Jonathan Demme created a beautiful celebration of magic and love and life with this movie. The best moments were built outside of plot intricacies but instead summoned out of moments of joy, music, dancing, emotion, and mania.
Jenny Lumet's screenplay can be a bit too obvious and that's what keeps it short of perfect, however, the cast of wonderfully unique faces, and the actors behind those expressions, manage to shuffle the screenplay into dark corners that put the brakes on the celebration at hand. Are you having a good time? Good. Here's another melodramatic downer before you can go back to the nuptial festivities. I kinda like it.
Run to see this if you love movies where you feel you're immersed in their world, where you know everybody there, where you are instantly transported from the darkness of the theater or the comfort of a living room. Very moving stuff.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 01, 2009
MILK
MILK isn't a very good movie and lamentably it isn't a Gus Van Sant film from any auteur standpoint. This is Dustin Lance Black's movie, as was written in every advertisement I've seen, and as his schmaltzy, TV movie screenplay has trumpeted to high heaven with every scene. Everything about MILK reeks of facsimile affection and rainbow coloured cheddar.
Now, I've seen the documentary THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HARVEY MILK and it did more for me and for those interested in his life because it didn't reduce his turbulent love life into soap opera or explain the achievements he earned in a "check off the list" string of sequences. I kept asking myself, is this Hollywood's poor excuse to pedestal some kind of gay martyr? The movie merely expects you to see Milk as a 'great man' without trying. They mention it once in the movie- Milk was great because used politics as a soapbox for equality. Unfortunately for cinema, he didn't do it in any spectacular way, and even if he didn't the movie sure as hell didn't do anything to pronounce that. It's a movie about a man who made speeches and loved men, and sure that may be enough, maybe even great, but it's all in the execution. The direction here fails.
Be wary of any movie where a crippled boy calls at two calculated points in the film to illustrate how Milk has affected his followers. Forget the film that swells up the music as the deceased is brought back to life with a speech he gave before his death just as the credits pop up. Run away from a film that goes back to a scene from the beginning after his murder to make the lines from that first scene appear 'prophetic' or 'transcendental'. There are no lessons here we don't know of or any truths mixed in the glowing whites of the film's photography. Except that Van Sant can continue to show he can make ridiculous Hollywood films when he feels like it and that this is a film that ignores a very important bit of foreshadowing, and you'll notice it when you see the movie, it's this: finish the 'opera' after the fat lady sings.
Now, I've seen the documentary THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HARVEY MILK and it did more for me and for those interested in his life because it didn't reduce his turbulent love life into soap opera or explain the achievements he earned in a "check off the list" string of sequences. I kept asking myself, is this Hollywood's poor excuse to pedestal some kind of gay martyr? The movie merely expects you to see Milk as a 'great man' without trying. They mention it once in the movie- Milk was great because used politics as a soapbox for equality. Unfortunately for cinema, he didn't do it in any spectacular way, and even if he didn't the movie sure as hell didn't do anything to pronounce that. It's a movie about a man who made speeches and loved men, and sure that may be enough, maybe even great, but it's all in the execution. The direction here fails.
Be wary of any movie where a crippled boy calls at two calculated points in the film to illustrate how Milk has affected his followers. Forget the film that swells up the music as the deceased is brought back to life with a speech he gave before his death just as the credits pop up. Run away from a film that goes back to a scene from the beginning after his murder to make the lines from that first scene appear 'prophetic' or 'transcendental'. There are no lessons here we don't know of or any truths mixed in the glowing whites of the film's photography. Except that Van Sant can continue to show he can make ridiculous Hollywood films when he feels like it and that this is a film that ignores a very important bit of foreshadowing, and you'll notice it when you see the movie, it's this: finish the 'opera' after the fat lady sings.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Happy Go Lucky
HAPPY GO LUCKY is the only other film I've seen from Mike Leigh and while I thought he was some down in the dirt cynic, because of NAKED, he's shown me with this picture that he grasps the full spectrum of day to day emotions.
His characters are as quirky as they were in NAKED but it goes to show that a great outlook on life they can be infectiously cheery whereas when cast in a dark light they are obnoxious. Poppy and her friends teach, laugh, and never let anything get them down. Isn't that great? Everyone else is repulsed by their unfaltering joy and yet they smile and move on. What a gift, I can't think of any talent more gracious than that.
The only character that seems to have bled in from the depths of darkness is Scott the driving instructor, who is filled with so much rage, that we resign in belief that it's too late for him. If only he'd had a social worker when he was a kid. O, there's a scene where a social worker, who Poppy fancies, helps out a troubled kid. Nice way of hinting at trouble at home being the reason for our unhappiness there, eh, Mike Leigh?
The whole flick is like if a chick Inspector Clousaeau stumbled out of fantasy land and into the world of angry, troubled, unhappy people. HAPPY GO LUCKY wonders how someone so "up" sees us. Do they pity our anger? Does it get them down? What the hell is all of this about anyway? In Poppy's case, she takes it as she comes and understands, never mind pity- it's too down for her isn't it? You won't find Mike Leigh trying to give you the answer to happiness or why we're so upset. He's only painting a character who will guide us to poke fun at ourselves and hopefully, if she charmed us right, we'll be uplifted.
His characters are as quirky as they were in NAKED but it goes to show that a great outlook on life they can be infectiously cheery whereas when cast in a dark light they are obnoxious. Poppy and her friends teach, laugh, and never let anything get them down. Isn't that great? Everyone else is repulsed by their unfaltering joy and yet they smile and move on. What a gift, I can't think of any talent more gracious than that.
The only character that seems to have bled in from the depths of darkness is Scott the driving instructor, who is filled with so much rage, that we resign in belief that it's too late for him. If only he'd had a social worker when he was a kid. O, there's a scene where a social worker, who Poppy fancies, helps out a troubled kid. Nice way of hinting at trouble at home being the reason for our unhappiness there, eh, Mike Leigh?
The whole flick is like if a chick Inspector Clousaeau stumbled out of fantasy land and into the world of angry, troubled, unhappy people. HAPPY GO LUCKY wonders how someone so "up" sees us. Do they pity our anger? Does it get them down? What the hell is all of this about anyway? In Poppy's case, she takes it as she comes and understands, never mind pity- it's too down for her isn't it? You won't find Mike Leigh trying to give you the answer to happiness or why we're so upset. He's only painting a character who will guide us to poke fun at ourselves and hopefully, if she charmed us right, we'll be uplifted.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wendy and Lucy
I can't believe this movie was made in the "recession" climate that has enveloped the independent and mainstream Hollywood scene. Okay, maybe made, since the story is simple, and I imagine Michelle Williams made concessions, but WENDY AND LUCY's distribution is a miracle.
Kelly Reichardt has made a masterpiece about what it must feel like to be a young person in a strange nation trying to overcome an economic downturn. This film is the gentle breeze that whisked off the violent storm that was INTO THE WILD. Fuck, after seeing this I thought about all of my friends suffering months without a job, with fucked up cars, with a dog we can't take care of, not knowing what the hell is next- I know it has to do with me, too, but what about everybody else?
There are no fingers pointed at anybody in this film. Societies rules are bizarre: the fixed prices, the unjust self-righteousness, the inability to park here or sleep there. Yet it's the way things have been set up in America: we're born to be pushed around or be confined. We have to be made examples of if we live outside the dotted line that we're expected to. People can be kind, sure, but in life it's hardly ever as grandiose as something at the end of Tom Sawyer, or being given shelter by a kind family, in other words, there is no rich old tycoon to rescue you. You'll get seven bucks from a security guard at best. We, the middle class, are so strapped that all we can give is a kind gesture. What are we supposed to do with that aside from smile and nod and move on?
It's not that there's no hope. There is. Wendy in the movie is crafty in her own way. Smart people survive. They hum. O, the humming. The humming in the movie is probably the hypnotic tune the madman on the pier in PIERROT LE FOU was talking about. There you go. We have a goal, in Wendy's case it's Alaska, this ray of hope, and we're faced with so many obstacles, so all we can do is hum.
WENDY AND LUCY will be known by those who see it, and have lived what the film depicts, as a staple of these times. It also features a very cute dog.
Kelly Reichardt has made a masterpiece about what it must feel like to be a young person in a strange nation trying to overcome an economic downturn. This film is the gentle breeze that whisked off the violent storm that was INTO THE WILD. Fuck, after seeing this I thought about all of my friends suffering months without a job, with fucked up cars, with a dog we can't take care of, not knowing what the hell is next- I know it has to do with me, too, but what about everybody else?
There are no fingers pointed at anybody in this film. Societies rules are bizarre: the fixed prices, the unjust self-righteousness, the inability to park here or sleep there. Yet it's the way things have been set up in America: we're born to be pushed around or be confined. We have to be made examples of if we live outside the dotted line that we're expected to. People can be kind, sure, but in life it's hardly ever as grandiose as something at the end of Tom Sawyer, or being given shelter by a kind family, in other words, there is no rich old tycoon to rescue you. You'll get seven bucks from a security guard at best. We, the middle class, are so strapped that all we can give is a kind gesture. What are we supposed to do with that aside from smile and nod and move on?
It's not that there's no hope. There is. Wendy in the movie is crafty in her own way. Smart people survive. They hum. O, the humming. The humming in the movie is probably the hypnotic tune the madman on the pier in PIERROT LE FOU was talking about. There you go. We have a goal, in Wendy's case it's Alaska, this ray of hope, and we're faced with so many obstacles, so all we can do is hum.
WENDY AND LUCY will be known by those who see it, and have lived what the film depicts, as a staple of these times. It also features a very cute dog.
Ghost Town
Usually, the mere utterance of David Koepp would make me sling my computer at a horde of innocent puppies, or something crazily senseless like that, but lawd did this movie make me laugh. [Anyone who's seen the Koepp (who knows how that's pronounced) penned Indy 4 or War of the Worlds (who knows why Spielberg keeps hiring this idiot) relates to this urge to destroy when he's mentioned]
There's nothing particularly mentionable about the predictable, formulaic, Hollywoodesque plot and characters of the film- that goes without saying doesn't it? You've seen the trailer. The thing is, if you cast Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, Greg Kinnear, and especially Ricky, then you have a very funny movie.
It's that simple.
There's nothing particularly mentionable about the predictable, formulaic, Hollywoodesque plot and characters of the film- that goes without saying doesn't it? You've seen the trailer. The thing is, if you cast Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, Greg Kinnear, and especially Ricky, then you have a very funny movie.
It's that simple.