by ·Comments Off on Sweeney Todd (2007, Tim Burton)

N.P. Thompson: “the most numbingly inert movie musical ever made”.

Watched it twice in a week, the second time with good sound.

Barber is imprisoned and wife-snatched by judge, returns years later (with young sailor) for revenge, kills blackmailing rival barber, finds then loses interest in own daughter, starts meat pie business with neighbor, mistreats and tries to kill young assistant, kills judge, neighbor, and (accidentally) own wife, is killed by assistant while young sailor rides off with barber’s daughter.

Loving the songs, especially “not while I’m around,” “pretty women,” “I’ll steal you joanna,” and “these are my friends”. The actors all do wonderfully, and the ol’ Burton goth murk is back with a vengeance. Katy disliked the horror aspects and wished that any character besides the two kids in love was a likeable protagonist, someone she could root for, and not a horrible corrupt monster. I thought the two kids were plenty enough brightness in the black, black. I wouldn’t call it numbingly inert, but for a musical it doesn’t exactly pop off the screen. Maybe Thompson will dig the 3-D re-release.

by ·Comments Off on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, Julian Schnabel)

I’ve gone back and forth a few times since seeing this.

FOR: the subjective camerawork from a bleary-eyed stroke victim’s point of view for the first 20 minutes is beautiful and avant-garde. The flights of fantasy mix and clash with harsh realities, like Bauby’s ex-wife and current girlfriend fighting over him via conference call, and there’s enough humor and absurdity to keep the whole thing light, even with the clouds of death and disability and shattered families hanging above.

AGAINST: it’s Schnabel’s third bio-pic in a row, and the story of a rich guy in hospital looking back on his life’s mistakes and dictating an autobiography by blinking his one good eye makes for the least essential story of the three. Bauby’s post-stroke struggle is interesting, but his life and character are not.

I feel like I should warn people against watching it, and at the same time, I want to run out and watch it again.

Max Von Sydow played Bauby’s father, and Ghost Dog’s ice cream man played his friend. His hot wife has been in a few Polanski movies (oh, she’s married to Polanski) and his even hotter nurse was in Ararat (the painting-slashing girlfriend, I think). Bauby himself starred in Assayas’s “Late August, Early September” and was billed just below Michael Lonsdale in “Munich”.

A sentence fragment from an IMDB review could be an alternate title: “The Patience of Others”.

by ·Comments Off on The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992, Brian Henson)

Good ol’ Muppet Christmas Carol, just like I’ve seen it twenty times before.

Christmas Past is voiced by a nine-year-old, Christmas Present has Katy’s favorite line “come in and know me better man”, and Future is run by the lead puppeteer from Little Shop of Horrors.

Brian Henson also did Muppet Treasure Island and is supposedly exec-producing a Dark Crystal sequel and Fraggle Rock: The Movie in ’09, ugh.

Michael Caine did pretty well, but I thought Kermit and the hecklers both upstaged him.

by ·Comments Off on Xala (1975, Ousmane Sembene)

Sembene’s fourth feature and his second movie I’ve seen named after a spell/curse.

IMDB: “It is the dawn of Senegal’s independence from France, but as the citizens celebrate in the streets we soon become aware that only the faces have changed. White money still controls the government. One official, Aboucader Beye, known by the title “El Hadji,” takes advantage of some of that money to marry his third wife, to the sorrow and chagrin of his first two wives and the resentment of his nationalist daughter. But he discovers on his wedding night that he has been struck with a “xala,” a curse of impotence. El Hadji goes to comic lengths to find the cause and remove the xala, resulting in a scathing satirical ending.”

Rama the daughter appears in Guelwaar.

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by ·Comments Off on Brandon’s Twenty Favorite New Movies of 2007

My Favorite Twenty New Movies in 2007

not sorted, just grouped by vague categories:

five miraculous foreign films:
Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako)
Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
The Wind That Shakes The Barley (Ken Loach)
Dry Season (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
Chacun son cinéma (shorts by a buncha directors)

two critically-loved mid-year american masterpieces
Zodiac (David Fincher)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird)

three brilliant early-year action-comedies
Grindhouse (Rodriguez/Tarantino/Wright/Roth/Zombie)
The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)

oscar-season masterpieces
Atonement (Joe Wright)
No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)

glorious and unconventional musicals
Sweeney Todd (Tim Burton)
Once (John Carney)

fits both of the above categories:
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)

difficult auteur-defense conflict pictures
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)

three that nobody cared about but me:
Sunshine (Danny Boyle)
The Screwfly Solution (Joe Dante)
Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer)

next ten runners-up: The Namesake… Offside… Across the Universe… The Lives of Others… Away From Her… Private Fears in Public Places… Into the Wild… Paris je t’aime… The Simpsons Movie… The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

by ·Comments Off on Brandon’s Twenty Favorite Old Movies of 2007

All seen on video for the first time, none are current releases, except maybe “The War Tapes” because I can’t remember if it played theaters here or not.

Top ten, in order:

1. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
far exceeds its reputation, a truly amazing film, like candy on my TV
2. Muriel (1963, Alain Resnais)
3. Dog’s Dialogue (1977, Raoul Ruiz)
one of my favorite short films ever
4. Pennies from Heaven (1981, Herbert Ross)
one of my favorite musicals ever
5. Three travel films by Chris Marker:
– Sunday In Peking (1956 China)
– Description of a Struggle (1960 Israel)
– The Koumiko Mystery (1965 Japan)
6. Matinee (1993, Joe Dante)
7. Miami Vice (2006, Michael Mann)
a work of art unfairly lumped in with “dukes of hazzard” and other TV remakes
8. The War Tapes (2006, Deborah Scranton)
I cried tears of pure sadness
9. Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville)
fewer tears, but still a shocking war story
10. Little Dieter Needs To Fly (1997, Werner Herzog)
third war movie in a row, this one considerably happier

Next ten, alpha:

Cabin Fever (2002, Eli Roth)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel)
The Face of Another (1966, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
The Girl Can’t Help It (1956, Frank Tashlin)
Guys and Dolls (1956, Joseph Mankiewicz)
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)
The Tales of Hoffmann (1951, Powell & Pressburger)
Waiting For Happiness (2002, Abderrahmane Sissako)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr)

Runners-up:
Le Joli Mai (1963), Zazie dans le métro (1960), David Copperfield (1935)

honorable mention:
A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)
seemed like it lives up to its masterpiece reputation, but in the crummy version I watched, I think I lost a ton of plot details… will surely place higher when I see it again.

happy auteur discoveries:
John Ford (The Searchers)
Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot)
Shohei Imamura (Vengeance Is Mine)
Eric Rohmer (first two moral tales)

five more great musicals:
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)
The Music Man (1962, Morton DaCosta)
Fiddler on the Roof (1971, Norman Jewison)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)
Red Garters (1954, George Marshall)

the better-than-it-should-be award:
a tie between Hard Candy & Lord of War (both 2005)

the most awesome cult / b-movie award:
Brain Damage (1988, Frank Henenlotter)

the “ahh, I get it now” award:
L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
runner-up: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959, Alain Resnais)

the saddest movie award:
The Road to Guantánamo (Michael Winterbottom)

the “child favorite that is, against all odds, still a favorite 20 years
later” award: a three-way tie!
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990, Joe Dante)
Night of the Creeps (1986, Fred Dekker)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Frank Oz)

the “makes me feel cooler just for having seen it” award:
Pandora’s Box (1929, G.W. Pabst)

funniest movie ever seen on an airplane:
Jackass The Movie 2

by ·Comments Off on Brandon’s Top Ten Retrospective Screenings of 2007

Best Retrospective/Not-Current Films Seen Theatrically

#0. Out 1 (1971, Jacques Rivette) at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York
not so much a movie as an experience, too amazing to even join the rest of the list

1. Play Time (1967, Jacques Tati) at Emory
2. To Sleep With Anger (1990, Charles Burnett) at the film festival
3. An Autumn Afternoon (1962, Yasujiro Ozu) at Emory
4. La Ronde (1950, Max Ophüls) at Emory
5. Killer of Sheep (1977, Charles Burnett) at the film festival
6. Red Balloon / White Mane (1953/56, Albert Lamorisse) at the Midtown Art
7. Pierrot le fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard) at the Midtown Art

all below had seen before, but was great to see again:
8. L’Atalante / Zero for Conduct (1933-34, Jean Vigo) at Emory
9. The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D (1993) at some multiplex
10. The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut) at the Plaza

by ·Comments Off on Six Movies I Didn’t Get in 2007

or, “The WTF Awards”

Not the worst movies I saw this year – those are better forgotten (ugh, Vibroboy) – but the ones that I should’ve enjoyed but didn’t, and so it’s probably my fault.

My Brother’s Wedding & When It Rains (both Charles Burnett)
It was Burnett’s big comeback year. I thought both “Killer of Sheep” and “To Sleep With Anger” were overwhelmingly great, but these two left me cold… “Wedding” seeming especially amateurish considering it was made after the gorgeous “Sheep”, and “Rains” just didn’t live up to my expectations being one of Rosenbaum’s ten favorite films of the 1990’s. Fortunately both are out on video now, with “Wedding” available in a brand-new director’s cut, so I’ll get to try them again sometime.

Mutual Appreciation
Magazines and blogs love “movements”, and as Film Comment is pointing out in this month’s issue, the “mumblecore” movement died pretty quickly. Judging from this uninteresting little movie, a mumblecore keystone, it should have.

W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
I heard this was great from way back, and once it came out on DVD and everyone got to see it anew, they all agreed it was great. So what’s my problem? I love bizarre and perverse euro-art films, but this bored me.

Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls)
Each Max Ophuls movie I see I enjoy less than the last one. At least I didn’t dislike “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, and I learned to appreciate it more when watching the DVD extras afterwards. This one I still haven’t figured out. The central segment felt tedious, and I’m sorry this is the one Ophuls movie that I’ve shown to Katy.

Paprika
It’s officially official – I do not understand anime.

Iraq in Fragments
Failed to find all the beauty that is supposedly within, still wondering if our film print was out of focus.

These are only runners-up because I should’ve known better:
The Good German (everyone said this Soderbergh flick was a dud, but I had to see for myself)
The Descent (halfheartedly-acclaimed horror that I halfheartedly liked)
Inferno & Pelts (Dario Argento continues to not ring my bell)

by ·Comments Off on Looking Back, Looking Ahead, 2007-08

Movie-wise, I’ve too many goals lately. Original quests to see every movie by Samuel Fuller (still got 1 or 2 left) along with as many films as possible from the IMDB list (206/250) and Rosenbaum list (about 340/1000) got a bunch more quests added to them:

Fritz Lang films (just two left)
Joe Dante (watched six this year, bought The Burbs and got some TV episode he did)
Stuart Gordon (a spur of the moment thing for shocktober, just two left, not counting his new one)
Jacques Rivette (saw seven great films, and got some more all lined up)
Luis Bunuel (just three this year, plus a half-hearted screening of Land Without Bread)
Alain Resnais (watched or re-watched eight of his earliest films and the recent Coeurs)
Chris Marker (watched/loved his first six films this year, up to the rocky 60’s-70’s period where everything’s either super-rare or untranslated on video)
Films from 1977 (watched maybe three features and a bunch of shorts)
The Criterion Collection (about 205/450)
“They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” top 1000 list (about 460/1000)
NOTE: they updated the list in December so now I’m closer to 450.

For 2008 I’ve got a new movie quest, one which will help all the above-listed movie quests as a side-effect… to watch movies I already have… as many as possible!

The “just two left” films by Fritz Lang mentioned above? Got ’em. Same for Stuart Gordon. Probably around 40 Criterion movies, everything available by Marker and Resnais and Rivette, and tons of titles on the Rosenbaum list. But more importantly, I find myself buying treasured DVDs (how much longer can I hold off on Kino’s second avant-garde collecton and Criterion’s Days of Heaven?) and filing them carefully on the shelf unwatched amongst all the other unwatched discs, then going off to rent Saw III. It’d make more sense to save this particular quest for some time when Videodrome has burned down or Katy has gotten a job and moved us both to Nebraska, but it seems like a good thing to start now.

That said, there are still plenty of 2006-07 films that I’d love to see on video, or when they finally roll out to Atlanta theaters, such as:
– Syndromes and a Century
– Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain and My Winnipeg
– Belle toujours
– Whatever Miike has been up to
– Don’t Touch the Axe
– Klimt, in its original cut
– My Blueberry Nights
– The Man From London
– Paranoid Park
– Go-Go Tales
– There Will Be Blood
– and the Coens’ missing short from Chacun son cinéma

JR Jones:
“And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown much less tolerant of movies that waste my time, a development I call the Finding Forrester effect. By most accounts Gus Van Sant’s 2000 drama about a reclusive literary icon is a listless hack job; I’ve never been able to watch it myself because it was the last movie my father saw before he took ill, went into the hospital, and died. When I’m sitting in a press preview I sometimes think, “If I had only a few days left, would I want to spend two hours watching this?” That may seem like an absurdly high bar for a filmmaker to clear, but whoever said a filmmaker is entitled to two hours of your life? Anyone who wants those two hours has a responsibility to make the movie meaningful in some way.”