Thursday, June 24, 2010

Still Walking

I’m tempted to say that Hirokazu Kore-eda is more Ozu than Ozu, since I happened to watch his latest in tandem with Floating Weeds (1959), which is uncharacteristic late Ozu in that it looks at a traveling theater troupe rather than his typical tight family focus.  Here Kore-eda’s focus is equally tight, one day in the life of one family.  Gathering at the parents’ home near Yokohama are the grown daughter, with her layabout husband and cute girl and boy, and the fortyish son who is bringing his new wife, a beautiful and charming young widow with a son about the same age as the others.  Absent is the elder son, who was supposed to take over his father’s medical practice, but died prematurely in a manner that emerges gradually from the mostly unspoken -- or indirectly expressed – interactions among the family members.  The family gathering seems to be the focus of quality world cinema these days.  Like Summer Hours last year and A Christmas Tale the year before, Still Walking is among the very best of recent films.  It foregrounds exploration of character while remaining deliriously visual – one memorable close-up has the hands of the three children reaching up into the blossoms of a cherry tree.  The film’s exceptional beauty came through even when streamed as video on a computer.  (Oddly, there is no DVD yet but Netflix does offer it for instant play.)  The rituals and habits of familial communication have rarely been more sensitively drawn.  Apparently Kore-eda made the film after the death of his parents, to atone for his inattention while they were alive.  It is a beautiful testament and testimony, humorous and heart-felt, life-affirming while sharply pointed.  (2009, Netflix stream)  *8*  (MC-89)

Crazy Heart

Are there two more ingratiating and approachable movie stars working today than Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal?  Sure, you have your Clooneys and Streeps, but face it, George and Meryl are not in our league.  No more than Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn ever were.  Without any aura of awe, it’s just a pleasure to spend two hours in the company of Jeff (shambling but equipoised) and Maggie (whose hunched shoulders look awkward one moment and elegant the next).  First-time writer-director Scott Cooper does not get in their way, or between them and us.  The story is familiar, but in good ways.  The presence of Robert Duvall makes explicit the derivation from Tender Mercies, one of my all-time faves.  The characters and setting – with an aging country singer getting too old for life on the road in the desert West, and the young woman who may be his salvation – are believably rendered (with a possible exception in the digs of a young single mother writing for a local newspaper).  Just when you think you know what well-traveled road the film is about to go down, something surprises you with a twist toward truth.  Just as Colin Farrell pops up with a surprising turn as a rising young country singer, Jeff’s one-time protege and now patron.  Both do their own singing, creditably, and the original songs have the authentic sound of hardscrabble poetry.  Within its compass, this little film does little wrong, and Bridges’ Oscar-winning performance as Bad Blake makes it big.  (2009, dvd)  *7*  (MC-83)

It's not TV, it's HBO -- and AMC!

Following The Wire and Generation Kill, both the best of their kind, with the new HBO series, Treme (2010, MC-87), David Simon continues his mission to immerse us in front-line environments, allowing us gradually to come to a rounded view of a complex situation.  Here it’s New Orleans post-Katrina, or more specifically, the Treme district of the city, fount of music in all its local variety.  Much of each episode is given over to extended performances, but since music looms so large in the life of all, those performances are also story-telling and character-delineating.  As one tangential character sums it up, “Sex is sex.  But music, that’s personal.”  At the end of the first season of ten episodes, I’m finally getting past thinking of Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters as the beloved “Bunk” and “Lester,” and knowing them as scuffling saxophonist Antoine Batiste and “Indian Chief” Albert Lambreaux.  Likewise, other familiar faces inhabit their roles and revolve through the intersecting stories, until they are at one with their characters:  Steve Zahn as the flaky but impassioned DJ; Kim Dickens as a chef struggling to revive her restaurant after the flood; Khandi Alexander as Bunk’s -- I mean Antoine’s – ex, who runs a bar and enlists public defender Melissa Leo to track down her brother, who was lost in the penal system during the disaster; John Goodman as Leo’s husband, a novelist and Tulane professor who becomes an internet celebrity for his impassioned YouTube pleas for the restoration of the Big Easy; and last but far from least, Lucia Micarelli as the amazing streetcorner fiddler with the druggy partner.  Again, Simon works that permeable membrane between fiction and reality, with many musicians and other New Orleans celebrities appearing as themselves, while exploring the intersections of class and race, history and politics, art and community.  For me, David Simon can do no wrong; for you – well, you’ll have to see for yourself.   

While Treme represents a comeback for HBO original series, AMC continues its hot streak with a just-completed third stellar season of Breaking Bad (2010, MC-89), leading soon to another of Mad Men.  While acknowledging that it will not appeal to all, I highly recommend Vince Gilligan’s series for its intelligent and stylish blend of grisly humor, twisty plotting , great character acting, local color and universal themes.  Taking a page from The Sopranos in mixing crime suspense with family drama, Breaking Bad is anchored by the Emmy-winning performance of Bryan Cranston in the role of a high school chemistry in Albuquerque, whose life starts to break bad, taking him down darker and darker paths, as his knowledge alchemizes into a major crystal-meth operation.  Aaron Paul also shines as the sorcerer’s apprentice.  Bob Odenkirk is fantastic as the sleazy lawyer who enables their criminal operations, and Giancarlo Esposito is steely and persuasive as the third season’s rival drug kingpin.  Anna Gunn is also strong as Cranston’s wife, along with great bit players along the way.  Continuously surprising, Breaking Bad maintains suspense and suspends judgment in a manner that shocks (and amuses!) while retaining credibility.  We sustain some undercurrent of empathy even as our familiar characters become more and more evil.  After a second season so tightly plotted that a mysterious scene that appears before the opening credits of the first episode does not get explained till the end of the final episode, this season Gilligan and his writers delighted in painting themselves into corners, and then surprising themselves and us with how they got out, along with daring tangents like a Beckett-flavored playlet with just the two leads and a fly caught in an hermetically sealed lab.

Though HBO series may have fallen short lately, the network continues to score with original movies.  Though not quite up to the level of Temple Grandin or Grey Gardens, You Don’t Know Jack (2010, MC-79) certainly ranks with the better films of the year.  Considering that it’s directed by Barry Levinson and stars Al Pacino, with support from the likes of Susan Sarandon and John Goodman (again), this film should have easily found theatrical release, but would not even have been made these days without the support of a patron like HBO.   Far from the last word on Jack Kevorkian – in fact, HBO itself has a documentary coming out soon – this film does a service in airing the issues of euthanasia associated with “Dr. Death” in an unsensational way, with important questions raised and left open.  Pacino is excellent in that he is a little less Pacino than usual, and believably the crazy-sane Kevorkian.

Hannah Takes the Stairs

Though more annoying than endearing, the insulated and self-involved twentysomethings of Joe Swanberg’s mumblecore touchstone do elicit some anthropological amusement across generations, but lack the implicit dimensions of Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax, for example.  I’m not immune to the appeal of Greta Gerwig’s bare breasts, which open and close the film, with other appearances in between, but this is a girl I would avoid in real life.  Within 90 minutes she runs through three guys, including Bujalski himself and fellow-director Mark Duplass.  Passing through naturalism to narcissism, Swanberg’s do-it-yourself effort does it more for himself than for the audience.  (2007, Sund/OD)  *5+*  (MC-63)

Consumer advice

I’m obliged to offer a consumer’s report on two pieces of product that you might consider taking in.  There are reasons to look at each, if that sort of thing suits your taste, but I cannot advise you to watch either.  The first I liked more than the less-than-tepid critical consensus, and the second less than generally lukewarm reviews.

Whatever Works.  (2009, dvd, MC-45)  Woody Allen continues to churn out a film a year, long past the time he had anything new to say.  Some people thought he was rejuvenated by making films in Europe, others are glad he is back on the home turf of Manhattan.  Apparently, this is a script he wrote thirty years ago for Zero Mostel, but in Larry David he finds the right actor to step into his own well-worn persona of cranky neurotic, which has reduced the likes of Kenneth Branagh to gross caricature.  The role meshes with David’s  “Curb Your Enthusiasm” persona in an interesting way, as when two headshots merge into a spooky composite.  For once a different old guy lands the sweet young thing.  And make no mistake, Evan Rachel Wood is a sweet young thang.  More than that, she brings some substance to a role that is the essence of caricature, the brainless Dixie cheerleader who meets cute and falls for the curmudgeonly retired physics professor with an exaggeratedly acerbic outlook on life and death.  It’s all very familiar, from the credits to the music, from the setting to the themes, but I found enough in it to enjoy for its modest duration.

On the other hand, if it weren’t for the earned-elsewhere affection I feel for its three leads, I would have found It’s Complicated  (2009, dvd, MC-57) unbearable.  I haven’t disliked all of Nancy Meyers’ films, but this one struck me as utterly manufactured, an assembly-line product given a false sheen by the presence of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin.  There are a few other amusing faces given little to do, but Meyers’ wooden (but light and brittle – like balsa) writing and direction undermines them all.  Managing to combine elements of house porn, food porn, and menopausal porn, this film embarrassed more than stimulated me.  I doubt there was a moment of truth in it.  Still love Meryl, Alec, and Steve, however.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Coming to the Clark

"SPANISH MASTERS OF CINEMA"  FILM SERIES

In a summer when the Clark will be featuring the work of two Spanish artists, Pablo Picasso and Juan Munoz, this free film series will look at the work of six great Spanish directors.  All films will be shown in Spanish with subtitles, on alternate Fridays at 4:00 pm.

Friday, June 18, 4:00 pm

Viridiana

1962, 91 min.
Luis Buñuel returned to Spain from Mexican exile and was immediately banned for this scathing surrealist satire, which won the top prize at Cannes and eventually was hailed as a sacrilegious masterpiece, with its parody of the Last Supper as portrayed by venal peasants and beggars.

Friday, July 2, 4:00 pm

The Spirit of the Beehive

1973, 98 min.
Victor Erice takes a mesmerizing child’s eye view of rural Spain after Franco’s victory in the Civil War.  In this enigmatic, allegorical film, Ana Torrent became a sensation as the little girl haunted by visions of Frankenstein’s monster after seeing Boris Karloff in the role.

Friday, July 16, 4:00 pm

Carmen

1983, 101 min.
Carlos Saura intermingles art and life in this retelling of the Bizet opera through the story of choreographer Antonio Gades mounting a flamenco version of the classic story of Spanish passion.

Friday, July 30, 4:00 pm

All About My Mother

1999, 106 min.
Pedro AlmodĂłvar’s Oscar-winning film follows Cecilia Roth as a mother who tries to cope with the death of her teenage son by seeking out the boy’s transvestite father and along the way meeting with old friends who re-enfold her into the community of women that the director always celebrates.

Friday, August 13, 4:00 pm

The Sea Inside

2004, 126 min.
Alejandro Amenábar’s Oscar-winner relates the moving and thought-provoking true story of a quadriplegic writer, superbly embodied by Javier Bardem, who mounts a campaign for the right to die with dignity and the help of three devoted women.

Friday, August 27, 4:00 pm

Pan’s Labyrinth

2006, 112 min.
Guillermo del Toro reprises many of the themes of this series in the spellbinding story of a young girl who escapes from the realities of wartime Fascist Spain into a realm of fantasy.  Sergi LĂłpez chills the soul as the evil stepfather, one of Franco’s commanders rooting out the resistance.

Tokyo Sonata

I went into this film with no foreknowledge, based solely on its ranking in critics' polls for last year (#23 and #44).  After the fact I learned that director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for horror films, so this mostly realistic social commentary represents a departure.  Like Laurent Cantet’s Time Out, it tells the story of a white-collar worker who gets laid off, but too embarrassed to tell his family, he sets off each morning as if he still had a job.  This missive from Japan’s “lost decade” certainly has relevance for an American audience today, as economic disaster frays the fabric of family and society.  This was a good film to know nothing about in advance, because one definitely does not know where it’s going as it unfolds.  Some events border on the surreal, but for the most part the film is only too real, showing for example how economic stress leads to domestic violence.  The acting is generally good, for the downwardly mobile father and the two sons, one a disillusioned recruit to American forces in Iraq and the other a surreptitious young piano prodigy.  Outstanding is Kyoko Koizumi as the mother who tries to hold the family together, until abducted into her own fantasy of escape.  I didn’t know what to think about all this as I was watching, and I still don’t know what it adds up to, but many of the elements are good and the intent seems serious, if occasionally oddball.  (2009, dvd)  *6+*  (MC-80)

Yi Yi [& Y.V.]

I have either too little or too much to say about Yi Yi, Edward Yang’s film about a middle-class family in modern Taiwan, voted third best of the decade by two different critic polls.  I recently watched the Criterion Collection DVD twice, once with a small film club audience at the Clark and again on HDTV with the commentary track on.  I didn’t mind that so few forsook a beautiful May afternoon to come inside and spend three hours in the dark with me, looking at ordinary folk in an extraordinary film.  As it happened, a dimming projection bulb did not make the most of the glowing Criterion transfer, but it certainly did show through in HD.  The viewer becomes a neighbor in the modern apartment building where a businessman father, a mother overburdened by the collapse of her own mother, a teenage daughter, and a grade-school son interact with family, friends, and associates, in what gradually becomes a wonderfully rounded portrait of life as it’s lived in a contemporary city.  Warm and funny, while quiet and exquisitely controlled, Yang expresses a viewpoint that is unblinking but endearing, especially in the persons of the two children.  Suspended between a wedding and a funeral, with a birth in the middle, the film encompasses a lot in a small scope, and gets richer upon repeated viewing.  (2000, dvd)  *9*  (MC-92)

On the other hand, I really have little to say about The Young Victoria (2009, dvd, MC-64) except the costumes and settings were impressive, and the estimable Emily Blunt does project a novel approach to the dowager queen, as a teenage monarch falling in love with her Prince Albert.  Despite raising hopes for more than it delivers, the film felt thin to me, and tarted up with perfunctory editing tricks, as if the budget had been shot on the dĂ©cor so they had to truncate the running time.  The giveaway is extended title cards at the beginning and end of the film, as if to tell the story they never got around to telling.  Anglophiles may still want to see it, for the production values alone.

The Messenger [et seq.]

Oren Moverman’s effectively affecting debut film depicts the military’s point of the spear, not one that penetrates the battlefield, but one that pierces the heart of the next of kin when the knock on the door comes.  Ben Foster convinces as a wounded and decorated Iraq veteran who is assigned to serve out his enlistment as a casualty notification officer, in tandem with the reliably unreliable Woody Harrelson, as a lifer with a drinking problem that has kept him in this job since the first Iraq war.  When the film remains focused on six successive families reacting to the fatal message, it seems honest and respectfully probing, a fresh and empathetic approach to the subject of war and its effects.  But when it pays homage to the buddy genre and has the boys behaving badly, with the obligatory drunken tearful confessions, it seems formulaic, even if well-played.  For me, in the end, the film was redeemed by the presence of Samantha Morton -- I always find her subtly involving -- as the widow of one of the dead soldiers, with whom Foster, against all regulations, forms a delicately evolving bond.  (2009, dvd)  *7*  (MC-78)

To follow the next step in the military’s rituals of bereavement, I looked into the recent HBO movie, Taking Chance, which follows the diary of an officer who volunteers for escort duty with the remains of a soldier killed in Iraq and going home to Colorado for burial.  Kevin Bacon is quite good in the role, and the unfolding of military ceremony surrounding the preparation and return of the body was definitely eye-opening, especially when you imagine it being repeated thousands of times.  But finally the piety of the source material shone through HBO’s typical gloss of sophistication, with nonstop musical cues tugging hearts relentlessly, as every citizen met along the way uniformly honors the fallen.  Yeah, it’s a different era, but I can imagine how a Viet vet (or current VA patient) would gag on this sugarcoated celebration of how we all support the troops.