Inglorious Basterds (2009) by Quentin Tarantino
What a ridiculous movie.
Posts tagged with film
Paranormal Activity (2007) by Oren Peli
A lot about this film reminds me of The Blair Witch Project: the low budget, the hand-held camera style of filming, the retroscripting, the slow build up, the tapping into our most basic fears (especially that of the dark)… The major difference of course is that Paranormal is great and Blair Witch is certainly not. (Note on the latter: while some people reportedly walked out of the movie because they were scared shitless, I distinctly remember almost walking out because I was bored out of my mind.)
Paranomal is brilliantly constructed, the tension mounts at just the right pace and culminates with a perfect ending (ref to the theatrical version — there are a few different versions out there and in my opinion they’ve made the right choice).
Kudos to the two actors, Micah and Katie; I found their portrayal of intimacy particularly truthful and considering that a lot of the terror takes place in the bedroom, it’s no small detail.
Sidenote: the reaction of the audience shown in the trailer is a tad over the top…A door moving of its own accord doesn’t leave me indifferent but that’s simply not enough to make me jump and leap into the arms of the person next to me.
Word of the day: Dybbuk
In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a malicious spirit in search of a body to possess. In A Serious Man’s pre-credit Yiddish fable, an old rabbi is mistaken for a dybbuk and gets stabbed with an ice pick. Harsh.
A Serious Man (2009) by the Coen brothers
A Serious Man is the Coen brothers’ Jew movie. It’s also a brilliant and unsettling dark comedy and hands down my favourite Coen flick of the noughties. I love the opening yiddish folk tale, I love the ominous ending, and I love everything in between.
Some of my favourite bits include a troublesome Korean student (and his dad), three rabbis, the weird neighbour coming back from a hunt, Uncle Arthur’s breakdown by the pool, Larry’s nightmares, Danny’s trippy bar mitzvah, the goy’s teeth story, Sy Ableman’s assholy pep talks and more.
Il divo (2008) by Paolo Sorrentino (via nevver)
The Once And Future Blonde urges me to see this film. Looking at this trailer, I’m in. It makes great use of Cassius’s Toop Toop; I also love how the tag lines synch with the images. Now added on my to-download list.
Cold Souls (2009) by Sophie Barthes
Meh…Lots of good ideas that all went to waste. Too bad as I’m sure a half decent screenwriter could have come up with a meatier and more engaging script.
A few things I liked: a soulless Giamatti doing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Giamatti’s great chemistry with Dina Korzun (their five-second bit on “frivolity” is pitch perfect), and, most importantly, Dina Korzun herself.
The White Ribbon (2009) by Michael Haneke
I knew this Haneke film was going to be particularly good (it won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes festival after all) but I didn’t expect to be blown away like this. This is so far and by far my favourite film this year.
The White Ribbon details the disturbing events that unfold in a small Austrian village just before the outbreak of World War I. Shot in beautifully crisp black and white, the film is eerie, perverse, full of repression, perversion, malice, violence and brutality…You know, the usual Haneke stuff. But in the midst of all that, it’s got a rather touching romance between the school teacher, who narrates the film, and a young nanny. Ironically, their love story is where you can find genuine innocence, while at the same time Haneke asks us to focus on the corrupted innocence of the children of the village.
More importantly, the White Ribbon is utterly absorbing. Of course, in the end, Haneke offers no answers, nor easy solutions. The ending left me left me a tad frustrated but it felt right. I need to watch this again.
First there was the book by investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald, then This American Life’s one-hour episode, The Fix Is In, and, nine years later, the film by Steven Soderbergh…Well, actually, first came the facts, since this is a true story. And what a great story this is.
I haven’t seen the film yet and will probably never read the book, but I strongly recommend listening to The Fix Is In. Mark Whitacre, the corporate whistle-blower-turned-FBI-informant at the heart of the story, is a fascinating guy: funny, gutsy and completely delusional (turns out he’s bipolar). It really takes a crook to catch a crook.
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) by Todd Solondz
This is the bit when dickhead Steve Rogers is singing the title song and Dawn is head-dancing to it. I don’t care what anybody says but in this scene, she’s the coolest kid on the planet. It’s not easy being Dawn.
Carey Mulligan
Just saw An Education (2009) by Lone Scherfig (adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby) and the film is all about Mulligan. And it’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing, in fact. She is absolutely fantastic in it. She’s amazing. She’s radiant, luminescent, incandescent…She’s everything to do with light, fire, stars and all those things… Someone needs to start a fuckyeahcareymulligan tumblr this instant.
Cold Souls (2009) by Sophie Barthes
I saw the trailer for this yesterday and at first it looked like an annoying, lesser version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind… “Giamatti stars as a fictionalised version of himself, an anxious, overwhelmed actor who decides to enlist the service of a company to deep freeze his soul” (— wiki). But then, as he tries to get his soul back (Joss? I know you’re hiding somewhere), he finds out that it’s been smuggled to Russia as part of a soul trafficking scheme. And that, to me, sounds like a rather cool plot twist. Giamatti in Russia? I’m in.
Tales from the Golden Age (2009) by a few Romanian directors under the supervision of Cristian Mungiu
The final 15 years of the Ceausescu regime were the worst in Romania’s history. So of course, the propaganda machine of that time decided to refer to that period as “the golden age”. Now, if humor is what kept Romanians alive under Ceausescu, then Tales from The Golden Age captures that mood perfectly.
The film is a collection of five cine-sketches, each story portraying a different aspect of every day life in Romania under the hated regime. It’s mainly about the survival of a nation having to face the totally absurd and twisted logic of a dictatorship.
I’m not familiar with the new wave of Romanian cinema (most notably Cristian Mungiu’s critically acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr Lazarescu), but I hear that Tales from The Golden Age stands out as a more commercial attempt to reach a wider international audience.
But even though the comedy in the film feels quite light and no matter how funny and farcical you find each situation, you never lose sight of how fucking sad it all is.
Check out the trailer
Check out Philip French’s review in The Guardian
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More detailed synopsis + some personal rambling:
> Story one: The Legend of the Official Visit:
“… about a village preparing frantically to Potemkinise their dismal community before the arrival of a party bigwig, but when an underling arrives to say that the visit is cancelled, everyone piles on to a fairground carousel swing in a mood of delirious relief. Too late, they realise they can’t stop, because no one can reach the off button – they must just whirl on until the machine runs out of fuel 12 hours later: a great image for incompetence, insincerity and an eternity of desperation.” — Philip French, The Guardian
In fact: on the occasion of Ceausescu’s working visits, countryside mayors ended up hanging fruit in trees to make sure their villages would be noticed, obeying even the strangest orders from the ferocious Party activists (at one point in the story, when the mayor is showing the Party Inspector some pigeons, explaining that he’d make them fly as a welcome to the official escort, the inspector gave him a bored look and said “make them white”).
> Story two: The Legend of the Party Photographer:
An official photo-retoucher has the job of making Ceausescu look as tall and imposing as Giscard d’Estaing during that pre-Photoshop era. Then he had to make him wear a hat. And do that in time for the newspapers to hit the stands the next morning. At some point, someone actually shouted “Stop the presses”… Yes, you guessed as much: serious cock-up and hilarity ensued.
In fact: communist party secret regulations stated that in official pictures, President Ceausescu couldn’t take his hat off in front of the representatives of the rotten capitalistic world.
On a more personal note: I seriously felt for that poor pre-press guy as he collapsed in his chair, clutching his chest, after someone had shown him the photo cock-up on the front page of the newspaper. This story particularly touched me for I’ve experienced this sort of situation first hand in places like Russia and Uzbekistan, and, believe me, just like the protagonists in the story, I wasn’t laughing then.
> Story three: The Legend of the Chicken Driver:
This one is rather tragic. A truck driver has the task of trucking chickens across country in food-strapped Romania, under strict orders not to stop. But then, there’s this woman he lusts for and want to impress with chicken eggs. And that’s when things go bad.
> Story four: The Legend of the Greedy Policeman:
A cop scores a pig from his brother-in-law. All OK so far. Except that the pig is brought to him alive. Now, the problem for our cop is to find a way to slaughter the pig discretely so as not to alert the neighbours to his pork supply. So of course, he choses to gas the animal in his kitchen”…I’d personally re-title this story “pig explosion”.
> Story five: The Legend of the Air Sellers:
A couple of students embark on a confidence scam to part people from glass bottles, which can be sold for cash. The “bottled air” scam is quite ingenious actually but only made possible by the absurdity of life under Ceausescu.
Myth: rumor has it that, in the golden age, a lot of Romanians purchased their cars by reselling empty bottles.
I can’t make up my mind about David Lynch’s Interview Project. On the one hand, I find the concept irritating and full of shit (the idea of the road trip and meeting and interviewing “real” people along the way, in search for the heart and soul of America snore blah snore) — to top it all, Lynch’s video intro is rather lifeless and awkward. One the other hand, I could as easily imagine Alvin Straight at the helm of this project as he tours the country riding his John Deere lawn mower, and that, my friend, is and idea I’d find much more appealing all of a sudden.
Well, If anyone finds an interesting interview in there, give me a shout, as I haven’t found one yet (not having browsed the site for very long it has to be said).
…To be revisited.
The Cove (2009) by Louie Psihoyos
Powerful documentary following a team of marine activists and filmmakers as they put together a black op to infiltrate the heavily guarded cove of Taiji, a remote village in Japan, where more than 20,000 dolphins get slaughtered every year. It’s a blood bath and the footage they snatched of the entire cove turning red is disturbing.
Now I really want to free Willy.
Ironically, I went to see this film right after devouring my own weight in sushi at Ten Ten Tei, my favourite Japanese caf in London. Anyway, remember folks: chose the safest fish to eat.
