Lemmy Kilmister is just like you and me. When he goes to the record store to buy the Beatles box-set in mono (a band he claims is his all-time favorite) he's politely told by the clerk that they're sold out of that. He laughs and says he's not surprised. Oh - but then the store manager comes out with a set that she had put aside for herself. You see, Lemmy is not at all like you or me. He's a heavy metal god, or more appropriately THE heavy metal god.
For the past 36 years Lemmy has been the leader and bassist for Motorhead, one of the first heavy metal bands and one of the creators of the musical form. He basically single-handedly invented the genre and has never stopped recording, touring and drinking for the past 45-or-so years. Now at 66 he lives much like he did when he was 36 (possibly taking less speed than he did then). He's a friend to all in the music world in LA, he's never met a fan he wouldn't take a picture with or give an autograph to and he is always happy to share a story about being a roadie for Hendrix or trading girlfriends with John Lennon (or his son!).
Lemmy, the documentary by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski, is a biodoc in the vein of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or Anvil! The Story of Anvil. We get to know Lemmy as a guy now, living in a rather humble rent-stabilized apartment packed with shit in West Hollywood, touring with several bands and looking back on his life and his music; we see just about every major heavy metal musician alive today talk about him and how much of an influence he was to them (and how much he likes to drink Jack and Cokes); we learn about where he came from and how he came to the genre that has become heavy metal.
Nothing is incredibly deep here (unlike, say, Some Kind of Monster, which was pretty deep), there are no major life events that happen to him or any of his bands and, all in all, Lemmy seems like a pretty nice, genuine guy. He records some songs with Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and The Foo Fighters), plays onstage with Metallica and, or course, with Motorhead.
The film is very rationally organized, but runs very long. There is a section about Lemmy's obsession with World War II stuff, including a fascination with Nazi weapons and uniforms (he says he's purely into them for their sartorial beauty, and I totally believe him... but then he never explains the swastika flags in his apartment.. but, to be clear, there is never a suggestion that he's any sort of Nazi- lover... just a lover of Nazi things... weird), a section on his love of Jack and Cokes (in spite of his Type 2 diabetes), a section on his son and his view of parents, a section on his own upbringing being raised by his mom and grandmother, a section on his love of gambling. These things are all very interesting, but each runs a bit too long and might be a bit too segregated into it's own area. I think it all could have been written and edited better and should have been cut by 30 minutes.
This movie is a ton of fun. Lemmy is a wonderful guy and a great interview subject. He's totally likable and a guy you really want to hang out with. If it had been a bit tighter it would have been much better, I think.
Stars: 3 of 4
Friday, February 18, 2011
Poetry (Friday, February 18, 2011) (7)
I have seen a bunch of Korean films in the last few years and most of them have been wonderful. There is a simplicity about them that is very interesting. Generally focusing on normal domestic situations (even when they're monster movies or documentaries), they tell straightforward, sometimes sad and frequently powerful stories. Perhaps it's unfair to lump them all together as a monolithic singular thing (just as with American cinema, there's no reason why there can't be a wide variety of genres and aesthetic styles), but the ones that I have seen have shared an interesting melancholia and directness reminiscent of the best of Ozu or the Dardenne brothers.
Lee Chang-dong's Poetry falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of new Korean films. It is not as sad and desperate as Kim So Yong's Treeless Mountain or In Between Days, not as flashy as Bong Joon-ho's The Host or Mother and not as bizarre as Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid. It is somewhat of a 'Goldilocks' film, falling just in the middle of all of these other directors and films. For me, I would have preferred it be more of one of those things than just middle, but what we get is still very nice.
At times the story and the way it unravels is reminiscent of Lee's last film, Secret Sunshine (just released in New York a few months ago). Mija is a woman in her 60s who lives in a small country town. She is very poor, making just a bit of money as a housekeeper for an old man. She raises her impudent teenage grandson (her daughter, the boy's mother is out of the picture) and is fighting depression and dementia. She joins a poetry class where the instructor teaches her how to look at the world in a different, more artistic way and she sets to work crafting her own poem. As she does this, her life gets more complicated as her grandson gets into trouble that she does not expect or know how to deal with.
There is a lovely dialectic in the film between the lyrical way Mija looks at the world as a poet (or poet-in-training), and how the reality for her on the ground is much less fluid and beautiful. She has to live in a world of pain and filth but rise above that to experience the world as an artist. She struggles with knowing how to behave and react in the two worlds: the day-to-day world with an unexpected challenge from her grandson, and the more comfortable, emotional world of poetry that is still new to her. Neither place is totally easy for her to be in and neither world allows her to live in it without difficulty.
Yun Jeong-hie is absolutely fabulous as Mija. She moves from what seems to be aloofness at the beginning, to what we are told is early-onset Alzheimer's beautifully. Her inability to communicate with her grandson, or really anyone for that matter, is visible not just in her difficulty in speaking, but also in the pain we see on her face. She knows what's wrong and what's right in most situations but has a hard time expressing these feelings.
The narrative structure is very similar to that of Secret Sunshine (to the point that I felt the story could be written by Lee before I knew it was), but I think the script is better in that than in this one. There is a gentleness that pervades the film that is interrupted several times by bigger 'bangs' of plot direction change. This trick feels a bit more blunt here than in Sunshine and a bit forced. (Time will tell if this is just a result of Lee being a mediocre writer or if this is just a stylistic flourish that will change over the years). Both films are just a bit too long, as well, and could benefit from tightening the story by about 15 minutes.
This film is certainly good enough to fit in well with the top tier of new Korean films (like Treeless Mountain, In Between Days, The Host and Secret Sunshine), but falls slightly below those in terms of overall beauty and virtuosity. I think there are moments here that feel a bit empty to me, that I recognize are important to the film, but I don't relate to. Much of the film is fabulous, but some of it is merely average.
Stars: 3 of 4
Lee Chang-dong's Poetry falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of new Korean films. It is not as sad and desperate as Kim So Yong's Treeless Mountain or In Between Days, not as flashy as Bong Joon-ho's The Host or Mother and not as bizarre as Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid. It is somewhat of a 'Goldilocks' film, falling just in the middle of all of these other directors and films. For me, I would have preferred it be more of one of those things than just middle, but what we get is still very nice.
At times the story and the way it unravels is reminiscent of Lee's last film, Secret Sunshine (just released in New York a few months ago). Mija is a woman in her 60s who lives in a small country town. She is very poor, making just a bit of money as a housekeeper for an old man. She raises her impudent teenage grandson (her daughter, the boy's mother is out of the picture) and is fighting depression and dementia. She joins a poetry class where the instructor teaches her how to look at the world in a different, more artistic way and she sets to work crafting her own poem. As she does this, her life gets more complicated as her grandson gets into trouble that she does not expect or know how to deal with.
There is a lovely dialectic in the film between the lyrical way Mija looks at the world as a poet (or poet-in-training), and how the reality for her on the ground is much less fluid and beautiful. She has to live in a world of pain and filth but rise above that to experience the world as an artist. She struggles with knowing how to behave and react in the two worlds: the day-to-day world with an unexpected challenge from her grandson, and the more comfortable, emotional world of poetry that is still new to her. Neither place is totally easy for her to be in and neither world allows her to live in it without difficulty.
Yun Jeong-hie is absolutely fabulous as Mija. She moves from what seems to be aloofness at the beginning, to what we are told is early-onset Alzheimer's beautifully. Her inability to communicate with her grandson, or really anyone for that matter, is visible not just in her difficulty in speaking, but also in the pain we see on her face. She knows what's wrong and what's right in most situations but has a hard time expressing these feelings.
The narrative structure is very similar to that of Secret Sunshine (to the point that I felt the story could be written by Lee before I knew it was), but I think the script is better in that than in this one. There is a gentleness that pervades the film that is interrupted several times by bigger 'bangs' of plot direction change. This trick feels a bit more blunt here than in Sunshine and a bit forced. (Time will tell if this is just a result of Lee being a mediocre writer or if this is just a stylistic flourish that will change over the years). Both films are just a bit too long, as well, and could benefit from tightening the story by about 15 minutes.
This film is certainly good enough to fit in well with the top tier of new Korean films (like Treeless Mountain, In Between Days, The Host and Secret Sunshine), but falls slightly below those in terms of overall beauty and virtuosity. I think there are moments here that feel a bit empty to me, that I recognize are important to the film, but I don't relate to. Much of the film is fabulous, but some of it is merely average.
Stars: 3 of 4
Monday, February 14, 2011
Cold Weather (Monday, February 14, 2011) (6)
More than being a genre, mumblecore is an aesthetic, a way a movie is made and designed. There is no reason why there can't be genre movies underneath the mumblecore umbrella (the Duplass brothers' Baghead was basically a mumble-thriller). Aaron Katz's Cold Weather is the first mumble-mystery movie, although it gets there is a really dull, sloppy way.
Doug is a loser living in Portland, Oregon where he shares an apartment with his sister and works at an ice factory while he figures out if he's going back to finish college. One day his ex-girlfriend comes to town on business. When she doesn't show up for a date (with a friend of his) he and his sister start looking for her. It seems she's involved in some mysterious but illegal dealings and her life might be at risk. So this everyman has to track down the bad guys who are threatening his ex and do something about them.
The biggest problem with this is that it starts out like a normal mumble movie with long, uncomfortable domestic scenes, quiet conversations about nothing (Man: "Doug, what did you study in college before you dropped out?" Doug: "Forensic science" Man: "Oh - like CSI:?" Doug: "Yeah.") and no particular plot. It's only in the second act that the film turns into a mystery and strangely sheds this "conceit of nothingness".
Unexpectedly, Doug becomes a driven man who seems to be more than totally helpless (which he is at the beginning). This transition happens for no particular reason and never really looks back at the past. Doug is suddenly and ridiculously not a loser, but a cunning private eye. We are abruptly in a different movie, different in tone, speed and narrative from the first. To say that solving the mystery gives Doug purpose and direction is just facile and silly. He begins merely as a type and then becomes a different type, but with no motivation or struggle.
Based on Katz's past works, like Quiet City and Dance Party, USA (both of which are good, but not great), we expect this to be a story of relationships, love and sadness. He pulls a rather unfair trick by showing Doug in what seem to be romantic situations with the woman he lives with (like taking a trip to a beautiful waterfall) but not telling us until later that he's doing these things with his sister - we have thought to this point that she's his girlfriend. This is a bit of an eff-you from Katz to us, I think, and serves no real purpose.
Despite the mystery plot giving some structure to the film, it is not a really good puzzle and doesn't really keep us guessing, or even giving a shit. Ultimately, Cold Weather is neither fish nor fowl. It's not a mumblecore movie about nothing and it's equally not a good brain-twister. I appreciate that Katz is pushing the boundaries of the DIY genre, but in the end, the story is really, really dull and there's very little good about the film.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
Doug is a loser living in Portland, Oregon where he shares an apartment with his sister and works at an ice factory while he figures out if he's going back to finish college. One day his ex-girlfriend comes to town on business. When she doesn't show up for a date (with a friend of his) he and his sister start looking for her. It seems she's involved in some mysterious but illegal dealings and her life might be at risk. So this everyman has to track down the bad guys who are threatening his ex and do something about them.
The biggest problem with this is that it starts out like a normal mumble movie with long, uncomfortable domestic scenes, quiet conversations about nothing (Man: "Doug, what did you study in college before you dropped out?" Doug: "Forensic science" Man: "Oh - like CSI:?" Doug: "Yeah.") and no particular plot. It's only in the second act that the film turns into a mystery and strangely sheds this "conceit of nothingness".
Unexpectedly, Doug becomes a driven man who seems to be more than totally helpless (which he is at the beginning). This transition happens for no particular reason and never really looks back at the past. Doug is suddenly and ridiculously not a loser, but a cunning private eye. We are abruptly in a different movie, different in tone, speed and narrative from the first. To say that solving the mystery gives Doug purpose and direction is just facile and silly. He begins merely as a type and then becomes a different type, but with no motivation or struggle.
Based on Katz's past works, like Quiet City and Dance Party, USA (both of which are good, but not great), we expect this to be a story of relationships, love and sadness. He pulls a rather unfair trick by showing Doug in what seem to be romantic situations with the woman he lives with (like taking a trip to a beautiful waterfall) but not telling us until later that he's doing these things with his sister - we have thought to this point that she's his girlfriend. This is a bit of an eff-you from Katz to us, I think, and serves no real purpose.
Despite the mystery plot giving some structure to the film, it is not a really good puzzle and doesn't really keep us guessing, or even giving a shit. Ultimately, Cold Weather is neither fish nor fowl. It's not a mumblecore movie about nothing and it's equally not a good brain-twister. I appreciate that Katz is pushing the boundaries of the DIY genre, but in the end, the story is really, really dull and there's very little good about the film.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Roommate (Sunday, February 13, 2011) (5)
I was desperately hoping that The Roommate would be an amazingly trashy and hilarious psycho-sexual thriller weighted heavily to the shity and teen-set. It has all the makings of an amazing movie: two stars of teeny soaps (albeit pure pulp and the other an elevated drama dealing with teens), Leighton Meester (from Gossip Girl) and Minka Kelly (from Friday Night Lights and Derek Jeter's arm... which is not a TV show); a plot that sorta resembles Barbet Shroeder's Single White Female; and the fact that they two stars look almost identical. (OK - I should say that these two look so much alike that it was sometimes hard to remember which one was which. I think this is amazing and hilarious. They might be the same person with slightly different makeup.)
I was hoping for some bad, melodramatic dialogue, some hot lesbian sex (for no reason other than that such a dumb movie with identical-looking actresses is screaming for them to make out, like in Wild Things with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards), and some bad ketchupy bloody violence. Alas, I got none of that. This movie is a total dud and when I was hoping for some sort of dumb fun, I just got a really, really bad movie with nothing going for it.
As the film opens, we see Sara (Kelly) checking into her dorm at her LA university. A bit later she meets her new roommate, Rebbecca (Meester). They become best friends, but some of the other girls in the dorm don't like Rebbecca because she's a bitch to them. Sara meets some douchebag at a frat party, Stephen, and they start to date. Rebbecca keeps to her bed in the room.
She becomes more and more possessive of Sara, ultimately telling one of the other girls on the hall that she will kill her if she doesn't stop being Sara's friend (that happens all the time in the shower in dorms). Then they go to Beverly Hills (as if girls going to school in Westwood, say, wouldn't have found their way to Beverly Hills before November). When they go to Rebecca's house, Sara realizes that she has a weird relationship with her folks (how strange!) and her mother says something about how she suffers from bi-polar disorder and is on meds.
Apparently this is fucking scary as hell to Sara, who comes from somewhere in the middle of the country. A roommate on meds?! Holy fucking fuck! She has to move out right away. Once she tries to push Rebbecca away, hell breaks lose and Rebbecca kills some people in a very boring way. Oh - and Billy Zane is in this as some letchy art prof... I'm glad the brother is acting again! (He's the fucking worst!)
There is so much wrong with this movie it's hard to pinpoint what is the most upsetting thing. I know I hated the fact that Sara is so dumb and doesn't think Rebbecca is fucking nuts until she finds out she's bi-polar - and then shit suddenly gets bad. Like, there are tons and tons of people in the world who are bi-polar... I think it's just lazy. (And not so say the Shroeder piece was a brilliant picture, but at least the suggestion of borderline personality disorder is more interesting than violent bi-polarity. And if we really want to get into it, we don't really see anything bi-polar as much as we see psychopathology and some possible schitzophrenia. Again, I'm being paid more here than the psych advisers for the film.)
Considering both actresses look basically like the same person, I was surprised that Meester did such a better job than Kelly. Kelly's voice really annoys me. She speaks mostly in a baby-talky light and airyness and never enunciates or finishes words (which I thought was lesson one in acting... at least it was when I was in 5th grade). She's mostly overdone and telegraphs her emotions too far (I'm going to do a sad face, because my character is sad in this scene). Meester is actually pretty good here (in a terrible role). I'm impressed by her so far (she was also pretty good in Country Strong).
This is a movie to avoid at all cost. There is nothing in it at all. It's ridiculous and boring, not really funny (to laugh at, I mean) and much more work than it should be.
Stars: 0 of 4
I was hoping for some bad, melodramatic dialogue, some hot lesbian sex (for no reason other than that such a dumb movie with identical-looking actresses is screaming for them to make out, like in Wild Things with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards), and some bad ketchupy bloody violence. Alas, I got none of that. This movie is a total dud and when I was hoping for some sort of dumb fun, I just got a really, really bad movie with nothing going for it.
As the film opens, we see Sara (Kelly) checking into her dorm at her LA university. A bit later she meets her new roommate, Rebbecca (Meester). They become best friends, but some of the other girls in the dorm don't like Rebbecca because she's a bitch to them. Sara meets some douchebag at a frat party, Stephen, and they start to date. Rebbecca keeps to her bed in the room.
She becomes more and more possessive of Sara, ultimately telling one of the other girls on the hall that she will kill her if she doesn't stop being Sara's friend (that happens all the time in the shower in dorms). Then they go to Beverly Hills (as if girls going to school in Westwood, say, wouldn't have found their way to Beverly Hills before November). When they go to Rebecca's house, Sara realizes that she has a weird relationship with her folks (how strange!) and her mother says something about how she suffers from bi-polar disorder and is on meds.
Apparently this is fucking scary as hell to Sara, who comes from somewhere in the middle of the country. A roommate on meds?! Holy fucking fuck! She has to move out right away. Once she tries to push Rebbecca away, hell breaks lose and Rebbecca kills some people in a very boring way. Oh - and Billy Zane is in this as some letchy art prof... I'm glad the brother is acting again! (He's the fucking worst!)
There is so much wrong with this movie it's hard to pinpoint what is the most upsetting thing. I know I hated the fact that Sara is so dumb and doesn't think Rebbecca is fucking nuts until she finds out she's bi-polar - and then shit suddenly gets bad. Like, there are tons and tons of people in the world who are bi-polar... I think it's just lazy. (And not so say the Shroeder piece was a brilliant picture, but at least the suggestion of borderline personality disorder is more interesting than violent bi-polarity. And if we really want to get into it, we don't really see anything bi-polar as much as we see psychopathology and some possible schitzophrenia. Again, I'm being paid more here than the psych advisers for the film.)
Considering both actresses look basically like the same person, I was surprised that Meester did such a better job than Kelly. Kelly's voice really annoys me. She speaks mostly in a baby-talky light and airyness and never enunciates or finishes words (which I thought was lesson one in acting... at least it was when I was in 5th grade). She's mostly overdone and telegraphs her emotions too far (I'm going to do a sad face, because my character is sad in this scene). Meester is actually pretty good here (in a terrible role). I'm impressed by her so far (she was also pretty good in Country Strong).
This is a movie to avoid at all cost. There is nothing in it at all. It's ridiculous and boring, not really funny (to laugh at, I mean) and much more work than it should be.
Stars: 0 of 4
Friday, February 11, 2011
Waste Land (2010) (Friday, February 11, 2011) (182)
Waste Land is a documentary that kills two birds with one stone when it comes to making white people feel good about themselves. It's about art and social justice! Yay! It follows Brazilian star artist (startist?) Vic Muniz as he goes to Jardim Gramacho (literally meaning Gramacho Garden... no so much...), the landfill outside of Rio de Janeiro and one of the world's biggest landfills, makes art with the poor pickers who sort through the mounds of junk looking for recyclables.
Muniz, who was born in Brazil, talks about how he sorted through garbage himself after he arrived in the United States 20-some years ago. The work was humbling, to be sure, but also get him inspiration to make the interesting art he makes. He normally takes found objects, sometimes garbage, sometimes sugar, sometimes toys, sometimes chocolate sauce and makes representational images with them before shooting photographs of these arrangements. He is best known for taking well known paintings and pictures by other artists and re-making them out of these found objects. It's a very interesting process and one that I like a lot aesthetically. I think it's fascinating how he removes the viewer from the subject of the work by at least one degree. This is a very clever post-modern process and it does it beautifully.
So back on the ground in Gramacho, Muniz spends a few days walking around the heaps of trash interviewing the pickers there and figuring out who runs what. He meets a few of the labor leaders who are organizing the pickers into an ad hoc union, he meets a man who has such a positive outlook on life you wouldn't know he worked in smelly junk for a living, he meets a woman who has three kids and works as a picker because she can't find any other work.
He takes some portraits of these people, and then sets to working with them to gather certain kinds of garbage that they will use to make the works. I like how in the process of making the art, Muniz (and the directors) shows us how these people do what they do so effectively. He shows us how when they need plastic water bottles the people can find them and when they need rubber tires they can get those too.
Ultimately he has the group of subjects lay the garbage down on the floor of a big warehouse where the image of their portraits is shown on the ground. They place the items, with his helpful instruction, so they end up with large-scare pictures of themselves. Through the process, the pickers learn a new respect for one another and for the beauty in the world.
This is a nice story, but is a bit annoying, to be honest. I like what Muniz does, and I think he does it with an extreme humility and honor throughout. I think the filmmakrs Lucy Walker, Karen Harley and Joao Jardim (Jesus! They needed three directors!) think that what is being done here is really important, when really it's just an art project. Sadly most of these people will ultimately have to go back to the landfill at some point in the future and most of them suffer from all sorts of diseases they get from working in such filth (from metal poisoning to lung disease, not to mention the terrible education and social services they don't receive). It's a bit annoying that this shows us a window into a really terrible thing and we see a non-solution to dealing with it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think a more polemical view of the situation would have been good. Why not pressure the Brazilian government (which is experiencing unparalleled growth currently) to help these people better?
This film is very reminiscent of another trash documentary from 2010, Garbage Dreams. That was more interesting because it approached the issue from a more sociopolitical point of view. I thought it showed more about Egyptian society than this film showed about Brazilian society. Neither one is wonderful, but aside from Muniz, whose art and personality are fantastic, there is not much here that's very good.
Stars: 2 of 4
Muniz, who was born in Brazil, talks about how he sorted through garbage himself after he arrived in the United States 20-some years ago. The work was humbling, to be sure, but also get him inspiration to make the interesting art he makes. He normally takes found objects, sometimes garbage, sometimes sugar, sometimes toys, sometimes chocolate sauce and makes representational images with them before shooting photographs of these arrangements. He is best known for taking well known paintings and pictures by other artists and re-making them out of these found objects. It's a very interesting process and one that I like a lot aesthetically. I think it's fascinating how he removes the viewer from the subject of the work by at least one degree. This is a very clever post-modern process and it does it beautifully.
So back on the ground in Gramacho, Muniz spends a few days walking around the heaps of trash interviewing the pickers there and figuring out who runs what. He meets a few of the labor leaders who are organizing the pickers into an ad hoc union, he meets a man who has such a positive outlook on life you wouldn't know he worked in smelly junk for a living, he meets a woman who has three kids and works as a picker because she can't find any other work.
He takes some portraits of these people, and then sets to working with them to gather certain kinds of garbage that they will use to make the works. I like how in the process of making the art, Muniz (and the directors) shows us how these people do what they do so effectively. He shows us how when they need plastic water bottles the people can find them and when they need rubber tires they can get those too.
Ultimately he has the group of subjects lay the garbage down on the floor of a big warehouse where the image of their portraits is shown on the ground. They place the items, with his helpful instruction, so they end up with large-scare pictures of themselves. Through the process, the pickers learn a new respect for one another and for the beauty in the world.
This is a nice story, but is a bit annoying, to be honest. I like what Muniz does, and I think he does it with an extreme humility and honor throughout. I think the filmmakrs Lucy Walker, Karen Harley and Joao Jardim (Jesus! They needed three directors!) think that what is being done here is really important, when really it's just an art project. Sadly most of these people will ultimately have to go back to the landfill at some point in the future and most of them suffer from all sorts of diseases they get from working in such filth (from metal poisoning to lung disease, not to mention the terrible education and social services they don't receive). It's a bit annoying that this shows us a window into a really terrible thing and we see a non-solution to dealing with it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think a more polemical view of the situation would have been good. Why not pressure the Brazilian government (which is experiencing unparalleled growth currently) to help these people better?
This film is very reminiscent of another trash documentary from 2010, Garbage Dreams. That was more interesting because it approached the issue from a more sociopolitical point of view. I thought it showed more about Egyptian society than this film showed about Brazilian society. Neither one is wonderful, but aside from Muniz, whose art and personality are fantastic, there is not much here that's very good.
Stars: 2 of 4
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Harry Brown (2010) (Thursday, February 3, 2011) (181)
Harry Brown is a great example of a good film going bad due to a lousy scrip, or at least a script that takes a bad turn. It begins as a moody and quiet story of an old pensioner, Harry (Michael Caine) living in a public housing project in England. Every day he visits his sick wife in the hospital and goes to the pub to see his best friend Leonard (David Bradley, who was also wonderful in Another Year). The two commiserate about how the kids who live in the estate are terrible and make them feel unsafe. It seems there are a few gangs and a few drug dealers who operate out of the complex and the teens who hang around them harass and threaten the older folks on their way to and from their errands.
Leonard is sick of these kids and talks back to them and they in turn set his flat on fire. He then confronts them and is killed in the fight that follows. This makes Harry furious, of course, and when the cops come to interview him (the lead detective is played by Emily Mortimer), he lets them know he's lost faith in their ability to protect and defend him. The cops have left this project for dead and aren't doing much of anything to control the kids in this area. Seeing no other option, Harry goes wild and starts killing the gang members and drug dealers himself.
What starts as in interesting and small atmospheric piece turns into a silly and bloody vengeance story that leaps off a cliff. The cops are totally useless and uncaring, which might be a convenient plot device, but nothing that I connect to reality. When the teens start a riot in the streets (which basically comes out of nowhere with no motivation) the cops do almost nothing to stop them and are beaten because they only send four officers to control the mob.
Add to this the very binary characters who are either good or bad and sometimes switch states. Harry and Leonard are clearly good, the kids drug dealers are clearly bad, the pub owner is good, but then turns bad, Mortimer is good, but the other cops are bad. It's all rather dull and overdone.
Caine gives good performance here, but it feels like roles he's played before (nice lower-middle class guy who has a rough life and goes violent). I like the blue-green palette of the film and how it informs our idea of this world we're in, but it's a bit banal, isn't it? I mean blue-green stuff looks sad. That's boring. This film would have been much better if it had a different second half. It all comes about too suddenly and melodramatically. I wish it had been more melancholy and thinky and less actively violent.
Stars: 2 of 4
Leonard is sick of these kids and talks back to them and they in turn set his flat on fire. He then confronts them and is killed in the fight that follows. This makes Harry furious, of course, and when the cops come to interview him (the lead detective is played by Emily Mortimer), he lets them know he's lost faith in their ability to protect and defend him. The cops have left this project for dead and aren't doing much of anything to control the kids in this area. Seeing no other option, Harry goes wild and starts killing the gang members and drug dealers himself.
What starts as in interesting and small atmospheric piece turns into a silly and bloody vengeance story that leaps off a cliff. The cops are totally useless and uncaring, which might be a convenient plot device, but nothing that I connect to reality. When the teens start a riot in the streets (which basically comes out of nowhere with no motivation) the cops do almost nothing to stop them and are beaten because they only send four officers to control the mob.
Add to this the very binary characters who are either good or bad and sometimes switch states. Harry and Leonard are clearly good, the kids drug dealers are clearly bad, the pub owner is good, but then turns bad, Mortimer is good, but the other cops are bad. It's all rather dull and overdone.
Caine gives good performance here, but it feels like roles he's played before (nice lower-middle class guy who has a rough life and goes violent). I like the blue-green palette of the film and how it informs our idea of this world we're in, but it's a bit banal, isn't it? I mean blue-green stuff looks sad. That's boring. This film would have been much better if it had a different second half. It all comes about too suddenly and melodramatically. I wish it had been more melancholy and thinky and less actively violent.
Stars: 2 of 4
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Kaboom (Saturday, January 29, 2011) (4)
Oh boy - what to say about Greg Araki's Kaboom. Well, it's very frank about sex. Uh, yeah - that's about it.
This movie is some sort of gonzo laugh at John Waters-like camp fare, but is sorta impossible to follow and goes off in such weird directions that you lose track of what the hell you're watching.
Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a college freshman living in the dorm. He thinks he's gay, but starts getting interested in some of the hot women he sees around. He has a dream with a mysterious girl in it and then thinks he sees her on campus. He tries to find her and enlists his best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) to help him. She's a lesbian (you see the trend) and always has a strong scowl on her face.
At some point there is a cult that starts recruiting students in the school and seems to have some sort of suicide pact, like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate. Well, they're more like the latter because there's some stuff about celestial bodies and space or something. Somehow Smith's search for this mysterious girl and search for getting laid by as many people (of all genders) as he can runs into the cult story. I'm still a bit mystified about what exactly happens.
Araki uses a rather non-linear structure to the film and it's very hard to follow from one scene to the next. I not sure very much comes from this aside from confusing us. Well, maybe this as something to do with drugs or something, but it's rather difficult to understand.
I fully admit that there might be something great that I'm not seeing here. I think Araki is capable of brilliant stuff (I think his film Mysterious Skin - which was also non-linear - is amazing), but I didn't see it here. To me, John Waters at his best was in Serial Mom and Pecker - two films that mixed the gross-out shock camp of his early work with normal (and hilarious) story lines that were somewhat approachable. Earlier and later stuff he's done (like Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living or Cecil B. DeMented) is just too hard to follow and such pure camp it's hard to connect to. This film is much more like Araki's Desperate Living than it is Mysterious Skin.
Stars: .5 of 4
This movie is some sort of gonzo laugh at John Waters-like camp fare, but is sorta impossible to follow and goes off in such weird directions that you lose track of what the hell you're watching.
Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a college freshman living in the dorm. He thinks he's gay, but starts getting interested in some of the hot women he sees around. He has a dream with a mysterious girl in it and then thinks he sees her on campus. He tries to find her and enlists his best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) to help him. She's a lesbian (you see the trend) and always has a strong scowl on her face.
At some point there is a cult that starts recruiting students in the school and seems to have some sort of suicide pact, like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate. Well, they're more like the latter because there's some stuff about celestial bodies and space or something. Somehow Smith's search for this mysterious girl and search for getting laid by as many people (of all genders) as he can runs into the cult story. I'm still a bit mystified about what exactly happens.
Araki uses a rather non-linear structure to the film and it's very hard to follow from one scene to the next. I not sure very much comes from this aside from confusing us. Well, maybe this as something to do with drugs or something, but it's rather difficult to understand.
I fully admit that there might be something great that I'm not seeing here. I think Araki is capable of brilliant stuff (I think his film Mysterious Skin - which was also non-linear - is amazing), but I didn't see it here. To me, John Waters at his best was in Serial Mom and Pecker - two films that mixed the gross-out shock camp of his early work with normal (and hilarious) story lines that were somewhat approachable. Earlier and later stuff he's done (like Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living or Cecil B. DeMented) is just too hard to follow and such pure camp it's hard to connect to. This film is much more like Araki's Desperate Living than it is Mysterious Skin.
Stars: .5 of 4
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