by ·Comments Off on Melancholia (2011, Lars Von Trier)

At first it’s a weird mix of the universe-history sections of Tree of Life with the shaky-cam family drama of Rachel Getting Married, but then it starts to come together. Oh actually before that is one of Von Trier’s typically outstanding opening sequences (think the sex/death of Antichrist and the musical watercolors of Dancer in the Dark). Here he uses the extreme slow-motion style of Antichrist, creating motion portraits of what seem like Justine’s depressive dreams, with stylised versions of images we’ll see later: Claire’s yard, the new planet above Earth, pictures from art books.

Part 1: Justine
Kirsten Dunst (last seen in Marie-Antoinette, again playing spoiled and detached) just married Michael (Alexander “son of Stellan” Skarsgard), heads to the lavish reception thrown by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg of Antichrist; has any other Von Trier lead actress ever returned to work with him again?) and husband Kiefer Sutherland at his Marienbad-like estate. But despite the smiles in public, Justine keeps returning to her ultra-depressive funk, disappearing outside or to other rooms for long periods, leaving the guests waiting, much to the frustration of wedding planner Udo Kier (“she’s ruining my wedding”) who dramatically averts his eyes from the bride whenever he passes.

More drama: the girls’ dad John Hurt is pretty reasonable, but their mom Charlotte Rampling couldn’t be more awful. Justine’s employer Stellan is bugging her – at her own wedding reception – for some tagline for a client, sends round-faced new employee Brady Corbett to follow her. Laboriously, Justine makes it through all the stages and events of her wedding reception, but fucks Brady Corbett instead of her groom. I don’t think he finds out (I ran to the restroom) but nobody is happy with her at the end of the night – father and husband leave without her.

Part 2: Claire
Sometime later (the husband and parents are never mentioned again) Justine is having a crisis, summoned to Claire’s house so her sister can take care of her with homemade meatloaf. The world is all excited that a previously unknown planet has appeared from behind the sun and will pass very close to Earth – various conspiracy theorists say the two planets will collide (one of the images we saw at the start of the film). Kiefer is vocally sure that Earth is safe, and Kirsten is silently sure that it’s doomed – Claire is caught between them.

Of course it is doomed, because what better ending to a Lars Von Trier movie than the destruction of the planet, the fiery obliteration of every character we’ve met? Claire superstitiously stocks up on suicide pills and Kiefer scientifically stocks up on generators and candles and fresh water, but when Kiefer realizes that planet Melancholia has doubled back after its fly-by, he sneaks off to the stables with the pills, leaving the sisters and his son to face the end of the world together.

All set at a single location, a rich family detached from the rest of society. Interestingly IMDB says the advertising image that Stellan has assigned to Kirsten is based on a famous painting, “an unflattering portrayal of excess and spiritual emptiness in a mythical land of plenty.” Kirsten is unusually tuned-in to planet Melancholia, and seems to brighten up as it gets closer. Either she’s perversely pleased by the idea of the planet collision or is spiritually in-tune with the planet, or the cosmic intensity of her depression has summoned the planet in the first place.

C. Wisniewski:

Things go from bad to worse in ways that never seem to reflect real human behavior. … the confusing structure of Melancholia’s first half exposes Trier’s inability at approximating emotional realism. Justine is believably depressive and damaged, but nothing that happens around her has even a whiff of authenticity, first frame to last. I struggled through the wedding sequence to make sense of it all: how she knew her husband or how well or long they’d known one another; why she had agreed to marry and then why she’d decided to sabotage her wedding; and how all of this could possibly happen in one night. Episodic in the worst way, part one plays like a shrill and repetitive run-on sentence authored by someone who has a clear idea of what he wants to say but hasn’t adequately structured and packaged those ideas.
…
Trier’s world … seems like a lousy, sad, miserable place. I’m glad he got a chance to blow it up.

by ·Comments Off on Red State (2011, Kevin Smith)

Watched this alongside The Ward, a double-feature of horror movies by formerly-favorite filmmakers which I expected to thoroughly disappoint. But The Ward surprised by being bland but not terrible (I heard it was terrible), and Red State surprised by being fully terrific. Starts out as a grim, bloody horror movie, three kids suckered by an internet ad promising group sex, kidnapped by a Christian cult to be executed for their immorality. Turns into a cops-vs.-crazies hostage-standoff thriller. But really the whole thing is a black comedy, gaining shock value from its willingness to kill major characters at unexpected times. It steals the tone and final scene directly from the Coens’ Burn After Reading, arguably improving it.

Kevin Smith’s best filmmaking has great comic timing but little else to recommend it, and I was worried when this started as an anonymous-looking movie about teens in peril. But then along came Stephen Root as a closeted small-town sheriff up against a house full of well-armed ragingly homophobic religious nuts, and things got immediately better. Happier still, Root calls John Goodman, who leads an FBI assault against the place with sidekick Kevin Pollack (killed almost immediately). Meanwhile inside the compound, one girl (Kerry Bishe) is slightly more enlightened than her mother (Melissa Leo) and their nutjob leader (Tarantino regular Michael Parks), tries to help the survivor of the initial three boys (Ronnie Connell, star of Signals) escape to the safety (heh) of the police. I wasn’t sure if Smith was serious about ending the movie by interrupting the standoff with blasts from heavenly trumpets signaling the coming of the apocalypse – turns out he wasn’t, but it would’ve worked fine for me either way. Distracting bonus appearance by the guy from the Mulholland Dr. diner.

by ·Comments Off on The Ward (2010, John Carpenter)

In 1966 Oregon, Kristen (Amber Heard of Drive Angry 3-D) burns down a house, is arrested, sent to The Ward at a psychiatric hospital, given mean looks from the nurse and orderly, but patience from the doctor (Jared Harris, the guy who isn’t Iggy Pop or Billy Bob Thornton in my favorite scene of Dead Man). She gradually gets to know her fellow patients, none of whom are real because the movie has a massive Tyler Durden ending. The ghost story (“Alice is killing us one by one”) and murder mystery (“who killed Alice?”) are all Kristen/Alice coming to terms with her identity, after some traumatic shit went down in that farmhouse from earlier.

Here’s Meryl Streep’s daughter again (as Emily, the one who also wants to escape) with much more to do than in Larry Crowne. We’ve also got Danielle Panabaker (of Friday the 13th Remake) as Sara the sexy one, Laura-Leigh as Zoey the girly pigtails one, and Lyndsy Fonseca (of the Femme Nikita TV show) as Iris the smart one. Some traumatic electroshock therapy and murder by medical instruments, the most easily-escapable psych ward ever, and the non-MST3K version of Bert I. Gordon’s Tormented on a television set.

It’s all pretty boring, an average 2010-era teen shock-horror flick, sub-Drag Me To Hell, except for one cool bit at the end with editing to the beat of the doctor’s metronome.

by ·Comments Off on Tabloid (2010, Errol Morris)

What a thrill – Morris’s most energetic movie yet. The story of a certain litigious woman (let’s call her J) and her exploits – in her own words, and from the perspective of a couple insiders (a pilot she hired, a dog-cloning scientist) and outsiders (two tabloid journalists and an ex-mormon radio host). The result is what Morris calls a “Looney Tunes Rashomon,” in which you can never quite be sure of the true events because each side is enthusiastically, entertainingly promoting their own version.

The events in question: in 1977 J’s boyfriend/crush went away on a mission (or was kidnapped by the Mormon church). She assembled a militant team to rescue/kidnap and deprogram/rape him, depending whose story you buy. When the story came out, the tabloids hit her hard, finding and publishing supposed evidence that she’d been a sex worker. Towards the end of the movie as we’re running out of details and stories regarding the 70’s incidents, J lives alone with her dog, still pining after her now-married Mormon boy, when the dog dies – so she has him cloned in South Korea, and now lives with five perfect replicas of her former dog. The events in J’s life would be notable in themselves, but the genius of the movie is all in the telling. The editing is a little jittery and jumpcutty for my liking, but the welcome absence of the Mr. Death-style re-enactments and the wealth of valuable stock photos and the cool tabloid-headline graphics make up for that.

Morris:

I like this new film because it’s a return to a kind of absurdist version of what I do. I love the oddities of how people express themselves. Take [tabloid journalist] Peter Tory’s affection for the phrase “spread-eagled.” Every time he says “spread-eagled,” and he says it again and again and again, I ask myself, “Is he making this up? Is this tabloid journalism in its essence?” At one point, he’s talking about the “sex in chains” headline, and he says, “I think it was ropes, but chains sounds better.” Tabloid’s a story about narrative, about how stories are constructed as they’re being told. I wanted to achieve that effect in a movie, and I hope it’s there.

by ·Comments Off on Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn)

A few years ago some critics raved that Paul Greengrass’s super-fractured Bourne movies were the exciting new thing, so hyperactively edited that they defied attempts to make sense of the action sequences. I wasn’t a huge fan, so I’m glad that this year critics are raving about Refn’s pared-down slow-motion action film instead.

J. Rosenbaum, listing things he does not like: “extreme violence as a function of specious and hypocritical morality (or, even worse, ‘sensitivity,’ as in Drive).” I haven’t figured out exactly what that means, but Katy disliked the extreme violence as well. For all the slow, cool aspects of the movie, its retro opening titles and theme songs (which I’ve been playing over and over), its straightforward genre story and simple themes of family love and heroism, there sure is some extreme bloody violence, including a thug’s head getting stomped to bits in an elevator, Christina Hendricks getting blasted with a shotgun, and Albert Brooks, in possibly his first death scene since the opening sequence of Twilight Zone: The Movie, getting a razor to the arm.

Ryan Gosling (unfortunately of Lars and the Real Girl) is perfect as the blank no-name Driver (stunt-man, getaway driver, track racer and mechanic – a vehicular all-star) who falls for his married neighbor. T. Stempel: “most of what she gets to do is smile sweetly. Carey Mulligan does that well, but it’s a criminal under-use of her talent.” When we meet her husband Standard, he’s a nice guy, seemingly reformed from prison, so the driver would have a moral dilemma if Standard was not quickly killed by gangsters (led by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman – great casting). Driver tries to help the girl escape the baddies, but the more baddies you hurt, kill or rip off, the more baddies you attract. So he finally has to kill just about everybody, ends up driving away by himself, mortally wounded, the soundtrack telling us that he has become a real hero. Oh also Bryan Cranston (Julia Roberts’ ex-husband in Larry Crowne) is great as the hard-luck mechanic who gave the driver his day job.

by ·Comments Off on Hobo with a Shotgun (2011, Jason Eisener)

The Black Dynamite of trashy 80’s action/revenge flicks. Gets all the details right, but skips the boring parts – a trick House of the Devil could have learned.

Our hero Rutger Hauer rides the rails to the worst town in the world, which is controlled by super baddie Drake (Brian Downey of the show Lexx) and sons Slick and Ivan. He tries to stay out of trouble, meets a friendly prostitute named Abby. But one day they push him too far, and Rutger grabs a shotgun and cleans up this town. The dialogue could’ve been better but otherwise it’s a hella fun flick.

by ·Comments Off on Carlos (2010, Olivier Assayas)

Wire! The Feelies! A long three-part series/feature about a so-called terrorist who operated by a strict moral code can’t help but get compared to Soderbergh’s Che, but the strong use of quality 1970’s and 80’s music throws a Marie Antoinette comparison into the mix.

Watched in nice widescreen over netflix streaming on the TV. Despite its epic length, the movie felt small and far away. Lots of political and historical touchstones that I didn’t recognize, because I have no education or sense of history. Carlos’s motives weren’t clearly explained (something about the Palestinian Struggle), nor were his origins (“It’s no longer Ilich. It’s Carlos”). But his battles, his public terrorist acts, his relationships, hideouts and escapes are all laid out in glorious detail. I’m generally a fan of Assayas films, but didn’t connect with this one at all. I’m thinking netflix is to blame.

Edgar Ramirez can’t be blamed anyway, was magnetic, as they say, as Carlos.

The movie was so long, and petered out in such an energy-depleting way, that I can’t bring myself to write a whole lot or even to read a bunch of articles. So I took to D. Hudson’s great notebook summary and cut out three points I would’ve made if I’d given it more thought (or took better notes).

G. Andrew:

Certainly, the film doesn’t feel anything like television. It’s shot in Scope, boasts the fleet way with narrative, camera movement and cutting that are characteristic of Assayas at his best and has a sense of scale, depth and seriousness of purpose that is essentially cinematic.

M. Dargis:

He lacks substance. He doesn’t have much to say, and his rhetoric gets cruder as the years pass (as does his treatment of women). He’s a man of action, not ideas. Mr Assayas, by contrast, is a director of ideas. … Carlos isn’t Che slogging through the jungle for the cause: Carlos is a mercenary, a thug.

T. McCarthy:

One element that vividly pops out from the film’s vibrant fabric are the numerous scenes in which government officials from Arab and Eastern bloc countries directly order, sponsor or otherwise facilitate terrorism and mayhem in other nations…. I can’t recall ever seeing scenes quite like these in any movie, and they are bracing.

by ·Comments Off on Winter’s Bone (2010, Debra Granik)

Katy and I were surprised that the movie had a happy ending. Then again, the happy ending consists of the lead character finding her dead father and sawing off his hands. She spends the previous ninety minutes in an atmosphere of such threat and menace, surrounded by hostile neighbors and relatives, all with guns in their hands, that we’re just stunned she’s alive, and with some money to boot.

Katy picked this because lead actress Jennifer Lawrence will star in The Hunger Games (having played Mystique in the X-Men prequel along the way). I was also glad to see Sheryl “Laura Palmer” Lee, first movie I’ve watched of hers since the great Mother Night. Lawrence is a dirt-poor girl with a messed-up mom and missing dad (this is all good Hunger Games practice) in a town full of angry meth dealers, some of which are her relatives but I can’t always tell which. What’s for sure is that this is a town which values shutting-the-fuck-up above all else, and even though she has damn good reason to go asking after her father (she’ll lose her house if he skips bail), all these questions are making people nervous, so they resolve to deal with her. Fortunately she makes a sorta friend in Uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes of Me and You and Everyone We Know) who helps her out, probably dooming himself.

Nominated for oscars but beaten by The King’s Speech, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Aaron Sorkin.

by ·Comments Off on General Orders No. 9 (2010, Robert Persons)

“You are not a witness to the ruin. You are the ruin. You are to be witnessed.”

The quote made me space out for a while, since people near me in the theater had been mentioning Collapse before this one started.

A slideshow of a movie, like a PBS version of The Tree of Life. It alternately seems to be a prayer, a history lesson, and a curse against the city of Atlanta. The movie never feels like explaining its ideas in depth, preferring to crossfade into the next evenly-spaced slide, having the unhurried narrator repeat something he said a half hour ago, valuing experience and images over explanation.

I was pleased that shots of N. Dekalb Mall were used as signifiers of the big corrupt city, since I’ve been angry at that place since I left a screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World covered in ants. Less pleased by the rumbly drone of the music, which only seemed to brighten once in a while.

Ebiri liked it.

“This isn’t a lament for the Old South, or even really for The Way Things Used To Be. There’s an abstractness to the imagery and to the discourse that suggests Persons is talking about a symbolic passing. … The film’s tendency to avoid humans comes across as an attempt not to seal itself off from experience, but to make its imagery even more subjective. … Persons’s lament – his surrender – doesn’t feel like a search. Perhaps because he understands the thing he seeks might never have been there in the first place.”

Cheers to Carros and Fearon for the sweet map graphics.

“The weathervane is the center of it all.”