January 28, 2005
Celebrity
Celebrity (1998), Woody Allen:
This is the Woody Allen I remember. Full of honest and light-hearted animosity towards nearly everything around him. It's not even that good, but it has that Woody Allen mouthfeel. Kenneth Branaugh, however, does not. Even though he does a pretty good job of aping Allen's mannerisms, he comes nowhere close to being a capable lead. I'd even take John Cusack's vanilla portrayal over this.
9/15
Posted by bing at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Enough
Enough (2002), Michael Apted:
I'm not sure if you can blame Michael Apted. The movie's put together well enough, doing exactly what I suppose it's meant to do. That being said, it's a pretty crappy movie. I mean, battered women can only win if they take the law into their own hands (and only, of course, if they're rich). Plus it loses points for being completely improbable; what happens after the end of the movie? Plus it loses more points for cribbing off of Eye for an Eye. And Sleeping with the Enemy.
5/15
Posted by bing at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
The Lion in Winter
The Lion in Winter (1968), Anthony Harvey:
Apparently the guy who wrote the play, James Goldman is the brother of William Goldman. Good job, guys.
Peter O'Toole is always fun to watch. Katherine Hepburn and a very young Anthony Hopkins, too. The movie seems caught between the family politics route and the dysfunctional relationship, both of which are good, but they don't meld well here for whatever reason.
11/15
Posted by bing at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2005
La Strada
La Strada (1954), Frederico Fellini:
Honestly, I couldn't stand 8½. I'm sure I just wasn't ready for it, didn't know what to do with it; it's probably wasn't the best film to start with (just as The Seventh Seal was a pretty crappy Bergman starter). La Strada does provide 8½ some context. You really do get the sense of the Fellini universe, even viewing such a small slice of it.
Back to matters at hand... from other people's opinions of this movie, it seems Giulietta Masina is really what makes or breaks the movie. I really think she was amazing and thought the movie was likewise.
14/15
Posted by bing at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby (2004), Clint Eastwood:
I was definitely in the exceedingly lukewarm crowd for Mystic River, so I wasn't really sure what to expect with the eerily similar near-universal acclaim for Clint's latest feature. (Well, the Village Voice apparently hated it, but I suppose that's the contrapositive of "universal acclaim").
Anyway, I absolutely loved it. Hilary Swank anchors the terrific cast, bringing a vitality to the dangerously subtle performances of Mr. Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. That's not to say they do poorly, but they essentially are variations on stock characters; there's a limit to how far any actor can push them. The story is a nice play on the boxing-rise-to-glory theme; Eastwood does good.
I still don't get the hubbub over Mystic River. Clint Eastwood here shows a sense of emotional restraint--remarkable for the combination of sports and old men exorcising demons--which was so clearly lacking in Mystic River. I'm not sure how much of it was the combination of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, but it's just so self-indulgent.
Eastwood still has limitations as a director. He'll never be as technically sound behind the camera as, say, Ron Howard. With his emotional maturity, though, he doesn't need to be. Like his skills as composer, which no one would say are particularly masterful (and which A.O. Scott describes as "Unobtrusive"), they're more than adequate to translate his vision to the screen.
14/15
Posted by bing at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2005
Fox and his Friends
Fox and His Friends (1975), Rainer Werner Fassbinder:
My first Fassbinder and apparently one of his most straight-forward. So why are all the movies about the hard lessons of life filled with such jerks? Is that really the key to life? I definitely see the link between Sirk and Almadovar, though it's funny how much more spare Fassbinder is (at least, so far I've seen).
11/15
Posted by bing at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2005
Unforgivable Blackness
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004), Ken Burns:
Surprise, surprise. Another superbly well-crafted documentary from Ken Burns. The subject is interesting, especially since it's one not many have really heard of. On the flip side, though, it means there aren't many people really well versed on the subject. It gets a tad tedious seeing the same three talking heads, enough so that seeing the wobbly head of George Plimpton near the end is a welcome change of scenery. On a side note, I'm not sure I heard Alan Rickman more than once.
13/15
Posted by bing at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Small Time Crooks
Small Time Crooks (2000), Woody Allen:
The first of the Dreamworks Woody Allens, and from what I've heard, the best of the lot. I'm not sure I buy the put-Woody-Allen-out-to-pasture arguments because Sweet and Lowdown was one of my favorite, and that wasn't that long ago. I can't argue, though, that he hasn't lost something; the only other Allen I've seen since Lowdown was Hollywood Ending, which was an incredibly hollow exercise.
I guess on some level, you can really gauge a Woody Allen movie on the strength of the co-star. Woody's performances go through their swings, but there's a huge difference between Tea Leoni and someone like Mira Sorvino.
Here, Tracey Ullman sums up the movie perfectly. She acts her part soundly, but never really shines. Honestly, it really was a Mia Farrow role, and near the end I realized that it should've been her (nevermind she can't really do the New Jersey bimbo well.) Maybe if she were still around, this could've been really great, even with Woody Allen's admittedly diminished abilities. I really felt that this, like Hollywood Ending, wants to be a deeply personal film but comes off frivolous and without the necessary emotional investment.
8/15
Posted by bing at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2005
lazy movie recap
Anyways, here's the movies I've seen since the beginning of the New Year in doublequick time.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Wes Anderson: see comments below. 7/15
Wimbledon (2004), Richard Loncraine: ditto. 4/15
A Mighty Wind (2003), Christopher Guest: I was never a big Guest fan to begin with, but this just doesn't seem as tight as Best in Show. 7/15
Mr. 3000 (2004), Charles Stone III: Airplane movie, surprisingly unedited with strange homoerotic subtext. 5/15
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Alexander Witt: Hoped it'd be like the original, sublimely mindless entertainment. Eh. 4/15
Wall Street (1987), Oliver Stone: Everything's still a little too pat, but it's still a great monument to the 80's. 13/15
Rosemary's Baby (1968), Roman Polanski: Wasn't sure what to expect. It aged a bit for a horror movie, but as a paranoia movie it still works well. 12/15
Posted by bing at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2005
... and the rest
The top five most disappointing movies of 2004
1. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Kerry Conran:
Everything I saw on screen and in print about this movie seemed liked it would be one of my favorite movies of all time. A grand adventure starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow against an entirely CG backdrop of fighteracepunk robots. What didn't show was that Kerry Conran, while incredibly gifted with computers and production design, sucked as a director, not even pulling off the super basic things correctly.
2. Hero, Zhang Yimou:
I had been looking forward to this for close to a year when I saw the trailer and it looked absolutely astounding. Wire-fu to one-up Crouching Tiger from a director with teeth; and Jet Li to boot. The cinematography looked gorgeous, and of course it was, but it looked like it should've been one of the best (and kick-ass) movies. The movie itself, however, was merely a retread of the trailer: lots of fighting (only half of which was any good) and not much else.
3. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson:
I was setting myself up for this. The Royal Tenenbaums showed some signs of Wes resting on his laurels, but I had just re-watched it recently and a lot of my quibbles disappeared. Aquatic continued the trend. It never really came alive for me; I noticed a couple things lifted directly from the previous films and the great parts were few and far between (though the soundtrack is, as always, magnificent). Emily really liked it, so I guessed there's always hope.
4. Wimbledon, Richard Loncraine:
Ok, I didn't expect it to be good, but it had Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany and a connection (apparently very tenuous) to that brilliant if inconsistent English cabal that keeps churning out good product. What came out was something close to the incompetence of Sky Captain; even the director of Resident Evil: Apocalypse had some idea of what movie he was making. This was a terrible jumble of sports movie and romantic comedy tidbits without making any sense.
5. A Very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet:
I really thought Jeunet would be perfect for this. Instead his sprawling, loose nature gets caught up in the necessarily intricate WWI mystery. It even seems to make the movie less lush, which is a terrible shame.
Posted by bing at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
Kickin' off the new year
So I'm a little late and the site is still in progress. I keep having to re-learn MovableType and need to finish cribbing off www.kottke.org.
Anyway, here's my recap of the last year.
My top ten movies of 2004
1. Spider-man 2, Sam Raimi:
The perfect comic-book movie. It had by far the best action of any movie I've seen all year and all the humor, wit and style you'd expect from Sam Raimi. He completely nailed the tone.
2. Dogville, Lars von Trier:
Lars von Trier, you're so angry. He dives headlong into his own style, but comes out with an incredibly mature effort (I'd say his most, but I've only seen Dancer in the Dark). His actual message is a little suspect, but the strength of his telling is what counts.
3. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, Ki-duk Kim:
An almost perfectly crafted film that lacks only in scale. Of course, there's only so much you can do with a parable without going to the lengths of #2 above, but Ki-duk Kim does it all.
4. The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci:
Able to be completely giddy about film while still acknowledging what it accomplishes in the end in the face of the real world. Bertolucci shamefully flatters us from the start, but tempers it with both the earnest love of movies and the aforementioned maturity at the end.
5. The Incredibles, Brad Bird:
Doesn't quite displace Nemo as my favorite Pixar, but it's up there. Once again, it's the mix of rock solid storytelling and gorgeous CG, but (as no one in the industry apparently can figure out) it's the former which makes it a true success. The CG's very good, of course--the hair effects having the most improvement.
6. Sideways, Alexander Payne:
I'm sorry A.O. Scott feels that way, though I suppose it's not hard to be overrated when you can hear the mass salivation of critics across the nation. At least, before Million Dollar Baby came out. I loved it, though, and thought it was everything they said it was.
7. Dawn of the Dead, Zach Snyder:
It's not as good as the original, but it's the most fun I've had in the theaters all year.
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Alfonso Cuaron:
Handcuffed by Chris Columbus, Cuaron did everything he could while still allowing the franchise to survive. I wish he could have thrown away the kids as easily as the lacksidaisical production design attitude.
9. Primer, Shane Carruth:
If this had a real budget this could have been an all-time great--or it could have tripped over itself terribly. I have the feeling this was Mr. Carruth's one great idea, so we'll never really find out.
10. There are lots of other good movies I've seen this year, but none I loved enough to say it deserved this last spot. I guess Collateral would get it by default, but I'm doubting how well it'd do on rewatching. Movies of 2004 I still have to see are: Before Sunset, The Sea Inside, Garden State, The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Control Room, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Bad Education, Vera Drake, Spartan, Friday Night Lights, Fahrenheit 9/11 among others, so any of those will fill the gap, and I expect they will.
Posted by bing at 05:10 PM | Comments (2)