (as do most films with John Wayne). And as I explained in this post, most traditional Westerns, while stimulating our imagination with their exploration of a mystical historicity, have a tendency to nonetheless deal with aspects of human nature that probably shouldn’t be so unabashedly revered.

Enter The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a brilliant take on the Western genre by Andrew Dominik, who previously directed the very entertaining Chopper (2000). Bashed by many for being overly self-conscious, this film defies many of the criteria that Bazin identified 60 years ago regarding the Western. It contains little action, blurs the line between good and evil and asks us to connect for two and half hours to bandits with sometimes little to offer in terms of principles and decency. Like McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), The Assassination of Jesse James depicts a gray, cold and unforgiving West (or more accurately in this case, Mid-West) where life does not revolve mainly around patting the wife on the behind, eating beef stew with the mates around the campfire and shooting Indians in the back. Andrew Dominik’s film is a slow, atmospheric, beautifully shot, exploration of a death dance between two men. Jesse James, played remarkably well by Brad Pitt (who always seems to do much better when he can play unusual or slightly offbeat characters, as in 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, Kalifornia, Snatch….) is the very intelligent, crazy, menacing and tired killer hero who has fabricated an elaborate plan to ensure that his name will live on forever. Robert Ford, played by Casey Affleck in a performance that earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, is the young neglected man who idealizes Jesse James and who wants to be one day as or more famous than his idol. The dissolution of the James gang serves as a background for a ballet between the two men’s fears, delusions and objectives. The Assassination of Jesse James is not an action film and probably not even a Western. It is a well acted and well scripted period drama wrapped in a heavy stylistic blanket that can either warm one’s sensibilities or that can turn one off in the same way that the films of Terrence Malick or Wong Kar Wai can exasperate some people. But if one were to insist on calling The Assassination of Jesse James a Western, then I would say that it is one of the best Westerns ever made.

‘I drink your milkshake…I drink it up!’
This innocuous line spoken towards the end of There Will be Blood by Daniel Plainview, the character played by Daniel Day Lewis, captures in the way it is delivered, the strange, powerful, sometimes magnificent but most often disturbing tone and atmosphere that permeates Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film.

An epic about oil, greed, good and evil, and, really, about nihilism, There Will be Blood is a troubling piece that resembles Requiem for A Dream (2000) in its desire, to quote more or less accurately something that Aronofsky once said about his film, ‘to throw you from a window and then once you are dying on the pavement, to throw a piano on top of you’.
The first 20 minutes of the film, which contain no dialogue, set the tone for what is a deeply unusual and remarkable film that makes a few statements with the power to draw contemporary comparisons, but that decides to keep them somewhat obscured in favour of an explosion of hatred, loneliness and ugliness. Surely, one can’t watch this film and be satisfied that it is simply about greed, capitalism and a loss of certain values that are pertinent to 21st century society (as they were already 100 years ago).

This lack of a clear message, as well as a haunting score and a very unlikeable protagonist (albeit so charismatic that we can’t take our eyes off him – enough has been said about Day-Lewis’s astonishing performance) who is the sole focus and the only fully developed character in the entire film, has disturbed many viewers and critics, depriving them of a traditional frame through which to appraise the film.

There is little doubt that There Will be Blood is not a standard film. Paul Thomas Anderson has delivered a work that is ambitious, different, and that pushes the envelop of traditional filmmaking. In the process, it asks the viewer to allow for a different type of experience to come through, one that is not always ‘pleasant’ but that certainly shows a high level of creativity and craftsmanship.

I love cinema because good movies take me to places in my self that I don’t always visit in real life. A good film for me is a film that knows how to tickle a part of my brain and arouse all sorts of emotions. These don’t have to be as simple as happiness or sadness or fright or laughter. It can be something else, something gray, something in between, something uncomfortable. In There Will be Blood, Anderson and Day-Lewis succeed magnificently in taking us to a place where cinema rarely goes, and they do so through a mastery of all the filmmaking ingredients, although in degrees and combinations that stand outside of usual conventions.

An ode to the beauty of the natural world, with particular emphasis on the sumptuous North American West, a condemnation of a race driven by personal gratification and material satisfaction, an homage to the power of love and of human connections, a portrayal of a remarkable, idealistic, selfish and naïve young man in his quest for a simpler life away from civilisation, Into the Wild is a riveting film whose cinematography and message linger in the mind long after the initial viewing.

Sean Penn’s fourth picture clearly shows that he is an accomplished director with a strong understanding of human tragedy and, in the case of Into the Wild and of The Pledge (2001), for placing it in the midst of humbling and majestic landscapes.

Based on the book by Jon Krakauer (the journalist and mountaineer who also wrote the tragic and fascinating Into Thin Air (1997), about a 1996 ill-fated ascent of Mount Everest), Into the Wild tells the story of Christopher McCandless, a bright young man from an affluent family in Atlanta, Georgia, who after graduation decided to leave everything behind, including his family, for a bohemian and penniless lifestyle across the American West. A modern Jeremiah Johnson, McCandless’s spiritual quest led him, after almost 2 years of nomadic wandering, to Alaska where he attempted to live alone in the wild.

There seem to be different opinions about McCandless’s personality and relationship to the world and whether he deserves the positive depiction that he received in Krakauer’s book and now in Sean Penn’s film. But regardless of whether McCandless truly was such a likeable person, Into the Wild is a breathtaking film that should make anyone long for the serenity and splendour of a world that we are sadly in the process of destroying.

You have to give Eastwood credit for trying. One of the most powerful men in Hollywood, he could easily go down the easy road and direct one shallow commercial film after the next, a la Ron Howard.

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How many times have we seen this story brought to the screen before? Man comes across a deal gone wrong, takes the money and tries to get away with it. If it is true that all film scenarios pretty much revolve around 32 plots (which it probably isn’t), then only real talent can make such a cliché story interesting again.

Enter the Cohen Brothers, the entity that might be known one day as one of the best director in the history of cinema. Forget Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and forget The Ladykillers (2004), two mediocre films that do little to tarnish an otherwise spectacular filmography. The Cohen brothers are back on top and while it is difficult, and probably inappropriate, to compare such a hard and dark film with some of their previous work, this latest effort is nonetheless as good a film as they have ever made.
No Country for Old Men has an intensity and rhythm that reminded me of the recent Scorcese, The Departed (2006). No fluff, no silly and excessive music, no unnecessary dialog, no gratuitous scenes, no let down in the strength of the performances, only tight and solid directing, scripting, and acting (and beautiful cinematography as well).
Many have spoken about the performance of Josh Brolin as a career defining role (good enough apparently to convince Oliver Stone to want to cast him as George W. Bush in Stone’s next biopic), or about Tommy Lee Jones’ convincing turn as a laconic and delusioned Sheriff (one can’t help but to try to create a connection between this character and the one he played a couple of years ago in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)) but I personally would like to single out Javier Bardem in what i consider to be one of the best villain performance of all time. I can’t remember the last time the character of a madman was so brilliantly and realistically depicted on screen (perhaps Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, or Ralf Fiennes in Schindler’s List). I still get chills down my spine thinking about some of the killings in the film and about the character’s methods, which involve a mix of principles, sadism and intelligence.

Overall, an intense, dark and disturbing film that ranks as one of the best thrillers ever made.

If I found The Manchurian Candidate (62) unwilling to go far enough in the treatment of its brilliant and daring concept, I certainly did not hold such opinion after watching Seconds. Despite a couple of moments when John Frankenheimer loses control of its material and over-indulges in wobbly camera movements (the wine orgy scene and, to a lesser extent, the party at home scene), Seconds is an amazingly dark and bold film for 1960s Hollywood (after all, Bonnie and Clyde (67), which represents a milestone in American cinema, was also considered dark and bold, but feels, at least to me, much tamer than Seconds), about a man who is given a chance at a new identity and a new life but slowly realizes that the change only makes him more miserable.

From the disturbing opening titles by Saul Bass to the unrepentant nerve-racking ending, Seconds takes you to some very unpleasant places, while managing to make several interesting points about midlife crises, beauty, identity, happiness and success. Some of these points resonate even more strongly today when beauty and material ‘satisfaction’ seem to be more readily accessible than ever, and increasingly at the cost of a traditional (and possibly archaic) definition of happiness. This quest for beauty is made possible by scientific advancement and Seconds reminds us of Les Yeux Sans Visage (60) and of the more recent Extreme Measures (98) in its portrayal of the brilliant scientist or doctor who too easily crosses ethical boundaries in a blind belief in the righteousness of their action.

Rock Hudson is particularly enjoyable to watch and effectively manages to make us forget a hollow reputation acquired by playing mainly in melodramatic roles. The cinematography, aside from suffering on two occasions from the already mentioned overbearing desire to create confusion, does manage nonetheless to craft a very claustrophobic and disturbing environment.

Seconds is not a perfect film, but it certainly is one that has been undeservedly forgotten and should have a place along such classics as The Manchurian Candidate, The Wicker Man (73) or even Don’t Look Now (73).

Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astair, in one of the bleakest films produced by Hollywood during that period.

With the exception of Australia, the entire planet has been decimated by nuclear war, the origin and details of which are adroitly never explained, and simply blamed on the absurdity and stupidity of humankind. A US submarine escaped the devastation and makes its way towards Melbourne where the locals have only a few months to live until the radiation reaches their country.

Tightly directed by Stanley Kramer, the director of Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), On the Beach maintains its serious and dark premise until the end, never letting cheap and easy sentimentalism take over and never trying to provide a false sense of hope or of a greater moral truth. In addition, and that is commendable for a film from that period, it does not choose sides and refuses to engage in ‘we are better than them’ or ‘it’s all their fault’ type messages.

Instead, the film focuses on a handful of people and how they choose to spend their last months of life and the decisions they face during that time. While the overall emotional intensity feels a bit subdued at times, a feeling reinforced by the decision to avoid showing scenes of madness, folly or desperation (unlike, for example, in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), another serious film from that period that deals with somewhat similar themes, where various scenes of chaos and rioting are shown, or in The Day After (1983), the made for TV film that shocked America with its realistic and disturbing scenes of apocalypse, or even in Peter Watkins’s groundbreaking docu-drama The War Game (1965)), the narrative nonetheless works effectively by keeping it all fairly understated, and, well, bleak.

Gardner and Peck are quite a charismatic couple to watch and I can only admire their liberal willingness to play in such a film.

Las Vegas has to rank as one of the most fascinating and intriguing places on earth, and I am not just saying this because I met my wife there. Any opinion that you might harbor about America, you are likely to find the affirmation of this belief in the characterization of life that permeates this city that never sleeps. And if we have now ‘officially’ entered the age of simulation, where reality has become a malleable commodity that each one of us can shape to his liking, then Bugsy Siegel, who, probably mainly motivated by financial gain, opened his Flamingo Hotel in 1946, should nonetheless be regarded as a pioneer and visionary for understanding the need that human beings have to escape and to exist in alternate realities.
Yet, behind this façade of glass and metal Egyptian Pyramids and Arthurian castles, which provides the ideal larger-than-life environment against which to contrast the ordinary problems of its inhabitants, unfold the old-fashioned lives of what we traditional refer to as real people. And there is probably no one better in Hollywood than William H. Macy to play the ordinary man caught in life’s strange unfoldings.

In The Cooler, Macy plays a gentle, disillusioned and unlucky man whose job as a Cooler involves working the Casino floors and ‘helping’ clients loose money by spreading some of his own bad luck upon them. But when his old-fashioned mobster of a boss, played brilliantly by Alec Baldwin (Baldwin truly excels in tough guy roles as demonstrated recently in The Aviator and The Departed), inadvertently changes his Cooler’s luck, their relationship quickly deteriorates and leads to a series of more or less plausible incidents.

While The Cooler suffers from several inconsistencies, there is a freshness and simplicity about the script and the acting that makes watching this film a very pleasurable experience. It is clearly much smarter than most Hollywood productions and much less arrogant and overbearing that many so-called ‘indie’ productions.

Watching a Frank Capra film is a bit like drinking a light beer. It is not an unpleasant experience and it can be rather refreshing but it clearly does not have the finesse, subtlety and richness of the real thing.
So if you feel like sipping on patriotic, feel-good, we-are-all-wonderful-people-if-we-pull-together type messaging, Meet John Doe should about do it. Barbara Stanwyck pulls a fairly entertaining performance and Gary Cooper, who was nominated for an Oscar for this film (????) and ended up winning the Oscar that same year for Sergeant York, does what Gary Cooper usually does: be his stoic self and let his good looks and imposing stature do the rest.
Not for the cynics.

This adaptation of the 1925 novel of the same name by Somerset Maugham tells the story of a young doctor who punishes his adulterous wife by accepting a position in a remote cholera-stricken village in China. The rest is extremely predictable and filled with so many clichés that the film, which is nonetheless beautifully shot, becomes a one-dimensional and shallow affair with a narrative built on one stereotypical situation after the next. The film is a painting whose exquisite flatness the actors are unable to extract themselves from. Instead, they do their best to move quickly from one scene to the next, never surprising us in their decisions, never straying aside from what one would expect them to do.
The Painted Veil has a simplicity to it that is honourable but certainly not worthy of anything more than that.

The critics (at least the ones I usually read) seem unanimous in their loathing of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, the Fountain.

I usually disagree with one, two or three of them, but when every single one of them writes that the film is a fountain of narcissistic and conceited rubbish, it makes you think that there must be at least some truth to it.

But here lies the beauty of cinema, and of art in general. It does not matter whether one has diplomas, or has worked on sets or has directed, written, shot or edited films themselves, when you speak to someone who loves or hates a film, no amount of discussion and debate will make that person change their mind. There is a visceral element to cinema, one that allows most people to say ‘I liked it’ without really being able or needing to explain why.

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I am trying hard to imagine what my reaction to this film might have been, had i not read half of the book upon which it is based, or had i not watched the film with someone who has read the book in its entirety. Perhaps i would have liked The Good German a great deal more as i certainly wouldn’t have been asking myself the question that haunted me throughout the entire viewing: why on earth did they need to change so many things from the book?

I am not suggesting that books should necessarily be adapted blindly and faithfully to the screen. In most cases, the demands of the medium and of visual storytelling often require changes, adaptations, and enhancements. But when these changes seem to provide only additional complexity, less character development and absurd ‘action’ scenes (as in Clooney getting beat up every 10 minutes), it is difficult not to wonder about the quality of this adapted screenplay.
You say homage, I say fromage.

As has been the pattern in the last few years, Eastwood delivers a film that is very much issued from the Hollywood mould, and that has enough democratic appeal to please a wide audience and enough ‘key people’ to garner various nominations. I know very little about what goes on in LA, but I suspect that Eastwood and Haggis must have quite a few friends in Tinseltown.

The problem I have with Letters from Iwo Jima is the same I had with Million Dollar Baby or Mystic River and with Haggis’s Crash. These films are only a semblance of what they claim to be. They pretend to depict a reality that in fact can only exist in a romanticized view of life. They pretend to deal with a certain harshness of life but can’t help burying this harshness under a pile of motivational speaker-type messages. They want to talk about the evil in the world but spend more time talking about the good. They are afraid to contemplate imperfection and only imperfection. They want to depict the average person’s suffering but only succeed in describing stereotypes and people whose personalities and actions make them stand outside of the norm.

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Christopher Nolan’s latest film, while intriguing, falls short of the brilliance he previously demonstrated with Memento, and to a lesser extent, with Insomnia.

This tale of two rival magicians in 19th century London, released curiously almost at the same time as The Illusionist (one of these Hollywood ‘coincidences’), suffers from an unnecessarily complicated narrative structure that offers too little reward for the effort, and from a large number of overly convenient and unrealistic scenes. Many of these scenes do not always flow smoothly into one another but rather seem to jump, skipping over essential material that probably couldn’t be handled meaningfully, or highlighting a characteristic of faulty scripts: the inability to make all the different parts function together. Or perhaps, it is simply the result of the narrative structure that Nolan chose, proving in this case that, sometimes, plain old linear might be better.

The outcome is uneven, fascinating and beautiful to look at on the one hand, dull and somewhat amateurish on the other (especially the scenes with Scarlett Johansson, in what is regrettably a very boring role).

And the ending of the film, its Prestige, a slightly outlandish (in its realization, and not necessarily in its idea) and constant back and forth of revelations, a bit a la Mission Impossible when everybody takes turns removing their mask, felt somewhat anti-climatic as some these revelations could be guessed earlier in the film and seemed out of sync with the intensity with which Nolan propelled us towards them.

Spoiler ahead:
I must now go and look for my doubles as I think I went through that Tesla machine at Burning Man once…

This compilation of about 20 short films about different neighbourhoods in Paris is definitively less than the sum of its parts.

Most of the shorts are actually quite bland, and some of them border on the depressingly bad. Gus Van Saint pays no homage to one of my favourite neighbourhoods, Tom Tykwer does whatever it is that he usually does, but much worse, Nobuhiro Suwa uses Binoche in a stereotypical role that goes nowhere, Gurinder Chadha delivers a politically correct religious sermon whose obviousness and lecturing aspect is almost insulting… While it is clear that the idea was to not follow too easily the clichés path, in some cases, the result might have been better had the directors done so.

Still, there are some beautiful moments and plenty of originality as well. Sylvain Chomet, Walter Salles, Isabelle Coixet, Olivier Schmitz, Vincenzo Natali and the Cohen Brothers help provide freshness, creativity and a much needed injection of emotionality.

I hereby demand a cap on the length of experimental films. 30 minutes should about do it, 45 minutes at the most. But not 98 minutes. Not in 12 chapters. Guy Maddin’s latest, Brand Upon the Brain!, says it all in the first 3 or 4 chapters. It’s all déjà vu after that, even if the corny one-liners keep you smiling occasionally.

I must be of royal blood meself since I watched The Queen and felt, well, not very much at all in terms of stimulation or excitement. Yes, the film is well done, and Mirren is splendid in her portrayal of a person whose emotions and feelings are fighting to free themselves from the oppression of expectations and education. But we are talking about the Queen here and I still have no idea whether what I just saw is an accurate description of what goes on in her head or if it is just some Brits delivering a romantic and chauvinistic feel-good (Love Actually wrapped in a fluffy political blanket), and ultimately marketable movie, about a Royal establishment that has been under a lot of fire in the past 10 years.

With Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron has reinvigorated the dystopic genre with a much-needed dose of seriousness and realism. Films such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Alphaville, and A Clockwork Orange inevitably come to mind, not only in their willingness to study the possible future consequences of current trends, but also in the gravity and sincerity with which they do so.

Children of Men potentially deserves to join this pantheon of dystopian classics. Brilliantly directed by the man who saved the Harry Potter franchise from a slow boring death, beautifully shot (side note: what is it with Mexican directors and beautiful cinematography? I have recently reviewed Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth and now Children of Men, and I find myself saying ‘beautiful cinematography’ in all 3 cases) by Emmanuel Lubezki, the DOP for Terrence Malick’s New World and for his upcoming film, Tree of Life, Children of Men explores with great care and details a near future where humanity has become sterile.

Deprived of the ability to conceive and, therefore, deprived of hope, people have slowly lost their grasp on existence. Chaos reigns across the world, with the exception of England where a dictatorial elite barely manages to keep some kind of order throughout the country. The first birth in 17 years propels different factions against each other, all determined to decide the future of the child.

The future of Children of Men, which is loosely based on the 1992 novel by PD James, is as almost as bleak as the one described by Margaret Atwood in the Handmaid’s Tale. Both reveal a post-apocalyptic world that suffocates under the tyranny of an authoritarian regime. And both use procreation as the driving theme of the narrative. But Children of Men offers a glimmer of hope at the end whereas, if I remember correctly, the Handmaid’s Tale leaves open the possibility that the future will not improve, the type of ambiguity that Atwood seems to cherish.

There is an incredibly well choreographed ‘war’ scene in the film that would have made Stanley Kubrick proud. The camera just seems to float and move seamlessly from room to room, from building to building, with bullets flying left and right, making the experience as, and if not more, intense and immersive than anything I have seen before.
Children of Men is perfect on many levels, and it is a pleasure to see a work of science fiction, or, as Margaret Atwood would call it, a work of speculative fiction, be treated with such dignity and importance.

Pan’s Labyrinth, recipient a week ago of the National Society of Film Critics Best Picture award, seems like the perfect follow-up to Hellboy. Del Toro goes further in his study and exploration of Magic Realism in film and delivers a work that, in spite of its brutality and a couple of disturbing scenes, has a broader appeal than some his previous efforts. His craft and technique is clearly improving and he is slowing starting to make his mark on the industry, alongside his Mexican compatriots Inaritu and Cuaron.

I initially felt slightly disappointed that Pan’s Labyrinth did not contain more scenes in the alternate world of the Labyrinth. I wanted Pan to spend more time escaping the cruel reality that she was facing. Yet, I realized afterwards that the magic of the film lies not in the depiction of the fantastical but rather, in the perfect mixing of fantasy and reality. I suppose that this is exactly what magic realism is all about and that straying too far in one direction tilts the equilibrium away from what actually creates the beauty of the work.

Thus, Del Toro mixes the ingredients adroitly and creates a work that is at the same time beautiful and disturbing, enchanting and unsettling, real and dreamlike, historical and authentic, gothic and believable…it is perhaps easier to understand how good of a film Pan is by thinking about how easily it could have been a bad film. I have an idea: let’s take the Spanish Civil War, throw in a young girl who likes to escape reality by reading fairy tales, and add an alternate world of fauns and fairies. In most cases, this would sound more like a recipe for disaster than one for a film that is actually on its way to winning dozens of awards throughout the world. Del Toro is a man with a vision and the skills to implement it.

There is very little I can say about The Departed, other than it is pretty much a perfect film directed by one of the true masters of modern cinema.

Scorsese is back and while The Departed may miss the perfection level of Goodfellas by a hair, it still is, I believe, one of the best thrillers ever made with one of the most furious paces and rhythms I have ever experienced in a film.

I wonder if Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong film on which The Departed is based, is as good as its remake…

Unmissable.

A couple of years ago, someone lent me Session 9 on DVD. I had never heard of Brad Anderson before and as such, wasn’t sure what to expect from the film. But it turned out to be one very scary, well crafted flick. It is therefore not surprising that The Machinist, just a few days after its release here in London, seems to already be establishing itself as a cult phenomenon.

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The Golden Globe nominations are out and Babel leads the way with seven, including a not-so-deserved one for Brad Pitt as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, though he admittedly delivers a performance above his usual average.Babel follows in the footsteps of last year’s Crash (and 21 Grams and Traffic) in its attempt to mix technical and cinematographic audacity and originality with political reflection and currentness. But if Crash could not get away with its blatant arrogance and cheap intellectualism (which it did as far as the Academy goes), Babel does; not fully, but enough to leave you in a state of reflection, and probably of confusion as well.Beautiful to watch and to listen to, technically masterful, remarkably well acted by most of its protagonists, especially by Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, Babel proves that Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, after only a handful of films that include Amores Perros and 21 Grams, is already one of Cinema’s most accomplished talent.

So, what is Babel about? Some critics seem to believe that a lack of clear answer to this question is Babel’s weak point. And that in his attempt to tackle such an ambitious project, Inarritu has built his own tower of Babel, a monument of such arrogance that it can only lead to confusion. But even this image cannot be so clearly established in connection with the director’s true intentions. Perhaps that is exactly the point, to build such a tower, to confuse, to not provide easy answers and to let the audience immerse themselves into this cinematic experience and to draw their own conclusions.

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The film noir transported to a present-day high school in Southern California.

Except that in this high school, only a few kids seem to occupy the premises, the principal strikes some unusual deals with the students, mothers offer glasses of milk to gang members and the high school itself and the grounds around it seem to exist somewhat out of time and out of space, a fake reality that plays with our senses, expectations and paradigms.

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For anyone other than Ayn Rand herself, the idea of bringing her tedious and radical 1943 novel to the screen would have seemed a gargantuan and impossible task.

Rand’s novel about the powers of egoism and reason as the ultimate tools of human happiness is a laborious and fascinating read that packs enough philosophical verbosity to make any screenwriter cringe. How does one effectively condense 700 pages of philosophical discourse into a less than 2 hours film and still manages to keep the cinema audience entertained? How do you lead your actors to act like the ultimate reasoning and rational egoists (and therefore, by all traditional standards, with a high degree of coldness) without resorting to dull and expressionless simulating (Brad Pitt attempting to play a blasé vampire for instance)?
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Hotel Rwanda is the perfect political film for Western audiences. It ends well. But the Rwanda massacre obviously did not end well. So why have a film ending that might leave the audience with a feeling that things are not so bad afterall?

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25th hour is a pretentious and confusing film. Not confusing in the sense that there is much to understand, but rather, confusing in its inability to deliver on the intended theme of a man whose outlook on life changes when faced with a seven-year jail sentence.

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