Elegy Posted 19 October 2008 in Screening log with 1 comment 2008 US Dir Isabel Coixet Cast Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, Deborah Harry IMDb

Another film adaptation of another Philip Roth fantasy about a brilliant aging man nursing a sexual obsession for a much younger, earthier, and ironically wiser woman. This time it’s Ben Kingsley lamenting that his young girlfriend does not yearn sufficiently for his “cawk” and Penelope Cruz (who’s becoming a much less awkward actor in English) as the thinly and tritely written object of his lust.

Emphasis on object: Roth in my experience doesn’t particularly understand or value women, and that viewpoint serves his male characters well, manifesting itself in self-important, immature, articulate and complicated guys who don’t value women either. But it’s a shame to see Coixet’s name on a film that does no more for the women in the story, only establishing the dichotomy between the emotional, commitment-seeking, body-image-fixated Cruz and the sex-without-strings, businesslike, and stereotypically masculine in her emotional needs (to reinforce that point, she yells, “I’m one in a million!”) long-term casual lover played by Patricia Clarkson, who is long overdue for starring roles in better projects.

Also frustrating is Dennis Hopper’s character, who merely exists as a smart-talking sounding board for most of the film, and I can’t stand characters like that; it’s such a cheap device to create a character merely to give another character an opportunity to speak his mind. Voiceover narration achieves the same result. Then suddenly we’re meant to care when something happens to him late in the film. There is nothing wrong with a film, or novel, revolving around one character to the exclusion of developing others, but this is more than seeing events through one man’s eyes: the people in his life are barely human, just stand-ins for types.

Despite its shortcuts and final-act flirtation with bathos, it is a basically good movie, but an often frustrating one that strains too hard sometimes to capture a moment artistically. The other Coixet film I’ve seen, My Life Without Me, was at least much more cohesive stylistically, and I think this is a bit of a step back for her. The bulk of my argument is with Roth and not Coixet, but her film doesn’t particularly improve on its source material where it might have.

Jeopardy Posted 18 October 2008 in Screening log with 9 comments 1953 US Dir John Sturges Cast Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Meeker, Barry Sullivan IMDb

Idiotic but harmless — maybe I haven’t seen enough B-movies to appreciate what they do have to offer in spite of the style and substance they’re missing, but it’s hard to get past how spare and silly this is on the way to a few satisfying thrills. Barbara Stanwyck & family are vacationing on a deserted Mexican beach. A serene spot, but is it any wonder the infrastructure hasn’t been kept up?

I couldn’t stop laughing when the young boy dusts off an old sign at the base of a pier, spells out loud P-E-L-I-G-R-O, shrugs and proceeds to walk the precarious length of it. Stany & her man are too busy with long-awaited foreplay to notice, and the kid gets stuck out there and needs to be rescued. After a goofily protracted but admittedly suspenseful walk to the end of the pier and back, the husband falls to the beach as part of the structure collapses and pins his leg underneath it.

Now it’s a race against time as the tide’s coming in, and it’s up to reportedly hysterics-prone Stanwyck, who comes across rather typically cool, to drive off in search of a rope to save his life. Inconveniently, she runs into a mass murderer along the way, and this is where the film becomes both doubly stupid and doubly interesting. Ralph Meeker gets the few good lines and puts more effort into his dumb but self-adoring thug than anyone else in the cast. It doesn’t make sense that he should never really be violent with his captive even when she tries to kill him, nor are his ultimate self-sacrificing helpfulness and her change of heart toward him particularly believable, but in between she pretty blatantly trades sex for her husband’s life which, if equally unlikely, is at least a compelling turn.

Stany wonders if all wives think about what they would do in such a situation, and while I kind of doubt it, that line of thought is just where the Jeopardy fails the most: a more thoughtful and thorough film might have delivered a blazing critique of gender roles.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her Posted 12 October 2008 in Screening log with No comments [2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle] 1967 US Dir Jean-Luc Godard Cast Marina Vlady, Juliet Berto IMDb

Godard’s disjointed, rambling anti-capitalist screed is never less than engaging, often hilarious, and occasionally astonishing. His argument is put forth sometimes directly, sometimes poetically: that modern society itself is prostitution, that we have come to value lifestyle over life. If some conclusions seem naive or facile, the overall effect is one that is frighteningly relevant forty years later. And it’s full of so many powerful images and sequences, edited perfectly. Some reviewers seem to find the film slow, and I suppose next to the guerrilla-style velocity of Week End it is, but for me it was never less than magnetic. It’s also one of Godard’s funniest, its presentation nowhere near as serious as its thesis, coming across as a nonstop stream of visual and linguistic puns and references. But then the mood will be broken with a gut punch of insight and wonderment: the world in a coffee cup; the decision of which narrative to follow. Multilayered and ambitious, and brings everything together with amazing cogency. See it in a theater if you can: it’s widescreen to tha max.

Appaloosa Posted 5 October 2008 in Screening log Comments are off for this post 2008 US Dir Ed Harris Cast Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall IMDb

Harris’ western could sit comfortably next to the B-westerns of post-war Hollywood, making few attempts to update, comment upon, subvert or mix in other genre elements as others from the latest cycle of westerns have attempted to do. This is a basically judgment-neutral observation, but whether or not it constitutes a lack of ambition, I think it is fair to say the film misses some opportunities and leaves one wanting more. But if it sets out to be a traditional genre entry, with the attendant rich psychological characterizations, appreciation for natural landscapes, and clear-cut struggle between good and evil, it succeeds fantastically, and ultimately satisfies.

At its core this is a film of characters, and therein lies both the great achievements and vaguely noted disappointments. Ed Harris doubles as the tough, conflicted, quick-drawing marshal for hire and Viggo Mortensen is his longtime deputy, a more deeply feeling yet more tightly controlled man with killer facial hair and a thoughtful wry smile. Their relationship is the soul of the film: distant but deep, occasionally physical but without real hint of homoeroticism, knowing and unspoken. They have worked together for they don’t know how long and, as Everett supposes in the beginning of the film, will continue to for the foreseeable future; over time, they have developed a wonderful shorthand language of shared glances and completed sentences. It’s stated explicitly but bears itself out in unexpected and subtle ways: Virgil can remove his feelings from his duties, and Everett will never be a top-notch lawman because he cannot. Feelings get you killed.

But then the film dangles intriguing possibilities and leaves them there, untied. After witnessing Virgil’s quick and potent violence in initial confrontations with the established bad guys, the moral line is blurred when he assaults with equal mercilessness a rowdy saloon patron. Suddenly Virgil is recast as a terrifying sociopath, and becomes twice as interesting, but the issue is mostly dropped. The greatest disappointment lies in Renee Zellweger’s character — first and subjectively because she is played by the at times unbearable Renee Zellweger, but also because of her unexplored possibilities. She is the mother and the whore in one, possessing something that puts visions of hearth and home in inveterate loner Virgil’s eyes, and yet she is so desperately lonely herself that she sleeps with every powerful man who crosses her path. Her betrayal wounds Virgil, but more than anything he is confused and intrigued by it. Most of the major characters invest some time in analyzing her, but ultimately it’s a lot of wasted words.

As to the classic fight between good and evil, Jeremy Irons embodies the other half of that binary with devilish appeal. It took me the whole movie to put my finger on it, but his performance is touched with possibly unintentional shades of Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood: whatever his inspiration, he struck just the right balance of menace and charm. I can think of no reason why Irons is not cast in more westerns. But again, his is a story of missed opportunity: the classic bad guy, yes, almost cartoonishly so, and his motivations and history are barely hinted at.

All things considered, Appaloosa is for what it sets out to be an absolute winner. It is brightly paced and plotted, with the requisite amount of firearm showdowns that are never belabored, and a wonderful cast of characters whose self-contained identities, and volatile comminglings, always surprise and entertain. It is only that it gives one a taste of something more, then draws back its hand, and takes up again its more modest intentions. Appaloosa is a very good film. But it seems clear it had the seeds to be great.