White Material

Having only seen "35 Shots of Rum," a pretty good but also pretty overrated film, I was a little skeptical of hugely admired director Claire Denis. However, her new "White Material," a film about the end of stability and trying to continue afterwards, is a great work. This is a movie that grows and grows, one that I had doubts about at the beginning that were answered by the end. It is a piece to relish and (it has been said, believably so) to see more than once. It will not have a unanimous appeal, that's for sure. For example, it has a twisty, hard-to-follow composition (beginning at the near-end and cycling in and out, through past and present) that has been criticized. I, though, find it entirely inherent to the film and its success. The film also seems to be about very little, but in its quietly sprawling nature, it rises above.

Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) is an unsuccessful French coffee proprietor staying in Africa even though her country's army has left and her workers have abandoned her. She's caught in the middle of a standoff between officials and rebels, personified by José (Daniel Tchangang) and the on-the-ropes and bleeding Boxer (Isaach de Bankole). Her ex-husband André (Christophe Lambert) is trying to sell their plantation to José and her son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is a slacker whose supposed streak of "insanity" is exposed after he gets robbed and stripped naked.

Anyways, the film shows Vial as she presses on, trying to carry on her normal life as it is starting to crumble. I won't say much more on the plot than that, as there is not a lot to say, other than that it travels familiar roads with transcendent results. What must be mentioned and praised is the excellent work by cinematographer Yves Cape (who's shot for Bruno Dumont before). Whether it be a stationary spread, a shaky follower, or a swift tracking shot, Cape does it right. (And although it seemed dubious to employ, as has been said before, Dardennes-like close-ups, they are well validated.) Stuart Staples and the Tindersticks' score (similar to the one by Wasis Diop in "A Screaming Man") is also first-rate. Finally, Huppert, in a much-lauded role, is always solid with some amazing moments (for example, the scene where she berates her son in his bedroom). "White Material" is the type of film that many are bound to turn off early or to not even bother with. That's their loss. A

Leaving the Parlor: Facebook and The Exterminating Angel

I saw Luis Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" two nights ago, an intense and draining film considered by many to rank among the best of all-time. It left me a little cold, but it provided me with very profound insight. The situation in the film, that of people who psyche themselves out of leaving a parlor and who go on to consider the simple act of walking away impossible, strikes me as relevant these days. After about a year and a half (with a couple of breaks in between), I tossed my Facebook account.

Excuse my heavy-handedness when I say that Facebook is the veritable Parlor of the Internet. It works much the same way as Bunuel's, based on the same "herd mentality" (as Zadie Smith noted) and desire to keep the status quo. It's hard to quit: why leave when no one else is leaving? To stay may seem innocuous, as Facebook is "free." But is it really? Monetarily, yes. But there are other things one can lose by continuing to be a member of the site, such as time, and, most disturbingly, dignity. For the latter: consider Facebook Stalking. This is defined by urbandictionary.com as "a covert method of investigation using facebook.com; good for discovering a wealth of information about people you don't actually know." Would a good person do this in real life? Probably not. But Facebook is transformative, just like Bunuel's parlor, and people aren't who we think they are. It is tempting to say that they "aren't themselves" online, but who is to really know? Maybe this is the "real them." When the options are available, people are capable of a lot of things.

Friends have seen Smith's New York Review of Books article "Generation Why?" and Gary Shteyngart's novel "Super Sad True Love Story" as effective anti-Facebook advocates. But I find the parallels between the website and Bunuel's film especially chilling. There are people who fancy themselves casual users of the site. Of these, there are some who actually are. But then there are those who say that they are just staying the morning, and who end up there a whole lot longer. For them, a wake-up call (or a piano piece played again) is necessary.

These Will Be the Winners: My Early Oscar Predictions (November 2010)

Having read websites such as The Film Experience and In Contention, I have a pretty good idea of what the field of play is going to be like at the Oscars (pre-nominations). So here goes:


Best Picture: The Social Network

I have a strong feeling about Toy Story 3 as well. Inception may have an outside chance.

Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, The Kids Are All Right

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

This is a lock. People haven't stopped talking about Sorkin's script, and even if The Social Network doesn't come out on top on Oscar night, this most certainly will.

Marwencol

With excellently done blown-up photographs and stop motion animation, Jeff Malmberg makes viewing the town of "Marwencol" as absorbing for the audience as it is for its creator Mark Hogencamp. This is a good first documentary, flawed (it can be aimless, repetitive, and a bit trite) but well-deviced and observant all the same.

Hogencamp was accosted by people in a bar (apparently after he revealed his penchant for cross-dressing). This assault impaired his brain functionality and wiped all memories of his life before out. (It also, beneficially, did away with his alcoholism.) After he recovered his motor skills, etc., he set to work on building Marwencol, Belgium, set during the Second World War and a convergence of soldiers forced to be kind with one another. (The Nazis, whom Mark equates to his drinking problems, invade at times.) He filled this with replicas of his acquaintances, which of course creates a strange parallel with the people they represent. Not only is his mom there, but also the married woman he developed a very strong attraction to (and married in Marwencol) and waitresses at the restaurant at which he works (when he kills off one of them, the person in question is a little perturbed).

Hogencamp took very meticulous photography of the miniature town, which eventually got its own art show. We see two people who expose the work to the broader world: a photographer (who's also Mark's neighbor) and a magazine editor. The photographer sees the pictures without patronization. The magazine editor purveys condescension, noting that there's "no irony" in Mark's shots. Malmberg and his film admirably for the most part lean towards the photographer's perspective.

The film paints a big picture of Hogencamp. It sometimes shows him as a bit unusual (what with his marriage to a doll and his fictionally-realized relationship with his married neighbor). It also allots him commentary, which is unabashedly sentimental. These things, both of which could be seen as negative traits (the former as exploitative, the latter as slightly truistic), balance each other out, and the film with both is altogether better. "Marwencol" should have been granted a spot on the Academy's documentary shortlist; it's not formally polished, but what it does makes up for that. B

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

With "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," director Edgar Wright deftly mixes and matches the plot points of Bryan Lee O'Malley's moderately indelible comic book series to come up with a workable but ultimately far too hurried adaptation.

But there is much to be said for it. Wright shows his capabilities as an accomplished director here; this is his best film to date (I say this only having seen his in my opinion mediocre "Shaun of the Dead"). How he plays the world of the spaced-out Scott is superb. In the book, Scott is notably at the mercy of time, but this isn't quite as intense for the reader. In the film, Wright excellently accentuates this to the point that the scenes slide and slam together. And, in his script with Michael Bacall, he does a great job of filtering the book's sardonic and eccentric humor through a cinematic lens.

The actors fit the characters' shoes admittedly to varying degrees of success, but at least they're all on the high end of the spectrum. Michael Cera, who I had doubts about in the role of the title character, does well, as do Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona, Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, and Jason Schwartzman, delightfully glib if slightly over-the-top, as Gideon.

For the uninitiated (who, to me, will be much better off when viewing this film as they won't have the books to think about in the back of their minds), Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is a Toronto-based layabout without a job who's floating in the world just outside of college, living in a crappy apartment consisting of stuff mostly owned by his roommate Wallace (Culkin). He's got a band (Sex Bob-Omb) and a girlfriend in high school (Knives Chau, played simultaneously as worthy and as pathetic by Ellen Wong) who he's not serious about but who's serious about him. He sees a hot girl in his dreams (much better explained in the book; I'll leave it at that), who comes into his life soon afterwards as an American moving to Canada for some quiet time. This is Ramona (Winstead), and according to those on the party scene, she's too much for him. But this is not the case, as they come to a relationship.

Not as simple as that, however. Scott is faced with the challenge of having to dispatch a whopping total of 7 "evil exes," who make up a sort of "league." They range from flames she had very minor encounters with in grade school to the one that she's still not over. I agree with the speculation of at least some that these battle scenes were dense and probably should have been wider spaced. Wright would have had to make a film 2 and half to 3 hours to do that, but still: except for the first two, which are meticulously re-created, the rest are sped through, cutting off huge developments (one wouldn't understand the true power of Envy Adams' devastation from this film) as the film goes headlong towards the ending. This is on some level good: I disliked the drawing-out of some of the conflicts in the book and it would be a pain to see them played out again on-screen. But overall, it's a bit slipshod.

The second half plays as if Wright took apart the end of the series, threw it in a box, and blew it up with dynamite. Strands of the plot are all over the place, as the film is very simplified. As I said before, this is well-done by Wright but, of course, disconcerting for the observant reader. The construction of the ending is completely foreign to that of the book, simultaneously refreshing and bizarre, using Knives Chau to a very profuse extent. She feels like an intruder in the messily observed climax and ending. It works at times, but it is not exemplary craftsmanship on Wright's part. Also: his decision to dance around the book's emotional pieces nicely lightens the mood but backfires in that it shuts out very important content.

As a gamer and a jester, Wright is able to do an admirable job with much of this film. He makes "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" absorbing and at times even surprising for me as a previous reader. But he didn't entirely make it work. Although I may be slightly off, I think those taking in this story for the first time will appreciate this film version better. However, if you were going to pick between the comics and the feature, I'd say go with the reading. B-

127 Hours

Danny Boyle (as Mike D'Angelo noted) subjects all of his films to the same "hyperkinetic" (as it has been called) style. With "127 Hours," his follow-up to "Slumdog Millionaire" (which I have very mixed feeling about), this proves to be a faulty decision. This is a film about an adventurous hiker named Aron Ralston who falls down into a cavern, getting his arm stuck, as the title of Ralston's memoir states, between a rock and a hard place. If there ever was a story deserving of Romanian New Wave-level realism or a POV treatment, it was this one. But instead, Boyle turns it into a movie resembling Van Sant's "Gerry" on stimulants, continuously spiraling away from the center, charting Ralston's thoughts instead of his experiences. It's an understandable approach, but considering, as D'Angelo also noted, what an audacious filmmaker could have accomplished, it's a path of cowardice.

The film opens with Ralston setting off on his fateful trip without, importantly, telling anyone where he's going. We see him as the reckless, brash guy who takes shortcuts to cut off time from "what the guidebook says." Early into his excursion, he meets two fellow backpackers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn, stiff and stepping on pretty much every line), who I suppose are there to be his final connection to the outside world. The fun they have furthers the extremely breezy tone of the beginning, which is jarred completely when, a few minutes after they part, Ralston slips and plummets.

As you might expect, Boyle is pretty focused, showing Ralston trying to chip at the rock with his low-grade knockoff multi-tool (as the prologue shows, he's left his Swiss Army Knife at home). That is, for maybe a good 30 seconds. Then, he breaks away, enough times that one could argue that more time is spent outside of Ralston's fix than in. Boyle compromises, when he should be uncompromising. The method works in a way: it shows us visually what he's thinking, and offers (if extremely confusing and half-cooked) exposition. (To it's detriment, it also overloads on massively sentimental imagery.) In my opinion, if it had really wanted to be effective, it would have viewed Ralston as someone who would have found him would have viewed him: as a man who's fighting against deterioration, mental and physical. The scene where he imagines that he's on a talk show could have been more interesting if it had not contained itself (i.e. added the applause in the background).

James Franco is the actor who takes on Ralston, and he does well. If there was an actor who could have played this part better, Franco makes us forget. (In a more intensive version of this film, he may still have been the go-to guy, though in large doses I feel he could be a little annoying, meaning that Boyle's guerrilla editing regiment maybe benefited Franco). However, the real character of Ralston is underexposed. Whether that's the fault of Boyle or Franco is unclear, but what is certain is that the film does not go far enough in its look at the man.

Of course, since this is a Boyle film, there is technical show-offing which (as they say) gets your adrenaline pumping. But this is not the film for it. This is the film where you sacrifice being bravura for being getting in touch with your subject. In this way, Boyle is not a mature filmmaker. He has all the control in the world when it comes to the small aspects of his mise-en-scene (if you can even grant that level of sophistication to his direction), but it doesn't occur to him that the right idea may be to switch the game-plan altogether. C+

Cannes Competition Distribution Report 2010

Competition Films With American Distribution:

Another Year (Mike Leigh) - Sony Pictures Classics

Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois) - Sony Pictures Classics (Gran Prix)

Outside the Law (Rachid Bouchareb) - Cohen Media Group

Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu) - Roadside Attractions (Best Actor, Javier Bardem; tied with Elio Germano)

A Screaming Man (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) - Film Movement (Jury Prize)

The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier) - IFC Films

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami) - IFC Films (Best Actress, Juliette Binoche)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) - Strand Releasing (Palme d'Or)

The Housemaid (Im Sang-Soo) - IFC Films

My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa) - Kino Lorber

Poetry (Lee Chang-dong) - Kino Lorber (Best Screenplay)

Outrage (Takeshi Kitano) - Magnolia Pictures

Fair Game (Doug Liman) - Summit Entertainment

Competition Films Without American Distribution:

Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project (Kornel Mundruczo)

Route Irish (Ken Loach)

On Tour (Mathieu Amalric) (Best Director, Mathieu Amalric; FIPRESCI award)

Our Life (Daniele Luchetti) (Best Actor, Elio Germano; tied with Javier Bardem)

Burnt By the Sun 2 (Nikita Mikhalkov)

Chongqing Blues (Wang Xiaoshuai)

Four Lions

"Four Lions" is a sloppy movie that shows in every single scene that it is the work of someone experienced with television and not feature films. Christopher Morris is apparently very famous in England. I see from his IMDb page that he's only written and directed television shows, like "Nathan Barley" and "The Day Today." This is a great way to build up a fan base, but it may leave you out of touch with cinematic instincts. That's what's happened to Morris. For example, he uses a lot of establishing shots and thus makes the film come off as episodic. As I said in my review of "Hereafter," this reeks of a sitcom. A real filmmaker puts their faith in the audience and segues right in with regular shots.

But I wouldn't care about this as much if the film delivered. Let me tell you: it really doesn't. This is a British comedy and satire that is reported to produce many laughs. Nearly all of mine were forced. When these types of films don't work (like Winterbottom's "Tristam Shandy"), they can be very middling, and that's exactly what this is.

This film barely even has a plot: we follow a group of inane terrorists as they try over and over again to orchestrate a suicide bombing. Omar (Riz Ahmed) is very serious about it all, the most diehard of the group. Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a sometime panelist, is hellbent on blowing up a mosque so that he can get Muslims to rise up. Waj (Kayvan Novak) is basically a puppet, who can be easily swayed ideologically with the promise of going on theme park rides when he's in heaven. Fessal (Adeel Aktar) earnestly buys chemicals at the same store with "different voices," and one of the more minor members of the group. And finally, we have Hassan (Arsher Ali), who joins the group later on after he pulls an audacious but senseless stunt in the audience of one of Barry's talks. We follow them through their mishaps, in terrorist training camp, videotaping themselves, and sometimes just blowing up microwaves for good measure. This is all put together in a way devoid of sense, somehow not developing characters enough to really make us care about them. It must be said, though, that at a certain point, I stop finding people failing and arguing about silly stuff humorous. There are people that do like this kind of thing, and they will be satiated. However, they won't be enriched by a quality film experience.

When we get to the ending, set during the London Marathon, Morris doesn't flinch at surprising violence. But even this he ends up making repetitive. He struggles a bit with tone, which doesn't help. It's really not his business. He's in it for setting up the music and the image, as that's what I assume he does with his television programs.

Morris hits some nice marks with his jabs at the faulty ideology of the terrorists. They completely misunderstand the meaning of jihad. Omar feeds it both to Waj (through the whole theme park meme) and his own son (through a story about "The Lion King") in misleading ways. There is also the idea of "following your heart," which is brought up in a scene between Omar and Waj where Waj obviously has doubts and where Omar has to convince him that "his brain really is his heart."

I will finally speak of the acting, which is a maker or a breaker in a comedy. Sad to say that "Four Lions" gets let down on this front. Ahmed in the lead role admirably plays a straight man, but he's not very good at delivery of jokes and this costs the film. Also underperforming is Lindsay, who swings and misses when it comes to making an endearingly annoying character and ends up just with the latter half. I didn't much like Novak either and had mixed feelings about Ali (who is admittedly better than his lookalike Aasif Mandvi, which is not saying a whole lot). Good work is given in my opinion is by Aktar making a comical character out of Fessel (providing salvation like David Rasche did in "In the Loop"), but he's such a small part of the film that it really doesn't matter that much.

I don't tend to get into the groove of cult films that cause unstoppable laughter. That was why for me "Four Lions" was a dissatisfactory movie. It definitely has an audience, which you may be a part of. Speaking for myself, though... C

The Town

Fair Game