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March 31, 2005

Salesman

Salesman (1969), Albert and David Maysles:
I don't think it's possible to write something about this movie without mentioning Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glen Ross, so I'll get it over quick. A documentary about four door-to-door bible salesmen peddling their wares to the unwilling. It sounds terribly interesting, but I didn't find it so. For me, it didn't speak as much of that time, like you needed to be of that time for it to take its full effect.
6/15

Posted by bing at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2005

Westworld

Westworld (1973), Michael Crichton:
70's sci-fi = extremely homosexual, as if Logan's Run didn't prove it.

Two buddies with great moustaches take a trip to Westworld, a resort populated by robots for the ultimate getaway, full of danger and meaningful glances. They meet robot Yul Brynner, exchange meaningful glances, and repeat.
3/15

Posted by bing at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2005

The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show (1971), Peter Bogdanovich:
Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd are so young, and that's not even mentioning Ellen Burstyn.

A while back I wanted to see what this whole Cinema Paradiso thing was all about. I had heard such great things about it and it turns out to be cloyingly sweet, pandering to the audience about how much it loves movies. There aren't as many movies in the Last Picture Show, but it has a reverence for cinema that Paridiso just didn't get. The first shots of Cybil Shepherd or Cloris Leachman are all little monuments to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

And it's not even really about movies.
13/15

Posted by bing at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Night Moves

Night Moves (1975), Arthur Penn:
I've heard a lot of good things about this, a Gene Hackman dectective "thriller". I didn't find it particularly remarkable and it seems to have been forgotten if it weren't for the very young James Woods and Melanie Griffith.

Things are very bright, and the mystery is not that compelling. As more and more people get roped into the conspiracy, I felt as one might when eggs are added to the shopping list. I'd saw the hightlight of the film is when someone gets hit by the pontoon of a seaplane.
4/15

Posted by bing at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2005

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), James Ivory:
My first Merchant-Ivory deal and it's pretty much what I expected it to be: a meticulous but otherwise unstylized movie with its dollhouse figures and politics. Paul Newman is the stodgy, Republican patriarch in pre-WWII America, resisting the outward urges of his wife and three children. I enjoyed it when I was watching it--it's very well crafted--but when I turned away, I felt utterly no emotional attachment. It seems like a very cold movie, to no fault of the characters or actors. The characters are refreshing turns on a familiar theme and Newman, Joanne Woodward and Blythe Danner play them warmly. Unforunately, I had to miss the last half-hour, but the movie's so even-keeled I doubt much changes in the end.
8/15

**Update**, I caught the rest of the movie over the weekend, and you know what, it ended really well. It has this air of flippancy that I just realized is in the whole movie hidden by its straightfaced delivery. Maybe I just really liked the end and forgot how unenthused I was about the rest of the movie. I don't know.

Posted by bing at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)

Days of Wine and Roses

Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Blade Edwards:
The lovechild between Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and an AA brochure. Jack Lemmon plays a free-wheeling PR guy who convinces his wife they'd have much more fun if they were both drunks. Hilarity, of course, ensues. It's kinda weird, because the movie begins in amost the exact universe as The Apartment, where the pressures of Jack Lemmon's workplace are driving him ragged, but in a funny way. The Apartment was pretty dark to begin with, but when this makes its turn, it's even more disorienting.

Besides Lemmon's excellent performance, I'm not sure there's much else here. It's very much has a Movie-of-the-week mentality, showing the terrors of affliction and educating kindly about the available remedies with a dead serious "No, I'm really serious" tone.
9/15

Posted by bing at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2005

Written on the Wind

Written on the Wind (1956), Douglas Sirk:
Sirk as the father of the soap opera? I can see it here. It's not the completely indulgent pulpy goodness of Imitation of Life; instead it's a well-balanced love triangle/quadrangle that unfolds perfectly. Lauren Bacall is a little awkward, caught halfway between sultry and stately, but she plays excellently between Rock Hudson and Robert Stack.
14/15

Posted by bing at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Sydney Pollack:
A movie about a Depression-era dance marathon where the contestants dance for days on end for three meals a day and a modest prize. It's Midnight Cowboy-lite, a faux-nostalgic view of how the American Dream can slip away so easily, complete with flashbacks/flashforwards.

Sydney Pollack builds a much smaller movie, trapped in the claustrophobic dance hall with its inhabitants a microcosm of society. (Also, Red Buttons still alive? Who knew?) It's not as incisive as Cowboy is, but it's certainly well made and worth watching.
12/15

Posted by bing at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2005

The Station Agent

The Station Agent (2004), Thomas McCarthy:
So I guess this is penance for seeing Peter Dinklage and not remembering his name or having seen his movie. Also, it's about New Jersey, so I couldn't not see it.

It's funny and touching and Patricia Clarkson still plays grating characters (and well). Thomas McCarthy said he wrote the script specifically for these three actors and I'm not sure it would work otherwise, the chemistry is so good. Raven Goodwin is one of the best child actors I've seen in a while and how has Michelle Williams stayed hidden for so long? I got a little annoyed when the film got serious, not because it did--I understand the need to push the characters--but it seemed like it did because it felt it had to, not to say anything important about any of them.
12/15

Posted by bing at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

The African Queen

The African Queen (1951), John Huston:
A family favorite of Emily and her mom and I had never seen it, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so (yes, this was two weeks ago. I'm falling behind).

I had no idea Humphrey Bogart could be filmed in color, but there he was, and after my unpleasant experience with Katharine Hepburn, she proved enjoyable.

As the grandfather of the Indiana Jones movies, there's no way I couldn't love this. Bogart and Hepburn play their roles with relish in the tropical surroundings and hiding from the Germans. Thumbs up for the hippos.
15/15

Posted by bing at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2005

Rocky IV

Rocky IV (1985), Sylvester Stallone:
The Rockies really do seem to follow a standard progression. This builds on the goofiness of Rocky III and expands the training montage/fight to epic proportions (half the movie, by my calculations). One thing I noticed is that they always seem to start the movie with clips from the last. I caught the beginning of V (which I haven't seen before) and sure enough, there's Drago. Maybe this is Stallone's masterpiece, all part of a grand ten hour affair. Maybe then he'd've kept the robot around.
9/15

Posted by bing at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2005

Millions

Millions (2004), Danny Boyle:
So a tv spot for this attached the word "visionary" to Danny Boyle, which I would say is a tad bit strong. I do admire him; though his movies haven't all been good, they've been interesting and, for the most part, in different ways. I mean, I really liked A Life Less Ordinary. I guess that means Boyle is the anti-Mamet, whom I don't really like, but who makes a consistently good film.

I was really excited about this after seeing the wonderful trailer. It looked like a perfect stylish and subversive children's movie, something like the vastly underrated Babe 2: Pig in the City.

It's stylish, and a little subversive (Danny Boyle hates Mormons. Who knew?), but it's just not all there. I had hoped that 28 Days Later... meant that Boyle finally learned how to finish out a movie. Millions has a great start, building themes of childhood wonder, tragedy and morality. The wonderful rhythm breaks down at the end to a sticky mess as Boyle retreats to safe territory.
10/15

Posted by bing at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

March 18, 2005

Oldboy

Oldboy (2003), Chan-wook Park:
Dear Gothamist,

Thank you for screening; watching movies in a private showing always seems more exciting. I was a little put off when you gave me an address at which to watch the movie, but did not even say 'Hi' when I got there. It was a little weird how no one checked to see if any of us belonged there, but I suppose if you're OK with that, you're OK with that. (Also, I'm sorry I didn't say 'Hi' to the guitarist from the Magnetic Fields. Cat and Girl says everyone's famous now to 1500 people and I'm not on his list)

The movie came with a lot of hype (or is it buzz?), so I was expecting something pretty awesome but not as good as everyone keeps saying (then again, does anyone take what AICN says at face value?). This is my first Chan-wook Park film, so I wasn't sure exactly what I was getting into, but I figured it would be ultra-violent, witty and elaborately structured . That's pretty much what I got. A little less violence, wit and much, much more elaborate than I could have imagined. There were a few times I felt it got over-clever verging on stupid, but I suppose that'll happen.

Anyway, thanks for having us over. You should visit sometime.
11/15

Posted by bing at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

Fletch

Fletch (1985), Michael Ritchie:
This is a fan-favorite of a bunch of my friends, but it was lost on me. Chevy Chase I feel can be funny at times, but he was far more unfunny in this standard plucky detective story.
3/15

Posted by bing at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

Zelig

Zelig (1983), Woody Allen:
I'm gearing up for disappointment for Melinda and Melinda, so it was a pleasant surprise when Zelig was on IFC. I remember reading a lot of the contemporary critics saying that this would be Allen's masterpiece, and it's definitely not. It's terribly funny at times, of the whimsical variety, and the technical achievement must've been astounding at the time.

I see how this fits in his artist-angst trilogy with Stardust Memories and The Purple Rose of Cairo but whatever the earnestness of emotion, it didn't really have that urgency. Myabe it's deliberate considering the documentary format, but I don't know.
13/15

Posted by bing at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne (1995), Taylor Hackford:
Half-baked Stephen King adaptation. Most of its failings seem to come from the source material. I haven't read the book, but parts of it are eerily similar to Gerald's Game.

Like King's other non-supernatural works, this is mainly character-driven and for the most part, they fail here. Kathy Bates is good, as always. Christopher Plummer does the best he can with his two-dimensional role. Jennifer Jason Leigh butchers what she has. I honestly kept seeing Stacy Hamilton every time she tried to emote.
4/15

Posted by bing at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2005

Croupier

Croupier (1998), Mike Hodges:
Poor Mike Hodges. Makes one masterpiece in Get Carter and thirty years later people don't even remember that because of some jagoff named Sylvester Stallone.

Let's hope Hodges can get back in the fray. I haven't seen his latest (which seems suspciously similar to Get Carter), but Croupier was a lot of fun. Hodges pulls his best David Lynch impression to make a fuzzy, dream-like journey through the the hidden side of society, but a surprisingly emotionless one.
11/15

Posted by bing at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)

Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby (1938), Howard Hawks:
I just don't know about Katharine Hepburn. I know it's mostly her character here, but she's just so grating. Cary Grant was a little too frenetic for me, odd because I really liked him in Arsenic and Old Lace. He doesn't play the bookish type well, unlike Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire. Maybe it's just the screwball form I don't like. I loved His Girl Friday, but not any of the others I've seen yet.
6/15

Posted by bing at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2005

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead (1985), George Romero:
What a disppointing finish to the zombie trilogy, dispite Mr. Romero's assertion that he considers it his best. None of the three really get A-movie treatment, but where Night used sharp human interactions and Dawn whimsical commentary on commercialism, this seems content to wallow in B-movie values. The characters are stock horror types, the dialogue is just an extention of that. The movie is just a vehicle for the (admittedly great) zombie freakout at the end.
5/15

Posted by bing at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2005

Trust

Trust (1990), Hal Hartley:
I'd never heard of this Hal Hartley guy, but it seems he (and this film) was pretty big in the "indie" scene of the early nineties, back when it was truly independent. The only names that seemed to have survived are yet-to-be-discovered Edie Falco and Martin "Pastor Skip from Saved!" Donovan.

It really has the feel of a film school short--dialogue-driven, human-centered, measuredly-quirky. It's good though, and manages to keep steady for its two hours. It's not fully sustainable, so it drops at times, but it's very good.
13/15

Posted by bing at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

Breaking the Waves

Breaking the Waves (1996), Lars von Trier:
I received a tip about our school's undergraduate library and their bountiful video collection and sure enough, there it was. Thank you, University trustees for deciding we students need Terminator 3 to facilitate our education. This solves my problem with Netflix in that out-of-print discs soon disappear from circulation because of extraordinary wear and tear.

Anyway, who knew that Lars could be so tender? In the two sacrificial lamb ones I've seen, Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, he showed love towards his heroines, but seemingly only to break our hearts so thoroughly later. Maybe he hadn't cultivated that mean streak early. I don't know.

Emily Watson is by far the most sympathetic character of his I've seen (she's by far the best actor I've seen in von Trier's works, too, and he's had a bunch of good ones). He never completely forsakes her, follows the same basic arc as La Strada. For all the world's abuse, we know her spirit will emerge unscathed. By the same token, the rest of the world isn't really mean, just uncapable of understanding. It's hard to hate any of the potential bad guys. Everyone's just playing his part, and there's a happy ending afer everything is finished.

My first analogy was going to be to the passion play, but I'm not it's a good one. Breaking the Waves is, despite whatever forced metaphors, highly spiritual. It reminded me a lot of Fanny and Alexander with its pervasive and everyday presence of God, even if they don't outwardly invoke Him. I guess where Dogville was the Old Testament God of smiting and retribution, Breaking the Waves was the New Testament humanity and salvation. I'm not sure how forced that is, either.
15/15

Posted by bing at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2005

Blow Out

Blow Out (1981), Brian De Palma:
So The Conversation was one of my favorite movies, ever, and Blow-up I liked a lot, too, so I figured I might as well check out the De Palma/Travolta remake of the latter. Strangely enough, it was one of Pauline Kael's glowing positive reviews in the early 80's.

I kinda don't understand what she says about its "dreamlike clarity". She says it transcends genre, but I'm not so sure about that. De Palma is pretty good at suspense, but time has shown that a lot of his artistic touches seem pretty gimmicky.

I'm wondering if Collateral will suffer the same fate. Reading Kael's review gave me flashbacks of Manohla Dargis's review of Mann's latest. I really liked it, but I could see it suffering the same fate.
6/15

Posted by bing at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2005

Bitter Victory

Bitter Victory (1957), Nicholas Ray:
I was wondering what Ray would do with a WWII drama, stripped of the gender play and that lush palette he seems to love so much. Of course, having Richard Burton is always good for some sparks.

Burton is an officer, alongside Chad Jurgens on a secret mission in the deserts of Libya. Jurgens happens also to be the husband of Burton's old flame. Their dynamic provides the driving force for an otherwise sloppy war film. Ray doesn't really have the requisite technician's touch to juggle the various war setpieces without get lost at times. Near the end, when it's just about the two leads, is when Ray gets into his element and things get interesting.
8/15

Posted by bing at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2005

Rocky I-III

Rocky (1976), John G. Avildsen:
Rocky II (1979), Sylvester Stallone:
Rocky III (1982), Sylvester Stallone:
Rocky III and IV were childhood favorites before we discovered Aliens. It's been years since I've seen them, though.

The exposition parts of the Rockies are pretty weak. They work best in the original, but it's all just prelude to the training montage/fight scene. Ok, that's not true. Rocky has a pretty character. He starts being more of a caricature later on in the series, but for the first (and parts of the second), you really get the feel of who he is beyond "ADRIAAAAANNNN..." Well, II and III try to add character development, but it just ends up being stupid.
13,10,11/15

Posted by bing at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)

Blood Work

Blood Work (2002), Clint Eastwood:
How the hell did Eastwood go from this to Mystic River in a year? Not that I liked as much as others, but it's still light-years beyond this.

Ok, so he didn't write it. The script is definitely the source of its terribleness. For all the acclaim Eastwood got for playing an aging hero, he still could have made this suck less, I'm sure. More twists is not how to make good crime dramas.
3/15

Posted by bing at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)

Animal House (TV edit)

Animal House (1978), John Landis:
I'm so sorry. I've been meaning watch this and couldn't help myself when it came on tv.

It made no sense, having been ripped of half its scenes. Ah well.

Posted by bing at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2005

Gunner Palace

Gunner Palace (2004), Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein:
A very nice documentary, if only for the uniqueness of perspective--a ground-level view of the soldiers in Iraq. I'd say that Three Kings is similar, but that doesn't come close to showing the monotony of day-to-day operations. Swimming in the pool, patroling the streets, following leads to weapon caches, repeat.

In some way, it could have well been the result of a camcorder. You see the soldiers' daily culture alongside their successes and frustrations. The footage is set (mostly) to the soldiers' own guitar, beatbox and freestyle compositions.

I'm still trying to figure things out. It's very interesting, but the ninety minutes go by really slowly. I feel pretty guilty about saying it's not exciting, because it's not supposed to be entertainment, but it's still supposed to be compelling. How do you show the routineness of their day-to-day without boring the audience? I don't know.

The makers definitely have a bone to pick, which is a little unsettling. It doesn't really get in the way much, but it started off on the IRONIC! title of "four months after the end of major combat operations" and I totally lost step with the movie when it used Ride of the Valkyries behind a weapons raid. C'mon, you don't need that.

Like I said, though, it doesn't interfere with what's going on. The soldiers are themselves so far removed from the politics and upper echelon of decision-makes that there's not really any room for anything beyond a pervasive animus.
10/15

Posted by bing at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2005

Dan Rather Shout Out

To commemorate Dan Rather's last day on the job, here's an old favorite:
The Evolution Control Committee - Rocked by Rape

Posted by bing at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

Frailty

Frailty (2001), Bill Paxton:
Yet another step in Bill Paxton's journey to set himself apart from Bill Pullman.

The two kids were terrible. I know that they can't all be Dakota Fanning, but they don't have to be good, just transparent.

The movie has some really good touches, playing off the genre without being predictable. The kids, though, are just one of a number of things that throw the movie off balance. Alas, Mr. Paxton, I think a lot of it is you (as director).
7/15

Posted by bing at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not (1944), Howard Hawks:
Ok, so they just wanted to remake Casablanca, but it's all about Lauren Bacall. Bogart's Bogart, Walter Brennan is the same coot he always plays. There's some Vichy guys. Something about a resistance.

Seriously. Lauren Bacall.
10/15

Posted by bing at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2005

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Amy Heckerling:
Yeah, so I hadn't seen this before. I feel like I must've been deprived growing up without Phoebe Cates' breasts. I did, however, get enough Judge Reinhold from Beverly Hills Cop.

It plays halfway between a bittersweet John Hughes teen comedy (though it predates all of them) and a bittersweet Cameron Crowe human drama, which is not really a good thing. I missed Nic "Coppola" and Anthony Edwards the first time through but thank you DVD featurette for pulling every frame in which either of them appeared. Also, Amy Heckerling is scary-looking.
8/15

Posted by bing at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2005

The Element of the Crime

The Element of the Crime (1984), Lars von Trier:
Dogville was easily one of my favorite movies from last year. I'm still not sure completely how I feel about Lars, but it's nice to have a director who takes risks but a) knows what to do with them and b) knows enough not to go overboard.

This is his first, and it's at its heart a play on Reed and Welles' Third Man: a detective trying to hunt down a mysterious criminal, Harry Grey (Ok, subtlety isn't his strong point).

What makes it worthwhile, though, is the horribly dystopic version of Europe he paints. Like Alphaville and Blade Runner, it's a universe of familiar elements taken to a logical extreme. Instead of the technology of the 20th century, though, it's more akin to a dark and earthy middle-ages.

So the rest of the movie isn't actually that good. Lars skews precious a lot (giving himself the role "Schmuck of Ages" e.g.) and it starts unravelling from the start, but there's some great great stuff in here. It finishes well, at least.
9/15

Posted by bing at 07:57 PM | Comments (0)

Buffalo '66

So I finally took the bait on those Esuvee commercials and visited the website. I had assumed it was secretly by the car industry trying to make a viral-like marketing thing, but apparently it's the collective state attorneys general financed by Ford settlement money. It was just so slick I didn't expect it at all to be government. They might finally be realizing not to skimp on advertising. Way to go, guys.

Buffalo '66 (1998), Vincent Gallo:
"Hey, that kinda looks like Anjelica Huston"

Vincent Gallo's seeming tribute to home and exorcising demons of the past. Buffalo is an appropriate analogy considering their Super Bowl failures (Gallo doesn't seem much like a football guy, but he also doesn't seem much like a Republican, though I guess he's not the most scrutible of people).

The movie is pretty in line with what I've heard. Artsy, pretentious and ultimately compelling. The scene where Ben Gazzara serenades Christina Ricci is easily my favorite of the movie. (Speaking of, I've really never been a fan, but Christina Ricci's so hot in this). Gallo gets a little too Gallo at times, though; I know with such a personal and self-made movie, there's going to be a lot of him, but on the whole, he keeps himself in balance.
13/15

Posted by bing at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2005

Last Tango in Paris

Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci:
I still can't get into Marlon Brando. He always just creeped me out. At least here, he's supposed to be that way.

Emily had a really good point in that her two loves are played by Marlon Brando and Jean-Pierre Léaud, arguably the pillars of American and French cinema. Considering his tribute to French New Wave, I'm sure if on the off chance it wasn't intentional from the start, he must've been at some point. Each presents his own version of love, Brando this raw and unsettling sexuality and Leaud romantic but distant behind his camera.

Brando's still creepy, though.
11/15

Posted by bing at 05:56 PM | Comments (1)

March 03, 2005

The Falcon and the Snowman

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), John Schlesinger:
Heaven help me. After his embarrassing presentation at the Oscars, I inadvertantly reward Sean Penn by pulling this and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's a Sean Penn lovefest.

I put this on my queue after Woody Allen mentioned it in Celebrity. I'd been wanting to see more good spy dramas so Woody's recommendation seemed as good as any. After watching it, I see where this fits into his idea that modern celebrity encompasses any number of dubious heroes, but it's not very good.

It plays more like a drug movie than an espionage movie, running from the law rather from the Government (with the capital 'G') as the deals get larger and larger. Considering the subject material, Schlesinger even plays that relatively straight. He toys a bit with the idea of espionage as protest, setting up promising ideological clashes from the start, and then promptly drops it. The only fruit it bears (and probably the best thing to come from the movie) is when Penn's being arrested outside the Soviet embassy in Mexico: "I'm not a spy! I'm Republican!"

Schlesinger also hesistantly tries to go the paranoia route, stealing for twenty seconds from The Conversation and seemingly ashamed enough not to bring it up anywhere else, and not for lack of opportunity.

I think either one of these routes could've made this something interesting. I know he can do it because his grubby little fingerprints are all over Midnight Cowboy and everything that made it great. Cowboy was just so brash at times and though it didn't hit on all counts, Schlesinger didn't hold anything back. This isn't bad, by any means, but it's something you'd expect from a Movie of the Week.
7/15

Posted by bing at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

Zorba the Greek

Zorba the Greek (1964), Michael Cacoyannis:
Emily's been raving about this for years now so it was a nice surprise when PBS was showing it Sunday.

I don't know. It seems to have aged badly. Anthony Quinn is ok, but he really seems to be rehashing his role from La Strada. He's a little tamer, but it's still a life-loving, selfish but attuned at some level to the needs of others. With his production credit, I'm more than certain this was his doing, consciously or not.

For the whole, it seemed (I know it's a terrible comparison) like a two-and-a-half hour episode of Perfect Strangers.
6/15

Posted by bing at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2005

Masculine Feminine

Masculine Feminine (1966), Jean-Luc Godard:
The children of Marx and Coca-Cola indeed. Between this, Garden State and Rebel, there's been a lot of teenage angst. I think this more resembles Garden State with one critical difference in that Garden State earnestly wants you to identify with its characters' trivial lives.

Godard really enjoys rubbing our noses in the utter vapidness (vapidity?) of his protagonists. Never mind that they're all beautiful people leading romantic lives as pop stars and poets. (And they are beautiful people. So far only it and The Big Sleep have achieved the perfect 1:1 ratio of female roles to beautiful women). There's a healthy dose of politics, too, but for all the talk of Communism, Brigitte Bardot is the more accessible cultural force.

Despite all the ribbing, though, Godard does love them. He gives them portrait shots that last for minutes, letting us fall for them, too. We just want them to be happy, and so does he. The movie is necessarily a reduction of reality and it realizes this fully (the movie within the movie consists entirely of a man and woman repeating "Yes." "No.", which is a pretty good proxy for the movie).

I enjoyed Band of Outsiders just a bit more, but this was also excellent. The new print looks great. I'm not sure how many screens at which it's playing and Netflix doesn't seem to have it either, but you should definitely see it.
14/15

Posted by bing at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)