James Piper - Entries from April 2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Toronto Stories. Feature film. (2008, 89 mins) IMDB

...Toronto as Toronto for a change...

pre-adolescent boy arrives at Pearson International airport. He wears a suit and white shirt, doesn't speak English and has no identification. He probably comes from East Africa or the Middle East. Immigration officials take him in and so starts the story except it's four stories and this boy is the string linking them.

From the airport, he manages to walk out, get on a bus and head to downtown Toronto. Don't ask me how or why, but that's what happens. It defies logic, but hey.

In the first encounter, he meets a boy his age ridding a bicycle in the park near the Bloor Viaduct. The local boy helps the stranger but not long after our visitor vanishes and doesn't show up until the next story. This first story, SHOELACES, is about two pre-adolescent kids riding their bikes and investigating make-believe monsters. Ten-year old kids going out after midnight to investigate a monster in a park didn't strike me as realistic. It ends when they come across a suicide victim. Yet another person jumps off the Blook Viaduct.

The next story is THE BRAZILIAN. The name refers to waxing and not a specific person. Take a young woman eager to hook up with some guy and some guy who isn't sure about himself let alone about the idea of hooking up with some woman. They have sex. We see her naked before and after the waxing. Completely naked, but that doesn't make for an interesting story. The dialogue in this story was so stilted and on-the-nose as to be laughable. People just don't talk that way.

The next story deals with a black man who washes windows. He likes his job, does it well. He has a young wife with a child on the way. Everything is turned upside down when a friend from the past arrives. The two know each other because they did drugs together and what ever other crimes they were involved in. The twist is the fact our visitor has escaped from jail and our hero doesn't know it. This story made the most sense, seemed the most realistic. The complications include the escapee returning to his ex-lover, a woman who wants nothing to do with him. Somehow he got a pistol and holds her hostage. Our hero comes to the rescue and then the police show up. There are some intense and interesting scenes in this story.

In the final sequence LOST BOYS, we have resolution about the young boy from Africa. The story starts in Union Station. A homeless man shouts out offers to play chess. The lost boy shows up but before they can play, a security guard asks him to leave. A bit latter, our bum discovers the boy is the subject of a search, finds him, reports him and he's not there. He's so screwed up, no one believes him, yet he's obsessed with returning this boy and we discover why when he returns to his house. At least it was his house. He was married. Lived in a nice house. Had a son who we discover drowned. It seems his son's death totally screwed him up.

The film ends on a happy note. The lost boy has been found and is safe.

I don't think you can say there's anything terrible profound or new in these four stories. Not great. Not terrible.

What I enjoyed the most was watching a city where I've lived and recognizing it for what it is meant to be: Toronto. There have been hundreds of films shot in Toronto yet most of them have been done so as to be Chicago or New York or some other part of the US. Here, we get to see the city as the city. I liked that.

In may shots, there was a golden hue to the film. There's three explanations for this. First is the choice of film stock. The second is lighting choices. Third, some type of filter was added to the lens. I suspect it was the later, but it could simply be about the lights used. I don't know why it was done, but it was a distraction because there was no consistency. Given the film was made with a small budget, I suspect that had something to do with the look.

Posted 2009/04/30 at 20h55ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Fierce People. Feature film. (2005, 107 mins) IMDB

...a far too predictable filme...

here do people get the notion that being eccentric is interesting? It may be interesting in itself for a few seconds, but it wears, after which point there had better be something happening to the characters or we'll get bored. But that's not enough, because we have to care about the characters and I never cared about the characters in this film.

Diane Lane plays a single mother living in a small, run-down apartment in NYC. She's a masseuse, sort of, because she screws just about anyone who shows up at her door, does drugs and drinks to excess. Her adolescent son lives with her and just accepts that her mother is screwed up.

Here comes the inciting incident. A very rich dude wants her to live and work for him as his personal masseuse and in a flash, the two of them pack up and head to this giant estate out in the country.

What follows really doesn't matter as it's not interesting. Truly. It's also extremely predictable.

The patriarch (Sutherland) takes care of his kingdom. Whatever wives he had have left with a boat load of money. His daughter (Perkins), the lush, lives with him. There's the two grandchildren and various maids and servants and all the rich neighbours.

There are so many characters we don't have a lot of time to get to know them. They come in for a scene or two and are gone. Plus we don't care because they don't do anything.

Somehow I think the filmmakers viewed this story as an indictment of the rich, but it doesn't go very far. We known the rich get away with murder. That's hardly news.

If it's meant to be a satire, it didn't strike any notes.

This film muddles along in a predictable way and when it's over we're thankful.

Posted 2009/04/29 at 20h47ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Love Guru. Feature film. (2008, 87 mins) IMDB

...it's much funnier film than people give it credit...

saw the many bad reviews for this film before I watched it and braced myself. I'm also biased because this film is about hockey and Canada which means I can relate and I do. I will say I was surprised. I had a smile on my face from the start of the movie to the end. That doesn't happen very often. Rarely. This film did it for me. My cheeks are sore from smiling. I'm in isolation in that regard, but that's what happened. Yes, I cringed at the urine mop sequence (please press fast forward) and the elephants copulating on the ice during a hockey game was too much, but I can let that pass because I was laughing and smiling so much during the rest of the film.

If this film rated so poorly, what gives? What did I see that others didn't? What is wrong with them? I'm not sure. I suppose since success is measured with US box office receipts where hockey rates with water polo, they don't get it and don't care. Oh well. Their loss.

While the Leafs, my favourite team, is a central part of the movie, it's not a hockey movie. US folks should have gotten past that but I guess they couldn't. All I can say is I'm not going to hide and lie. I liked this movie.

I was also impressed with the skating ability of the actors in this film. While there were stunt doubles for the fast, puck handling moments, the actors were on the ice, in equipment, and they didn't fall flat on their face. It was impressive.

There was an obvious scene missed: the love guru struggling on skates. Not sure why they didn't include such a scene. I'd say, include it in the sequel, except unlike Wayne's World and Austin Powers, there won't be a sequel.

Posted 2009/04/28 at 20h02ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Shattered. Feature film. (2007, 95 mins) IMDB

...one of the best thrillers I've seen in a long time...

s in many thrillers there are twists and turns and they are based on withheld information and disinformation. This film is no different in that regard.

During the long, boring setup, we meet Mr. and Mrs. Perfect couple. They live in a perfect house in Chicago. They have a perfect young daughter. The husband has a perfect job where he's perfect. Life couldn't be any better. That's a typical setup for this type of movie because what follows is the complete upheaval of their life.

With plans for the weekend, a man confronts them in their SUV. He has a gun and tells them their daughter is a hostage. Do as I say and she won't be hurt.

So far there's nothing in this film we haven't seen before, but what follows is different including the ending. I think it's next to impossible to predict the third act, to guess what happens. I don't see how anyone could do. For that reason, I won't spell it out here. Probably.

To show us how different this film is, our kidnapper forces the couple to go to their bank and withdraw all the cash they can. With a suitcase full of cash, he proceeds to burn it. Ouch. Since we only see part of it burning, we should know better. Here is an element of misinformation. What appears to happen, doesn't happen. It also defies logic that someone would have his hand on $100,000 and burn it. That piques our interest, because if he doesn't want money from this couple, what does he want. That forms the central question of the movie. Why is doing this? The answer comes in the end and we don't expect what we find out. You have to love it.

I've said enough about the plot.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film (except for the tedious and slow setup). It should have been shortened.

Although this film stars Pierce Brosnan et al, the film fits into the independent category simply because it's Canadian film with a bunch of non-Canadians involved in it. The result is the film didn't have a massive marketing budget, didn't get reviewed, didn't get any push. Too bad for viewers because it's a worthwhile film to watch.

Posted 2009/04/28 at 20h02ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, April 27, 2009

Blood Diamond. Feature film. (2006, 143 mins) IMDB

...an intense film--must see...

n the West African nation of Sierra Leone you can find diamonds. Control the diamonds and you control the income that comes from selling them. With the money from selling diamonds and you can fund an army to maintain control over the diamonds and continue the cycle.

Having lived in West Africa, I can related to what is shown in this film. It is dangerous place even when civil war isn't breaking out.

Solomon is a fisherman trying to provide for his family. He wants his son to do well in school. His world is turned upside down when rebel forces attack his village. What is shown is gruesome. Sick even. The villagers are shot with AK-47s. Those who survive are tortured and mutilated. I'll never fully understand who people can do this and while the film tries to answer that question, I don't think it can.

Solomon, because he is fit and able, is taken from the village to a diamond mining operation. He, along with many others, sift through mud in a river to find diamonds. One person tries to steal a diamond, is found out and shot.

Many civilians are shot in this movie.

While sifting through the river, Solomon finds a large, pink diamond. He conceals it, buries it, but is found out. When the sadistic rebel leader is about to kill Solomon, a government attack comes. Some are killed and many are rounded up and taken to a Freetown prison. Needless to say, this prison is no hotel.

It's in prison where Solomon meets Danny Archer. A white African who is involved in smuggling diamonds to Liberia, who traffics in guns for rebels or whoever can afford them and is essentially a mercenary. He's a piece of work. When he learns Solomon stole a large diamond, one that may be priceless, Archer attaches onto Solomon in order to get the diamond. It's his ticket out of Africa.

Then there's the third major character. Maddy has come from the US to write about the civil war and conflict diamonds. Since Archer knows inside secrets, she wants to pick his brain but wont' help that is until he needs something from her.

Since they left prison, the rebels have invaded the capital and taken over. The country is in anarchy. She can travel to places as journalist. The two of them tag along as "journalists."

The film is filled with intense battles. The rebels raiding villages, invading Freetown. Attacks by government troops. Attacks from mercenaries. It all gives a framework in which our three central characters are fighting for their lives. Archer shows why he survived so many years in Africa. He knows how to kill.

I found myself completely caught up in this film. The many situations where it was life and death for our heroes were many and real. Intense. I kept thinking I'm glad I'm not going through that. I've been there and at my age, I don't think I'd want to go back. It gives me nightmares where I'm hunted and trapped.

The film also reminded me I wouldn't buy diamonds even if I knew they came from Canada as many do. I don't like jewellery. I don't like wearing rings. Why are people so superficial about diamonds and "bling." That's something else I don't get. I see NBA stars with 1 carat diamond studs sticking out of their lobes and wonder what doesn't go through their heads.

Posted 2009/04/27 at 20h12ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Sahara. Feature film. (1943, 97 mins) IMDB

...a predictable WWII film...

AHARA is an entirely predictable WWII film staring Humphrey Bogart.

Bogart is a sergeant of a tank crew in North Africa. The tide is turning against the allies. HQ orders him and his tank to retreat, to go south and they head south. It's just one tank and a few soldiers. Their concerns are the German troops and water.

They encounter a British hospital unit that is battered and bruised. The two forces hook up and continue south in search of water.

While Bogart is only a sergeant, the British officer in charge of his unit gives up command to Bogart. That's why he's the star.

Enter a Sudanese soldier who guides them toward a well.

Enter a German plane who attacks them. They fight back and shoot down the plane. They have a prisoner of war in this pilot who embodies the hatred towards Germans.

Enter an Italian officer who embodies the bon-homme sitting on the fence type. He hates El Duce and loves the US.

They arrive at an ancient fort with a well. The well is dry except for a trickle. The men are dehydrating and in desperate need of water.

At this point they have maybe thirty men plus POWs.

Enter a force of German soldiers. They are greatly outnumbered and nowhere to go and no support in sight. It looks bleak for our heroes. They setup up trenches and defence and manager to hold off the Germans. Then in the closing sequence, the Germans give up en mass. They need water and surrender to get it. During the bombing and fighting, the water in the well begins to flood. How ironic.

Posted 2009/04/26 at 22h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Catch a Fire. Feature film. (2006, 101 mins) IMDB

...I don't think I'll ever understand the violence in South Africa...

his is not the movie I thought it was going to be. Not your typical Hollywood film. Apartheid. Blacks v. Whites. Torture. Struggles. Hard to image it existed, but I don't doubt it.

Reminds of A DRY WHITE SEASON. Different, but very similar, yet the SEASON was a much better film.

One difference: we don't see the whites living cosy lives, we see it from the blacks perspective with the whites as the Nazis.

The film could be called: how to become a terrorist because at the start of the film Patrick is the exact opposite of a terrorist.

He's married with two daughters. We works as a boss in an important oil refinery in the country. He keeps his nose clean and stays away from the political troubles in his country. But that's not enough.

The ANC bombs the plant where he works and the whites suspect it's him. It wasn't him. He was away coaching his soccer team with a side jaunt to visit his one-time girlfriend who is also the mother of one of his children. No one knows except the two involved.

When he returns, he's captured and accused of terrorism. They'd hang him right away except they want information from him--information he can't provide because he's innocent. They torture him until he confesses except it's clear he's confessing to something he didn't do.

His wife is captured and tortured to make matters worse.

When they are released, the government follows him and he decides to become part of the ANC.

He travels to Mozambique where he trains to be a terrorist. There's an assault on the training facility but our hero survives. There's an interesting image where white soldiers pant their skin black for a sneak attack. There was close-up of one soldier--bright green eyes and completely black face.

He's on a mission. To plant bombs in the plant where he once worked and he does.

It's the ending that doesn't work at all. Muddled. Predictable and so on.

They jump forward to him being released from prison many years later when white rule is over turned. Mendela takes over.

I don't think it was a movie worth making. We've seen it before and the ending didn't work. Not that the ending was wrong, but how we got there was wrong.

I liked the wife: Precious.

I was also impressed by Tim Robbins accent. If I hadn't seen him before, I would have thought he was Dutch or South Africa. Very impressive.

Posted 2009/04/26 at 22h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Home at the End of the World. Feature film. (2004, 97 mins) IMDB

...those 70s hairdos were replaced with even wilder 80s hairdos...

his film is one of those films I wanted to like a great deal more than I did, but I could never get to that point. Perhaps what I'm saying is I wanted to love it, but never did and that might be asking too much because there aren't many films I love.

Too much happens in the film, over decades, to summarize it with a sentence or two. We meet our hero as a nine-year old boy with an older brother who is a spaced-out on drugs. When he walks through a plate-glass window, a chard punctures his neck and he dies.

Flashforward a few years where Bobby is now in high school. He smokes drugs and befriends Jonathon. They are both on the fringes of society. They are friendly in a way that suggests they are gay and it turns out at least one is gay.

Bobby lost his brother, then his mother and now his father. He goes to live with Jonathon and his parents. He corrupts the mother if that's the right word. Bobby likes to smoke joints and in a scene that defies believability, this 15 year old shares one with Jonathon's mother, dances with her. There is something about the mother that is incredibly odd. It's as if she is exist in autopilot. Someone who cooks, bakes and does the laundry. Anything beyond that and her brain doesn't function.

At some point, we're never told, Jonathon moves out to the big city and Bobby gets a job working in a bakery. He likes to bake. I can relate to that.

He's happy with his life until the parents, his adoptive parents, decide to move to the desert and he is forced to find his own way. This leads him to NYC and Jonathon and his older friend, Clare.

The rest of the film deals with the three of them living together and not living together.

Clare loves Jonathon but he's gay and they never seem to acknowledge that. That's another part of the film I find completely unbelievable. Is she blind? Is he ashamed or in denial? I'm not sure.

When Bobby enters the picture, it's Bobby and Clare. The first time they are in bed he makes the declaration that he's never done this before. That he's a virgin. Give me a break.

At some point Clare becomes pregnant. It's never stated who the father is, but it surely must be Bobby. The three decide to leave the congestion of NYC and move to a farm house for the sake of the child.

Not a lot changes. Yes, there's a new baby girl and the three plus baby live in a farm instead of an apartment, but to what end? To live I suppose. Just another collect of people living on this planet.

The ending is completely subtle. There are hints that Jonathon contracted AIDs. It fits the time and his profile. And Clare packs up and leaves with her daughter on a short trip that isn't apparently short, even though it was her money that purchased the property. I doubt that someone in that situation would be so oblique. Words would be said to make it clear.

I found the hairstyles to be a complete distraction. The cropped bangs, straight across, didn't seem right. It was as if a chimp was the hairdresser.

Aging is never kind to anyone, but it seems particularly curl to blonde females. At least in Robin Wright's case we can always pop in the DVD to THE PRINCESS BRIDE.

Posted 2009/04/26 at 22h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Miss Potter. Feature film. (2006, 92 mins) IMDB

...enchanting and charming...

ISS POTTER is a charming film about the life of Beatrix Potter--noted children's book author and illustrator.

It's the early 1900s in London, England. Potter lives an affluent and protected life with her wealthy parents. She loves animals, love to draw and paint. She also writes stories about her animals.

The early scenes show her making her first steps in the publishing world. The two older brothers who run a publishing firm don't think much of her book and give it to their younger, neophyte brother as a pet project. Little did they realize the book and many that followed would be best sellers.

The young brother is Norman Warne. The two fall in love but since Potter has sworn off marriage and the norms of Victorian England are restrictive, it takes a while for the love to blossom. When she agrees to marry him, her parents are against it. He's a tradesman and beneath her standing and the family's standing in society. Such was the way back then. The three reach an agreement. The family will go away for the summer and if after the summer, they still want to marry, they can do so. Day after day Potter and her fiancé exchange letters until his letters stop. It's not that he's fallen out of love, but that he has become ill. When Potter races back to London to be with him, she's too late. The illness took his life.

That's not how a Hollywood movie is supposed to go, but this film is a biographical and these are the facts. Her first love died before they could marry.

As unmarried woman she has lived her entire life with her parents, but with the wealth from her book sales and desire to live in the country, she buys a farm and moves from London. She continues to draw and paint and write new children's books, but develops an interest in conserving farm land and nature and buys up property.

It's during the property buying that she reconnects with a childhood friend, Mr. Heelis--a country lawyer. Eventually they marry.

I enjoyed the movie. The performances by all the actors were strong--even the small roles.

I also enjoyed the animation moments were Potter's drawings of Peter Rabbit come to life on screen. It's been done before but it was fun to watch.

Posted 2009/04/25 at 19h42ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Passchendaele. Feature film. (2008, 114 mins) IMDB

...it's great to see a Canadian story on screen...

say bravo Paul Gross.

As a passionate Canadian I'm biased about this film. I've watched many films and documentaries about both World Wars where it appears as if Canada had nothing to do with either. That's hard to take. It gets me angry especially since some of my uncles fought in both wars.

CNN once showed a graphic: WWII 1941-1945. It's not just Canadians who'd be pissed by such a graphic. A documentary on the DVD for PATTON says as much, "In 1942, just three months into the war..."

Well enough is enough said Paul Gross and I don't blame him.

Canadian soldiers fighting in Europe were fierce. Something about farming and mining and hauling logs will build character that is perfect for the battlefield. One of the things I learned from the movie is the derivation of the word: storm-trooper. The Germans created it to describe the Canadian soldiers they faced. When they saw Canadians were coming, they knew they were in for a fierce battle.

The Canadian Corps took Vimy Ridge when the French and British weren't able and the Americans were back home unwilling. They did the same at Passchendaele.

The film focuses on a portion of the battle of Passchendaele.

The film shows the harsh life on the front lines, the death of battle from hand-to-hand combat to bullets and bombs, but not in the way as is done in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. This film is centred completely on the central characters, and yes it's melodramatic, but when a writer chooses to write about a period in history that involves hundreds of thousands of people, he must choose a point of focus. Focus on a few people and show it from their point of view, or look at the bigger picture and risk not having any emotional involvement. Then once it's decided on who to focus on, he must decide on what makes them tick and in this instance he chose a universal storyline--love.

I won't fault him on his choices or execution of them. The film is effective even though a hundred different stories could have been written with the same title about the same point in history.

I haven't said much about the actual film, but I'll say this. He chose to write a structure that isn't expected for any war film let alone WWI. Our hero has already fought many battles in Europe and returns home where he can stay if he wants, but as circumstances develop, he decides to return to battle. He returned home a hero to some, a coward to some and completely screwed up in his own mind.

We see a range of him that is both heroic and evil. In the opening sequence, he runs his bayonet through the head of a defenceless enemy soldier. The visual on screen is gruesome but the images in his mind about what he did must be worse. A Hollywood star wouldn't go near such a scene. It was brave on Paul Gross's part to put it in and for him to act it and keep it.

Again I say bravo Paul Gross.

Posted 2009/04/25 at 19h42ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Wrestler. Feature film. (2008, 111 mins) IMDB

...why do people put themselves through this?...

hen a movie like THE WRESTLER receives a great deal of hype, as this film surely did, and I haven't seen it before the hype, it's going to taint my viewing. The hype in this case is positive, and most of it directed towards Hollywood bad-boy Mickey Rourke.

Watching this film was like watching a balloon being filled with water. At what point will it explode and who's going to get wet?

Rourke plays a wrestler--one of those fake wrestlers. I'm not a fan of wrestling and can't say much about it except this film is all about wrestling and has nothing to do with it. Does that make any sense? It should.

It's the present day in New Jersey. Rourke has just finished wrestling to a small crowd. His body is wounded and sore. He crawls to his trailer park to find the manager locked him out for overdue rent. He sleeps the night in his van. The following morning there's a pat-the-dog scene where the neighbourhood kids come to play with him. They now him and like him and he reciprocates. Pat the dog.

The man is forty something. He's been wrestling for twenty years. His body is battered and tired. He's broke. What I liked about the film is that all this information and other information is said with mostly images. So much is said with little dialogue. Bit by bit we see a man who was once at the top of his field, but those days are gone. He lives hand to mouth and he lives recklessly.

(This film is not ROCKY. It's far less romantic and far more sober.)

When he does earn a few dollars from wrestling, he goes to a strip club where he knows the people who work there and in particular one stripper named Cassidy. He likes her. Gives her money for a dance instead of the manager of his trailer park. He wants more from her, but to her, he's just another customer to take money from or maybe that's just what she says.

The first major turning point happens at the end of Act II. He spent the evening in the ring being cut with glass and barbed wire and being slammed and stapled. It takes a team of medical attendants to clean him up and when they're done, he collapses with chest pain. Not only did he have a heart attack, he had bypass surgery. It should be the end of his wrestling days and for the rest of act II, it is.

His struggle now is how to survive without wrestling--the only thing he was ever good at. Cassidy suggests reuniting with is estranged daughter. On the first visit she wants nothing to do with him. Cassidy suggests buying her a gift and they go shopping in a used-clothing store. The gift works and father and daughter spend time together. They plan to have a dinner. It's all arranged except the night before he continues his reckless ways. He attends a wrestling match as a spectator. When he goes to a bar afterwards, he meets a young groupie who clearly wants to fuck him. They do drugs and drink and fuck and he ends up at her place. When he wakes up the next morning he's a wreck. When he goes home, his only thought is to sleep it off which means his misses the dinner with his daughter. He screwed up again and this time it's for good.

That's major turning point number two. It's act III.

During Act II as he struggles to figure what to do, he works odd jobs and makes headway with Cassidy (real name Pam). They get to know each other outside of the strip club.

While we watch this over-the-hill wrestler in the bottom of his life, we also see the stripper realize hers days in a g-string are almost over as well. Aging isn't kind to anyone and in certain work, it's deadly.

In Act III, our hero goes back to the only thing he is any good at wrestling. He failed with his daughter. He failed in his odd jobs. He failed with Cassidy. He's also failed in taking care of his body and his health, but he doesn't know any other way. He wants whatever it is he gets from being in the ring. It's the only place where he feels comfortable even though it's literally killing him. The steroids and painkillers he takes. All the scars. The bypass surgery.

He attends a big event--an historical rematch. Cassidy follows with the hope of stopping him but can't and when she realizes she can't, she leaves him.

The film ends without explicitly stating what happens, but we can guess. He lost his daughter and it's not likely he'll get her back. Cassidy was in love with him, reached out to him, but when she realizes he's basically suicidal, she backs away. She doesn't want to watch him die. It's not likely he wins her back.

The last image of the film shows him jumping from the ropes into the ring. The film fades to black before he lands. In the scenes just prior, he was feeling chest pains as if he was suffering a heart attack. This finally image to me suggest he dies that night or shortly thereafter. It was his one last moment of glory in the ring--the only place where he knew where to live.

Posted 2009/04/24 at 19h23ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Persepolis. Feature film. (2007, 96 mins) IMDB

...an animation film with a powerful story and refreshing visuals...

ERSEPOLIS is an animation film from France based on the life of its co-writer and co-director Marjane Satrapi. As a young girl in the 1970s, she grew up in Iran under the Shah. Saw the revolution that overthrew him and saw the rise of religious clerics who stamped out freedoms for women.

As a teenager she lived in Vienna, returned to Iran, married, divorced and finally left for good and a new life in France.

The story and images are compelling. It is refreshing to know a film can be made with hand drawings instead of bits of data in a computer.

The title and cover images are not particularly inviting, but that shouldn't stop someone from watching this film.

In watching the features on the DVD, I learned the film took a small army of artists to create the film over a three year period and yet the budget was only $7.5 million. That it was made, is an achievement, but that it is so engaging and revealing about life in Iran is the reward of watching it.

Posted 2009/04/23 at 19h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Savages. Feature film. (2007, 114 mins) IMDB

...old man in diapers...

avages refers to the name of the family. There's Lenny, an old and estranged father, and Wendy, his daughter, and Jon, his son.

Lenny lives in Arizona with a girlfriend. She's as old as him--maybe older. Just as we "get to know her" she dies. With her death, Lenny has no place to stay. His children are called and asked to help. Jon travels from Buffalo and Wendy from NYC. What follows in the movie is how the two siblings deal with their estranged father and the impact it has on their lives.

Wendy lives in Manhattan. We first meet her working in an office where instead of working for her employer, she steals office supplies, writes up applications for grants and uses the postage meter to mail her applications. She lives alone in a small apartment. A neighbour visits. His wife thinks he's out walking the dog, but instead he's fucking Wendy. Not only is he married, but he's older. There's a look on Wendy's face that says, this is the best I can do and puts up with him.

Jon has a Ph.D in theatre. He teaches at some unstated college. He's working on a book about Bertolt Brecht. He lives in an old house cluttered with books and papers. He has a girlfriend who is Polish but since her visa has expired must leave the country. He won't marry her, which would allow her to stay, because, well, he has his reasons.

The bulk of the story deals with the siblings and their father. The step by step process of figuring out where he is and what state he is in and what to do from there. They find him in a hospital and decide to relocate him to a nursing home in Buffalo.

The father doesn't have a lot to say or do in the film. He spends most of his time asleep or semi-comatose. When he does speak it's to emphasize the fact he's losing his mind and just isn't with it. Not an effective character.

Jon spends his time being dutiful because he has to and he just wants to get it over with so he can get on with his life. He has as much joy about what he's doing as he would carrying the garbage to the curb.

Wendy is the true hero of this story. I suppose that's not surprising since the film is written by a woman. She realizes her relationship with a married man isn't such a good idea and ends it. She lies about getting a grant, but manages to get her play in production with a small theatre in NYC. It's a tiny step, but a step forward.

The film tries to shock us with the outrageous behaviour of the father (mostly related to bodily functions). I was neither shocked or outraged, simply annoyed. Do we really need to see this? Of course not. A man in diapers isn't interesting. Where's the wit? Where's the insight? Where's something other than the obvious.

The ending is telegraphed and sudden and not realistic. Lenny could have lived another five or ten years, but the story didn't call for that.

Posted 2009/04/23 at 19h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Fried Green Tomatoes. Feature film. (1991, 130 mins) IMDB

...you don't have to be a woman to enjoy this film, hating racist bastards helps...

he title is unforgettable. I remember watching this film quite a number of years ago and a few images stuck, but for the most part I didn't remember the storyline. I remembered the scene with the bees. In watching it again this evening, it was clear the performer was dealing with the real thing. It was her and there were hundreds of bees swarming the tree, swarming her. In watching the feature with the DVD, it's not hard to see why it worked, but it's something few people could do. As with most wild animals, the best advice is to stay calm. They are more afraid of you than you are of them. Easy to say, but hard to do.

In watching the feature, everybody suggested that fried green tomatoes were a Southern thing (southern US). I don't know where they get that. My mother made them with tomatoes picked from the garden. It was a case of not waiting for them to ripen. And if my mother did, her mother did and so on.

But what about the film. To write about what happens in the film would take as long as watching it. Many characters with two story lines--one in the present and one flashing back to the 1920s and 30s.

The present deals with a middle-aged woman (Bates) who meets an elderly woman (Tandy) by chance in a nursing home. The older woman tells her a story about her sister from long ago.

It wouldn't be fair to say that the bulk of the story is about the flashback because events happen in both time lines. We watch as Bates struggles with her marriage and mid-life while we see the events of the past with Idgie and Ruth and a large cast of characters. There are many familiar faces in this film. It's really two films in one.

Bates' husband is a cliché--fat, career-driven, the bread winner, expects his wife to make dinner and do the household chores while he spends his evenings watching baseball or some other sport on TV. Bates wants something more and begins to take charge of her life.

But sixty years ago, things were different. We meet Idgie as a young girl on the day of her older sister's wedding. Idgie doesn't want to wear a dress. The scrapped knees tell us she's a tom-boy. She pouts and runs off but her older brother Buddy, the voice of reason, comes to the family's rescue. After his intervention we cut to the church and Idgie is wearing a boy's outfit complete with tie.

During the reception we meet Ruth. She's a young woman in love with Buddy. They kiss on a bridge crossing over a railroad. Her hat is caught in the wind and blows down onto the tracks. Buddy like any 18 year old runs after it and runs after it until his foot is caught in the tracks and a train whistle blows and he can't escape and the train can't slow down in time. Death comes suddenly to this wedding.

I didn't like this sequence. I suppose I could say it was melodramatic and it is and I could say we've seen this before and I'm sure we have, but mostly I'm not sure what purpose it serves in the story. The story needs Ruth and Idgie to meet and become friends but at this point in the story there's such an age difference (18 for Ruth, 12 for Idgie), this doesn't seem like the time. The story also requires Ruth to marry Bennett which means she can't marry Buddy. So why have Buddy and Ruth in love? It's just not a necessary bit of the story. Once Buddy dies, we don't think of him and neither do the characters.

With the story setup and time advanced, we meet a young Idgie as an adult and the same Ruth. Neither seem to age in this story, but, as Ebert would say, oh well.

Idgie is not a lady. She wears cloths like a man. She spends her free time at a "bar" where she drinks and gambles and swears. She is a free spirit. She's also most likely a lesbian but that word is never spoken in this film.

Ruth marries someone named Frank Bennett. She moves into a large house with him. When Idgie comes to visit, she discovers Bennett is a wife beater. The black-eye tells the story even if Ruth won't.

If Ruth and Idgie are the central characters of the historical plotline, Bennett and his death create the mystery that drives the story. We know he died or went missing, the question is what happened.

The story answers the question in quite an interesting way and in doing so jabs at the KKK for the bastards that they are and people like Bennett. I don't think I'll ever understand how a husband can hit his wife. We clearly have no sympathy for Bennett nor should we.

This leads to an interesting point about characters in fiction. Stories tend to portray characters in the extreme. If they are good, we only see their goodness and if they are bad, we only see their badness. We never once see anything about Bennett for example that is admirable or worthy. He's a wife beater, a thug, a member of the KKK. Can something really be that one-sided? No, but in story telling that's the case.

Two questions follow. Should that be the case and how does it effect person's reality of the real world.

George Bush The Stupid said you're either with us or you're against us. There's good and there's evil. If you believe in fairy-tales these extremes exist, but not in real life. Even George Bush The Stupid is not entirely evil, although some believe that.

(Note his father is George Bush The Enlightened. I use the nomenclature because it reminds me of the Italian father and son team and the invention the semi-colon.)

People are quick to judge and place people into neat little boxes, and while that serves a purpose, it also closes the mind to other possibilities.

As for the second part, on whether that's appropriate for storytelling, well, that could take months and months to discuss. Critics often speak of two-dimensional characters as opposed to well-rounded, three-dimensional characters. The later being the preference. But is Iago from Othello purely evil and therefore two dimensional or are there signs of benevolence? Is he three dimensional? Perhaps he is more complex, yet evil. A psychopath.

Having said that there is, in this film, lively characters who conflict with one another in a way that is interesting and I suppose that's what we want to see in fiction and film.

The film is also what most would be describe as a chick-flick. That may not be the right description. It's definitely a film in which the focus is on women and therefore would appeal to women, but yet I found interesting. You don't have to be female to enjoy this film.

Posted 2009/04/22 at 18h41ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Lorenzo's Oil. Feature film. (1992, 129 mins) IMDB

...what an amazing story...

rilliant. Inspiring. An amazing story.

I watched the film for the first time tonight and I'm glad I did. I'm surprised I hadn't watched it before, but that's how it goes. I assumed, based on my limited knowledge of the film, that it would be a downer--parents struggling with a terminally ill child, but that's only part of the story. It's the story of their determination against great odds to help their boy and in doing so find medical solutions and help other boys.

We first meet Lorenzo Odone as a young boy playing and studying in the East African island-nation of Comoros. He's there with his parents because his father, Augusto, works for the World Bank. He's bright, playful, active--a typical boy.

When the family relocates to Washington, DC, the boy acts up in school. Throws tantrums. At first no one knows what to make of it, but after a series of tests at a children's hospital, the cause is discovered. He suffers from an inherited disease known as adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). It's a death sentence. His body doesn't produce an enzyme that breaks down long-chain fatty acids. These cells build up in the blood and attack the brain. The person's brain slowly shuts down until the person dies. The doctor gives him two years at most to live. Case studies of other boys with the disease show death follows quickly.

The parents first seek out medical help. They visit specialists and try experimental treatment. None of it works. Time is ticking by.

They realize the scientists have their way of doing things and it isn't always in the interest of their son. Michaela takes charge of treating her son who quickly requires round-the-clock nursing. Augusto goes to the medical libraries to learn anything he can.

They are relentless in finding a cure, in getting researchers to do something and in getting the message out through the ALD foundation.

They battle the scientists who must take time to run studies, time to raise funding. They battle the scientists about using an oil that is shown to have negative effects on hearts in rats.

They battle the couple who run the foundation and who follow the line of the scientists. Odone's pseudo-science is rejected. It almost seems as if this couple, played as villains in the movie, didn't want a cure for a boy who is in a vegetative state. It was as if they were saying, it's better for everyone once he's gone. Lozenro's parents reject that notion by their actions. They never had to say it.

Augusto in his search for answers reads the studies and books and thinks about the issues and asks questions and thinks some more. He knows this bit of fact, but wonders why it doesn't work and eventually comes up with an answer. I found this sequence amazing.

Even more amazing is the fact they just don't give up. As their son's body decays (a built in ticking clock), they aren't put off by failures with the first oil treatment. They aren't put off with the impossibility of extracting a very specific chain of oil from another oil.

Even more amazing is the fact the oil worked on their son. He didn't die when the doctors said he would. Other boys took the oil at the first sign of trouble and stayed healthy.

As interesting aspect of this disease is that mother's carry the gene but don't develop the disease. Only boys do. That raises all sorts of questions.

The film is more about the story than any visuals, but what an amazing story. It says don't give up. Never give up.

(I can't believe the low IMDB rating of 6.9. Something is wrong there.)

Posted 2009/04/21 at 20h22ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, April 20, 2009

Mona Lisa. Feature film. (1986, 104 mins) IMDB

...interesting characters, but is George really that stupid?...

eorge gets out of prison and goes to his wife's home with a bouquet of flowers. He sees her and his teenaged daughter. The daughter doesn't know him. The mother screams and yells. He runs off in shame and becomes angry. We see he can be violent if he wants and one look at Bob Hoskins and you know he can be violent. His friend Thomas comes to the rescue.

His next stop is to buy a white bunny rabbit and does. He takes it to his former boss played by Michael Caine except his boss is nowhere to be found. I'm not sure why a grown man would buy a bunny rabbit for another grown man. It's quite odd. The rabbit shows up in the climax and still I'm not sure what the hell it's supposed to represent. My only guess is that George is a bit dense and stupid. Maybe. Is George a reference to George in Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN? Not likely.

In going to his boss, he expects payback. He spent seven years in jail for his boss and wants a job in return. He gets it. He has a car and drives a high-end call girl around West London. The relationship between the two forms the bulk of the story.

She doesn't like him. He's glad to have something to do. She gives him money to buy new cloths--it seems he's wearing the same suit he wore when he went into prison--a little snug and out of fashion. His choice of clothes upsets her. A leather jacket, a loud shirt, a gold chain. Guido on screen. She takes him to a fine clothing store and buy him shirts, ties, suits, an overcoat.

Each night after her tricks, she asks him to drive her to the street walking area. Here we see a stream of street pros and johns. Night after night until she confides in him and explains she's looking for Cathy. She used to work the streets with Cathy but lost touch and wants to find her. George goes looking.

What surprised me about this sequence was the ability of George to go and do things you and I wouldn't know about and yet when he looks closer he finds another world. It's as if he's seeing the life of these women for the first time. How they are drugged and abused in order to maintain the cash flow. How could he not know? Yet, he seems to have not and it bothers him. At one point he says, "I have a daughter that age." Was he blind before? Stupid? Wasn't interested in finding out? All of these things? What's clear is he's changing as a man. He starts to do the right thing.

When he finds Cathy, it turns out she was under the control of his boss. He takes her away and thus begins Act III.

He takes her to Brighton--a place Simone talked of spending a summer. Simone and Thomas join them. By this point he has fallen in love with Simone and thinks she has as well. After all, he's helped her. Helped her find Cathy and brought her to safety. Helped her get away from Anderson, her former pimp, who has grudge.

As the two of them walk the boardwalk in Brighton, they are confronted by Anderson and his henchmen. The chase is on. They escape but when they return to the hotel suite, his boss with the bunny rabbit is waiting. Anderson and company return. There's a fight and Simone pulls out the revolver George obtained. She shoots Anderson and the boss and Anderson once more. She points the gun at George. He realizes he's been screwed by her. Manipulated by her. He tells her to shoot, but she doesn't. He wrestles the gun away from her. It's the last we see of her.

He finally learns another lesson about women who screw for money. He was duped.

The film ends with George walking with his friend Thomas and his daughter.

All the characters in this film are easy to understand except one--the lead character George. He's not a one-note person. Violent at times. Compassionate at times. He cares for his daughter, Simone and Thomas. He seems street smart but then just plain dumb. Perhaps this is a story to show the maturation of this person. It's the only thing that makes sense to me at this moment, yet it seems too obvious.

Posted 2009/04/20 at 19h22ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Rose Tattoo. Feature film. (1955, 117 mins) IMDB

...roses, roses and more roses...

ot a lot happens in this film and a great deal happens. I say not a lot because the film can be summarized with a few points.

Serafine Delle Rose lives in a house somewhere in the south with her husband and teenaged daughter. She's from Sicily and behaves and talks as we've come to expect from an Italian. Loud and passionate. Never holding back.

She reveres her husband whom she calls the rose. His hair smells of roses from the rose oil and he has a rose tattoo on his chest. We never meet him. He was a Baron in Italy (or so we're told) but in the US he drives a truck. He seems to be involved in hauling something illegal and in the opening scenes dies when chased by police. His truck veers off the road and crashes.

The wife is distraught from the news. At this point the film flashes forward three years. Serafina has closeted herself in the house. She doesn't get dressed anymore. She's behind in her work--making dresses and shirts.

Her daughter, Rose, is about to graduate from high school. In a scene she meets a sailor. The mother tries to scare the sailor off, but he explains he's a virgin too and swears he won't touch her. We don't see a great deal of the young couple. The focus is on the mother. By the end of the film, the two plan to get married with the mother's blessing and run off.

In the opening scene, a woman leaves a tattoo shop where she got a rose tattoo on her chest. She goes to Serafina with silk cloth to have a shirt made for a man. Because of the accident, the silk shirt is never collected.

Enter Burt Lancaster at the 52nd minute. I was surprised he was so late coming into this film, but Serafina is the star of this film and she won an academy award for her performance.

Lancaster plays an Italian immigrant (his performance and accent wasn't believable at times). He drives a truck, is poor and falls in love with Serafina.

Part of the film is Serafina acting and behaving because of what the neighbours would think. She's always worried about it, acting on those thoughts. For example, it's late at night. Lancaster is visiting her house. She tells him to park his truck down the street and sneak into the house. She doesn't want the neighbours spreading rumours.

Back to the silk shirt. She gives it to Lancaster to wear and puts two and two together. Her husband was cheating on her. That's what she thinks and has to find out and does. When she does, her revered rose is a disgrace to her, but the film ends on an upbeat. She and Lancaster become a couple.

Posted 2009/04/19 at 21h07ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Beaufort. Feature film. (2007, 131 mins) IMDB

...an anti-war film...

f you're a Canadian like me, Beaufort means something that is very different from what it means in this film. There's the literal translation from French to English, there's the Beaufort Sea and, to my discovery, there's a legendary castle in Lebanon that dates back to the crusades. The film is about the later.

The Israeli army controls this piece of land in Lebanon, but as the movie unfolds, control may be the wrong word. Soldiers live in a modern-day, fortified bunker on top a barren hill. It's steel and concrete and sand bags. Life inside is grim. Hygiene a luxury.

They are surrounded by the enemy--an enemy we never see or get to know. Every hour mortars scream into the compound, land and explode. The men run for cover. To them, the mortars seem more like a nuisance--like putting up with black flies or mosquitoes.

The men are solders. Always in full battle gear. Always thinking about getting out, saving their ass, bickering with one another. Besides that, they are simply a target. They aren't defending anything because there is nothing to defend. They never fire a shot. Never once do they see a target to shot at. They are biding time until they leave, and in this film, it's leaving the outpost for good.

In the first act, a bomb squad soldier arrives at Beaufort to dismantle a land mine (maybe an IUD) on the road leading to the fort. In a practical sense, it would be better to set it off and let it explode except the upper echelon want it dismantled to study what's inside. As the man works to dismantle the bomb, it goes off and is killed. His fellow soldiers are upset at the stupidity of the higher-ups. I don't blame them. What's effective about this moment is we don't know what will happen. The debate rages. Yes it will go off. No, it won't. There are reasons for both.

In Act II, a new development arises. The enemy has its hands on US-made TOW missiles. They are far more dangerous than the mortars. We're told these missiles can penetrate 800 centimetres--more than enough to penetrate their walls. Several soldiers die. There is a debate about what to do? Some want to leave the fort and fight--find who launched the missiles and kill them. The higher-ups simply add more concrete protection and wait for the evacuation.

Act III is about leaving the fort for good. Stripping it of what they can, ferrying out soldiers, and planting explosives to blow the place up.

The climax is predictable. With the push of a button, all the explosives go off and the fort blows up in a massive fireball. The direction of this action was poor. It was essentially one master shot. For such a critical moment in the film, I expected multiple camera angles with different views of what blew up. I fully expected a shot from inside the bunks but that never came.

I expected more because in previous explosion shots there was an element of realism that isn't usually found in feature films. Pieces of metal ripped by the screen in a way that was genuine and not computer generated.

The characters all speak Hebrew in this film--a language I don't know. The subtitles were a bit too fast to disappear. It's not that I'm a slow reader, it's that you want a chance to read the text and see the images--absorb the images and I found I didn't have enough time for both.

I knew Hebrew is a right to left language, but there was a discovery. Like almost all major languages, they use the Arabic number system, but the numbers are written left to right. For some reason I expected the numbers to be reversed. I also noticed a number of English language words have made their way into their language. Bullshit, shit and okay come to mind. There were a couple of others, but I can't remember them and didn't note them down.

Anytime a movie is made about war, it quickly becomes an issue of whether the film is a statement for war or against it. Given the retreat shown in the film, the soldiers' deaths, BEAUFORT an anti-war film.

Posted 2009/04/18 at 19h30ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 17, 2009

Jurassic Park III. Feature film. (2001, 92 mins) IMDB

...here's a sequel that didn't need to get made unless you were cashing cheques...

igure out a way to get Dr. Grant back on the island with all those dinosaurs for a third time. How? Pretend to be exceedingly rich with a taste for adventure trips and tell him you only want to fly over the island. He wouldn't go near the place if he didn't need money to continue his field research.

But once you're near the island land the plane so you can search for your missing son who is probably been processed through some dino's digestive track. Bring along a large cast so we can see them become dino snacks. Make sure the plane is cracked up beyond repair so they can't just fly out. Make sure the radio is kaput and the portable phones don't work.

Now they are stuck on the island with dinos chasing after them. A few die. Some are scrapped up. Teo Leoni spends half the film screaming and running.

Then as they make their way to the beach, have the marines land a company of men to rescue our heroes.

I think that about covers it.

Posted 2009/04/17 at 18h21ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 17, 2009

Night at the Museum. Feature film. (2006, 109 mins) IMDB

...fun, fun, fun...

un, fun, fun.

The film has a trite plot, and follows the formula, but still it's fun. Laughs and adventure all confined to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Stiller plays a dreamer who can't find his place in the world. He hopes his big idea will make him into something he isn't. His ex-wife has married a nerdy bond trader (Paul Rudd). He shares custody with their ten-year old son who doesn't want much to do with his flaky father. Hold up your hands if you've seen this before. Yes, I know, it's trite, but this film isn't meant to be provocative or insightful, it's meant to create laughs and it does.

Desperate to maintain a relationship with his son, he looks for any work that will give him some stability and ends up as the night watchman at the History of Natural Museum. That would normally spell the end of any story because such a job is filled with tedium except there's a catch. Ever since the museum received a certain Egyptian tablet--24 carat gold--the exhibits come to life during the night. A t-rex skeleton steps from his platform and growls and chases a bone like a dog. Teddy Roosevelt kicks the hinds of his horse and trots down the aisle. Attila the Hun raises his sword, screams and chases after our hero. From Romans, to Western settlers to Egyptians to African animals, the place comes alive. The result is chaos and danger and zaniness.

Suffice it to say once his son sees what his father's new job is like, he's no longer the butt of jokes.

Act III is as completely absurd as the second, but it does shift gears in the story and bring us to a conclusion. The conclusion being a statement his son made about his father in the opening minutes of the movie.

"What if you're wrong and you're just an ordinary guy who should get a job." Ouch.

Well, I guess the job doesn't matter. Maybe.

Posted 2009/04/17 at 18h21ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 17, 2009

Adrift In Manhattan. Feature film. (2007, 91 mins) IMDB

...a flat, emotionless film...

n old man visits an eye doctor and discovers he's going blind and there's nothing to change the outcome. It wouldn't be so bad except he likes to paint which is impossible to do without sight. As discussed in the film, Beethoven could still write music because he heard it in his head and could see to write it down. It didn't matter he couldn't listen to the final result because he had perfect pitch and well, he was Beethoven.

The eye doctor, played by Graham, is adrift because her two-year old son died. She and her husband (Baldwin) separated as a result. We learn the son died because he fell out a window of their high-rise building. She was watching him but not closely enough.

There is Simon. He's around twenty. He doesn't say much. He works in a photography shop destined to end because of the digital movement. He likes to shoot photographs of people. Early in the film, he spots the doctor and like a stalker follows her and snaps photos. He follows her to her home and snaps photos of her inside.

Later, with the B&W photos printed, he delivers them to her. Her first instinct is to call the police, then discuss it with the owner of the photography shop and finally to have sex with this young man in her house after he follows her again. The minute the sex is over, she tells him to leave.

Meanwhile our old man develops a relationship with a forty-something co-worker. They have a family dinner. Kiss. There's an odd couple. He's never been married. Has no children. No relatives. Hooking up with her seems like a good thing, except he can't or won't. He can't tell her he's going blind although maybe he does.

There's also Simon's mother. She has a job during the day which she hates. In the evening it's her and her son and wine. The father is probabaly a deadbeat and nowhere to be seen. What surprised me about this relationship was the fact the mother treated her son as if he were her lover. Very odd and disturbing.

This film isn't about going from A to B to C with some purpose. It simply shines a light on these disparate characters. We get a glimpse of their lives and its over.

In doing this, we're supposed to be enlightened, interested, entertained, amused, challenged, or provoked, but I can't say any of this happened.

The result is a movie that is flat from beginning to end and is, for the most part, devoid of emotion. One of the reasons we watch films is to feel emotions. To laugh and cry and shrink away from danger. When we feel these things, we know we're alive otherwise it might as well be a dream.

Posted 2009/04/17 at 18h21ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Journey to the Center of the Earth. Feature film. (2008, 9. mins) IMDB

...a fun ride and you'll wish you were there...

s expected and as it should, this film is a fun ride. Based on Jules Verne's novel of the same name, the story finds a professor, his nephew (13 years old) and an Icelandic guide (an attractive woman no less) travelling to the centre of the world where another world exists. A wondrous world with dinosaurs, florescent birds, tropical forests, oceans and rivers. Once in this world, they have to find a way out.

If you haven't read Jules Verne then you have missed some wonderful adventures--adventures based on real life and immense fantasy and imagination. Don't forget he was French.

In this film, there are a number of scenes where characters stand at an edge with a shear drop to who knows what below. It's a setup used many times in film and it always send tingles through my body. It's one ploy in movie making that gets me over and over again. It seems impossible for me to not be affected by it.

There is one incredible cool and interesting sequence. The young nephew, by himself, walks across boulders that float in space because of magnetism. Imagine stepping stones to cross a creek, but instead of a creek with water there's air and a large drop to the bottom. I'm not sure it could exist that way, but it doesn't matter. It was cool to watch.

The film I watched was a regular 2D film, but the filmmakers created a 3D version. I have no idea where 3D technology stands at the moment, but I know it comes and goes. Hitchcock, believe it or not, created a 3D film called DIAL M FOR MURDER. Quite a waste considering the talent gone into making the movie. It was a gimmick that faded and came back and faded and is now back again. In Hitchcock's movie, he created shots specifically to use the 3D effect--the scissors flashing out toward the camera and in this film, it's clear the filmmakers did the same thing.

Seth Meyers measures cabinets in a university lab with a metal tape measure. He turns with the tape extended out as long as his body and I'm sure in 3D it would appear that the tape was coming at you. The same with the yo-yo and all those monsters dashing out of the ocean or the T-rex snapping at our heroes.

I haven't flipped the DVD over to see what's required to watch it 3D but I suspect you need special glasses. In fact, I'd be amazed if that wasn't the case. I probably have a pair somewhere, but don't ask me to find them. It'd be easier to find Hoffa's body.

Posted 2009/04/16 at 18h22ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Happy-Go-Lucky. Feature film. (2008, 118 mins) IMDB

...what would it be like to be Poppy...

ow. I'm not sure what to say.

Is it really possible to create a narrative where you're hero is happy-go-lucky? That no matter what happens, she smiles and laughs and continues on as if nothing happened. It appears to be the case.

In the opening sequence she rides a bicycle with abandonment as if she were riding to enjoy the breeze on her face, marvel at the sites and to take her wherever she ends up. When she arrives at a bookstore, she parks her bike and goes in. The shop clerk is indifferent. Her attempts to humanize him fail. After her browsing, she returns to find her bike is missing, probably stolen, to which she responds with a laugh, "I didn't have time to say good-bye." Who else would speaks those lines in that situation? I know I wouldn't.

As I watched the film, I wondered what evil would befall such a person, but it doesn't come. Having said that, what befalls her is the everyday things we all experience and have seen.

While she is happy with her life, almost everyone around her is befuddled or angry or confused or just miserable.

Her younger sister, pregnant, married, living in her own home, doesn't understand why Poppy, the old maid, wouldn't want what she has, even though she seems depressed with life and not satisfied with what she has.

Her driving instructor is the central figure after Poppy. Since she lost her bike, she figures it's a good idea to learn how to drive. The instructor, about her age, is miserable and paranoid and well a bit on edge. The two of them are an odd couple, but they are and never will be a couple.

In every scene where they are together, and there are many, they are at odds. She tries to loosen him up. He does what he knows, what seems safe to him and that's be a prick.

From start to finish, does Poppy change? Not really. I think she's the same at the start of the film as she was at the beginning. Does she reach any particular goal, achieve any objective? Again, not really. She establishes a relationship with a social worker, but who knows where it will end and the film doesn't end with them clutching each other.

In a scene, on their first date, they meet at a bar and chat. Each asks questions and make statements that say, "I love you," but neither ever says those words. It's a scene worth studying because it is true to life and fascinating to watch. It's fascinating because we get to see another side of Poppy.

No, this is a film to showcase a person named Poppy who is happy-go-lucky. Fortunately for her, she doesn't come to some evil. Perhaps there is justice in this world.

I write my comments after a first viewing of the film and with only the briefest of notes (one page). I wonder what I'd learn from a second viewing because I think this film has move going on and it's difficult to get it all in one viewing. Even for Oscar Wilde and Northrop Frye.

Posted 2009/04/16 at 18h15ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Broken English. Feature film. (2007, 97 mins) IMDB

...if only they got the third act right...

he title for this film, BROKEN ENGLISH, comes, I guess, from the fact our hero's love interest is French and English is his second language. I know many Europeans for whom English is a second language and they speak it as well as anyone in North America or Britain. It all depends on when and where they learnt the language. It's a cliché to have a foreigner speak with "broken English" but so be it.

Our hero in the film is Nora Wilder played by Parker Posey--the so called "Queen of the indies." This film is definitely an indie. It doesn't follow the Hollywood standards for romantic comedies.

There is romance and love and lost love and angst in this film, but I didn't see a great deal of comedy. Supposedly it's there, but I didn't see. Not even satirical moments. That's not a complaint, just my observation.

The fact the film doesn't follow Hollywood standards and norms for romantic comedies, means the film isn't, for the most part, predictable, but it also lacks what we enjoy in those types of film--we enjoy fantasy. Most of us are so bewildered and disappointed with life, we want our spirits lifted by a movie that lies to us about true love and romance. We're suckers for it. This film is not one of those films.

One of the challenges, of many, a writer must overcome in writing any story, is naming the characters. It seems like a simple task, but it is quite difficult. You can't use Jack Kennedy or Lee Oswald or Al Capone and so on and so on. John Brown and John Smith are bland. Martha and Edith don't cut it either. Samantha isn't the same as Elizabeth which is different from Sarah. Or is that Sara? See. Naming characters is quite difficult.

Our screenwriter follows an unusual choice. See if you can catch it. NORA WILDER. NICK GABLE. CHARLIE ROSE. PETER ANDREWS. IRVING. AUDREY. VIVIEN. JENNIFER ROSS. Sorry, the last one is a friend of mine. There are probably others, but I've never seen such choices before.

I'm not sure why she chose these names, they all bring to mind connotations that aren't necessarily appropriate for this film. NICK and NORA (CHARLES) comes from THE THIN MAN movies of the 1930s and 40s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. That couple is fun, amusing, amicable and in love. In this film, Nick is a cad who uses Nora for a one night stand. Not quite the same. Oops.

Is it possible the filmmakers are referring back to those old B&W films as a statement about love today? No for the simple reason 9.7 out of 10 people wouldn't know anything about THE THIN MAN or its two stars. The closest you might get to recognition are the names RICK and ISLA, but even then the numbers don't improve greatly and that's for a well-known movie with two well-know stars.

But back to the story.

Nora is lost in Manhattan. She has no lover, no husband, and doesn't know what she wants. She's searching for something but can't find it. You and I can both relate. It's universal.

She has several dates, but they're disasters.

It doesn't help that her best friend just celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary in what is a "perfect" marriage. It doesn't help that her mother is needling her about being single and not being set up with some man.

By chance she meets a Frenchman at a house party. She's so burnt out with life she's not interested, but he won't give up and thus begins Act II and a weekend of romance and when it's over he returns to Paris.

Not surprisingly, in circumstances I don't understand (this film likes coincidences and a lack of logic and that's okay when we're dealing with romance, but to a point), Nora and her best friend Audrey end up in Paris. They just happen to be there and decide to find Julien, Nora happens to lose her contact information for him which makes contacting him impossible and just as the movie is ending, he just happens to get on the same subway car she's riding to get to the airport.

I don't understand the third act. I don't understand the abrupt ending. There are many more ways it could have gone and this seems to be least desirable.

In a way I think I expected more from this film, but yet, until the third act, the film represents a truer picture about life and romance. This film is not the first one to get it right early and blow up in the third act--the toughest one to get right.

Posted 2009/04/15 at 17h37ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Feature film. (1947, 104 mins) IMDB

...a classic romance...

ecently widowed, Mrs. Muir bolts from London for a new life on the seacoast of England. When she moves into a house there, she does so knowing it's haunted. The ghost of its former owner, Captain Gregg, haunts it. He doesn't want any visitors, and to date, has succeeded in keeping the place vacant until Mrs. Muir arrives. She's not frightened by his presence and survives the first night.

The film is a love story with the ultimate barrier separating the two from each other--death. She can see and hear him but others can't.

There are no such things as ghosts. They simply don't exist. Usually I would use that against any story because they want us to believe they exist and usually to scare us. This film is different. We know ghosts don't exist even though Rex Harrison appears as one in this film and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because while he appears in the film, we don't see him as a ghost. It doesn't matter because of the wonderful, foul-mouthed character that he is. It doesn't matter because we can watch the lovely Gene Tierney go toe-to-toe with him and win. It doesn't matter because it's a love story. It's meant to float us away from the moment for ninety minutes to a world that doesn't exist. It doesn't matter because even the story and characters in it know that ghosts don't exist. In fact, what we see in the film could very well have been the fancy imagination of Mrs. Muir living in isolation. With no husband, no companion, she invented these interactions with the captain who died four years earlier.

Act II is filled with a growing love between the two. He's less cranky towards her. She's more appreciative of who he is. In an effort to generate income for her, he dictates his life story to her to write up as a book to be published. While at the publishers, she meets the suave and charming George Sanders. He goes after her with the determination of black flies. It isn't long before she gives in to his charm and they plan to marry. Those marriage plans are thrown out the window when she discovers he's already married with children. Ouch!

That heartache and the disappearance of the ghost brings us to Act III where life continues in a mundane way and flashes forward ten years when her daughter announces her engagement. And forward even more years where Mrs. Muir, grey-haired and ill, dies. In her death, the captain returns and they walk hand in hand off into the distance.

It's hard to imagine how this film could have been better. It has a stellar cast with a top-notch crew. It's a film to watch and enjoy.

Posted 2009/04/14 at 18h30ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Fluries. Feature film. (1950, 109 mins) IMDB

...a marvellous performance by Walter ...

watched this film for the first time this evening and I'm not sure I understand what happened or why.

It's the 1870s in the west. A western. T.C. Jeffords owns a vast track of land he calls The Furies. It's a ranch where he raises cattle, but mostly resides over it like a king. His hero is Napoleon. Both rose from nothing and both conquered land. TC even has his own money printed which he uses to pay people with--provided they'll accept it and as the story progresses, they don't want it. TC is larger than life.

His daughter is full of spirit. She'll inherit the ranch provided she marries the right person. She appears to be in love with a Spanish man and a sworn enemy of her father. Ouch. But this film isn't a love story. It's not about her and her suitors. It's all about her and her father.

Her father wants to prove to her that Rip, her other suitor, is only interested in money and the father makes a deal with him. He tells him he has two options. If you love my daughter, you can marry her, but she'll be cut off. She won't see anything from his estate. The other option is to take $50,000 in cash, but no daughter. He takes the money and destroys the relationship between everyone.

Later in the film, the father, a widower, returns from San Francisco with his own gold digger. She manages to get money from him without even marrying.

Having written that I'm not even sure that's what happened.

She also appears to be in love with a Spanish man, but is she? I'm not sure. She acts to protect him and his extended family and when her father hangs him for stealing a horse, well that seems to tear her up to get revenge on her father by taking away the ranch which was hers to begin with. See. I don't quite get it.

Posted 2009/04/13 at 17h56ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Gothika. Feature film. (2003, 98 mins) IMDB

...do you believe in ghosts...

ou know ghosts don't exist. They simply don't, but these filmmakers want you to believe they do. Ugh. I suppose if I were ten, I might have gotten into this type of film, but I'm not anywhere near that age.

The film started out with promise. Halle Berry plays a respected shrink in a hospital for the criminally insane. When Penelope Cruz, one of her patients, speaks of the devil living inside her, we and Berry know Cruz is nuts and why wouldn't we think that. There are no ghosts and there is no devil.

Flash forward through a series of events where Berry finds her self on the other side of the table. He husband was viciously murdered and Berry is the prime suspect. She has no memory of the events and doesn't believe she did it. She's also haunted by ghosts and spirits in the way Cruz is haunted and when she explains this to Downey, playing a fellow shrink, she appears as crazy as Cruz appeared, but in this instance, we know she's not nuts. We saw the ghosts on screen just as Berry had seen them.

That's the dilemma our hero faces.

Did she kill her husband? I'm not sure, but if she did, she had a good reason. As the story progresses, she discovers her husband and the local sheriff kept sex slaves which they video-taped. The ghosts are these girls.

I suppose there had to be a reason for these girls appearing as ghosts and the filmmakers chose a rather gruesome scenario. It's often jarring to see a character come out of his shell to reveal a dark side. Dutton, the husband, is lovey-dovey and sweet at the start of the film but later as information is revealed, we learn he's a depraved masochist. The same for the sheriff who appears completely psycho when he rips his shirt off to reveal a mess of tattoos on his body.

There were two cool shots. One we've seen before where Berry walks down a hallway, opens a door and enters a room. The camera follows through the wall from the hallway to the other room without cutting--at least I didn't see a cut.

The second shots show Berry swimming laps in a pool. The exposure was slowed down to make it speed up on regular playback as well the camera seem to ride through the water with her.

Posted 2009/04/12 at 18h08ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Day Night Day Night. Feature film. (2006, 94 mins) IMDB

...a film full of surprises...

young woman arrives in a city where a man picks her up and drives her to a hotel room. She waits until she is contacted by other men. She has agreed to be a suicide bomber.

The film spends its entire time following and watching this woman. Watching as she waits in the hotel room, as she bathes, as she walks Manhattan streets with her backpack full of explosives. The result is a movie short on dialogue.

We don't learn a great deal about this women. We don't understand her motives.

Before I watched the film, I assumed it took place in the Middle East and I was surprised to see it was happening in the US. It mimics the real-world Palestinian bombers.

If we don't learn a great deal about the suicide bomber, we learn even less about the men orchestrating the plan. They wear black hoods and speak with North American accents. It's all done in English, not Arabic.

The film's third act follows her as she walks Manhattan streets near Time Square. She's looking for the perfect spot to push the button. Nervous, she pisses her pants and runs to a washroom.

When it comes time to push the button, she does and it doesn't go off. What happens after that? We don't know.

Posted 2009/04/12 at 18h05ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 11, 2009

His Majesty O'Keefe. Feature film. (1954, 91 mins) IMDB

...the splendour of technicolor...

et in the South Pacific (Fiji), the film is colourful and majestic. Just what you'd expect from a film shot in that location.

The film stars Burt Lancaster who plays a ship's captain. While sailing south from Hong Kong, his crew throws him overboard and he ends up on a small island complete with locals in grass skirts, bone necklaces and skin paint.

It's an obscure island with one German running a trading post. He's there to collect coconuts which are sold in Hong Kong--worth their weight in gold. It hasn't been going well for our trader. He needs the locals to harvest the coconuts and they are not motivated to do so. They aren't interested in money. They are interested in FEI--stones they collect from another island. It's part of their religious beliefs.

Enter Lancaster to change that. Get a new boat and crew from Hong Kong to carry all those coconuts back to Hong Kong. He gets the boat and he has to figure out a way to get the locals to harvest the coconuts. He does. He'll help with the FEI if they help him.

Lancaster is charming and driven and tough and cunning and all sorts of other characteristics you'd want in a leading man, but he seems entirely motivated by greed. Not something you want in your hero unless you want to document his downfall which is pretty much what happens by the end of the story, but he does get the girl and fall in love.

Posted 2009/04/11 at 19h37ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Gone Baby Gone. Feature film. (2007, 114 mins) IMDB

...Boston accents to add flavour...

'm always amazed at how I can't remember having seen a movie until I start playing a DVD. It happened with this film. I think I know why. I watch so many, they begin to blur. Once the film starts, I start to remember specific scenes and I know I'm not alone on that account.

The film is set in Boston because Ben Afflick wrote the script and directed the film and he's a Boston guy. And not Cambridge or MIT or Harvard, it's the poor area of Boston. The white-trash area of Boston.

The story revolves around a single mother whose young daughter goes missing. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear this isn't an ordinary missing person case.

The mother is a deadbeat, drug addicted piece of work. If there were ever a case where a mother shouldn't be allowed custody of a child, here it is. The performance by Amy Ryan was outstanding. The best part of the film even if we hated her behaviour.

Since the film is a mystery, who took the girl and why, is she alive, there are twists and turns until the final scene plays out and we see in whole what happened. It involves drug addicts and drug dealers, the detective hired to help on the case, crooked cops and honest cops and it's all based on people lying or speaking half-truths. What seems to be, isn't and that allows for twists when full knowledge comes forward.

If you can tolerate hearing the Boston accent, then you might enjoy the film.

Posted 2009/04/11 at 19h37ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Cape Fear. Feature film. (1962, 105 mins) IMDB

...a classic is born...

APE FEAR is one of those film I watched growing up--at least once or twice. For the few who haven't seen it, you've probably heard about it.

If you've ever read about film structure, about three acts, about raising the stacks etc. then use this film as an example. It's all there. It includes making the bad guy as bad as possible and Mitchum plays him perfectly. Not many actors could have played the role as well as he did.

The story and premise are straight forward. Mitchum just got out of jail. He spent eight years in jail because Peck was a witness to his crime and testified against him. Mitchum's holding a grudge. A big grudge.

When they reunite, the suspense and terror begin. What is Mitchum going to do to Peck and his family? How can our hero fight back?

He works with the police, but there isn't much they can do because he hasn't committed any crimes. The private detective Peck hires can't dig up any dirt. Bribing Mitchum doesn't work either.

As it should be, Peck devises a scheme to lure Mitchum to a remote area in Cape Fear where the showdown takes place. The outcome known, we watch the final struggle with interest because we want to see Peck prevail even when we know he will.

An early scene in the film shows Mitchum is the bad guy. He's walking up a flight of stairs inside a courthouse. A woman, carrying a stack of books, is walking down and past him. She's struggling to carry this load and drops one of the books. Struggles to bend over and pick it. Mitchum hears it happen, knows the woman could use a hand, but keeps on walking up the steps and ignores her. There's not one word of dialogue and yet it tells a great deal. That is filmmaking.

I always that the name of the film was made up, but according to Peck in a interview on the DVD, he wanted a place name for the title and found it on a map. Odd name for a place. He reasoned films with titles based on places (e.g., Casablanca) did well. It didn't turn out that way. While the film is recognized today, it didn't do well when it was released with the result that Pecks' producing career was over.

Posted 2009/04/11 at 19h37ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 10, 2009

Cleopatra. Feature film. (1934, 100 mins) IMDB

...a familiar story...

he rise and fall of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra are so familiar that it sucks any suspense from a story about them and this is a story about them. It's a combination of Shakespeare's two plays: JULIUS CEASAR and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

Unlike DeMille's THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, Colbert takes centre stage in this film. She's the title star after all.

Cleopatra welcomes a conquering Julius Caesar to Egypt. I guess there's not enough screen time to show his four plus years in Egypt or the fact they had a child together, but you're not watching a film to learn about history. A film will always be short on details.

When Caesar returns to Rome, he's murdered and a power struggle ensues between Marc Antony and Octavian. Marc flees to Egypt to be with Cleopatra. When Octavian comes with his men, the gig is up for Cleopatra and Marc. The end of imperial rule in Egypt has come.

Filled with large sets and elaborate costumes, the film stands out for its day when so many film were shot in either the barren openness of the West or inside a few rooms of a house on a sound stage.

Posted 2009/04/10 at 20h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, April 10, 2009

Dogville. Feature film. (2003, 177 mins) IMDB

...it'd be hard to point out another film that is this different...

play made into a film complete with a stage set except this film was never a play. It was written directly for film. Go figure.

From Lauren Becall to Patricia Clarkson to Nicole Kidman, there is a large, large cast with familiar faces. Too many to count.

All that and it's one of the strangest films I've ever seen without any question.

The film was shot in Sweden but it could have been shot in any country that has a large building with open spaces. Imagine a football field under a roof.

How this film was ever made with this cast amazes me.

I read Bettany didn't want to work in the film but changed his mind when his friend Stellan Skarsgård, who has worked with director Von Tier before, told him it would be fun. Half-way during the shooting, Bettany asked when the fun would begin. Skarsgård had lied to him in order to get him involved. I can relate. I read the DVD synopsis of this film without knowing anything more. I was duped as well.

I'm not sure what else to say about this film because it reminds me of a Beckett play with a plot yet the story line in this film is surreal and Beckett would have been a whole lot better. Maybe that's the point. The entire film seems surreal. From the one set used in this film (imagine a film, and three hours no less, with just one set) to a large cast who at the end of shooting wonder what to do that evening in Sweden.

See. I'm talking so much about things outside of the film I obviously didn't think much of it and I don't.

Hey. I lived and worked in Sweden. I've been to Denmark a number of times. I have nothing against them, but I didn't like this film. Baby Zeus, I tried.

Posted 2009/04/10 at 20h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Sign of the Cross. Feature film. (1932, 125 mins) IMDB

...just in time for Easter...

HE SIGN OF THE CROSS is probably an appropriate movie to watch around Easter although I'm sure there are many more that would be appropriate--not that I believe any of it.

The film takes place in Rome around 64 CE. Nero is Emperor (Laughton). Hedonistic. Indifferent to his people. Selfish. A non-Christian. When a massive fire rips through Rome, his thoughts turn to PR--how to get the people to believe the Christians were responsible. If he can do that, the Christians will be targeted for ridicule and death.

As the story unfolds, civilians and Roman soldiers round up Christians. They are killed for their beliefs. To avoid being captured, Christianity is a secret society based on the sign of the cross--hence the title.

If the film were simply about oppression and persecution, it would be tiresome, but the film isn't about Rome and Christians, it's a love story set in this milieu.

Mercia is a lovely, young Christian living with her father and younger brother. Marcus is a high-ranking Roman official. One day while Mercia is a filling a jug with water, he spots her and falls in love. Since one of his jobs is to round up Christians to be fed to lions, she's naturally reluctant to be involved with him.

In an Act I scene to show he has a heart, he turns a blind eye to an obvious lead to finding Christians (her brother returning to a baker to get a loaf of bread). He lets his emotions get in the way of doing his duty.

His rival, Tigellinus, uses this against him and soon Marcus is at odds with Nero. Marcus is sentenced to prison and the Christians in question, including Mercia, are captured. Marcus would die save for the Empress who is love with him. She convinces Nero to be lenient.

Claudette Colbert plays the Empress. It's a small role for such a big star, but I suppose she wasn't as big a star when this film was made.

We are introduced to her when she has a bath. No ordinary bath. Instead of water, servants fill it with donkey's milk. While there are bubbles floating on top, it's not a snow storm of bubbles (so common in films when a woman bathes) and her breasts are clearly visible. I was surprised by it, but apparently the Hays Code wasn't in effect. When the film was re-released and shown on TV many scenes were cut because they were considered objectionable. I don't know how you can object to Colbert's breast. They seem lovely to me.

Act III takes place in the arena. Romans including Nero have come for a day of fighting and killing. First the gladiators enter, shout, "We who are about to die salute thee." They battle to the death and we see the famous thumbs up or down (a movie creation apparently).

From there, animals enter to find people tied down. There are elephants, crocodile (although they used alligators which is an anachronism), bears, tigers, bulls and of course lions--lots of lions. There isn't much in the way of gory details, but a couple of the women wear nothing more than a thin, see-through scarf wrapped around their chest and waist--something Hays I'm sure would object to.

The last to enter the arena are Christians. The film moves to the dungeon where they are kept. They pray and sing and find solace in their belief that death isn't the end. They will find a new, better life in heaven. Okay.

It's in these closing scenes where Marcus comes to Merica. He has made an arrangement with Nero. If Merica renounces her faith, she'll be spared death in the arena. She refuses to give in. Then in a sign off true love, Marcus understands the afterlife. If they can't live together in this world, then they can do so in heaven. He takes her hand to enter the arena with her.

We never see the Christians dying in the arena. The film stays down in the dungeon until the end when the couple walks out.

The dungeon, with its massive steps, leading up to the arena, was designed to give the impression these people weren't just walking up from the dungeon of hell on earth to the arena, but we're walking up into heaven.

I imagine if you're a Christian, you'll enjoy this movie and all it represents.

Posted 2009/04/09 at 19h02ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Demon Seed. Feature film. (1977, 94 mins) IMDB

...it might have worked in its day, but not today...

EMON SEED was such a great film I fell asleep watching it. Uh-huh. As I've said before I'm not a fan of horror films. For whatever reason, they just don't do anything for me. I can't get caught up in the story. As for science fiction. Well, it's about the same and any film or story that may be a sci-fi and I like it, is probably more likely to be classified in some other genre. STAR WARS, for example, isn't a sci-fi film, but there are elements of sci-fi in it.

But I guess I should say something about this film.

There's a tiny cast. Really just two characters: Susan and Alex Harris. A husband and wife who will separate because that's what the narrative requires in order for it to work.

They live in a large, ultra-modern home. In fact, you can't buy such a home because it doesn't exist. Imagine a large home with a computer out of Star Trek. That's there home. The computer is so capable it fixes meals, talks with you and well I'll get to that.

The husband is a scientist who builds these super computers. During the slow, boring first Act I, we see him putting the final touches on a new super computer, Proteus IV. It's a thinking computer. It sucks up facts and is a form of artificial intelligence. Such computers have been abused by story tellers many times, the question is what's different this time. Well here goes.

As Act I ends, our lovely Julie Christie is home alone. The servants have left. The husband has deserted her and the super computer moves in. It takes over the house. She's trapped. I didn't buy the trapped bit. Make it a submarine, space station, an underground mine and maybe, but that's what the film did.

She's trapped in this house with this sadistic, motivated and intelligent computer. Try as she may, she's a prisoner to it.

And here's the twist. The computer wants to impregnate her. Say what? The computer wants to reproduce and all that goes with it. Okay. The computer figures out how to make sperm and impregnates her. Instead of a nine month gestation period, it's 28 days and after the child is born, he (could have been a girl) grows even faster.

Then the movie ends.

Perhaps there's some deep philosophical questions about life and supernatural powers, maybe, but to get to those questions give us a story we can watch without being completely bored. I'd have more fun studying the grains on sandpaper.

Posted 2009/04/09 at 19h02ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Tough Guys Don't Dance. Feature film. (1987, 110 mins) IMDB

...or make great movies...

uring its production and release, this film was well known for these simple facts: it was based on Norman Mailer's best-selling novel, he wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Since that time, the film has faded away from public consciousness for a very good reason. It's not a great film. It's not even a good film.

In describing the film, Mailer continually refers to it as a horror film. I wouldn't use that word. I would prefer the word suspense in the Hitchcock mould, however, his worst film would be more enjoyable than this film.

Ryan O'Neal plays a lost man married to a wealthy southern belle. They have a large house in Cape Town. Money isn't a problem. But it takes a while to know this because of the way the film is structured. The events that make up the plot are straightforward, but how they are told to create a convoluted situation because the film wants to show us the story from Ryan's POV and so we only know what he knows and he doesn't know much.

The film starts with Ryan waking up in this house. He appears to be confused and alone. When he goes downstairs he discovers his estranged father in the dinning room. As they talk, we discover what has happened and the film flashes back to different points until we return to that morning when he wakes up again and the film proceeds from there to end the story.

There are six major players in this film. Ryan as the befuddled husband. His beautiful, wealthy wife. Her former husband, another southerner with loads more money and college friend to Ryan. There is the chief of police who behaves more like a criminal than an officer of the law. A couple from California who appears out of nowhere. Plus a couple of local deadbeat thugs. That's eight, but you can think of them as six. Then I almost forgot Isablla Rosselini. She's married to the police chief, but in love with Ryan.

Throw in a quantity of cocaine worth a few millions and people with a lot of greed and you have your story.

The rich southerner produces an attaché filled with $2 million in cash. In films, it's always an attaché filled with cash even if $2 million would require a chest trunk to hold. His money will buy the coke and as part of the deal to net $10 million in return. It's never explained who will buy it on the end. Nor do we see the stash of coke, probably because it doesn't exist. So there's our first greedy person. Because the deal collapses and he sees himself as a failure, he kills himself with a pistol in the end and besides, greedy people have to die off in these types of stories.

His former wife and Ryan's current wife is also greedy. She apparently leaves Ryan at the start of the film. She's after money as well. A complete gold digger. She dies when her lust for the money gets in the way of the chief of police. He kills her and cuts off her head. The head baffles and terrifies Ryan when he finds it. The implication is he killed her. He's going to jail, but that sense of angst over a wrongfully convicted man doesn't develop because he doesn't know if he did or didn't kill her. Too much booze and drugs to remember. Because he doesn't know, we don't know.

At one point the California couple have control of the money. The husband is going to vanish with it and leave her behind. She kills him. Then the police chief kills her to get the money, but his greed results in his death as well.

Lots and lots of dead bodies.

Bodies that Ryan and his father dump into the ocean.

The film is in short a muddled mess. In some respects a different cutting might have made for a better film, but even then the subject matter isn't that interesting and a few scenes are simply repulsive.

Posted 2009/04/08 at 21h39ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Immortal Beloved. Feature film. (1994, 120 mins) IMDB

...just listen to the music...

ary Oldman plays Ludwig van Beethoven in a biopic about the composer and his unknown "immortal beloved," but is Oldman the star of this film or is the music?

The film opens with a pained and shrivelled Beethoven on his death bed. A thunderstorm roars. During his funeral, crowds gather in a frenzy. When the calm returns, his older brother produces a will in which he is named heir to the estate, Schindler, Beethoven's long-time secretary, finds letters addressed to my Immortal Beloved. Beethoven left everything to this person--whoever this unknown person is.

Schindler's search for this person creates the narrative for the film, and in doing so, he meets various women in Beethoven's life. We see it as the film flashes back to various points in Beethoven's life.

Like most people I recognize the music when I hear it. We've all heard his music even if we don't know who wrote it or what it's called. What was a revelation to me was the man himself. I knew very little about him and as I watched this film I wondered if what I was watching was a complete fabrication or based on his life. After a little bit of research, I discovered the names existed and events did happen, but for the most part the film is speculation and creation. It is after all a feature film, not a documentary.

Beethoven never married, had no known children. The film would like you to believe his nephew Karl was his son but that appears to be speculation.

His hearing difficulties are well-known, but I always thought it was in the last few years of his life. It affected him for many years longer. Imagine the anguish of being a composer with no hearing. Tap the key of a piano and it's as if you hadn't touched it.

In searching for the immortal beloved, Schindler meets with three different women who explain their interaction with Beethoven. Violent and compassionate. Indifferent. Egocentric. It's not hard to imagine why he lived an isolated life.

In the third act the filmmakers present the notion his sister-in-law is the one. There is no evidence in fact to substantiate this claim, but it's a film after all. Another writer and director could attempt the same story with the same premise and reach a different conclusion.

Oldman has an interesting line in the film which I've shortened.

"Music. What does it mean? It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer."

I don't know if Beethoven said that, he may have, but it represents the essence of what an artist is. It is someone who takes the images and sounds inside his head and presents them for others to read, view and hear. Artists are challenged and tormented by this endeavour: How to get what's up here out there for others to experience.

There's an irony in his life. He wrote one of greatest compositions in music: The Ode to Joy. That an atheist would write a triumphant piece of music that pays tribute to spirituality is ironic. But as an artist, he probably had no choice. He heard that music inside in his head and had to write it down. The result is music we can enjoy it to this day.

The music is the star of this film and pages of writing couldn't do it justice. You'll have to listen to it. Just listen to his music.

Posted 2009/04/08 at 21h39ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Twilight. Feature film. (2008, 122 mins) IMDB

...what is the fascination with vampires?...

ampires don't exist, but of course that doesn't stop writers from using them in their stories as is done in this film. Like Anne Rice a decade plus ago, Stephanie Meyer's has bestsellers based on vampires. Go figure. I don't understand the fascination, but fifteen years from now someone will add a twist and come up with another batch of bestsellers. How about toddler vampires? Careful if you're breastfeeding.

The first act of this film is boring high school material where nothing interesting happens. Our hero Bella moves from Arizona to Washington State to live with her father in a small town called Forks. Her father is the chief of police. Divorced and not remarried. Bella attends a new high school and struggles to fit in.

While in the cafeteria one day, Bella first encounters Edward and falls instantly in love. Well, that's what they want you to believe, but she's 17 and--oh, never mind.

In Act II we learn Edward is a vampire with superhero strength and speed. Is that the new twist? I suppose, but I don't know much about vampires and don't want to.

There are a few interesting scenes in this act where Edward gets to play hero to Bella. He saves her from being crushed between two vehicles. And in another typical Hollywood non-sense scene, Bella is in a dark alley at night when she is surrounded by a gang of males intent on raping her. Again he saves her. But what the hell was she doing there in the first place? Oh yeah, the writer's wanted that scene to show how protective our vampire is of our hero.

Act III is complete non-sense. Edward isn't the only vampire. There's a rival gang of vampires that have been attacking and mutilating humans. During a friendly family baseball game that includes Bella and Edward, this gang shows up. Once they discover Bella is human and not a vampire, they go after her. They want a light lunch. The result is an elaborate chase sequence where Bella is on the run with Edward and others trying to protect her from the rival vampires. It makes absolutely no sense, but it's act III and the filmmakers needed to end the story.

I suppose if you're a girl in high school, you might love this sort of story, I suppose, but otherwise I find it hard to take any of it seriously.

Posted 2009/04/02 at 20h21ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Golden Compass. Feature film. (2007, 115 mins) IMDB

...imagine a more literal interpretation of the novel on which this film was based...

magine Victorian England in style, but with high-tech gizmos that don't even exist today. Imagine parallel universes and multiple worlds. Imagine every person walking around with a talking animal known as a daemon. Imagine a government that wants to stifle knowledge in name of maintaining control--oh yeah, the Bush administration--that's one's not hard.

The film is a fantasy with action and adventure and religious undertones.

The golden compass is a complicated mechanical device with watch works that allows our hero, Lyra, to read the truth about any questions she asks. Some gizmo.

Lyra is a young girl in school, an orphan, and according to the witches' legend she is the one--the one who can read the last golden compass in existent. It turns out she can.

She represents the forces of good, of pure heart, innocent and naive. The ruling body known as the magesterium wants to control the world, remove knowledge and truth, tell us what to think. (Hmmm, that sounds like organized religion). This force of evil, the dark forces, reminded me of Nazis and Darth Vader, but that was the costume designs. It wasn't hard to despise this collection of people. I was surprised it included Nicole Kidman in a role where she's charming and beautiful but in a second flips into a mean and vicious women. The result is a fascinating character because she becomes unpredictable and dangerous.

I won't comment on the religious aspects of this film because it's not my thing, but I will say there is a simplified view on life--a stark black and white, but that's typical of narratives especially legends, myths and fantasy.

I quite enjoyed the film even if I wasn't sure what a Gyptian was or the other clans of people. I imagine reading the novels before hand would provide insight into whose these people are.

The film ends with a set-up for a sequel, but it also ends abruptly. I expected Lyra to continue her journey to find her uncle/father Lord Arsiel, but that didn't happen. Hmmm.

The running time is listed as 113 minutes. That seems to include 13 minutes of end credits. Unreal.

(P.S. After watching the film and writing my comments, I read some online ones about this film. The film is based on the novels by British writer Phillip Pullman who, as atheist, wrote the books to take shots at the Roman Catholic Church and religion in general. The studio, New Line Cinema, in an act of cowardice, didn't want this shown and as a result the film tries not to offend. As Winnie-the-Pooh says, "Oh, bother." It's a form of censorship and I hate it. It's exactly what Pullman is writing about, warning about. One step closer to the dark ages.)

Posted 2009/04/01 at 19h08ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

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