by ·Comments Off on Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, The Coens)

Oscar Isaac (Carey Mulligan’s loser husband in Drive) is a folk singer who gets by on his earnest music and pity over the suicide of his ex-partner, not on his abilities to make or keep friends or smoothly adapt to change. He sleeps at fellow folkies Jean & Jim’s place (cutie couple Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan) or arts patrons The Gorfeins. Llewyn may have gotten Jean pregnant, and he accidentally receives (then loses) the Gorfeins’ cat. He’s running out of career options and hastily plans a last-ditch trip to Chicago in the company of sullen actor Garrett Hedlund and grotesque blues man John Goodman, to (unsuccessfully) audition at a major club.

R. Brody: “The symbolic aspect of this sidebar is clear. The jazzman is a hardened cynic with a wound, a habit—and a career; the young actor is a self-deluding purist trapped in humiliating servitude; and for Davis, both options appear unbearable.”

Interesting how the end of Llewyn Davis is similar/opposite to the end of The Grandmaster. In Grandmaster, Ip Man has suffered and ended up alone, but we see a young guy who is obviously Bruce Lee, and the movie is telling us that Ip’s legacy and teachings will live on gloriously. In the Coen movie, Llewyn has suffered and ended up alone getting his ass kicked in an alley, but we see a young guy who is obviously Bob Dylan, and the movie is telling us Llewyn has run out of time, than his whole genre is about to be transformed and move on without him.

B. Ebiri:

The film fades to black, and the Dylan song, victorious, plays over the end credits. Somewhere along the way, you figure Dylan has been on his own, significantly luckier trajectory – maybe like the Incredible Journey that Ulysses the cat must have been on. But we didn’t see that journey. We saw the other journey — the one with some loser named Llewyn and a nameless, wounded cat. In many ways, that’s the journey the rest of us are also on.

M. Koresky:

It ought to be rather clear by now that the Coens’ body of work constitutes the closest we have to a consistent existential American cinema. This helps explain that sense of detachment in their films, often misread as condescension. Theirs is admittedly not an open-arms type of filmmaking, but no one could accuse Inside Llewyn Davis, at once their warmest and most fragile film, of treating its complicated, imperfect protagonist with disdain. From its opening shot, the camera caresses Llewyn (Oscar Isaac), who enters from frame right to meet a microphone in wait.

by ·Comments Off on Stranger by the Lake (2013, Alain Guiraudie)

A semi-thriller, methodically structured with a non-ending, set at a cruisy gay nude beach. I didn’t love it as much as the Cinema Scope critics did.

Our shiftless hero is Frank, who spends an awful lot of time at the lake. Frank befriends Henri, a not-nude not-gay not-fit dude sitting off by himself every day, and looks for love among the others. Early on, Frank witnesses mustached Michel kill his boyfriend, spends the rest of the movie dating Michel and avoiding the local cops. Michel kills Henri and chases Frank at the end – you wonder if Frank got away, but you wonder if he wants to.

No music! Produced by Sylvie Pialat (wife of Maurice), picked up a couple of Cannes awards, film of the year according to Cahiers.

by ·Comments Off on Stoker (2013, Chan-wook Park)

Kind of your standard family-secret homicidal-maniac twist-ending thriller, but Park makes it great. Every scene is amazing looking, not just well-shot but with attention-drawing effects like seamlessly transitioning Nicole Kidman’s hair into a field of grass.

Mia W. is our vaguely Rogue-looking heroine whose dad died the day she turned 18 – killed by his maniac brother, it turns out, who killed their youngest brother as a boy, then kills Mia’s would-be-rapist school acquaintance (Alden Ehrenreich, Bennie in Tetro), then almost kills her mom until finally Mia pulls out the hunting rifle that the movie has taken care to mention and blows him away. Then she drives off, killing a sheriff on the way out of town, having inherited her uncle’s taste for murder.

Other victims include family maid Mrs. McG (hidden in the freezer) and Auntie Jen (Jacki Weaver of Picnic at Hanging Rock) – great discovery scene as Mia calls auntie’s cell and hears it ringing underground. The shooting (by Park’s usual guy Chung-hoon Chung) and editing (by Nicolas de Toth, son of the House of Wax director) are thrilling. Matthew Goode (Firth’s dead boyfriend in A Single Man, kinda has a George Clooney voice) is crazy uncle Charlie, Mia Wasikowska is currently starring in Only Lovers Left Alive, and this is the first Nicole Kidman movie I’ve seen since Birth. Shoot, Harmony Korine was in this and I didn’t notice him.

by ·Comments Off on The Grandmaster (2013, Wong Kar-Wai)

On one hand, I don’t think this is a perfect movie. Many of the scenes are beautiful by themselves, but I’m not sure that it comes together into a structure that makes sense. On the other hand, I’m fascinated with this movie, having watched the U.S. version twice in theaters then the original on blu-ray. The U.S. makes some major blunders, changes the order of events to the detriment of all emotional build-up and overuses title cards. But those title cards came in handy for me, and the original version made more sense for my having seen the other one first. Also, even though the U.S. is a half hour shorter, it somehow contains entire scenes that weren’t in the original.

My favorite edit:

Tony Leung has been in Red Cliff and Lust, Caution but I haven’t seen him since 2046. He plays Ip Man, a renowned martial artist and teacher, introduced fighting a hundred dudes including a final boss played by Cung Le (Bronze Lion) under the slow-motion rain. Action isn’t abstracted like in Ashes of Time – it’s actually more commercial-looking than usual for Wong, shot by new guy Philippe Le Sourd but edited by William Chang who worked on Ashes of Time and the others.

Ip moves away from his wife to Hong Kong then isn’t allowed to return. He and Zhang Ziyi have a mutual fascination, and the best part of the movie follows her story as she reclaims her father’s title from his traitorous former disciple Ma San. This sidetrack from the “Grandmaster” story plus the movie’s splintering into different versions make it seem more open-ended, like every character could unexpectedly lead his own movie. For instance, Chen Chang (male star of Three Times) has a minor scene in the U.S. cut, and two completely different scenes (including a major anti-government battle) in the original. Usually we hear rumors of trouble in the editing room then Wong delivers a final, completed film – this time he seems to have given in to artistic indecision. Or maybe it’s simply the Weinsteins’ fault – either way, I’ve enjoyed assembling the pieces in my mind, dreaming my own Grandmaster.

Jiang, for instance, deserves his own entire movie:

by ·Comments Off on Catching Fire (2013, Francis Lawrence)

Lawrence (who made Water For Elephants and the music video for Gone Till November) turns in a much better Hunger Games movie than the last guy did. This movie will, of course, be best remembered for bringing together both mid-2000’s Truman Capotes: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toby Jones. New additions to the movie’s revolutionary team include Jeffrey Wright (also in Only Lovers Left Alive this year) and Sam Claflin (Snow White and the Huntsman).

by ·Comments Off on Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche)

Here’s an email I wrote on the subject:

Blue is the Saddest Movie

Figured I’d see Blue one day last weekend and 12 Years a Slave the next day, as a sort of controversial critic-bait double-feature. Was very skeptical of Blue for the first hour because it’s a coming-of-age young-love story completely shot in handheld close-ups. Not my thing. Also the director comes off as quite pretentious in interviews, plus there are multiple controversies (extended sex scenes causing a NC-17 rating, the actresses turning on the filmmaker, the author of the source story hating the movie) so it seems like a hype movie that’ll be soon forgotten.

But – spoiler alert here – the movie is about this girl who falls for an older girl, they’re together for a long time, young girl isn’t getting enough attention after some years, cheats, is kicked out, they break up. It’s a three-hour movie, and the last hour or so is dealing with the aftermath of this break-up. It’s not the most emotionally complex three-hour movie about a teenage girl I’ve seen lately (that would be Margaret, my runner-up to Holy Motors as best movie of 2012) – it’s very straightforward. It’s a love-at-first-sight movie where the relationship doesn’t last but the love does, which might make it the most depressing movie of the year, at least. The handheld close-ups and controversies aside, it’s a movie that lingers in your mind for a long time – I’m getting choked up just thinking about it again. A massive accomplishment, no wonder it won best picture at Cannes.

by ·Comments Off on 12 Years a Slave (2013, Steve McQueen)

Finally, justice for Chiwetel. McQueen’s follow-up to Shame, which I skipped. I was bracing for a no-holds-barred art film, but it’s closer to a typical Hollywood drama than Hunger was, based on the real guy’s memoir and adapted by John Ridley (Three Kings, Red Tails).

Chiwetel is kidnapped by circus tricksters and sold to Django Unchained vet Chris Berry, who immediately kills fellow slave Omar and throws him overboard. Chiwetel is auctioned by Paul Giamatti to relatively-decent Benedict Cumberbatch, but pisses off watcher Paul Dano and so is sent to Fassbender’s place. Fass is fucking female slave Lupita Nyong’o and Fass’s wife Sarah Paulson knows it – guess which of those three will get the shit end of the stick (or the whip). Chiwetel seeks help from Garret Dillahunt, who sells him out, finally gets it from forward-thinking Canadian Brad Pitt.

Amazing story, certainly a well-made and well-acted movie, but the closing titles leave things depressingly unresolved and one yearns for some Django-style payback. IMDB lists the previous adaptation, starring Avery Brooks of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame, as a comedy/drama!

by ·Comments Off on Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Kathryn Bigelow)

After the Nairobi mall attack, I felt like watching some terrorists get killed. Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life, Take Shelter) gets help from her torturer friend Jason Clarke (killer of Gatsby), follows the trail left by informants to identify Bin Laden’s personal messenger, sees her friend Jennifer Ehle (Contagion) get blown up following a false lead, traces the messenger’s cellphone, follows him to a compound, spends years convincing her dumb bosses (first Katy’s TV football coach Kyle Chandler, then Mark Strong of Tinker Tailor) to invade it, then sends a Seal team (featuring Brolin-looking Gatsby star Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt of Parks & Rec). They crash one helicopter but still have two others, shoot Bin Laden in the face, and take off.

by ·Comments Off on The Unspeakable Act (2012, Dan Sallitt)

Another talky, low-budget incest drama. Sallitt’s style is closer to Lena Dunham’s in Tiny Furniture (or a more naturalistic Wes Anderson) than to the indie dramas I’ve watched lately by Azazel Jacobs and Alex Ross Perry. The dialogue is well written and hilarious, and the image is super clean. And unlike the Jacobs and Perry movies, this one is fully engrossing, with a terrific lead performance.

Jackie is in love with her brother Matthew, who is leaving for college soon. She talks with her brother, with her mom (who is somewhat vacant and removed, has a mysterious past), with her therapist – there’s a lot of talking, and no music. She has sex with some hat-wearing dude at school who seems to barely care about her after her brother tells her about his girlfriend Yolanda (whom Jackie grudgingly likes). Jackie calls her desire “the unmentionable act,” never quite saying the title.

D.S. taken out-of-context from a Gorilla interview:

To me, movies are photographs and are therefore about the outside of things, surfaces that we can’t see past. .. I think I’m just trying to increase the sum total of mystery in the world, trying to hit the viewer with some fact that conveys forcibly how little access we have to people’s inner lives.

Amazing: Sallitt might turn this into a trilogy, though he’s not optimistic about finding the funding to make part three, so maybe not. Guess I didn’t realize how much I loved the movie until I read that news and couldn’t make myself stop smiling.

C. Marsh:

But what’s perhaps most striking about the film is that, despite being narrated in reflective voice-over by Jackie and more or less totally confined to her point of view, she remains something of a mystery throughout, seemingly unknowable no matter how close to her the movie encourages us become. This isn’t a failure of the film — as Sallitt describes her himself, Jackie is designed to be “fundamentally an unsolvable puzzle” despite being “wrapped in layers of plausible-looking psychology.”