My Lawyer Will Call Your Lawyer

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2010) Directed by Joann Sfar

2012-01-27T20:20:00.004+02:00

Nick:
The musical icon biography rears its head once again. In this case, Serge Gainsbourg, one would hope a movie about his life could open his wonderful music up to a wider audience. That's not to say that Serge's music is obscure, it's just that most people know he's responsible for J'taime Moi Non Plus and recognize little else of his work. Amongst the keener music enthusiast Gainsbourg's reputation as an artist of serious note has increased over the years. By the time of his death Gainsbourg had reached national hero status amongst the adoring French. Gainsbourg's passionate rebellion and casual sexism endeared him to a public who initially viewed him as a grotesque. This in itself is quite astonishing when discussing a popular writer of song, whom over a period of time, radically experimented with his sound and his idea of the conventional song. There was also the incessant smoking and then of course, there's the women.

Sfar, basing his biopic on his own graphic novel, uses some touches of surrealism throughout the movie. This mostly comes in the form of a huge puppet version of Gainsbourg (resembling The Count from Sesame Street) whom the real Gainsbourg (brilliantly portrayed by Eric Elmosnino) often converses with throughout the picture. One of the problems with Gainsbourg is the willful artiness associated with this technique, which Sfar persists on using. The first half of Gainsbourg pretty much whizzes by in a very entertaining fashion that shows Serge the artist finding his confidence as a boy in Nazi occupied France, before he gives up on painting. Choosing to peruse a career in the less credible pop world, Gainsbourg shows us how Serge, through reputation as an extraordinary writer of song, in essence becomes a 'babe magnet'. Juliette Greco, France Gall and Bridget Bardot all come into the Gainsbourg orbit. Then, he meets Jane Birkin, played by the late Lucy Gordon in her final role.

Nothing in Sfar's film looks or sounds as good as this

It's at this point that I wanted more from Gainsbourg. From the late 1960's onwards Gainsbourg's music became more interesting, a fact which Sfar loses perspective of and pretty much ignores by focussing on the personal life, albiet in a fleeting manner. This isn't helped by Gainsbourg's music being reinterpreted in the movie by actors - often flatly compared to the originals. One has to ask why? Could this be the last time this happens? I cant imagine say, Kirk Douglas re-painting Van Gogh's masterpieces in Lust For Life. Why does Sfar give the privilege with Gainsbourg's songs to Elmosnino here? It could be argued that Sfar glosses over the most interesting parts of Gainsbourg's life, whilst never quite portraying the obnoxious shit that Gainsbourg could be. Yet, despite all this, Gainsbourg has much to like about it. Mainly the performances are good, the look of the movie exquisite and the film has a certain swing which makes it entertaining. Still, Gainsbourg feels like an opportunity missed.

Astrid:
Serge Gainsbourg has been one of this household's demi-gods for years now. His holy position entails high expectations towards anything Serge related, even this movie. We could not go and see it in the cinema in Finland, because of the subtitle problem for the English speaking, so we had to wait until now.
I loved the first half of the movie. The description of Serge growing up and finding his talent was eloquently and freely made. The film employed puppetry to visualize an internal development. The movie dared to stretch the heavy demands often made on biopics to be faithful to a Reported Reality.

Unfortunately, the second half of the film dealt with the most iconic things known about Gainsbourg and as if chained by the well known names and events, the movie became stiffer and less imaginative as a result. The amazing women (Bardot and Birkin) and the descent into alcoholism and illness were presented more out of duty rather than out of inspiration. The actors playing these people were very beautiful and even managed to look a little like BB, Birkin and Serge in their day, but still, what was the point of even trying to recreate these iconic looks? Or what was the use of cramming a whole person's life story into one film, rather than making an artistically valid and whole piece of cinema?

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life ended up suffering from many of the usual biopic problems. The thought of a real living person's life and death can become (and often do) a way too restricting approach to cinema. The question of what is Real being an impossible and boring one to answer anyhow. That is why I celebrate the first half's inventiveness and hope to see more of this in films about celebrated people in the future. Also, if I want to look at the iconic images of Serge and Jane, I can refer to the documentaries and image sources, a film should never try to compete with those because it cannot.

Pierrot le Fou (1965) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

2012-01-19T10:39:00.000+02:00

Astrid:
As I have stated before in this blog, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard have an almost holy place in my cinematic heart. To see and experience life as Pierrot Le Fou is to really live – or so I have thought. That's been the innocent child-like view of mine. Cynically speaking, Godard's films from this period offer a vast visual resource pool for any young blogger wanting to tap into effortless cool. His films also offer an air of intellectualism, name dropping and they mix fairytale with essaying about art. This complexity is second nature to Godard. Who cares if anyone can follow a plot from beginning to end in some coherent linear way, at least you can congratulate yourself for recognizing at least ten names of film makers, philosophers and poets mentioned in any given Godard movie...

The reason why none of the snobbism gets to me in Pierrot Le Fou is Anna Karina with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Their acting looks like the most fun kind of playing, spontaneous and unexpected. Not only do they look amazing in their clothes and without their clothes, they have a sense of humor about themselves. Nothing is too serious. Not even this movie. This time around I didn't really care much for the plot of this film. I was bothering to try and understand what motivated the two characters, but did not come up with anything rewarding in the end. In my mind I had also mixed up a couple of other Godard films with this one and created my own story thus looking for scenes in Pierrot Le Fou that never take place.

A suspicion smoulders in my mind that maybe Godard is somewhat resentful towards his always stunning leading ladies. He seems to portray these women as cunning, deceitful, confusing, mysterious and deathly. It is always the women who drive the men to trouble bigger than they can cope with. And it is the women who stop loving the men first. Godard's attitude to women as dubious femme fatales is something I've never thought of before and now that I have started, this idea disturbs me a little.
Ultimately, I would like to remain a woman who can watch Pierrot Le Fou without too much analyzing, just for its visual impact and occasional emotional reward too.

Nick:
In the annals of looking cool with a cigarette dangling from between your lips, there have been many wannabe champions of the art. In popular song, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry and Serge Gainsbourg have all tried to master this pose. Humphrey Bogart & Elliott Gould as a certain dick called Marlowe have improved the pose compared to their rockstar counterparts. Many others have tried this look, but the undisputed king is Jean-Paul Belmondo. Just watching the fat Gauloises hang from those luscious lips is enough to make you wanna strike one up. Yummy. Sexual. It's a shame I dont do that anymore.

Godard understands the power of "Chercher La Femme" and in Pierrot le Fou he realizes that Belmondo's love for Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) like his own love for Karina is doomed. It's all over Pierrot le Fou and in the subsequent movies he directed Karina in. He's telling us you can dream about someone like that but you'll never have someone like that. Belmondo as Ferdinand, Pierrot or himself is as cool as screen males ever have been or ever will be. But he's no match for Karina. Pierrot le Fou has more ideas in it than most of popular culture combined and then some. It's still radical, sexy and pretentious. But as it gets older, Pierrot le Fou starts to resemble something even more classic in cinema. The look is spectacular in an oddly conventional way. The use of color and the cut-up soundtrack somehow recall a vintage quality.

If I were to compare this to an album I'd say it's a White Light/ White Heat or a Before Hollywood. Does that enlighten you much? A Scott 4 or New York Tendaberry perhaps? Can I make this easier for you? In these postmodern times I can suggest A River Ain't Too Much To Love or Wu-Tang Forever? Pierrot le Fou is not like these albums at all in any way. The film just leaves me with the same feeling, that's all. I'm just trying to say you should see this if you have not. Life's too short and Pierrot le Fou is one of its pleasures.

Greenberg (2010) Directed by Noah Baumbach

2012-01-17T19:58:00.000+02:00

Nick:
I was in a band once that was signed to a major record label (actually, it's something that has happened to me a couple of times in my life). On this occasion it ended in tears when the promise of something better from the label led to compromise on my part against the wishes of my band members. I lost my band (I left) directly as a consequence of said compromise (the recording of two songs). I learnt many things from this experience. Trust your band members. I'm still not sure they were right, or that I agreed with their view on the songs. Compromise and the possibility of something immaterial are no substitute for the binds that tie. Friendships were damaged (I'd like to think not permanently) and a few years' work was wasted. This was the only way possible for me to relate the character Ben Stiller plays in Greenberg.

As the Greenberg of the title, Stiller gives a note perfect performance as a former musician turned carpenter, suffering from depression in a shallow-peopled LA. Self-absorbed, narcissistic, vain, humorless and selfish Greenberg has gone through life thinking his own way is the only way. Away from his native NewYork and house sitting for his brother in LA, Greenberg tries to re-connect with his former friends (an excellent Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh). In doing so he reluctantly falls for his brother's personal assistant, the equally lost, low on self-esteem Florence (Greta Gerwig).

After a whole stream of very uncomfortable scenes, Greenberg finally offers us some redemption in the promise of love fulfilled. Baumbach handles Greenberg with an uneasy mix of comedy, seriousness and then ultimately embarrassment. A sharp, dryly witty script helps, as does James Murphy's unobtrusive soundtrack. But Stiller dominates. An awkward yet enjoyable romp.

Astrid:
I think I need to watch this film again in about six months, because I know I missed some things this time around that I would usually really appreciate. As I was watching Greenberg I was sitting on a birthing ball (a normal gym ball actually) trying quite desperately to get comfortable and failing all the time. This personal difficulty made me not focus perfectly and it added a touch too much un-comfortability to an already uncomfortable film.

The film's sense of discomfort was of course intentional and well-established. Ben Stiller's character Roger Greenberg was returning to LA from a period of hospitalization due to serious depression. He landed somewhere between what he knew of his old life and what he was about do discover. He seemed to be suffering from a catharsis of sorts – a change was taking place. A kind of mirror image of himself was reflected on the young assistant Florence (played by Greta Gerwig), who was equally lost in life, but much younger and a woman. This film played with a very genuine feeling of awkwardness all the way through, its events and shifts in characters and plot were subtle and therefore believable. Something kept me at a distance though, which might be my own fault, I know.

There was a great scene between Roger and his good friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans) where they finally told each other how they felt and had been effected by the end of their band together about a decade earlier. I have never seen a scene in a movie getting so deep into how meaningful it can be for a person to have a band (even an unsuccessful and unknown one). Those relationships are immense and what happens between the people and to the dreams the members have is crucial in life. Bands are life. There, that was a nice acknowledgement from a film.

Quien Sabe? (1966) Directed by Damiano Damiani

2012-01-13T10:24:00.001+02:00

Astrid:
It's nice to get presents that reflect the receiver and their state of being. It says plenty of good things about the giver, like that she is in tune with the person getting the gift. I gave Nick a box of rare Spaghetti Westerns for Christmas, because he always cries watching them... and because he asked for the box. OK, sometimes it's annoying how exactly he knows what he would like for a present. He doesn't go for the element of surprise, yet, he always thinks he knows what I want without asking me!

Anyway, I extended my niceness to include sitting through one of the films. Nick chose Quien Sabe? because it was supposedly less violent than the others in the box. The movie, like most of this genre I've seen, looked very good. It was a pleasure to watch just for the detail in costumes and the camera work. The story itself was pretty simple and offered no surprises or really deep thoughts or even great lines. Gian Maria Volonte played the leading Mexican outlaw whom Lou Castel's character came down to exploit in order to kill the leader of the revolution. A kind of loving relationship forms quickly between these two characters – the savage and the noble man – sort of a classic from Italian gay porn.

When Nick watches these films, he is right at home. He even looks a little like the characters onscreen when I gaze at his direction during an extra violent scene. He morphs into the action and his emotions are illustrated by the Morricone (was it really?) soundtrack. That's how much he is a Spaghetti-Western-kind-of-guy. Despite some effort, I'll never be a true fan of this genre. I have developed a respect for some aspects and enough knowledge to contextualize the genre in cinema history, but I have not found the pleasure of submission here.

Nick:
It's always galling when having to tell someone what you would like for a gift. I always come across as some adolescent with Tourette's. I was hoping for Judge Dredd Complete Case Files no.12, the first volume of the Mega City law enforcer's complete 2000AD adventures in full color. I was also interested in revisiting the Mad Max series in one handy box set. Atlas Sound's latest album on vinyl was a wish. I also had the Cult Spaghetti Westerns DVD box set on my list. Three gems from the genre (Quien Sabe?, Keoma, Django) I remember viewing many years ago when they first aired on BBC 2's Moviedrome series, introduced by British film Director (and Spaghetti Western nut) Alex Cox. Well, I'm guessing you already realized what I unwrapped.

Quien Sabe? (known in English as A Bullet For the General) is a certain strain of Spaghetti Western from the mid 1960's which has a definite political bent. A few other pictures have delved into this area in the Western genre, Sam Peckinpah with The Wild Bunch and Sergio Leone with Duck, You Sucker! I think both are far superior to Quien Sabe? in that they have more depth, are better acted and have sharper, less cliched scripts. Still, Quien Sabe? came first and has a visceral energy that the other two pictures never match. Although Leone's influence looms large over Quien Sabe? especially as regards the look, and the sound (the music was supervised by Ennio Morricone). The influence is no more apparent than the casting of the amazing Gian Maria Volonté. Volonté cut his spurs on the first two parts of the Leone Dollars trilogy.

Volonté plays Chucho, a mercenary whose main purpose is to steal arms and sell them to the leader of the Mexican Revolution. On the way his gang (including Klaus Kinski as his overtly religious brother El Santo) recruit American Bill Tate (whom the gang refer to as Nino). Unbeknown to Chucho and his gang is Tate's intention, as paid for by the Mexican government, to assassinate the leader of the revolutionaries. In some ways, Quien Sabe? is a rite of passage tale of how Chucho becomes a revolutionary and rejects the lure of the capitalist dollar. Along the way, director Damiani displays a serious style in framing, costume and set pieces. Quien Sabe? is one cool looking movie. That it raises political and personal ideals along the way and has such style while doing so, I can only recommend Quien Sabe? Then again, I'm a soft touch when it comes to this kind of movie.

Blue Valentine (2010) Directed by Derek Cianfrance

2012-01-10T12:19:00.000+02:00

Nick:
It's been an especially strange start to the New Year. We didn't celebrate as normal. We mainly hung around the house waiting for our baby to be born. We're still waiting, so in some ways the baby's arrival has overshadowed getting on with normal life. I made no New Year's resolutions, paid little heed to what was happening elsewhere, rarely went out. We've just been living in our little cocoon. I'm still stuck in the cocoon and in 2011. Reading the previous year's best or worst of whatever can keep you grounded in the year you're leaving. Retrospection can effect one's own sense of time and space. I got lost in it this year.

That withdrawn world can become overbearing for some people, it can obscure rational thought. To some degree Dean and Cindy, the main characters of Blue Valentine have created an isolationist environment that leaves little space for growth, in their respective relationship or outside lives. Possessive attention and the old ways just aren't doing it for Cindy anymore. Dean, whose days are increasingly spent with a bottle, can't see the distance his drinking creates. In some ways Blue Valentine's characters could be a modern update of the Richard Yates way of loving. However, in cinematic terms, Blue Valentine is a far better picture than the Yates-based Revolutionary Road, although both pictures share similar themes if not period.

Told in flashback, the story of how Dean and Cindy fell in love with each other touched familiar nerves.
Director Cianfrance imbues Blue Valentine with a fine sense of atmosphere, which leaves one with an almost eerie feeling that something awful is going to happen. Yes, Blue Valentine is intense, but there is humor here too. Essentially, the film works as a romance due to the extra yard the actors go, the performances are great. Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling convince as the lovers here, there is a naturalness to their being which heightens the impact of the smallest details. This felt like a valediction, and in doing so Blue Valentine reveals some basic truths. This picture was close to perfect.

Astrid:
Very rarely nowadays do I come across a movie that speaks to me personally, a movie that comes into the living room from the screen and stays there even after the credits. Blue Valentine had such staying power and effect. I was a little afraid to watch it because for some reason I took it so personally from the first minutes onwards. For the first half an hour I was afraid someone will die and I didn't want to deal with that loss. No one died, but a relationship did. The descent from romance to gradual loss of connection was pictured very realistically – and this time I'm talking about an emotional reality, not a historical one.

Emotional honesty and rawness on this level is rare in movies. It's rare in books too. It's not easy to achieve a sense of the real experience between two people. Intimacy is difficult to picture. Somehow Blue Valentine managed to draw the viewer in by giving lots of detail and at the same time not trying to explain everything. Michelle Williams plays her part with the same fragility as she had in Brokeback Mountain. She might be my favorite actress of the moment. I have no passion for Ryan Gosling, but he is very believable as the romantic young lover and husband who battles with alcoholism among other things.

It continues to baffle me what romance means – what it means to me and what it means in general terms. Why are we still so obsessed with romance over a hundred years after Romanticism ended and Modernism and Post-modernism supposedly opened our eyes into seeing a reality?
I guess love itself is not possible without the acceptance of loss. Romance is somewhat married to this loss that looms in the shadows. Romance is made of all things romantic; falling madly in love, accepting the other one with their imperfections, rabbit sex, more sex, dramatic gestures, marriage vows, rings (that can be thrown in the bushes for emphasis in arguments), having kids, taking daring uncalculated leaps of faith... Romantic gestures may seem irrational and unnecessary when the result of surrendering oneself to love leads to inevitable loss, but I think it is precisely that awareness of loss that necessitates and justifies romance (and the silly gestures).

J. Edgar (2011) Directed by Clint Eastwood

2012-01-08T10:24:00.000+02:00

Astrid:Surprisingly, the problem with going to cinema when you are nine months pregnant is not that you need to pee or that your back is aching too much, but that the 50-something couple next to you stinks of booze, sweat (the onion variation) and old-perfume-gone-bad. They also ate something smelly during the film that came from a noise making package and caused additional burping. I breathed through my mouth for nearly three hours and somehow managed to enjoy J. Edgar most of the time.

In many ways J. Edgar was a boring film with too much crammed in the nearly three hours. It was an attempt to really picture the life of a completely unsympathetic real historical person. The question remains, why do we have to keep thinking about this man? Why especially, do we need to try to understand him? There were other more interesting perspectives in the film though and they elevated the film to a high artistic level. First of all the movie looked refined and classic, Clint Eastwood's directing was reliable and his actors excellent. There was an easiness while at the same time the film oozed class rarely visible in cinema these days. So what if it was old-fashioned – cinema usually looks better that way.

Without making J. Edgar's sexual orientation the focus of the movie, the film's emotional core was the love relationship which Hoover (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) had for decades with his loyal assistant Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer). Eastwood has become a master of making sentimental and touching films without over-playing the emotions. It's an admirable skill. Here the best scenes are the ones depicting how deep and real Edgar's love for Clyde was and what a personal tragedy it was for him that his relationship needed to remain secret and somewhat unrealized. For some reason the Finnish cinema audience often laughed when the gay references became explicit. I have no idea what was funny there. To the credit of the smelly lady next to me, at the end of the film she was in tears. Love is love and I'm glad that our loyal republican Clint E. is not afraid to make that statement one more time. Still, the poor closeted J. Edgar came up with a load of scary and hateful practices and there is very little reason to feel much for him in the end.

Nick:
It was trying sitting through J. Edgar at the cinema. Not only is the film wordy and slow paced, being flanked either side by noisy middle-aged alcoholics was an endurance test that did undermine my enjoyment of the picture somewhat. I think the premise of Eastwood's latest picture and its inherent interest to anybody hangs on how fascinating you find the life of J. Edgar Hoover. The bad-boy of recent American history has a poor reputation and no real legacy. Could the liberal-republican Eastwood be the perfect director to tell his story? As with Howard Hughes (recently tackled by Martin Scorsese and also portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio), so much mythology surrounds Hoover, distinguishing fact from fiction will always be hard.

For the first two hours of J. Edgar, Eastwood concentrates on Hoover's recollections of his rise to the head of the FBI. The movie is narrated in flashback, Hoover addresses various secret service agents in the 1960's. We hear of Hoover's fight against communism (his obsession), his involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping in the 1930's, his fight against organized crime, his various meetings with the 8 US presidents he served under. We get the prescription drug addiction Hoover got in later life, the secret gay life and the mother (Judy Dench) who molded his insecurities and his obsessions. DiCaprio is again, amazing in an unflattering role. Naomi Watts on the other hand feels wasted as Hoover's loyal secretary Helen Gandy. Armie Hammer is exceptional as Hoover's right hand man in the FBI and life- long lover Clyde Tolson. Gradually, J. Edgar moves from being a picture about a man who collects secrets on others to a picture of a man who guards his own secrets and reputation.

And although it takes awhile, it's worth hanging around for the last half an hour when the picture moves up a gear. Eastwood's gift to Hoover is to humanize him enough so that we feel sympathy for him when his mother dies. Eastwood from then on brings an emotional heft to the picture when it becomes a gay romance, focusing increasingly on the secret relationship between Hoover and Tolson. In essence J. Edgar becomes a Federal Bureau version of Brokeback Mountain. And here lies the problem with J.Edgar. It's a credit to the picture that I felt that emotional thrust at the climax (ahem!), but J.Edgar would have benefited greatly from being a fully fledged love story and leaving Hoover's public (secret) history on the back burner. A good, engrossing movie, but not a great one.

Trust (1990) Directed by Hal Hartley

2012-01-05T09:30:00.001+02:00

Astrid:
There are so many things that I have learned to love after being introduced to them by Nick, but if I had to name something specific Hal Hartley's films are one of these treasures. Every one I have seen so far has touched me and inspired me in the way that only best artistic efforts can – a good experience alters you a little every time. I also do not feel silly crediting Nick with the introduction of Hal Hartley in my life, because I doubt I would have ever discovered his films otherwise. At the moment Hartley's movies are not easy to find on DVD and his name when mentioned, does not often ring a bell with anyone. This is a wrong that should be righted soon.

Trust is a fantastic love story in which the concept of love is questioned. While the film is in many ways unromantic (the world is often cruel, people have no taste, people are tacky and violent) it manages to ponder on romance in a way rarely matched in contemporary art. Lost souls can find peace, wisdom and love, the mean lost souls can have their due punishment and then some sympathy, ugly and mundane things can exist in the nearness of fleeting beauty, stupidity and again – wisdom. A suburb can be inhabited by free people. Trust and admiration equal love.

Hal Hartley movies are a little like the music of Felt. For me Hartley was actually more immediate than Felt. It took me 10 years of force-feeding to become sophisticated enough to appreciate Felt, but the Hartley films I got the first time around. Now that I'm immersed in reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, I cannot help but hear a Hartley-esque synth heavy soundtrack playing during each chapter. Maybe one good day Trust will be as widely appreciated as Freedom has rapidly become.

Nick :
It's enough to tell you that I miss so much the cinema of Hal Hartley that my review of Trust will be informed by this. The last 'new' Hartley film I saw was Book Of Life from 1998, with Trust's Martin Donovan playing Jesus in modern day New York accompanied by Polly Harvey as his Magdalena. Since then, none of his movies have made it to Finland and even fewer to DVD. So I haven't been able to see any new Hartley movies for nearly 15 years (there have been three full length movies since 1998, with a fourth coming this year). Older pictures Simple Men and Amateur have seemingly been in some DVD living hell and unavailable. Can someone liberate these masterpieces? Why is Hartley's cinema so neglected?

Simple Men (1992)

So, Trust was my first experience of Hartley back in the day. The dialogue finds Hartley in some ways at his most aggressive and adolescent. The early starlet of Hartley movies, the late, great Adrienne Shelly plays Maria, a high school dropout who announces her pregnancy to her family and in so doing unintentionally kills her father. Her mum throws her out, her boyfriend drops her and she's finally found homeless by the notoriously dangerous yet educated loner Matthew (Donovan). Trust discusses the change both undergo in forming their unorthodox relationship. Maria grows up and Matthew compromises his hard worn principles so that they can accommodate each other.

Hartley's ultra-smart dialogue provides scene after scene of intensity and offbeat humor, enlightening us on the many intricacies that inform the characters in Trust. The film's visuals warm up as each year passes. In many ways, this is the perfect Hartley film to start with, his later cinema just develops and goes deeper into many of the themes discussed here. So, no real objectivity from me. I still love Trust, it bristles with brilliance even after all these years.

Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961) Directed by Blake Edwards

2012-01-02T22:07:00.000+02:00

Nick:
Deep Blue Something had a hit with one of the worst songs ever, which of course referenced this film. Some witty fuck somewhere will try to re-evaluate the song and say it's a classic of the time and has only improved with age. Or someone else will say it's a guilty pleasure with a memorable chorus. But in reality, to some of us, Deep Blue Something and the film it references are the enemy. Breakfast At Tiffany's is nowadays regarded as a classic and almost a by-word for some kind of feminine cool.

The general consensus is that this is Audrey Hepburn's moment. Blake Edwards, if it were not for Peter Sellers, would mainly be remembered for being married to the excellent Julie Andrews. His Pink Panther films were reliant on Sellers and little else. His direction on Breakfast At Tiffany's is embarrassing. This is such a mess, Edwards often mistaking wacky for radical. In his heart of hearts, Truman Capote must have been on the rooftops singing "What have they done to my book Mummy?" – but then watched the fame and the bucks roll in.

Capote recovered to write his In Cold Blood and then fell off the trail. Hepburn would be iconized with this movie. Yes, she is the anorexic waif where every outfit looks splendid darling... and Moon River sung by Hepburn is a brief highlight in a swirl of conservative diarrhea. But really, someone needs to question why this movie is rated at all. Hepburn is just to clean for this role, one cries out for a dirty Jane Russell, Cyd Charisse or Marilyn Monroe. Yes, one cries out for hard filthy sex! Overrated garbage where the pussy (cat) steals the acting honors.

Astrid:
I had never seen Breakfast At Tiffany's until yesterday. It had cropped up in conversations sometimes in ways that made me realize there was a hole in my education right there. How embarrassing. I think I was aware of this lack of knowledge and experience by the age of 11, so it took a relatively long time for me to catch up with the rest of the civilization. Too bad then that I thought the film was fluffy, pretty awful and racist. I had high expectations – at least I thought I'd be entertained – but I was mostly bored.

First of all: I'm not a fan of Audrey Hepburn. I think there are two kinds of women around, those who root for Marilyn and those who root for Audrey. It doesn't take much to guess whose side I'm on. It infuriated me even further to hear that her role had been planned originally for Monroe, but then somehow Hepburn got it. A starvation victim attempting to be funny and a loose hooker type just didn't convince me. Ok, her face is quite amazing, but there is nothing but force in her performance. She is desperately trying to convince everyone. Where's the sensuality? How are we supposed to believe that she has been having sex with all these middle-aged men?

Well, there are some enjoyable things in Breakfast at Tiffany's too. For example the Givenchy outfits are a feast, and it is fun to realize how much a certain Carrie Bradshaw character was modeled after Holly Golightly. Holly's nameless ginger cat with his bad temper is maybe the best character in the whole movie and the theme song Moon River is better than anything else in the film. Had I seen this film at the age of 11, I might have connected in a whole different manner.

The Kids Are All Right (2010) directed by Lisa Cholodenko

2011-12-30T17:14:00.000+02:00

Astrid:
I really enjoyed and appreciated The Kids Are All Right when I first saw it about a year ago. I liked it for portraying a family with two moms, making lesbian parenting appear normal and lesbian love pretty usual too with the common long-term relationship hick-ups. I especially loved the film for Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore – in that order. I embraced the politics of it all: finally Hollywood makes the lesbian film, after gay men had been starring in mainstream pictures for almost a decade.

On second viewing I dared to be a harsher critic of the movie. I still had fun watching it though. I liked the imperfection of the perfectionist Nic (Bening) – I saw that she was playing a specific written character, not a stereotype of the butch-partner. I still empathized with the womanizing Paul (Ruffalo), who found himself suddenly in the middle of a family drama in which he played dad. Nick felt the film did not portray him kindly, but I continued to like Paul – I guess it helped that it was Mark Ruffalo all along. What seemed to be a let-down this time was the written structure of the film: it floated from the funny relationship stuff and the in-search-for-a-father-figure stuff to being unnecessarily sentimental in the end. The boring guitar soundtrack music mixed with the storyline about the elder sister Joni (Mia Wasikowska) going off to college was an unnecessary way of saying 'look how normal a lesbian parent family really is'.

Despite there being a sense of the education program and appropriation project, The Kids Are All Right is a funny witty film, most of the time. The relationship between Nic and Jules (Moore) made me laugh aloud many times and at times it reminded me of myself in a relationship. I would file the film next to Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine – harmless California sun, light entertainment and real emotions all in good proportion for no one to feel overwhelmed.

Nick:
I just started reading Simon Reynolds' book Retromania about our obsession with the past and its impact on popular culture (specifically music). I think Reynolds is arguing that our unhealthy obsession with a time when everything seemed better than now (take your pick from the 1960's onwards) leaves less space for new ideas in our culture. I think this is a truism to an extent. I hate the way how old celebrated movies/records take away the space from new releases. Yet, re-evaluation also brings new perspectives on old works which can give new currency to the old classics. We begin to look at things in a new way. This blog mostly covers old movies, making me think are we just adding to the general air of 'things used to be so much better?' The Kids Are All Right names itself after a classic Who rockumentary (and soundtrack album), so its title certainly fits into what Reynolds is talking about.

The Kids Are All Right gives us what it would like to think is a radical examination of the modern American family. In fact, the selling point, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore playing lesbian parents Jules and Nic just confirms the conservative attitudes that pervades most straight society. Once you get over this condescension, The Kids Are All Right opens up into a well performed comedy. At times the patronizing tone of the script comes over as being a little bit too pleased with itself. Can we also have no more scenes in films where middle-aged former hippie chicks turned capitalist bastards rhapsodize on why Joni Mitchell's Blue was so special back in the day. You're killing it for us.

Quietly, the consistent Mark Ruffalo steals the acting honors (though his character is poorly treated by the script) as the sperm donor father Paul, who Jules' and Nic's children decide to contact. Bening and Moore (especially) overact as the picture moves on, making us feel less for their characters. By the end, long passages of bland music and aimless images reveal that The Kids Are All Right was really about the daughter coming of age all along. So The Kids Are All Right feels like a missed opportunity to go deep into the workings of the middle class American family.

Doctor Zhivago (1965) Directed by David Lean

2011-12-27T11:20:00.004+02:00

Nick:

It's often the case that through the critical community, too much emphasis is placed on the script when discussing cinema. It's an odd thing to say, but cinema is a visual medium first of all (and its origins certainly attain to this with the silent era). It could be argued that in its purest form, that after the visuals, music even trumps the words in the emotive power of cinema. This may explain to us why the action blockbuster picture actually remains closer to the origins of the form than say a wordy art house drama. The introduction here is as a warning to tell you that if you enter into Doctor Zhivago for an intellectual/intelligent explanation of what happened in The Russian Revolution, you may be disappointed.

Doctor Zhivago in many ways finds a film which offers its political attitude through the voices of a bunch of English luvvie actors. Pretending to be Russian, spouting in the best Queen's English, many a British thespian can be viewed espousing the most basic clichés about Russia and its bleeding Revolution. Yes, hard facts or even any correct information on the events at hand is not why I would recommend Doctor Zhivago. Julie Christie, captured by Lean in her prime is one reason to watch – she looks amazing here, Omar Sharif, doing so much for the cause of the mustache is another. Instantly, Lean, by giving us such a gorgeous looking pair, takes us into the world of idealized fantasy. One can just marvel at shot after shot of beauty on screen, littered with little details that keep the continuity of the story going. The lost, gained and lost romance of the banned poet Yuri Zhivago and his muse Lara engages us, even if one does not actually care that much for what comes out of their mouths.

So Lean, almost more than any other director, and certainly in the second half of his career, understood the visual power of the medium better than most. He had been a great director of actors but seemed to have loosened his grip somewhat for Doctor Zhivago. The only American on view – Rod Steiger, as the surviving scoundrel Komarovsky delivers any sense of reality amongst the decadent camera work. But more importantly, Lean makes his romance credible, or our wanting for it to succeed, by keeping the central lovers apart for most of what is a lengthy picture. Doctor Zhivago has no real sense of sentimentality, which serves it well, especially with its cruel ending. So as cinema nowadays becomes more based on trying to convey real emotions (why?) or using CGI to recreate the ultimate unimagined world, I'll always fall back on the artistry and genius of David Lean. Lean knew how to tell a "jolly good" yarn in the most eye catching way. Some of the primal essence of cinema throbs here.

Astrid:
I'm not a lover of David Lean epics as such. Too many men, too many wars. Doctor Zhivago is an important exception though, because I do love it. I feel as if admitting this love requires proper explaining. There is a guilty pleasure feeling that creeps in with this film – the lightness of the political content, the general fluffiness, the romance of a lifetime – nothing really stands the inspection of a critical mind. Yet, the story of Zhivago and Lara appeals to me time and time again.

A big reason for why Doctor Zhivago works is the look of the film from the way it has been filmed to the way it has been designed to look using sets, props and clothing. The movie makes everything from poverty to abundance and from torture to sexual desire look romantic in the early 20th century Russia. Also, the fact that the film was made in 1965 influences the look positively, especially in the case of Julie Christie.

It baffles me how I can find it romantic that Zhivago is married to a nice beautiful poetry-loving lady, but still yearns after and has an affair with Lara. He wants to keep both women obviously and manages to juggle between them until he is highjacked by the red army. Then he returns a half-dead man into the arms of Lara to find out that he has been left by his wife. In the end he loses both brunette and blondie – I guess that's the romance: love is romantic if it's lost and unromantic and mundane when it becomes a lasting thing with routines. What I really cannot grasp is why and when did Zhivago become such a patriot that he chose Russia over any ladies at all.

Sex and the City TV Series (2006) & George Harrison: Living In the Material World (2011)

2011-12-23T11:22:00.002+02:00

Astrid:
The third trimester of pregnancy in my case should be called the-sex-and-the-city trimester rather than the tired or huge trimester. The box was a gift from Nick. At first he meant to say that I can watch it when ever I want and just relax, but when we actually started going through the first season (out of 6), it became clear that he was equally into the whole series and did not want to miss episodes. The first and second seasons showed how this series really is not just about women, but it's just as much about men. Those two seasons remain the best. Carrie has not yet taken over half the series and it deals much more with thematic questions about sex and sexualities. As Carrie takes over, so do many other less favorable qualities. For example the focus on product placement isn't outrageously obvious in the beginning, but becomes a distracting feature by the third season.

I have watched Sex and the City on TV when it first aired in Finland. I have watched the reruns several times, and I even went to the cinema to sit through the two horrible movies. I have been the twenty-something woman who constructs her ideas about shoes, bags and relationships with a little help from Sex and the City. Now I wonder if it really was a worthy influence. I'm still hanging onto the 20-something-tag for at least one more month – nowhere near the ages of Charlotte, Carrie, Miranda or Samantha. I've not been single for a decade, I don't own any Manolo Blahniks and I don't really care for them, I'm about to be a mom and no, my boyfriend is not filthy rich nor does he own a bar. But maybe it was this realization of how I do not relate that allowed me to enjoy the series in a light-hearted way. I'm glad I own the box.

Nick:
This last few weeks have been spent in the company of the girls from Sex & The City (Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte). It's almost been a prescient time to watch the whole of Sex & the City. The euro struggles to survive as the whole capitalist/consumer society comes under attack from market forces and the dignified and needed Occupy movement. Candid sex scenarios from a women's perspective are most welcome when we live in a society where so much sexuality seems to be discussed from a male perspective. This is where it can be said the early seasons of Sex & The City really work, these shows have edge and a great sense of humor.

As the series wares on, it becomes apparent that Sex & The City becomes aware of it's on success and the whole affair turns very self conscious. It's also the time I begin to wonder what kind of message is being sent out here. Sex & The City's ladies become impossibly decadent. A fantasy world where expense and emotion try to mingle in a game of spot the product placement. So, from my own perspective of not having (and actually rarely wanting), I found Sex & The City and the kind of life aspired to in the series (some kind of Manhattan neo-conservative fascist) remarkably offensive. These are tough times, so come the revolution I hope Carrie and her ilk are the first up against the wall!

Astrid:
I was keen to see Scorsese's documentary on George. Usually, Scorsese makes great docs on rock stars and generally, The Beatles is a fruitful topic with plenty of angles and a lot to admire. Four hours of George and the three other guys and lots of famous talking heads and good music – sounds like a good idea. But I was a little disappointed. It felt like the doc never really began. There was never a strong narrative thread that took hold and delivered an insight. George remained a distant figure throughout. I felt that a lot of talking heads idealized him leaving out the criticism they most likely would have been able to deliver in another circumstance.

So George was a bit of a loner, a ladie's man in a stern quiet manner, a joker, a volatile angry guy and of course, a spiritual seeker. The emphasis here was on admiring George's involvement in meditation, sitar playing and all things Eastern and incense-smelling. What remained in the sidelines was the fact that he obviously battled with all kinds of substance abuse and with his own bursts of negative energy, bad temper, or what ever you want to call it. He was one of the Beatles and therefore the documentary was made with kid gloves on. Or maybe, George was a bit boring and Scorsese struggled to find interesting material on him...give me Bob and No Direction Home any time. A put-down with a frown is still more interesting than a mantra as a chorus.

Nick:
We go from the abundant materialism of Sex & the City to the anti-materialistic sentiments of George Harrison. Of course it should be mentioned here that being a millionaire Beatle and being able to have whatever and whoever you want at any given time from a very early age (in George's case an incredible early 20's), it's maybe easier to take a stance of anti-materialism when you are as rich as George was. Let's remember this was the George that wrote Taxman moaning about how much he was paying to the British Government, so although having money was seemingly not important to George, giving it away obviously rankled too. Yet, this sense of contradiction in Harrison is something we take away with us whilst watching Martin Scorsese's patchy documentary.

The problem with George Harrison: Living In the Material World is it tries to take too much on board. Unlike Scorsese's excellent Dylan documentary No Direction Home, where Scorsese takes a certain part of Dylan's life and focuses on that, here he tries to fit too much in. So, this never goes deep enough into Harrison's life. It's a shame as some anecdotes are funny and there is some great unseen footage. Even more surprising about Scorsese's film was the small amount of focus on Harrison's guitar playing. Yes, we get a sense of Harrison's quick disillusionment with being a Beatle, but not enough about how great an innovator Harrison was with the six stringed beast. I expect more from Scorsese, so this was quite a big disappointment to me.

The Aviator (2004) Directed by Martin Scorsese

2011-12-20T12:12:00.001+02:00

Nick:
I've had the worst runny nose of my life this week. And it's still runny! Stop! Now! It's been over a week. Is this a permanent state? The amount of toilet roll used to blow, soak and wipe away the slightly green gunk, well, it's a forest or two I'm telling you... I've also found myself in a period of time where I've been extremely busy. So, flu and work = lack of full strength recovery. So, through tissue and sniff we decided to go for The Aviator again. It's always struck me as a very accomplished yet cold piece of film making. After The Gangs Of New York (a bombastic failure for Scorsese), The Aviator sees Scorsese turn his attention to another slice of vérité, his portrait of the early rise to notoriety of American aviator, inventor, film maker, rogue, freak, racist, compulsive disorder victim and crucially, filthy rich Howard Hughes.

Something happened this time however. I finally got what Scorsese was trying to do with The Aviator. Through the early life of Hughes, Scorsese has managed to make his own Citizen Kane and in part even pay homage to Orson Welles' classic. Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes even resembles the young Welles. So here we get the flashbacks to the influential youth, the rise and fall of Hughes, before he once again triumphs in designing and flying the era's biggest aircraft ever. I've always found Hughes' life after the time frame of The Aviator more interesting. That Hughes (as written about fictionally in James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy) is the one whose compulsive disorders ended up taking over his life, as he became a recluse in the Desert Inn Hotel, yet still holding influence over all aspects of American life. That influence includes plotting with and against various US Presidents, owning Las Vegas, the daily blood changing which earned him the name of Dracula amongst the FBI, and his open racism. Hughes had an agenda and the older he got, his money and power still exerted itself. The Aviator steers clear of the darkness in Hughes and is more a celebration of his genius and creativity (although Scorsese does focus acutely on Hughes' phobias).

So Scorsese gives us early Hollywood glamor in a special turquoise tint for the first 50 minutes of the picture. He also uses unsubtle CGI to show us many of Hughes' daring flying exploits. Cate Blanchett impresses as Hughes' early squeeze Katherine Hepburn, but it's DiCaprio who burns up the screen. The Aviator justifies Scorsese's choice to make DiCaprio his acting muse in recent pictures. This film has got better for me, and gives me hope that even some of Scorsese's more recent, so-so fare will improve with age. The Aviator, seven years on is starting to feel like a great Scorsese picture.

Astrid:
I remember thinking after the first viewing of The Aviator that it was a depressing and sad film with too bright colors. I also blamed it for being cold and grand without reason. This time around I thought the whole movie was saying: never underestimate the mentally ill. While the film described Hughes' descent into being overpowered by his illness (which at first only effected some areas of his life) it simultaneously celebrated his amazing creativeness and admired his fight against the even bigger guys.

Nick has been going on about Howard Hughes for years – the blood changing and the Nevada desert, casinos, power and more peculiar power. I have been rather annoyed by his fascination, or maybe by the the tone I detected, making the guy sound like a vampire master planner with evil intent.
Yes, it may be that there was some of that too. But this time The Aviator made a lot more sense to me because actually it humanizes Hughes (the racist vampire legend) and sympathizes with him.
Ironically, this sympathy sounds from the analysis that it was the mother of the child who effed him up (to put it politely). It's always the mother, right...Well anyway, this is a film about obsessive compulsion.

Despite the masterful editing and coloring of the movie and the wonderful set design and costumes, the focus of the movie is DiCaprio as Hughes. The Hughes who is not that ill when flirting and having sex, flying and making movies, but is very very ill all the other times. The Hughes whose list of pattern behavior for safety gets so long it isolates him from other people almost completely. And yet, when people believe they can humiliate him in public and can thus force him out from the aviation power game, he manages to make a public appearance defending himself, winning the case. DiCaprio is very believable in his role, which at times makes the film uncomfortable and very emotional. This time I understand why Scorsese decided to make his film about Hughes describing this rather early period of his life; he wanted to celebrate and appreciate rather than fortify the mythology that surrounds Hughes just like it surrounds mental illness even today.

The Way We Were (1973) Directed by Sydney Pollack

2011-12-14T18:50:00.000+02:00

Nick:
Over the last few weeks we've had a Sex & The City marathon, re-watching the whole series. We're currently on the 5th season, where quality and meaning have been reduced to product placement. In an earlier season, the girls raptured about Hubbell in The Way We Were, and the episode even riffed on the last scene of the movie. In some ways, The Way We Were has a reputation as the quality romantic weepy, especially with mainstream audiences. I'm sure a lot of women of a certain age regard this film as a classic. The reality after watching The Way We Were again is what a confused mess of a picture this is. The Way We Were tries to mix political incentive (specifically the clumsy portrayal of McCarthyism) with liberal ideas on femininity in stark contrast to Hubbell's stoic (outdated!) machismo, all the while trying to impose a romance where opposites attract. Phew...did I say it was only a weepy?

But lets clear another thing up, the direction here is terrible. Pollack has always been well liked as an all around good guy rather than a great director. Personally, I always liked him more as an actor and have found his direction certainly workman-like. Pollack has also had a thing for Robert Redford (Hubbell), The Way We Were being one of six films Pollack has directed Redford in. And here lies a big problem with The Way We Were. Pollock indulges Redford here. Redford does nothing but look good and act cool offering nothing of the emotive variety. Opposite Redford is Barbara Streisand as the politically aware Katie, who by being so good here, merely shows Redford's capacity for imitating cardboard. We're with Streisand all the way here, in every cause she stands for, while her dream-man often feels embarrassed for her. This lack of empathy from Redford towards Streisand ruins any will we might have for Barbara getting her man. Oh well, you're better off without him Babs, one might opine. On top of this, Streisand, one of the great voices of cinema trumps Redford again by singing the excellent theme song.

Watching The Way We Were again, it does remind me of where the appeal lies with Redford. Robert Forster, The Go-Betweens tunesmith once opined that Redford had perfect hair, and it's a view one can't help but agree with. As Redford has spent most of his 1970's cinema trying to be a Fitzgerald character on screen, until he actually got to play Gatsby in the end, his hair in the meantime has been exquisite. The best scene for Redford in The Way We Were? Redford behind the wheel of a vintage Mercedes sports car, blonde locks blowing in the wind. If his hair could act, Redford would be the perfect actor.

Astrid:
We have been working our way through Sex and the City - the boxset with all seasons. At some point the women had a moment where they remembered The Way We Were and even sang Memories all together...it made us eager to watch the film again. I remembered The Way We Were as a really flawed film, which had nevertheless made me cry. On my second viewing I liked the movie less than before. Barbabra Streisand was pretty convincing and passionate in her role, but Robert Redford seemed to be sleepwalking through the role of an idiot hunk. He was so meat-and-potatoes and so full of himself as a movie star, it was impossible for me to believe Streisand's character in love with him.

As the film happened, it unraveled as a cinematic example piece on co-dependency. At first the movie managed to portray a woman's lust and passion for a man in a way that's quite rare – Redford occupied the sex object position usually given to the leading ladies. Quite quickly though, it became clear that Hubbell was not much of a man for the thinking woman Katie. Yet, she kept insisting on needing him and loving him. That's where instead of romantic, the film seems to me sad. Surely there would be someone more stimulating and loving for Katie, if she would let go of the blond pin-up sailor boy.

For once watching the making-of-documentary offered a crucial perspective to the film. In the documentary it came out that the movie was brutally edited after a few test audiences saw it. Barbara Streisand thinks the edits ruined a great movie. Many important scenes were cut out in which the politics of the film and her character Katie were developed. These scenes gave depth to Katie's and Hubbell's separation and difficulty as a couple and they justified the whole political aspect of the film. In the version that came out and became a hit, the politics seems to serve no purpose other than being a futile prop offering something for Katie to feel passionate about. Had the politics stayed in the film, it could have been a much more fulfilling a film á la Reds or Doctor Zhivago. Now it is a rather mixed-up story of a relationship with some great acting and some confused directing.

The Big Sleep (1946) Directed by Howard Hawks

2011-12-07T20:03:00.000+02:00

Astrid:
The Big Sleep has always been present in this blog, because the title banner is a picture from the film. Why is this the visual image we chose out of all possible film visuals? That might be a good question to attempt to answer right now. I think it was important to have an image portraying a couple, because being a couple was the premise for our blog. Then it was about what energy we wanted to convey and that is where The Big Sleep and Bogie and Bacall became a natural choice. This cinematic couple is nothing if not verbally superior, sexy and edgy. Their looks are also to die for, as is the style of the whole movie. To put Bogie and Bacall in the banner is to direct you to imagine what's to come: the differing opinions of a man and a woman, their difference and their similarities all being equally important ingredients in their romance – and on the blog. To put B & B on the banner is also to engage with the imaginary, which is why we watch films in the first place, I believe.

There is a secret that the world of cinema has largely forgotten since 1946: a put-down can be the sexiest thing one can say to the other. You just have to choose the right time and tone to deliver your line. Howard Hawks knew this, Bob Dylan knew this, Bogie and Bacall certainly acted like they knew – but what's happened to the beauty of a put-down these days?

Another great aspect of the way B & B talk to each other in The Big Sleep is the implicit sexiness of almost everything they utter. In this exchange the subject is supposedly horses and betting on them:

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or comefrom behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

Nick:
So a lazy Independence Day passes by once again. As was pointed out to me earlier in the day by Astrid, Finland seems to be a country that celebrates its independence by watching various celebs and political types visit the Finnish President's palace on TV. No demonstrations in the street this year, this seems to be a time to be home with the family watching the box. It's a strange tradition where even the most ardent political renegade displays their soft under belly. Why do Finns get so soppy at this event? So, as the hand shaking progressed, we wanted to watch something classic.

The Big Sleep offers more than the pure heated sexual chemistry of the nowadays iconic Bacall/Bogart team-up. Some of the dialogue between the two here is as charged as film dialogue has ever been without expressively shouting "I wanna Fuck!" Yes the photo at the top of this blog is from The Big Sleep. But instead of focusing on Bogart & Bacall or even Hawks (as we have dome in the past), it's time to give the script some credit as to why The Big Sleep still retains the edge and sexual prowess that is pretty much unrivaled in mainstream cinema. The Big Sleep was mainly written by William Faulkner from the Raymond Chandler novel. Like Chandler, Faulkner was a serious writer who turned to Hollywood to make some money and ended up writing some (often uncredited) scripts. He already scripted the Hawks/Bogart/Bacall team up To Have And Have Not. For me, The Big Sleep surpasses even that milestone with clever plotting, great characterization, and the screen Philip Marlowe. So much is down to Faulkner's energetic script.

If for some reason this film has passed you by, stop what you're doing and track it down and watch it (shouldn't be too hard). One of my all time faves, The Big Sleep reminds me of a time when the Studio System really did have the best talent available. That combination of artistic ideals combined with entertainment values have rarely created anything as stylish and sexy as The Big Sleep.

White Palace (1990) Directed by Luis Mandoki

2011-12-06T18:04:00.001+02:00

Nick:
Hey, wake up! It's been a bit sleepy here I know, but work commitments for me (i.e. mixing an album) usually mean I'm not home watching movies. I must add at this point that having been in a virtually sealed audio environment for a number of days in a row plays havoc with your social activities, even your nearest and dearest may suffer. It takes a few days to acclimatize back to a different version of relative normality. So, the day after a per-usual, intense studio session, me and Astrid arrive in downtown Helsinki. We couldn't find anything interesting enough on at the local picture palace, so a hastily chosen DVD will suffice. I remember being fond of White Palace at the time of release. Well acted, smart and little bit rougher round the edges than your usual romantic movie.

After some 20 years since I last saw White Palace, time has bought mixed feelings from me towards the film. Yes, Susan Sarandon is still excellent here. This was a time when Sarandon would willingly disrobe in any old art house movie (The Hunger, Atlantic City) and as well as the acting chops, she still has it here in other ways too. Yes, she's very sexy. James Spader, hot young thing that he is at this time, has not quite reached his height of robotic conformity that he would later go onto display in other movies (with chilling effect in Crash). He has empathy here, and the chemistry between Sarandon's older waitress and Spader's younger, wizard copy-writer still resonates. So, the romance and unlikelihood of it, still works for White Palace.

It's when the picture tries to discuss class values and differences in social background that it falls down. Cliché after cliché is wheeled out about Spaders possible embarrassment at being seen with an older and poorer woman. What becomes quickly apparent at a party scene in the picture where Spader takes Sarandon along, is that Sarandon oozes a sex appeal that many men would fall for, weather he be a rich frat boy or Hollywood superstar. The other women vying for Spader's attention don't stand a chance. It takes some of the gloss away from an otherwise intense romance which occasionally and skillfully deals with the loss of loved ones. White Palace (named after the Burger joint Sarandon works at) remains still, just about open for business.

Astrid:
Choosing an anniversary movie to watch is a big deal if you think that the choice somehow reflects the state of affairs in the relationship. We had our anniversary yesterday. At first, we were going to see a movie in town, but a few facts worked against us: Mainly, there was nothing suitable on in the theaters in Helsinki. The couple of films we could have seen (Midnight In Paris and Tree of Life) started at nine in the evening and I was not up for waiting that many hours after dinner. Also, at this stage of pregnancy we need to practically always remain within a few feet from a toilet, so a cinema might have been impossible anyway. Not a surprise then that our anniversary date started with picking a DVD for later.

For some reason it seemed we were both on the look-out for a romantic film, or at least one about a relationship. I was very keen on Blue Valentine, although I remember reading that it's quite sad while romantic. I was told it was too expensive right now and we would have to wait for the price to come down. Nick then suggested numerous old classics with beautiful stylish old-fashioned movie posters on their covers. He also attempted to get me to go for My Beautiful Laundrette, but although I love Daniel Day-Lewis, I was not ready to identify myself as him that evening. I much rather identified with Susan Sarandon.

So we ended up going home with White Palace. Simple enough, I was Susan and Nick was James Spader. They fall in love against all obstacles, not everybody approves, but they have fun and then they really get serious – easy enough to identify with in our circumstance. An added aspect of comparison was that the couple in the film had a pretty big age gap between them, although in their version the woman was the older one. White Palace was really an entertaining film wrapped up in the tangles of this one chance encounter turned into a love story. It had an awful soundtrack, a dated look and it wasn't really anything that special as a film. Yet, I'm sure it was a perfect choice for the occasion. At this point in our relationship, I am sure we too have that dated look from time to time. But the soundtrack is always excellent in this relationship.

Boogie Nights (1997) Directed by P. T. Anderson

2011-11-25T09:55:00.001+02:00

Astrid:
Boogie Nights and Magnolia are not only directed and scripted by the same guy, P. T. Anderson, they have mostly the same cast too. The two films are eternally linked in my mind. Like Magnolia, so Boogie Nights had a relatively huge impact on me growing up. Their shared and pessimistic outlook on life in general seemed real to me then. I did not see it as overly dramatic. Also, the fact that Boogie Nights deals with the beginnings of the porn industry as we know it, is important and was crucially overlooked by me in the past.

The way I remember the film and the way I experienced it now are two very separate perspectives: The porn film making content, the always naked women, the drugs and the eventual judgment the film appears to pass were all one big teaching video for the teenage-me. Instead of feeling uncomfortable and critical towards the way women were in Boogie Nights, I felt uncomfortable and as if this was a here's-how-to guide. It is baffling to realize how much a teenager watches a fictional piece of art and reads it as a lesson on Real Life, Real Sex and Real Relationships. I think I came out of seeing this one for the first time thinking something like: 'ok, cool women are available and enjoy sex with anyone at any time, they drown their sorrow into silence and always look good no matter what.'

This time around Boogie Nights seemed tame as well as overly dramatic, unnecessarily violent, shallow, pretentiously sad and mildly dated. I sensed no pressure from the film, it was not suggesting ways of being anymore. I felt also that Anderson was possibly playing with too simplistic stereotypes about porn. It may be that the director was being judgmental, looking down on people who make porn their occupation. He even mixed the issue of child porn and molestation with adult porn thus making the old-fashioned 'cigarettes lead to drug use and porn to crime' -claim. If I'm honest, this time I was a little bored and not very entertained.

Nick:
Do you remember a time when people thought Fionna Apple was somehow the musical zeitgeist? It correlates with a time when P.T.Anderson was regarded as the savior of modern cinema. This feels oddly conservative to me. But I think it's true to say of most things that seem cutting edge at the time, when we look back, we realize it was just more of the same. Apple seems to have disappeared into some vacuum. With Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood Anderson seems to have passed his fan-boy period and shows signs of becoming that predicted savior. Bloody hell, the then approaching pre-Millenium 1990's, remember that time? One could be mistaken for thinking that Anderson as well as savior, perfectionist and friend of Aimee Mann was also the oracle, as demonstrated by the consciously "intelligent" Magnolia of 1999. Boogie Nights placed Anderson on the map and made him hot hot hot.

There is no way round this, but to not note the specific influence of Scorsese on Boogie Nights is to miss something crucial with the picture. From the use of long camera shots and fast editing to the constant 1970's soundtrack, Boogie Nights stylistically is the work of another director. It's second hand goods watching Boogie Nights (primarily Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Casino). Rather like the debt to Altman on display in Magnolia. It doesn't stop Boogie Nights being a blast at times. The first hour is a non stop disco ride of good looking men and women "getting it on" on the dance floor or in front of camera. The picture has energy. Excellent scene after scene is readily crafted here (especially the 1970's period), every detail shot to perfection. The ensemble cast (many would re-appear in Magnolia) is universally excellent. Burt Reynolds surprises with his smoothness and sometimes sensitivity. Still, you do have to wonder what Julian Moore has done to Anderson for him to always have her play such desperate characters in his pictures. But this brings us to another element which constantly raises it's head in Anderson's early films : depression.

The second half of Boogie Nights is depressingly drawn out. Characters we don't really connect with or know suddenly find themselves in life changing situations. Simultaneously, Anderson does not deal in any depth with the porn industry of the 1970's (a far more interesting movie awaits). So, Anderson digresses by having his main protagonist, exceptionally well endowed porn star Dirk Diggler (Mark Whalberg) descend into a cliched portrayal of drug abuse. It made me yawn. Two excellent scenes come out of this malaise : Dirk Diggler's attempted early 1980's music career (after turning his back on the porn industry) and the later drug exchange with Alfred Molina's Rick Springfield obsessed druggie.
Moments like this make Boogie Nights worth it, just. It's a long movie that outstays it's welcome. Anderson decides in the end that everything really does turn out OK and hell, we all need some kind of family. So, this can be a frustrating film, which is also occasionally brilliant.

Ghost World (2001) Directed by Terry Zwigoff.

2011-11-19T20:46:00.003+02:00

Nick:
Last weeks news of famous comics scribe Frank Miller, spewing right-wing dogma against the Occupy movement wasn't so surprising. His seminal and groundbreaking The Dark Knight, Daredevil and Sin City graphic novels re-imagined noir for a new generation with some added, subtly fascist undertones. Unfortunately, recent works have shown a drop in standards, followed by a drop in popularity. Controversial seems a surefire way to get attention, and maybe Miller can try to hide the fact that he had anything to do with directing The Spirit by spouting off some outrageous comments. It's fair to say that Miller is responsible (along with a handful of other writers) for breathing life back into some legendary superhero franchises some 20 odd years ago with the graphic novels boom. Around this time another kind of writer emerged within the comics culture. Daniel Clowes, creator of Ghost World, ushered in a more literary approach to comics. As opposed to dealing with the superhero variety, Clowes creates worlds that are slightly twisted and surreal. Grotesques, 1960's pop-culture and the suburban slacker malaise feature in Clowes distinctive visions.

Zwigoff, working from a Clowes script, captures the essence of the comics whilst fashioning some great performances along the way. Not only this, Ghost World works as a slightly surreal love story. Thora Birch (who I'd completely forgotten about after American Beauty) and Scarlett Johansson star as the two high school outsiders (Enid and Rebecca) who decide to move in together after graduating. In many ways, Ghost World does work as a rites of passage movie between two close friends as they make their way into the real world. But that does make the picture sound too simplistic, when what's on offer is never obvious.

Steve Buscemi playing the loser-in-love Seymour who is the subject of a practical joke from Enid and Rebecca ignites Ghost World. The endless walking the streets and checking the freaks turns (at least for Enid) into forbidden love. After the practical joke, Enid falls for Seymour, probably because there's nothing better to do. Twigoff (well know for some ace documentaries such as Crumb) strikes the right chord with Ghost World. Not only does he make you laugh, but he creates something original with the film, without cheapening Clowes initial inception. Birch is really good here (although the yet-to-be-star Johansson will probably be the reason why people find this now). Ghost World is for once a great graphic novel adaptation.

Astrid:
I watched Ghost World with curiosity and dread. I wished the two young women would not be too hurt by what life had in store for them. At the same time, I was tickled by their daring and a little bit over-the-top manners, their sense of superiority in relation to their peers and their parents, their outfits full of expression and their growing difference in how they experienced life as well as what they expected from it.

I have been one of those girls. Maybe not just Enid or Rebecca, but a mixture of both. I have also been one half of a such close union of two girlfriends. Watching Ghost World reminded me of a time that was simultaneously very uncomfortable and very potent with a sense of becoming. Life was pure potential, all doors seemed open and I had complete trust in the world, even if I could make sarcastic remarks on its inevitable doom. This time was spent with great girlfriends, talking big dreams, planning to live together, borrowing each other's clothes and talking about men, the future, sex, the futility of education and a lot of important matters that completely escape my mind now.

Ghost World is not a very happy and funny movie. Yet, it is a kind of comedy and though it’s pretty realistic, there is something fairytale like in the movie. The film has a touching and serious side to it. Thankfully, it treats the two young women with respect instead of saying ’look at them they are freaks’. I’m amazed I haven’t seen this before. I would recommend this to a teenager, although am not sure how I would have responded to it at the ripe age of 16 or 17.

Unforgiven (1992) Directed by Clint Eastwood

2011-11-16T10:16:00.001+02:00

Astrid:
Unforgiven, the word itself has multiple meanings and directions in Unforgiven. In fact forgiveness is something the characters in this story have very little of. The prostitute women in town will not forgive the man who mutilated one woman's body. The men of the town will not forgive the women for ordering the mutilator to be killed by an outside killer and the women of the town will not forgive the men for not killing the man themselves. There is no forgiveness, just appropriate degrees of revenge. It's a game of survival.

Clint Eastwood's elderly farmer has a dark past which he does not forgive himself. He does not forgive the village for their inability to protect their own women and no one forgives him. He has been a changed man for years, bringing up his children in poverty nearby his dear wife's grave, but to the outside world he is always the ruthless killer that scared everybody even if they just heard his name mentioned.

Unforgiven describes a world where justice does not get protected by the law or a sheriff, even though these institutions exist. People are guided by their individual morality, they are alone seeking for their rights to exist. Revenge is a a logical mechanism in a climate where forgiveness is a life-threatening utopia. Really, in this scenario to forgive would mean to surrender and to give up one's life rights.
Forgiveness was a luxury in the Wild West. But can we still claim that today?

Nick:
People's perceptions of who you are rarely change, even when presenting evidence contrary to hard worn belief. It's a natural conclusion one can draw, it's especially relevant when discussing celebrity, we are after all lazy beings. Take Clint Eastwood. The perception people still have of Eastwood is the liberal conservative toting a big gun. He's popular (immensely) and his hard, iconic on-screen persona has betrayed his talent as one of the great mainstream film directors of the last 40 years. Of course, this perception has changed slightly over recent years (with Oscars comes respectability), but he'll always be remembered for the "make my day" line. I could argue that prior to Unforgiven (the movie that made him welcomed by the movie establishment), Eastwood had directed some unfussy and occasionally brilliant movies. Personally, he's yet to better The Outlaw Josey Wales, in not just Western terms, but as a piece of cinema in any genre. It's one of my favorite films ever and the fact that I rate Unforgiven close to it, should give you advance to some of my feeling here. Unforgiven also has a bonus as being Eastwood's best on-screen turn.

I grew up in Staines, and I do recall going to see Unforgiven at the local cinema on release. That old cinema went years ago, a multiplex nowadays supplying the local public their celluloid thrills. I do remember that the cinema housed all my growing movie experiences. I remember going alone to see Unforgiven and some 3 other people being in the cinema with me. In isolation, Unforgiven was a majestic beast that validated those of us that knew Clint was the man. My opinion hasn't really changed. I've watched this film so many times. It's slow to unravel, intense, and occasionally reveals gentle mocking humor. Eastwood always uses natural light which means the look of the film has just got better over time. All the performances are standout, especially Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman. But Clint waited to play this role, he knew he had to be the right age. Yes, there's echoes of Henry Fonda here, but it's The Man With No Name referencing his own past, specifically High Plains Drifter and the Preacher from Pale Rider, Eastwood's William Munny in Unforgiven could be these same charters a few years down the line.

So this is the deal. We get Eastwood debunking his own iconic screen persona of the previous 30 years for most of Unforgiven. He's trashing The Man With No Name and the callous violence of Dirty Harry and countless other cool shoot'em ups. Eastwood has pursued this theme for a lot of his post Unforgiven pictures (Mystic River, Letters From Iwo Jima), this was a turning point. Eastwood shows us the futility of taking someone's life, the key line in the movie, delivered by Eastwood's rejuvenated Munny being:"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." But Eastwood can't leave it alone. The thrilling last 20 minutes of Unforgiven remains some of the most intense cinema I've seen. Eastwood's scraggly features redefine for us his screen persona and deliver the ultimate vengeful angel of death. It's hardness unparalleled combined with a laconic cool only Eastwood's iconic cowboy persona can deliver. It's the soul of Unforgiven and it's unmissable.

ER: Season 1 (1994)

2011-11-12T10:10:00.002+02:00

Nick:
So, this week: the environment is well and truly shafted, the Eurozone is well and truly shafted, the white & black rhinos are well and truly shafted and Republican candidate Rick Perry is well and truly shafted, but he probably doesn't remember why. It's not as if any of these things have impacted on my life – yet. As the days get stupidly short in Finland it feels like the news grows equally darker and more depressing. On top of this, we've been rattling through the first season of ER. Somehow I have managed to miss ER. I've caught a few episodes over the years, but Michael Crichton's celebrated Emergency Ward series is a mystery to me, especially these early one's with George Clooney.

ER is famous for taking the hospital drama into a more realistic direction than home audiences were used to (although M*A*S*H certainly didn't spare the blood or the political/social commentary in the 1970's). ER is mostly focused on the emergency ward of a Chicago County General Hospital and with the young resident surgeons and doctors who treat patients under the most trying circumstances and in never ending shifts. Scenes are gritty and technical yet over the course of Season 1 we get to know the key characters intimately. The main cast of Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Noah Wyle, Sherry Springfield and Eriq La Salle are all excellent. As the season moves on we get more personal with each central character and their lives away from the ER, but it's the hospital where ER excites and, at times, traumatizes.

Yes, ER can be a massive downer. It can also be sentimental and George Clooney can be the smarmiest arse. But this is minor. ER is top TV series fodder. It has been incredibly popular and holds all sorts of records. I've heard the standards of the first season were maintained throughout it's 15 (!!!) seasons. If so, it's deserved its success. I cant wait to tuck into Season 2.

Astrid:
When I was an exchange-student in Michigan in 1999, my mother based her idea of what my surroundings were like on ER. Sure, I went to Chicago once with a symphony orchestra of teenagers to play a show at a Hilton hotel downtown, but other than that my life was nothing like the characters' in ER and Chicago remained a stranger to me. I came to ER later, possibly when I returned back to Finland in 2000 and my mother was still watching the series because it was so good. I remember being surprised that my mother liked a show about a hospital emergency room with doctors and nurses as the main characters and with a lot of fast paced technical talk and blood.

ER ran on Thursdays in Finland. It went on for years and so when I had moved out from my parents' to live with Nick, I continued to watch it. Or actually that's when I began to really follow it. The characters became people I really cared for – I cried every Thursday on my own while watching ER, because Mark was dying and Carter was going to Africa and patients died and the women were often so unlucky in love...The important point is: I was always home alone on Thursdays when ER was on.

During the resent months my taste in entertainment has narrowed to accommodate the pregnant brain and emotional state. Yet, I was surprised to find myself needing to watch ER again. Surely it would be too gory and heavy...people dying and being born all the time...But I wanted to start from the beginning and share ER with Nick, who was always working on Thursdays back when we still had a TV.
ER: Season 1 did not disappoint. Even when the series is nearing its 20th birthday, it doesn't seem dated. I guess that's because it deals with such fundamental issues and everyone's wearing a white, green or pink doctor's coat, which don't seem to change in look ever. One of ER's best features is that it is easy to insert oneself into the series and therefore reflect on my own life. There's always something familiar there: some experience, fear, situation or a character to empathize or identify with. Still makes me tearful and wanting more.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) Directed by Steven Spielberg

2011-11-06T10:21:00.002+02:00

Astrid:
I believe that me never becoming very fascinated with comic books as a child was to do with what I was offered. I was given the world of Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, the visuals of Rudolf Koivu and Carl Larsson. The outlines and block-colors of Donald Duck were foreign to me and I didn't even know what order to read the comic book boxes in. I did have a Tintin book though. It was from my father's childhood and I read it many times, even when I did not know my ABC.

There was something about Tintin that seemed slightly adult, over-my-head, sophisticated and yes indeed, fascinating. Tintin was a boy in adventure, but he was also an intelligent journalist (which I must have not really understood for a long time) and his friend Milou/Snowy added an endearing touch. My distant affection for Tintin has survived to this day and it now led me to the opening night of The Adventures of Tintin in 3D. It was my first time wearing 3D glasses and let me warn people with glasses: it's not a fun combination to wear two pairs on top of each other for two hours. Next time I'd prepare by wearing contact lenses underneath. My initial shock of seeing things in 3D felt a little like it must have felt for people a hundred years ago when they first drove a car. Sadly, this exhilaration wore off quickly and was replaced by a feeling that the film really didn't need to be in 3D at all.

Having freshly viewed all 3 first Indiana Jones films I must say that at times Spielberg's Tintin veered very close to Indie-like-action-filler. That's my criticism of an otherwise entertaining and great looking fairytale. The style of animation used in the film seems to aim at mixing very realistic human features and movement to very fantastic and unreal scenarios. I'm not convinced all this fancy technology is necessary for a good movie experience, or for a good story. The success of a fairytale is so much down to our own imagination. Nowadays it looks like adults are making children's movies prioritizing the advances in technology over our capacity to imagine. Yet the kids love their movies, I know. But why the hell does the theater turn up the sound so much we have to block our ears in the fighting scenes?
Tintin is still good and intelligent though, Haddock's alcoholism is an interesting topic rarely openly discussed in a film for kids and Milou is a genius.

Nick:
It has been fascinating the last few weeks reading Tintin experts (yes they exist), spouting forth all kinds of nonsense about how violated they feel by Spielberg's movie. The Guardian newspaper especially seems to have a vendetta against the film, as article after article spouts on about how rubbish The Adventures of Tintin is. Personally, I've found some of the claims made on behalf of Hergé's creation really ridiculous" "Greatest comic strip ever" (calm it!) "deep, hidden layers of meaning" (patronizing or what?) It's amazing, but I'm pretty sure most of these Tintin experts are white, middle class and middle-aged males who as well as obsessing over Tintin, probably masturbate over the thought of the Hubble Telescope. Getting a life has a lot to do with it. I'm a Tintin fan, I've read the books (ages ago), I used to love the old TV cartoon series as a child and even the very confused 1960's movie adaptations. Spielberg's Tintin (produced by the Lord Of the Rings guru Peter Jackson) has been accused amongst other things of simplifying Tintin for US audience demands, a country where Hergé's creation has never really caught on. That The Adventures of Tintin really works and is totally in keeping with what we expect Tintin to be, makes me wonder what all the fuss has been about.

Spielberg combines three of Tintin's stories to create the plot for The Adventures of Tintin. This Tintin, as so many are, is a treasure hunt with twists and turns, a fair dollop of action and a smart level of humor. Jamie Bell plays Tintin, Andy Serkis his drunken sidekick Captain Haddock, whilst the latest James Bond Daniel Craig wickedly enjoys himself as Ivanovich Sakharine. Spielberg uses motion capture animation and 3D to heighten the adventure. The 3D felt a bit pointless to be honest (it is used relatively subtly). The motion capture looks great and allows Spielberg small exaggerations in character, but most importantly to comfortably transport Hergé's comic book world to the big screen. Being the king of the action set piece, I'm glad to report that The Adventures of Tintin contains 3 or 4 amazing sequences from Spielberg that show he's still got it. In truth, some of the creativity on view from the art department to the staging of these scenes and general use of imagination associated with The Adventures of Tintin is breathtaking.

Anything wrong here? Bell maybe still lacks the overall presence to carry a film this big and ambitious, but still his Tintin works, so it's a minor quibble. I'm sure it's a role he'll grow into (there is already talk of a Jackson-directed sequel.) This is definitely a kids movie, my 10-year-old loved it. Saying that, Spielberg injects enough knowing to satisfy the adults. Special mention must go to the opening title sequence which is a thing of rare beauty to watch on the big screen, almost worth the price of admission alone. I can't give you enough of a recommendation other than to say The Adventures of Tintin finds Steven Spielberg on top of his game. No desecration going on here, just passion for the subject, a big heart and a lot of fun.

A Mighty Heart (2007) Directed by Michael Winterbottom

2011-11-01T10:13:00.001+02:00

Nick:
The war in Iraq seems an age away now. 10 years is a long time. So much pain and loss on all sides. It's war based on a brazen lie from supposed civilized nations. Coupled with the arrogance that we are dealing with supposedly inferior people living in different cultures we dare not understand, our trail of destruction raises all kinds of moral questions. But we can afford to ignore our own moral dilemmas as our lives are enveloped in materialistic temptations and those troubles in far off continents just seem like something happening over there. Winterbottom has repeatedly tried to draw us back into messes our governments have often shirked, giving us real events dramatized in his dry/semi-documentary style if not an actual documentary. The Shock Doctrine (2009) The Road To Guantanamo(2006) Welcome To Sarajevo(1997) and A Mighty Heart all deal with war in modern times and its various repercussions. Winterbottom has form and doesn't shirk from showing the uncomfortable.

A Mighty Heart is another movie where Winterbottom manages to work with top-draw Hollywood talent on a low budget. So, amongst Winterbottom's often difficult and challenging oeuvre you'll find the likes of Jessica Alba, Colin Firth, Steve Coogan, Kate Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Kate Winslet and Woody Harrelson slumming it in often political, generally top quality, yet weird films. This time, it's Angelina Jolie, taking a trip out of her comfort zone and messing with the rough trade to show she's got the chops to be taken seriously. And she's good in A Mighty Heart. Winterbottom rein-acts the real life kidnapping and ultimate murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan with his usual no thrills. The focus is on how Pearl's pregnant wife Mariane (Jolie) deals with the often confusing search for her husband.

Winterbottom bravely shows possible logical reasons as to Pearl's murder by Islamic fundamentalists he was supposed to interview before he and his wife were due to leave Pakistan. Was it because of Guantanamo? Because Pearl was Jewish? Repercussions for American involvement in Iraq? Supposed Wall Street Journal coercion with the CIA? Or because the Pearls housed an Indian helper who was possibly looking to discredit Pakistan? Winterbottom considers all options to the kidnapping/murder that nowadays is simply put down to an al-Qaeda killing. A Mighty Heart despite this, still works as drama. That Mariane Pearl, a journalist herself, emerges from A Mighty Heart as a human being with great compassion and willingness to understand difference in the most trying and horrific circumstances, is something we could all learn from. Up to his usual high standards, Winterbottom's picture is a powerful reminder and lesson in tolerance.

Astrid:
In 2007 there was still a sense of urgency about understanding what was really going on with the USA in Iraq, Afghanistan and the neighboring countries. I had that need too and wanted to see A Mighty Heart immediately when it came out. I did not see it, for some reason. Now, at the end of 2011 there is a deflated helplessness and resignation to all things evil – I mean that the general feeling, the media and individual people seem to be much less attuned to asking what is still going on. I'm talking about a perspective that's strictly Scandinavian, far-removed from the streets of Pakistan for example. (I imagine it impossible to not ask those questions there every day.)

In this climate watching A Mighty Heart seemed out of place. It did not feel right to view it as pure cinema, because of its depiction of real events and people. It did not seem right to view it as a superstar vehicle for Angelina Jolie either. As a movie or a series of acting performances there was nothing that impressive about the film. Yet, time had passed and the film had lost some of its political urgency, which I can imagine was shocking still in 2007.

Then again, as the end credits roll and remind you that Mariane Pearl is now living with her son in Paris, the realness of it all hits me. Despite the movie's end or the Western world's gradual disinterest in their own hateful mess, the husband and father Pearl is never coming home to his family.
This simple point should end all conflict and prove futile the logic of hatred and warfare. It seems that the Pearl family knew this and know it still, after their personal loss. It is still important to make films about what is really happening around the world – sometimes cinematic values become secondary to the need to tell the truth. Injustice will not end through ignorance.

We're 200 reviews old! Here's some personal favorites

2011-10-30T20:24:00.016+02:00

To celebrate that My Lawyer Will Call Your Lawyer recently passed 200 posts, we decided to pick three of our favorite reviews so far.
Click on the film title to read our reviews.

Astrid:

New York, New York :

Brief Encounter:

Comes A Horseman:

Nick:

Stardust Memories:

To Have And Have Not:

The Misfits:

Falling in Love (1984) Directed by Ulu Grosbard

2011-10-26T11:41:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
I went to the library last week and borrowed a pile of movies to watch while Nick was too busy to sit down with me. I have squirmed through Last Chance Harvey with the elderly Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson embarrassing themselves as new lovers. I knitted my way through Flash of Genius and was actually moved by The Great Debaters. One evening Nick was home and I had saved us the most romantic of my library choices, Falling in Love.

Falling in Love pictures Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep falling for each other in New York – or on the train going there actually. It describes the tangles and mess of being already married but falling for someone new...and not being able to recover from those feelings. This was a film I had seen a glimpse of many years ago on TV and had since dreamed of it as a great unattainable movie. Sure, had I seen Falling in Love in the 1990s I would have truly loved it. Now I could not help but notice that it was a little hollow here and there, the clothes on Meryl were 4 sizes too big and Robert's intensity was a misplaced leftover from Raging Bull or some other testosterone-role. After seeing him in all the aggressive and violent roles he was so brilliant at all through the 1970s, as a viewer I could not trust that he wasn't actually a psycho waiting to blow his fuse...not a good thing for a romantic drama with no intended edge.

Falling in Love casts the great Diane Wiest as Meryl's single girlfriend. Although her role is not big here, she is funny and deep even in the small supporting role. I have grown to love Diane Wiest over the last couple of years. Not the least because of her role in Hannah and Her Sisters and her version of a psychotherapist in the TV-series In Treatment. She is the New York woman.

Nick:
My life is a perpetual blur at this time. Flu has been a constant companion, I just cant shake it. I'm drowning in things to do, the in-tray permanently full. I'm waiting for a lull. It feels like it ain't coming. So this past Sunday finally arrives and palatable relief. I've not had a genuine day off in weeks. Here it is. Time with my family, nice. Unwind, relax. Falling In Love, let the blandness wash over you. It's an easy option when my brain won't engage. Powerhouses of American acting share the screen, New Hollywood graduate behind the camera, it's a sure fire wet dream! No? Why? Surely? Don't piss on my undemanding mode of operation. This film's actual stiffness becomes a problem that precludes me from merely just enjoying it.

Here's the problem: Grosbard has a history of average movies behind him, with a couple of alright efforts (True Confessions, Straight Time). He brings willful arty pointlessness to Falling in Love. This could be OK in some faux-European-Art-House-movie sense, but Falling In Love has the flat feel of a US TV movie from 1981. Falling In Love also takes an age to get going. So, in my tried impatience, I don't want anymore scenes of the main protagonists Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro nearly meeting on their train into New York, nearly exchanging glances and so on ad-nauseum. It's shocking that De Niro and Streep accepted this slow slow slow build-up. Falling In Love is a picture about finding one's true love despite existing, established surroundings. The chance meeting. Is this a new Brief Encounter? If only.

I did catch this when it first came out. It was all the rage back in 1984 and I was seduced by Streep and De Niro. The pretension that so inflicts almost every frame of Falling In Love was somehow acceptable in those hollow times. When eventually these confused lovers get it together in Falling In Love a sense of "thank god this is over" transpires. A wooden turkey from people who should know better.

Terms of Endearment (1983) Directed by James L. Brooks

2011-10-18T19:40:00.000+03:00

Nick:
I get it sometimes when extremely tired, also when mentally and emotionally hurt. If I bang my little toe on the sideboard, I get it too. What is it I get? I get a handful of hankies/tissue papers and ultimately a flood of tears. Yes, I get tearful. I cry watching movies (I'm sure I've mentioned this here before?) King Kong does it for me every time (strangely the 1970's remake!?) And some other pictures like say, Casablanca or the Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep definition of the modern weepie, The Bridges Of Madison County. Terms Of Endearment is a terrible film. There is no way for me to avoid making that statement. It's smug and self-satisfied and has the worst chirpy-fucking-chirp soundtrack. Add this to shallow characterization in a film that thinks it's dealing with real issues. Yet, this film makes me blub like a baby every time. Why?

Hateful mum (Shirley MaClaine, sister of Warren) resents getting old, treats grown-up daughter (Debra Winger) terribly. Mother does not agree with her daughter's pending wedding to Stephen Malkmus clone Flap (Jeff Daniels). After the marriage a few years whiz by. Daughter has children all the time whilst husband moves family around America, accepting teaching jobs and having affairs with students. Daughter has affair with ugly bank manager and is diagnosed with cancer. Lots of guilt ensues. Daughter dies. Crying starts. This is basically the plot of Terms Of Endearment. I forgot to mention that MacLaine is excellent and that Jack Nicholson as a boozy womanizing astronaut steals the film. In fact the hateful mother and the crazy astronaut scenes elevate Terms Of Endearment momentarily to greatness. Unfortunately, the movie focuses too much on the duller-than-life daughter's story.

Despite my boredom with this twee Americana and the essentially slavish mentality of the do-gooding Winger character, once she's on her death bed, being so brave and the big C is coming to get her and she says goodbye to her kids and her husbands a shit, the hateful mum keeps the children once she's gone, all this emotion just does me in, it's too much for me ...boo hoo hoo....... So, I say it again. Terms Of Endearment is a terrible film. One that brings the tears out in me and I don't know why (or maybe I'm being coy?).

Astrid:
Terms of Endearment is a film I cannot discuss without acknowledging that I took it very personally indeed. I (along with a surprisingly big number of my close friends) am currently expecting a baby. Needless to say, at this point this fact influences my perspective on almost anything I experience. Yet, because Terms of Endearment is largely about a mother-daughter relationship once the daughter has started her own family, I watched it especially closely with mother-to-be spectacles on.

The movie portrays a mother (MacLaine) who has difficulty letting go of her daughter and accepting and supporting her in her independent choices. In fact, the mother has obviously always been using the daughter for her emotional needs rather than offering her own shoulder of support for her growing child. That becomes clear from the beginning of the film. The mother does not approve of the daughter's (Winger) hair, girlfriend, husband, or any choices for that matter. The film offers no explanation as to why these people have turned out the way they are. The mother is rich and the daughter ends up poor and uneducated with three children and a philandering looser husband. The mother finally breaks her years of loneliness by starting an affair with her neighbor, an alcoholic astronaut (Nicholson). All the while the mother keeps herself suffocatingly close to the daughter by phoning her up everyday, all day long. I'm not sure if the film is aware of its portrayal of co-dependency, but that's what it certainly depicts.

Terms of Endearment is infuriatingly flawed. It creates very flawed characters and leaves the viewer wondering if this is entirely intentional or not. Maybe it's a good thing that I never know what the film wants me to feel about anything – there is a callousness of the characters which remains in complete juxtaposition with the sentimental and therefore intrusive music. Finally, the ending of the film is entirely unsatisfactory. Despite all these things, in my current state of metamorphosis and becoming, I enjoyed the movie because it allowed me to reflect on my own dreams of mothering and my own experiences as somebody's child. Terms of Endearment was made in 1983. Unfortunately, I'm afraid there is nothing out there being made now that could speak even this honestly of such flawed parenting. Nowadays Hollywood seems to concentrate on sneakily making films about how to be a better consumer-mother-workaholic-genius-breeder. No pressure – just entertainment.

Planet Of The Apes (1968) Directed By Franklin J. Schaffner

2011-10-15T11:19:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
During the titles Nick had already made a few comments: "Great titles!" he said, and then "we never watch enough 60s films". I said nothing. I was making an effort to be nice and agreed therefore to watch Planet of the Apes although I knew I was in for something equally as annoying as it would be entertaining. I could have remarked that the reason we cannot watch too many movies from the 1960s is because the period in cinema is unreliable (you get a lot of daring invention but you get unimaginative conformist and naive stories too)...While I can embrace some of the stylish, groovy and funny 60s, I hate James Bond and to me it signifies the period. Anyway, I continued to say nothing when Nick predicted that I would like Planet of the Apes.

He was talking in a hopeful voice with a tiny amount of force in it (just in case that would do the trick of persuading me to fall in love with Chalton Heston). The film began and Nick declared with child-like excitement: "the spacecraft is sinking!" and "wow, that must be the Grand Canyon". Indeed, I thought, but how stupid is this film when it expects us to believe that these 700-year-old astronauts would not recognize the Grand Canyon when they land in the middle of one of the biggest landmarks in the US, their original home? That question proved to be frustratingly poignant throughout the film. It felt as if the makers were undermining both the audience in front of the silver screen and the characters in the film. In 2011 it felt a little too simple to just reverse the roles between humans and apes (or other mammals) and then stop imagining anything further. It would a be a great script if it had been written by a 10-year-old, but it wasn't.

Nick remained enthusiastic until the end. I could see he was watching the film with the childhood self who first saw the film decades ago. He did not suffer and intellectualize, he did not laugh at but with the film. He got the almost environmentalist message at the end of the movie and it still could make an impact after all these years. I watched Chalton Heston ride away in his Tarzanesque outfit with his own non-verbal sexy Jane in tow. Yes, I got it – Adam and Eve all over again. Past and present meeting in a circle where it no longer matters what is the future because it's all the same evolutionary repetition in the end. And then there was the final scene of the film with the Statue of Liberty. Nick loved it because it was "iconic" – sometimes I wish I were a little boy, sometimes I wish I was in the target audience for something other than Sex and the City I and II.

Nick:
A strange symmetry, web of conceit or pure coincidence seems to tie together the movies we have reviewed this month. Edward Scissorhands features Johnny Depp playing a character who is in part based on The Cure's Robert Smith. This year at Cannes premiered a new movie called This Must Be The Place starring Sean Penn, where his character is a Robert Smith-like retired rock star looking for his father's killer (!!!!). James Franco co-starred with Penn in Milk, and this year Franco starred in a kind of sequel to Planet Of the Apes called Rise Of the Planet Of The Apes. Confused? Well, lets just add that Scissorhands helmer Tim Burton directed a famously pointless remake of Planet Of The Apes in 2001. This really doesn't represent anything other than the small circles and lack of original material knocking around Hollywood. Planet Of the Apes, the original from 1968 is still the definitive chapter of the series that warrants revisiting (at least in my opinion).

Planet Of The Apes not only spawned sequels and remakes but also a TV series in the 1970's which I was a big fan of when I was a kid. I had the badges and knew friends who were members of the series fanclub. I always loved the reverse concept of Planet of The Apes, that the human species have created their own destruction, only for the Apes to rise and become the dominant species on a future earth. Man cannot talk and is in fact closer to our present understanding of the primate. Planet Of The Apes deals with this concept, yet also manages to mix in an oppressor influenced by Nazism, a commentary on the outsider in society, the issue of race and man's headlong race to destroy the planet (environmentalism). This is perhaps why Planet Of the Apes has endured so long, under disguise it tackles so much that is still relevant to our current state.

Schaffner manages to create an amazing looking backdrop for the 'new planet' with the early scenes shot in Glen Canyon, Utah, these being the most impressive of the picture. Charlton Heston as our cynical hero spends most of the picture in states of undress (he was 45!), yet offers us a stern authority as future spaceman Taylor. Stand out performances come from Kim Hunter and Roddy Mcdowall as the intellectual scientists who fight for Taylor's cause of actually being an intelligent human being. Special mention must go to the ape make-up, which still looks convincing after all these years. So, what Planet Of the Apes actually states are quasi-liberal ideologies, a warning to man of what might happen. The final scene of Taylor's ultimate discovery has become one of the most iconic images in modern cinema history. It's enough alone to preserve Planet Of the Apes standing as a classic.

Milk (2008) directed by Gus Van Sant

2011-10-12T18:56:00.001+03:00

Nick:
Harvey Milk is someone from real life I find inspirational. A human being who ended up on this earth fighting hypocrisy, discrimination, bigotry and hatred in its worst forms. Milk seemingly did this with a smile on his face and a big heart. So yeah, if we're talking of modern heroes, they don't come any better than Harvey Milk and his fight for the rights of gay people. It's amazing to me that these events are so recent and how backward we are as a society that we even have to have this discussion. If you've watched the excellent documentary The Times Of Harvey Milk, then, in a rather sad way, I can't think of any reason for you to watch Gus Van Sant's movie Milk.

Yes, Sean Penn is great in Milk as Harvey. He displays a rarely seen sensitivity, Van Sant positions his film solely on Penn's shoulders. However good Penn is, it's too much responsibility for him to carry the movie when all other characters are left so shallow. This is a bio-pic in the most crass Hollywood terms, sharing facts, but little personal insight. Milk is never as gripping as the real life portrayal of Rob Epstein's aforementioned documentary, yet it covers virtually the same ground. Actors like James Franco, Josh Brolin and Diego Luna are wasted in poorly written roles that just keep the story moving along. I would love to say there were great scenes of fucking in this movie, but unfortunately even these are rare and very self-conscious in a "let's not rock the established order" kind of way.

I'm never convinced by Gus Van Sant as a director, he' so miss with the odd hit. For every Drugstore Cowboy or Goodwill Hunting (both great), there is the frankly awful Psycho remake, Finding Forester and Last Days. You know Van Sant could be a wonderful art-house director, but he always has one eye on the mainstream and gets too confused. If Milk had been made from a personal perspective it would have been far more interesting than this piece of second hand furniture. Worth watching (just!) for Penn and some visual flare, Milk was a major let down for me. Harvey deserves better.

Astrid:
I was familiar with Harvey Milk's story through a great documentary on him. I think I saw it around the time Milk opened. I was curious to see the film as well, but the documentary kind of satisfied that need for the time being. Before watching the film I expected to see some different approach to Harvey Milk, but in fact Milk turned out to be strangely loyal to the doc. Whatever personal affairs and emotions the film tried to inject into the drama, it hardly took the narrative anywhere – the most interesting stuff became Milk's gender political campaigning.

I guess in many ways Milk was an attempt at mainstreaming gay rights issues in a social environment where things had gotten seemingly more relaxed, yet huge discrimination abides in the US and Europe.
If Brokeback Mountain (2005) had approached gay men as a romantic leading couple, in 2008 it was time in Hollywood to portray the larger scale of what it has meant to be gay in America. Lesbian women await that more politicized treatment from Hollywood, now that The Kids Are Alright (2010) has offered the personal-is-political viewpoint.

Back to Milk the film. I was impressed by its 1970s look, the way it was shot and the mood that was created with sets, props, and clothing. This was the first time I saw James Franco in a film. Strangely enough he reminded me of Heath Ledger, the other star of Brokeback Mountain. The film itself was in no way perfect or cinematic, but I'm glad it got to be made. What happened to Harvey Milk cannot be forgotten. If I ran for office in any political election, I would argue for more public affection. There should be much more public kissing and cuddling in general – between men, among women and in what ever combination. Public affection makes the world a safer place.

Edward Scissorhands (1990) Directed by Tim Burton

2011-10-09T19:07:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
As a child I missed the fall-in-love-with-johnny-depp boat. I just didn't get on it and then it got difficult later in life. I'll admit though, that once he got old enough to seem a bit ragged instead of just beautiful, I like him better. One big reason why I didn't get Depp like all my girlfriends was that I totally missed Edward Scissorhands. Can you believe it? I was just the right age to be very impressed by it in the early 1990s, and it was everywhere – oh, the references I must have missed. For me Winona Ryder was also a phenomenon familiarized by Little Women, not Edward Scissorhands.

So in my 30th year, among many other baffling and strange things I had never tried before, I finally saw the film. And I shared the experience with a lucky 10-year-old who got very frustrated and sad because she thought the film was hopelessly sad and downward-spiralling. She did not realize, how amazingly lucky she is from my perspective. She's not missing out on major cinematic shifts. My theory on why she got so very upset is that she has been totally bitten by the johnny-depp-love-bug already. He's still hanging around for this generation of girls...in pirate costume, in a chocolate factory and everywhere else.

Edward Scissorhands is a good movie even though I was hopelessly late for it. It is a light look at difference contrasted with monotony, and a look at the inability we socially have to accept anything different from our norm. It was romantic and kind of funny. In my opinion though, the film was light as a feather. I cannot help but associate the discovery of it with the discovery that I grew up in bubble when it comes to popular culture. That's why I'm writing this blog now: I'm taking it all in and devouring pop with a hunger. I don't have scissors for hands, but I relate to Ed(ward) – a little.

Nick:
Johnny Depp eh? What a cad. Nowadays Depp sleepwalks his way through many a picture, picking up some ridiculous paycheck at the end. There was a time when he was the king of quirk, making many a flawed art-house picture for cult audiences pre-the-Pirates franchise. It's clear now that Keith Richards wasn't the first rock star that Depp mimed for onscreen inspiration. Depp's early collaborations with Burton are in my opinion the best Depp pictures. With Edward Scissorhands Burton and Depp are able to create a modern day fairytale where the main character, at least on a visual level, is based on The Cure's front man Robert Smith.

I haven't watched Edward Scissorhands in many years, so I was surprised how well it stood up. Not only this, I'd say nowadays this stands as a modern classic. This is no news to anyone, it's hardly an obscure film. But it's a strange film, with a singular vision. Edward Scissorhands mixes post-war (1940's) sensibilities/visuals, old school-Hollywood Horror (Vincent Price!) with Lynchian attitudes and Walt Disney fantasy to create something new. Not only this, but Burton manages to imbue the picture with a great sense of humor (there are many laugh-out-loud moments). The film's eccentric take on American suburban uniformity has endured. Its message of tolerance to difference is more relevant now than ever in a world that can't accept any change or the other.

Winona Ryder is the love-interest (around this time Depp and Ryder were an item), the chemistry between the two leads is palpable and ultimately makes the picture moving. Lets be honest here, Ryder can be awful, this could be her best role. But it's Depp all the way that one remembers. As Edward Scissorhands Depp displays the makings of a future star (this was his first performance to make a mark), but one who understands restraint. He returned to this standard in later Burton pictures but never quite with this comic intensity. Edward Scissorhands still has the capacity to move and bring a lump to the throat, it's an emotional picture. A true original, Edward Scissorhands really might turn out to be Burton's masterpiece.

That Touch Of Mink (1962) Directed by Delbert Mann

2011-09-28T09:48:00.001+03:00

Nick:
I could laugh at the old-fashioned attitudes towards women and homosexuality that pervade That Touch Of Mink. I could point at the fact that the picture's main obsession is sex and how to get it and how naive that seems now. But then I could tell you about what I read was happening today: the pop star Rihanna taking her clothes off in a field for her new video and how interested we are in that. Or how I read a Tweet today by RuPaul that declared "Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one". Or could I point out to you that as I write this, American Amanda Knox is being tried for murder in Italy and during the trial has been compared to a witch (you know, the medieval variety) with multiple personalities. So in 2011, I can attest that we have really moved on from the old fashioned sentiments of That Touch Of Mink and will view That Touch Of Mink's mild homophobia and sexism is so beneath us as to be disdainful.

In reality, the kind of film that That Touch Of Mink represents is being made regularly in 2011(with he same attitudes) and will appear at a cine-plex near you very soon. The modern version will invariably star Jennifer Aniston as an approaching-middle-aged-woman, unmarried and looking for the incredibly wealthy and suave Mr Right (erm, Ralph Fiennes perhaps?) Sounds like a regular idea for a movie, yes? It's just that That Touch Of Mink stars Cary Grant and Doris Day, and is a star vehicle for actors who are effortless. No complications or depth in analysis needed here.

Grant retired a few years after That Touch Of Mink and Day didn't make so many more films after this either. They are easy on the eye and ear. Professional. Mann directs like the TV journeyman he really was. This film is in many ways pointless but I still laughed out loud at a couple of gags. Doris Day really is the Queen of soft focus and Cary Grant still is the best looking man to grace a cinema screen. Light nonsense with a touch of class.

Astrid:
It's all about sex. Unbelievably so, the whole point of That Touch of Mink is the yearning to have sex and the social obstacles on the path to the bunk. Isn't it annoying when the woman wants to be married first? Isn't it funny that men get nervous too, about the first time (even Cary Grant it appears). I guess it might have been back in 1962. Now it's just silly. What could be a film about class and about the power that money brings, a satire of sorts, is finally only a comedy about the extent to which these people have to go to get some. Sex.

From the perspective of Wednesday, the 28th of September 2011 it is refreshing to remember that obsession with getting laid is not something new, something rotten poisoning the minds of us internet-housed cyborgs. We have been sex-crazy forever. At least for the last 150-something years, if Foucault is to be consulted.

That Touch of Mink is a little sinister still. It suggests that rather than being about love, hetero relationships are a transaction – money-for-your-eggs kind of thing. The most terrifying thing of all is that when the film ends with a little baby being pushed in a pram – the happy result of Doris and Cary finally making it to bed – I smile contently. Yuck.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) Directed by Steven Spielberg

2011-09-25T18:12:00.002+03:00

Astrid:
There was only one way to get me to sit through Raiders Of The Lost Ark again, if I could watch it with a child who has never seen it before. Sure enough, the scenario took place this weekend and she declared it one of her favorite films. Watching movies with a child is very rewarding. They bring me to see things in a new or at least refreshed light. I was quite uncomfortable with the violence the film contains, but the child was very curious to see someone's face 'melting off', and the numerous skeletons and the snakes. She took it all as pure entertainment and went to sleep without nightmares (the only thing that was making her sick was the thought of the chocolate she'd been eating while watching the film).

When I first saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark I was thrilled too. I think I started from the second film and was thus very impressed by the ape brain soup. It's funny how many Spielberg films left an impression on the Young-me. And how many of his movies infuriate me now. Jurassic Park was the one I went to see in a theater in 1993 – and thought it was amazing.
I must have been a less opinionated person then and more able to enjoy what life throws my way. It is an ability I struggle to connect with these days. For example, I hate James Bond. I don't have the sense of humor or the senselessness for it. I think too much, I get offended. The same goes for Indiana Jones. It's best I don't begin my analysis, because somehow I survived through the film without the Adult-me's perspective.

To get back to my safety area, I am about to curl myself on the sofa and watch a Woody Allen classic. It's going to be one that I definitely know all the lines for. Sorry Indy, don't expect to see me in your class with my eye lids batting for your attention.

Nick :
When Ingmar Bergman died a few years ago (2007), I remember having an argument with a friend about who was more important and who would be remembered longer: Bergman or Steven Spielberg? I think the right question might have been: should cinema make us dream and create an escape from our daily existence, or should cinema make us reflect on the harsh realities of the human condition? Of course cinema functions as much more than just these opposites (as does the individual cinema of both Bergman and Spielberg) and ultimately any such arguments are futile. For the record, I was definitely in the Spielberg camp. I think Spielberg will live longer in people's memory (as if that matters). And furthermore, I personally prefer Spielberg's films. This says more about me than either film maker.

I've watched Raiders Of The Lost Ark countless times, it's a flawed movie for sure. But the action (which is of the roller-coaster variety) is exhausting in its excitement. There is a strong sense of humor, a Bacall-Bogart type of chemistry between the principles (Harrison Ford & Karen Allen) and at times, it's extremely violent. It also reveals Spielberg's on-screen loathing of the Nazis, a theme he would come back to in subsequent pictures. George Lucas co-produced the movie and there is always a sense here that this is two movie nerds (albeit rich ones) paying homage to an era they grew up in and the first movies they ever saw. That is key, as Raiders Of The Lost Ark displays an energy from Spielberg that he's shown since but rarely bettered. As Raiders of The Lost Ark celebrates 30 years of existence, much of what we know of as the generic action movie stems from here, but Raiders... offers so much more.

Harrison Ford gives one of his better, less resentful performances, he actually seems quite animated here. Ford's an actor who you feel expects to be in a better caliber of picture, something deeper (Bergman perhaps?) But people love him as Indiana Jones/Han Solo (or that type of wise cracking hero), so he's accepted his lot and slept through many of these type of roles, reluctantly giving the public what they want. In Raiders...he's still enthusiastic. Spielberg meanwhile continues to carve out an unpredictable filmography (with varying results). Raiders Of The Lost Ark still finds Spielberg at a time when he was more in the role of mass entertainer. For me Raiders Of the Lost Ark still shines bright as edgy, knowing entertainment and represents an early marker of greatness from one of cinema's masters.

Rumble Fish (1983) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

2011-09-21T11:17:00.001+03:00

Nick:
One of the most embarrassing things can be the older uncle who thinks he's the cool guy and still down with the kids. Getting older and clinging to youth. I often wonder if I appear like that to people. I am firmly in middle age now (45 years old). I have adult responsibilities. Yet, I have the same burning desire and enthusiasm for my favorite interests as I did when I was a teenager. Have I simply not grown up? Am I clinging to youth? I mention all this as it seems in 1983 Francis Ford Coppola made two films about street gangs that tried to appeal directly to a youthful audience. Did he feel in the early 1980's that he was no longer the young guy changing the movie industry from within (along with a whole bunch of other New Hollywood people)? Was he simply just shot after the Apocalypse Now! adventure and the flop musical One From The Heart? The Outsiders was the straighter of the two films, Rumble Fish the elegiac and one must add, more pretentious offering. Whatever the results, Coppola at least managed to introduce a roll call of new acting talent in both films that would keep movie theater's full for years to come.

As with the The Outsiders, Rumble Fish is based on S.E. Hinton's novel (she also co-scripted the movie with Coppola). This is where Rumble Fish struggles most. Frankly, the script is embarrassing. It's as if Coppola thinks it's OK if his characters spew out angst ridden cliche after cliche. This kind of dialogue may have worked in the 1950's (and especially in a Nicholas Ray movie) but by 1983 it makes Coppola look like that out of touch uncle I was talking about. But that's not all there is. You could say that the rot set in right here for Coppola as a film maker. What did he have to prove after the first two The Godfather's, Apocalypse Now! and The Conversation? Rumble Fish offers enough evidence that Coppola was actually embarking on his most experimental (if inconsistent work). Few movies from any era look as stunning as Rumble Fish. You can just ignore the terrible dialogue and bathe in the iconic imagery. You also have to factor in Mickey Rourke.

What makes Rumble Fish so fascinating now is how it captures Rourke at the height of his coolness. And he dominates Rumble Fish. Whilst everyone over acts or struggles with the material Rourke brings a calmness to proceedings, mumbling a la Brando, moody but gorgeous. Coppola nails the iconic Rourke here, on screen, in this movie. Dennis Hopper adds some Frank Booth like intensity, otherwise it's a parade of future stars and Tom Waits ( Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Nichols Cage etc). Police drummer Stewart Copeland adds futuristic menace to the stunning visuals with his percussion heavy soundtrack. Rumble Fish shows Coppola trying to deal with his own mythology, growing old and trying something different. It's an uneven affair, but when it clicks, Rumble Fish can still take the breath away.

Astrid:
Yet another film about men – the angry, young and frustrated types, who simply channel their aggression into physical fights, their emotions into booze and drugs and their desire into sex. The bunch so loved by cinema, the guys that owned the last century; that's who Coppola decided to portray. He always portrays this group anyway, just think of The Godfather or Apocalypse Now. Men.

Rumble fish. Of course it's a simile. But I remember as a child watching one of these fish in its fishbowl at a neighbor's home. The girl did not have a mother and that already made me feel sorry for her. Then she had the lonely fish, which had to remain alone, because it would kill any other fish immediately. Luckily, the girl's father bought her potato chips and cereal with sugar. Those were things I was never allowed to have in my house. I had a fish tank though, with frogs even.

Back to Rumble Fish, sort of. Mickey Rourke is obviously the reason Jamie Hince looks the way he does.

That's what we figured out. Too bad I am not in my biggest The Kills fan-phase, because had I seen this movie then, I would have loved it. The look, the photography and the pretentious air would have been just fine. Now I got angry and frustrated, but I'm not a young man, so what the hell can I do?

Lust for Life (1956) Directed by Vincente Minnelli

2011-09-18T20:26:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
Lust For Life is a 1950s movie about an artist, or a genius, as they would have definitely branded Vincent van Gogh then. In 1956 Western culture was at a crossroads: youth culture was rearing its unreliable head threatening with rock and roll, questioning the old ways on all levels of society, yet, the portrayal of an artist was still drenched in the masculine cult of the genius (with a long romantic history to back it up). Lust For Life portrayed a rebel of his own time, but the portrayal was not drawing similarities between now and then – the plight of the social misfits – it saw van Gogh almost as if through the eyes of a child.

Also, the film treated its subject, van Gogh, as a child-like innocent creature. As if the artist was never quite aware of his talent, his persona, or anything much around him (except of course when he painted). Life just happened as a chain of events, and their arbitrary connections seemed to throw van Gogh further into insanity. It is too bad that the film's emphasis on events of his life overshadow any imagining of what the artist might have been feeling or going through in his mind. A distance between the main character and the audience thus never goes away, which is always disappointing in movies.

I have rushed excitedly to a few big museums in the world just to catch a glimpse of a "genuine van Gogh" – I love his vision, yet I know very little about the man. Of course I heard about the ear cutting and the mental illness, and the interesting fact that he was never successful and now there's nothing we cannot buy with his painting printed on it. I remember the first time I had a chance in Chicago in 1999 to go see a van Gogh and how sophisticated I thought I was – the others were going to Sealife while I went to see art. Mostly though, my love for van Gogh comes from post cards and the stuff that was written on the other side of the pictures. There's never enough time to stare at a painting in a museum.

Nick:
Twenty years since the release of Nevermind, Nirvana's mainstream grunge breakthrough album, the tortured, anguished short life of band leader Kurt Cobain comes back into focus. The consummate, non-commercial artist as young man, bringing cultured sounds to the masses. Of course, ultimately Cobain could have done without the attention and the success. He paid the heaviest price for being at the center of a media shit storm. As article after article about the Grunge explosion starts to celebrate 20 years of the quiet/loud dynamic and the rehabilitation of the plaid shirt, am I the only one having a nightmares at the prospect of a Cameron Crowe documentary celebrating 20 years of Pearl Jam? That's a bottom barrel team up if ever I heard of one. Artist Vincent van Gogh wasn't afforded any real attention or fame during his short lifetime. Van Gogh is possibly the quintessential tortured artist, a front runner for Cobain. Eddie Vedder's got a lot to learn before being 4REAL.

There is a stiffness and quaintness to Minnelli's van Gogh bio-pic which is redolent of the times. This is its major flaw. Otherwise, Lust For Life is top quality and a genuinely strange picture posing as a Hollywood star vehicle. There is no real attempt in the film to come to terms with van Gogh's mental problems, which eventually cost him his life. Instead, we get lots of shots of Kirk Douglas (as van Gogh) looking anguished, lost and in pain. This is truly strange cinema. It's as if Minnelli gave Douglas a simple instruction: "Emote!" and left Douglas to get on with it. But the opulence of the direction (everything is in, ahem, broad strokes), the use of color, the sets and production values, all suggest money. Anthony Quinn brings energy to the picture with his portrayal of rebellious painter Gauguin.

Still, despite its shallowness and almost embarrassment with its subjects mental condition, Lust For Life is top draw. Douglas is brilliant, overacting at every turn, it's fun to watch. Minnelli knows how to use color and design: many of the shots do correlate with van Gogh's paintings. Minnelli is a master director, responsible for some of the all time greats movies, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Bad And The Beautiful, An American In Paris (in fact, a Martin Scorsese wet dream?) Lust For Life finds all participants on top form and is a classy picture, which deserves rehabilitation.

The Front Page (1974) Directed by Billy Wilder

2011-09-13T10:32:00.000+03:00

Nick:
Familiarity breeds contempt. This isn't just my view, you could also level that charge at Billy Wilder with his remaking of The Front Page. This is late Wilder, taking his hands off the production mantle and just opting to co-write (with regular writing partner I.A.L Diamond) and to direct. It's a clinical yet still stylish film. You feel Wilder is here because he's got nothing better to do. Wilder and Diamond inject some cynicism, black humor and crudeness into the script, which you expect. What interests me most about The Front Page is the remake angle. This was the third time this story graced the silver screen.

I can't claim to have seen the original film version from 1931 but the not so much later retelling, going under the name His Girl Friday from 1941, is cinema gold. Howard Hawkes' 1940s remake with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell has all the smarts and swing that Wilder's remake is lacking. Worse for me (and Astrid I feel) is that we actually watched His Girl Friday quite recently. The Front Page is an almost scene for scene remake, with some characters changing gender being the only real difference. Few films would compare favorably with His Girl Friday, so a flat, going through the motions version didn't really stand a chance.

Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon offer quality to Wilder's picture (when do they ever let you down?) as the wise and cynical newspaper men who know how to squeeze a story. Sad to say the casting of Susan Sarandon, in an early role, only highlights one of the films shortcomings. So much script time is handed over to periphery characters, which eats into the screen time and the acidic chemistry Matthau and Lemon bring to the picture. Wilder ultimately makes an OK picture. With a little more focus on the central duo, and a more elegiacal touch, Wilder could have bought in a picture with the emotional pull of his late masterpiece The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes. Instead, The Front Page feels like it was just a job for Wilder.

Astrid:
The Front Page marks a change in the way I watch a movie: I sat knitting through the whole thing and thought to myself 'this way I can last through any boring film'. That was the point. The Front Page was a bore – especially if you had seen the previous version not so long ago and this one appeared to be an overly-faithful remake with way too little Susan Sarandon in it. Yet, through the new-found knitting, I was able to emphasize in my mind the act of sitting in a chair and really concentrating on being this woman who knits while enjoying the evening's entertainment. I could feel the calming effects of doing something repetitive with my hands and I enjoyed the sense that women have sat in comfy chairs in dimly lit rooms knitting for centuries.

From another perspective it could be asked, why is it that women who are sitting down taking a break, often have to appear to be doing something even still? Is the knitting a sign of being a dutiful wife, not wasting any precious moments? It seems like I am talking about an image from a couple centuries back... But in my case in 2011, is knitting a sign of restlessness and inability to concentrate when I used to be just fine watching a film from beginning to end with my hands in my lap? Maybe.

One solution to my frustration and lack of concentration would be to watch better movies. Recently our choices have been unlucky. The Front Page in itself is not a bad film, although I have no idea why it needed to be remade in 1974 (for the third time), still not that many decades after the original came out.
Right now I dream of going to see a film in the theater for a change. It would be luxurious. And if my hands would be occupied with anything they would be diving into a bag of candy.

Funny Lady (1975) Directed by Herbert Ross

2011-09-04T19:27:00.002+03:00

Astrid:
New York New York (by Scorsese) is one of my favorite movies because it tells the story of a creative couple in the period setting of musicals, big bands and elaborate hair-dos. I got a little excited then, in the first five minutes of watching Funny Lady, realizing that it might be a related film about similar subject matter. Unfortunately, despite being a 1970's film, it turned out to be a rather conservative and cheesy effort. It dealt out some promising strands of plot and lines, then taking things to nowhere interesting.

Barbra Streisand plays a successful musical star and a recording artist in the 1930's New York. She just has bad luck with men, who appear to only be interested in (her) money. Left by one of these gold diggers (Omar Sharif), she forms a working relationship with another (James Caan) and eventually, the relationship becomes more than a working one – it becomes a dysfunctional marriage. I have no clue why though, as there is obviously never infatuation, love, sex or any kind of chemistry between the two. The guy needs the rich lady to further his career. That's all.

The mid-1970s was a time of active feminist voices everywhere. It was a time when Hollywood produced some subversive cinema, even questioning the portrayal of women only as props and property. Erica Jong had a hit with her novel Fear of Flying already in 1973. In this context, Funny Lady is a poor and stuck-up movie offering a rusty vehicle to its superstar Streisand. Seeing her in almost anything else would have been more interesting than this.

Nick:
Herbert Ross is somehow related to the naming of our blog. He directed Play It Again Sam, the Woody Allen movie that quotes from the Bogart/Bacall picture The Big Sleep where we picked our blog name. Unfortunately, Ross would have a rather unremarkable career post PIAS. Funny Lady shows the director as a yes-man to the stars, a safe pair of hands to guide the superstar vehicle: in this case, the whims and ego of Barbra Streisand. Streisand really was/is the last actress (save Lisa Minelli?) who could pull off the old-style Hollywood musical.

Funny Lady starts with promise. Although Astrid really didn't pick up on the period detail, it's one of Funny Lady's pluses for me and the movie evokes the 1930's depression era with fervor. There is also a chance that the movie will develop along the lines of Scorsese's amazing old-style musical homage New York, New York and inhabit the landscape of songwriter (James Caan) and muse (Streisand). It's sad to report that Funny Lady shies away from this at every opportunity. Instead it treads musical convention in every way with a series of uninspiring musical numbers that relate neither to plot nor charachter. It becomes very clear that this is all about Streisand and that amazing voice of hers.

Funny Lady is the sequel to Funny Girl (which I recall from my misspent youth) and does tell the real- life story of Fanny Brice (original Ziegfeld Follies girl). The first film has a certain zest, this sequel is a mess. But still, there are moments when Streisand's voice and presence carry the film and you'd hope that some substance would be given to her relationship with Caan (playing songwriter and producer Billy Rose). Caan seems to be reprising his role of Sonny in The Godfather, which considering Funny Lady is a lighthearted musical comedy, suggests he was slightly miscast. Streisand is good here but is let down by poor direction, a patchy script, flat directing and – worst for a musical – unmemorable songs. Lightweight in every sense.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Directed by Wes Anderson

2011-08-31T13:53:00.001+03:00

Nick:
Family disagreements, forced silences, different perspectives; nothing brings as much turmoil and discomfort as families at war. I have always seen myself as the black sheep in my family, I seemed to embrace my adopted nation's cultural values much more than the rest of my family (England, compared to my parents' Italy.) I also lacked any moral allegiance to religious guidance. It's still like that really. I love my family dearly, but one has to acknowledge the difference. The Royal Tenenbaums does not impact on my own family in any way. It is however, one of my favorite films of recent times.

After Rushmore, it's fair to say that The Royal Tenenbaums was the movie where Wes Anderson not only cemented his reputation as being a visually stylish director but also a distinctive one. Nowadays you can see the influence of this film everywhere. It's in the color co-ordination of the sets and characters, the bloody great use of soundtrack (Elliot Smith, Nico, The Velvet Underground) that gives hints it's an Anderson movie. But as well as embracing Bill Murray in his movies, it's the fact that Anderson knows how to use the goddess that is Angelica Huston. He remembers that Huston was the daughter of John and the lover of Jack and affords her the true presence and authority of character that Angelica should always demand in her roles. The Royal Tenenbaums also acknowledges that Gene Hackman, when on form, is the equal to any actor out there. His lovable scoundrel Royal is the beating heart here, Hackman brings this one to life.

So, we get tragedy and laughs in equal measure, but neither seems out of place or uncomfortable in this context. The big issues, life and love and death are dealt with. I love this film. Nothing in mainstream American cinema really compares. Anderson may never make a movie as great as this again (though he's come close). Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson certainly won't. If this has somehow alluded you, go find it now. The Royal Tenenbaums is masterful entertainment.

Astrid:
The Royal Tenenbaums was a movie Nick and I watched in 2002. It was one of the early cinema experiences we shared – we even found a huge poster for the film and hung it on our kitchen wall for some years. Therefore the aesthetic of all subsequent Wes Anderson movies and their continual dealing with love and dysfunction have felt directly personal to me – or to us – in my interpretation. The film meant so much to me on so many levels that when my parents were divorcing in 2005, I gave my dad a copy of the film thinking he would appreciate it. He hated The Royal Tenenbaums.

It is a movie about an estranged father trying to make it back to his family after years of neglect and wrong doing. Yet, it is not only about the dad and his often failing attempts to get back the love he is missing. There are the children and their mother. The three adult children (played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson) who one by one move back to the family home and suffer from various degrees of depression, are at the heart of the story. The mother (Angelica Houston), who is about to marry her longtime friend and accountant, is there too. The point is that they can all move on in their personal lives through the confrontation with the returning father/husband.

Wes Anderson knows how to make an intelligent and deeply-felt drama, while at the same time, showing the comic side of life. He wrote the script with Owen Wilson. The other thing that Anderson is a master at is the look of every frame in his pictures. Viewing his shots, as well as his moving scenes, as detailed portraits (almost like paintings) of characters is essential. There is thought to each detail, reason for each strayed hair. In a long relationship you sometimes question whether the partners involved have anything left from the selves they were at the beginning of things. It is hard to remember. The Royal Tenenbaums is our relationship ruler, by which we can measure how far then is from now.

Atonement (2007) Directed by Joe Wright

2011-08-30T10:01:00.000+03:00

Astrid:We watched Atonement one Christmas Eve some years ago and were left with a hesitation about whether the film was any good. It took us until last night to feel like reviewing the movie. This time around, I was quite convinced by it. Atonement fulfilled similar cinema needs as The English Patient used to – until I watched it one too many times. There is the romance that is all the more romantic because the lovers are doomed to never make it to the boring repetitive everyday life together. There is the period setting, the first half of the 20th century, which is a much more aesthetic time than the present. There is the epic scale of the picture, and actually and surprisingly, a good and complex enough story line to carry us through.

I'm still not a huge fan of Keira Knightly – like I don't get Audry Hepburn, I just don't get the anorexic gazelle look – and I find it difficult to peer through her looks into the acting. But hey, at least this time I sympathized with her hopeless love story and believed her passion. I got passed the superstar into the narrative.

Atonement is of course a very popular novel by Ian McEwan and I must credit most of the film's success with me to the writer of the original fiction. The juiciest and most thought-provoking aspect of the story is not the cross-class-border romance, it is the story of the writer woman, who as a young girl of ten destroys the love, and eventually the lives, of her sister and the sister's lover by accusing him wrongly of rape. Then she grows into a well-read fiction writer and she exploits the two lost people even more by writing their (and her) story. The tragedy is that the whole misunderstanding and loss could have been avoided by providing sex education to young children and by getting rid of the rigid class system.

Nick:
Toff. At one point in Atonement, Robbie (as played with Trevor Howard like intensity by James McAvoy) insists he is not a toff. Although his character, through association, aspires to move up the classes class distinction ultimately destroys his ambitions. So why does Atonement deserve to stand out from the overcrowded British upper class dwelling period drama? Do we need films with such plummy accented characters? I gave up reading Ian McEwan's celebrated book, bored by it. It's my second time watching Atonement and something struck me in a good way on the second viewing.

The faults of the picture are seemingly enough to give up on the whole exercise. Keira Knightley has yet to deliver in any significant way in any movie I've watched her in. Here she's on auto-pilot. McAvoy on the other hand, is bright. Unfortunately for me, he reminds me of a young David Cameron, so it's really difficult to initially feel any sympathy towards his character. The opening half an hour of the film flirts with tension and ultimately delivers us a sermon on coming-of-age sexual awakening mixed with tragedy, and the aforementioned class role playing. Director Wright's time framing of the film has a little of the art school project about it and can feel intrusive.

On the other hand, Wright's bravura French sea shore, one shot scene, which seems never ending, depicting the madness and sheer lunacy of the Second World War, is masterful. It lifts Atonement to a different level, that one piece of inspired film making. It's still not enough to save Atonement from being pretentious. What improved the film so much this second viewing was my own mood. I was feeling sentimental, so I wanted to believe in the central love story between the McAvoy and Knightley characters. I survived Atonement this time, even it's twisted ending that seems zoomed in from a different picture. Yes, one has to admit, there are moments of brilliance here.

Forthcoming Attractions

2011-08-27T10:41:00.002+03:00

Nick:

The Tree Of Life (released this week in Finland), directed by Hollywood's reclusive Terrence Malick interests me purely as it utilities the great Douglas Trumbull (of 2001 fame) in a tale that seems worryingly deeply religious. Brad Pitt stars which is enough to turn me off, but I'm interested in the creation of earth and the dinosaurs.

Dredd is due to open in 2012. It looks like this time round Judge Dredd will be treated with the respect that Danny Cannon's 1995 Sylvester Stallone starring vehicle obviously lacked. One of my all time favorite characters, I hope they get it right this time.

George Harrison: Living In The Material World sees Martin Scorsese back in documentary mode. Nowadays, it fair to say that this excites me more than his movies. After his Dylan masterclass, I wonder if Scorsese can shed any light on one of the most written about people ever? Out on DVD in October 2011.

Astrid:

Midnight In Paris continues Woody Allen's travels in Europe. I have been somewhat disappointed with the last couple of Allen films, almost getting tired of the things I used to love in his movies. Yet, this trailer has given me hope that Woody in Paris means Woody back in romantic and truly witty form. I'll report on this later.

Le Havre has fascinated me ever since I saw Aki Kaurismäki's interview in Cannes earlier this year. He spouts out in an unfashionable manner. He has the courage to do something ethically involved as well as light-hearted while dealing with a serious topic such as immigration and the EU's closed borders. At least that's how it seems, but I have not seen the film yet.

Larry Crowne is this summer's Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts movie. Despite not really enjoying Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love last year, I feel strangely ready for Julia with Hank. I guess I'm hoping it'll be something like Sleepless in Seattle...why? Well, every now and again I need my movies predicable, stereotypical, Hollywood-faced and safe in an almost boring manner. Larry Crowne seems to promise to be all those things.

The Limits of Control (2009) Directed by Jim Jarmusch

2011-08-23T10:14:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
Our household has a lot less time to watch movies these days and unfortunately, there will not be any change in the situation any time soon. Therefore it was especially annoying that when we finally had time and space to share a film together, we picked something like The Limits of Control. Our intention was to watch something entertaining and good. In the shop Jim Jarmusch seemed like a quite safe bet for the both of us – and the guitar case a suited man is holding on the cover of the DVD, seemed like a promise to me.

The Limits of Control is extremely slow. It is also abstract, only occasionally attached to plot development, certain time and space. After half an hour we are ready to fall asleep. Aesthetically things are pleasing, but I cannot be cheated into thinking that I could figure something out here. Everything just IS. But we persist because we cannot begin a new habit of starting films and then never finishing them (this has happened a little recently and it's not good for blogging).

Half way through the film we have started to argue about where in Spain the film is located after each train ride. It's become more interesting to look for location clues and talk over the film than to concentrate on the protagonist's repetition of routines. I have never been to Spain and Nick has only visited Valencia some 20 years ago, so this made for a passionately ignorant argument. In the end I felt I had witnessed something that passed me by because the timing of the film and my personal timing was totally off. I don't want to say the film was bad, although I cannot recommend it either. Hopefully next time, Jarmusch will revisit his sense of humor.

Nick:
We all want more from our culture. We want it to move us, make us think, transport us to new areas mentally and even physically. The need to experiment is essential in creating new experiences. But what happens when someone you admire, who's known for pushing the boundaries ends up losing the plot? Jim Jarmusch has taken risks before and come out on top or, at the very least, engaged us. The Limits Of Control however tests one's patience.

Where to start? Repetition when used to create a riff of images can be startling. In The Limits Of Control the repetitive use of image following the main protagonist, Lone Man ( Isaach De Bankolé) easily drifts into tedium. Sitting at a cafe drinking his espresso in two cups, the use of the matchbox with a secret message, his continual Tai Chi exercising in hotel rooms or the Lone Man's visit to the art gallery begin to grate when viewed with no context or meaning. Jarmusch would like to think he's deconstructing the gangster film, a post-modern hit movie with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville. Unfortunately, the script brings a new level of pretension. When anyone does speak, it's Jarmusch's own thoughts rapping on movies or art or lame humor, usually delivered by the starry extras, who include Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal and Bill Murray.

What almost saves the day is the look of the film (shot by the ever reliable Christopher Doyle), coupled with the musical atmospherics of Japanese band Boris. This, sadly is not enough to salvage The Limits of Control from being terrible. The Limits Of Control could easily have been the existential thriller Jarmusch obviously thought he was making. But you need to create on-screen tension, character, context and meaning for that to work. The Limits Of Control tested my limits to stay awake all the way through.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Directed by George Roy Hill

2011-08-08T20:31:00.000+03:00

Nick:
The concept of celebrity has been with us a long time. It may take different forms or shapes, some celebrities may be real or imagined. Celebrity goes hand in hand with myth making. Despite constant changes in fashion and thinking, celebrity still obsesses us. In Forbes' recent list of top earning film actors, the list displays that it's your fame/connection with the public that puts bums on seats more than your acting talent. But in many ways, it has always been like this. Hollywood has always worked on this type of demand quota. It's amazing that in 2011 we still buy into this shallow process. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid then, is a star vehicle from the old days. If they had cast the movie today (or remake it, though an improbable sequel is being made!), it would be Leonardo DiCaprio teaming up with the slightly older Johnny Depp, the love interest being supplied by Anne Hathaway (if she's not too tall for those guys!)

But then, similarities would cease. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was made in the climate of New Hollywood, so even in a commercial fair like this (despite being a Western), some risk taking has happened. The hazy, hippy photography of Conrad Hall, the wit and counter culture nodding of William Goldman's script (a Ménage à trois is heavily suggested throughout). Lets not forget the greatest thing about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Burt Bacharach soundtrack. Bacharach's soundtrack adds a depth and pathos to certain sections of the film that is often lacking. But what Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lacks in grit and substance, it makes up for in chemistry. The superstar variety.

This brings us back to celebrity. The reason we entertain a picture like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the first place is the pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The chemistry and play between the two 'sexy' superstars (this was a fledgling pairing of superstars for Hollywood) is so easy on the eye, so effortless, so witty yet honest, it's pure entertainment. It saves this endeavor and makes you want to return again and again to the film (as I have done over the years). Actually, in many ways I love this film, even though I'm also secretly repulsed by it. Far greater than the very contrite and contrived pairing of Newman and Redford in The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is some kind of classic. Yet the picture itself has a moralistic view towards robbery and outlaws, that ultimately, the picture is against its own heroes. This is a republican Western in many ways. One that lulls you in. It fooled its left-leaning stars of the day too.

Astrid:
As you may have guessed already, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are eye-candy for me. That's why I suggested we revisit this film. I like their suits and hats. 1969 was still a good year for suits and hats. Then there's the silly and quite unnecessary scene with Newman and Katherine Ross on a bicycle together, which was the other reason I wanted to see the film again. Somehow the innocent and ridiculous morning ride (accompanied by Bacharach's jolly song) had become very meaningful in my memory. On a second look the scene was so unrelated to the rest of the film that it was hardly the right reason to watch it again.

The rest of the film then: Well, there is a lot of horseback riding, getting away from the chasing parties and then running away some more. Oh yes, and robbing trains and banks (in a Hollywood way where everything is too easy and showman-like). Everything takes place in a great scenery and varying degrees of natural light and is filmed with gritty and often unfocused lens, which is refreshing after watching today's super clarity and CGI. The plot is just a bit boring for my hunger for intelligence, psychological complexity, or something else to throw me out of being sure of what's going to happen next.

Sundance Kid (Redford) has a girlfriend (Ross), but the relationship between the girlfriend and Butch Cassidy (Newman) seems almost hotter in the film. There is a feeling all along that she is being shared by both of them – just like the two buddies share everything else... I would have been interested in seeing a bit more than a suggestion to this direction. In fact there is a part in the middle of the film that describes the threesome's travels from the Wild West via New York to Bolivia and from the pretended home camera footage they could have made a whole different movie about the three-way love Butch, Sundance and the woman (whose name was not repeated enough for me to remember it) had. But somehow the director was more interested in gun fighting scenes and endless horse riding. That's where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lost me.

L'Avventura (1960) Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

2011-07-31T20:26:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
At first L'Avventura was an intriguing poster in our Italian movie poster calender, then it was a 'forgotten masterpiece' that kept popping up in film magazines. It didn't take long to persuade me to feel I should see the movie, but it took some time to find it. We finally did find a copy of the film in London and yesterday we decided to treat ourselves to some intelligent, stylish Italian cinema from the 1960s.

What a disappointment. Nick kept staring into a distance in the periphery of the movie screen. He kept changing positions and he even fell asleep forcing us to take a break from the film. By the last 30 minutes he was openly making loud remarks on how boring and vacuous the movie was. Unfortunately, I cannot disagree with him, although I think I did try a bit harder with L'Avventura. I wanted to give it a chance even after half the film was gone and I still could never be sure if there was one or two leading males and if there was any credibility left for the meandering script.

The film moves from places and scenes wandering slowly. It is clear that not everything is imbued with meaning here, but by the end I feel cheated. It is as if even the things that usually signify something were utterly empty. Death and loss, love and desire all pour out and in. Visual details look like something with intention, but in the end, why should I read anything more into them? Monica Vitti looks divine, but she remains unattached as if suffering from sunstroke or the sheer lack of direction.
I still love the poster though.

Nick:
I've been waiting to watch something substantial. Over the last week or so we've watched the truly dreadful (500) Days Of Summer and the unnecessarily violent and average Guy Richie handling of Sherlock Holmes. It's fair to say some of the pictures we've reviewed on the blog recently have been disappointing for me. I've never seen L'Avventura. I'm a fan of Antonioni's later films, so a sense of excitement and above average expectation accompanied this viewing. Cinema still holds that thrill. L'Avventura is heralded as one of the greatest films ever. Sight & Sound tells me it's the only serious rival to Citizen Kane that could be afforded such distinction.

Monica Vitti is an Italian actress I really adore. Stylish and unusual looking for the typical Italian actress of this period, she retains for me a certain personification of cool. L'Avventura made her an international star and was the first of three collaborations with Antonioni (the film also putting him on the map). She looks amazing here. Her presence is enough to carry this film. Visually there is much to stimulate the senses, and nothing more so than Vitti's blond main and face. L'Avventura is noted for inventing a new narrative for cinema, a visual narrative that at the time caused controversy as well as influencing a whole host of art-house film makers. L'Avventura also shows sex as something essentially casual amongst the characters, a depiction rarely seen in cinema up to this point. It's such a shame that after all these elements being in the right place, L'Avventura bored the death out of me. I have to confess here that my mind could not concentrate on the film. It kept wandering.

Any tension Antonioni tries to bring to proceedings, due to one of the main character's sudden disappearance, dissipates through a confused narrative and a series of unending shots of figures lost in rocky terrain. Unlike Blow Up or even the slow moving The Passenger, the mystery in L'Avventura soon gives way to an inconceivable romance which so much of the film hinges on (especially the ending). It's a jumbled, non-credible, slow moving mess. I know I could come back to this, at another time and in another year and with the right frame of mind and really love it. I'll certainly give it another go, but in 2011 L'Avventura was a bore.

Crazy Heart (2009) Directed by Scott Cooper

2011-07-25T19:05:00.002+03:00

Nick :
If you will permit me to go back to 2007 and the SXSW music festival. Amy Winehouse has just broken big in the USA. She is playing at least one show everyday of the festival and on some days two or three. It was my last time in Austin, and I have to say, it was nigh on impossible to catch Amy during the festival. She was either late for her shows, canceling shows, or, as we heard from one doorman, throwing up mid-song on stage. It was the first time I realized there was something seriously wrong with Winehouse after her meteoric rise to fame. Winehouse's death this weekend was predictable but no less tragic. Yes, fame can be a monster to deal with I'm sure, but am I alone in finding it so cliché to succumb to such a predictable death? That record definitely is broken, move on, nothing to see here.

Crazy Heart suffers from the same dealing in cliché. It's a very sensitively made film, well acted and well written. It looks good, its striving for authenticity is most welcome in a music-related film, even if at times the film has a made-for-TV vibe. There's just the sense that this is second hand goods. If we want to get specific, way back in 1983, Duvall starred in the excellent Tender Mercies, the story of a middle-aged country singer, who enters a new relationship and tries to reconnect with his long lost daughter and put his troubled life back together. Replace the daughter with a son and I've just described the main thrust of Crazy Heart for you. Duvall, like Jeff Bridges does in Crazy Heart, performs the songs on screen very well (Duvall also performed his own songs for TM). Also, like Bridges did, Duvall won a best actor Oscar for playing an alcoholic country singer.

Duvall was one of the producers on Crazy Heart and he must have seen some worth in resurrecting this tale. My problem with a film that really is fine, is its dealing in that old rock n roll cliché of past it singers and life on the road. If we look at Winehouse's case, I guess those clichés still define a troubled artist's life. Bridges is great and offered good support from Gyllenhaal, who has pretty much defined this role in her other movies. But ultimately Crazy Heart is entertaining lite fluff. It offers no real insight into the reason why musicians get so led astray. Nothing deep here, so don't go looking for meaning. That could also be the reason, despite its many faults, why Crazy Heart ultimately works.

Astrid:
On the day that we heard Amy Winehouse had died, we ended up watching Crazy Heart – a film about an alcoholic musician – strangely timely. Amy's life story is a much sadder and more hopeless one, than the destiny of Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) in the movie. Kind of unfashionably in these cynical times, in Crazy Heart a man is able to get help for his addiction, he turns his life around and there is hope in the end.

Musicians are very often portrayed as alcoholics in cinema, but I must admit from the many I know personally too many fit the description. I can too easily imagine the young ones 20 years down the line struggling just like Bad Blake. In the film the motivation for change comes from falling in love. I wonder why it is so often the case that it is easier to care for one self if it can be wrapped up as caring for another? Exceptionally, in Crazy Heart the love interest (Maggie Gyllenhaal) draws the line and leaves the man, when Blake loses her 4-year-old son in downtown Houston. It is still rare to find movies about addiction that do not end up promoting codependency as a byproduct.

Crazy Heart is a gentle movie about a serious subject. Jeff Bridges is great as a little but Dude-like Bad, who even at his worst still seems to enjoy the odd laugh in his life. The subject of his estranged son is thankfully left after the son says he does not want to see his father. This plot line and the general theme of the film resonated strongly with The Wrestler, but where that film was hopeless this one holds on to its optimism – people can change.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) Directed by David Fincher

2011-07-23T18:36:00.002+03:00

Astrid:
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is really not curious at all. Predictable and condescending are words I would use to describe it. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was disappointed. When I saw the trailer for this film years ago, it reminded me of Forrest Gump. Seeing the whole film now confirmed to me that this was supposed to be a new version of the 1990s sentimental classic. Benjamin Button just failed to be a touching character, like Forrest once was (I can still sing the opening melody and see the feather fall from the sky).

It was surprising actually, how The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button could tackle so many touching human issues (death, birth, deformity, lost love, romance, war, hurricane Katrina), but remain distant and unfeeling. In its long run the film also employed many narrative devices, but here their multiplicity seemed glued-on rather than being an enriching factor in telling a story. I'm afraid there lies the weakness: the story is not very interesting and engaging. The bottom line is: being born a baby and then growing old and dying is pretty tragic, isn't it? Is it any different if you go from old to young and end up dead? I sometimes have script ideas for films and maybe I should write them out next time, because I think they are better than this one.

Brad Pitt is still not a great actor by any means. I did write a song inspired by him once, but it was from a nasty angle rather than an admiring one. Luckily he won't care what I think of his acting or anything because he has made a lot of money from his kind of acting and he is married to Angelina.
I like Cate Blanchett generally, but even she appears miscast here. Her ballerina scenes make me feel embarrassed and her old dying mother scenes are impossible to understand without putting on the hard-for-hearing subtitles. Of course the successful conventional romance takes place when Brad and Cate look like their movie star selves. I did not like The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button much, yet one evening we'll probably revisit it. It's that kind of bland stuff that is sometimes all we can take.

Nick:
How preconditioned have we become? Last night as the day was ending, horrific attacks were being carried out in Norway. First, bombs in Oslo then shootings on the small Island of Utøya. At first we were told through various news agencies this was a terrorist attack, perpetrated by some Norwegian Muslim group. I wake up this morning to find out it was a lone Norwegian, a possible Neo-Nazi supporting individual who was responsible for both tragedies. Was the media pandering to our preconditioned expectations? One thing for sure it demonstrated a still fond need to blame the outsider before admitting it could be one of our own responsible for such atrocious actions. I've just returned from England where the media furor surrounding News International's phone hacking had reached fever pitch. The media reacts in indignation at underhand reporting amongst its own fraternity, sensationalist analysis about how Rupert Murdoch handled his questioning by British MP's. Ladies and gentlemen, a rare insight into the kind of idiots who trawl the wings of high power which effects so much of our lives. Oh, and isn't Murdoch's wife feisty and ever so young, guffaws the media!

So, amongst all this real drama, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button seems so gentile. This film patronizes us in the same way that Forrest Gump left some of us so astounded all those years ago. You expect more from Fincher, whose pictures usually display a slight hint of disdain for all that Hollywood bullshit. Here he dives right into that pile. Cate Blanchett seems destined to become the one great impersonator of modern Hollywood. Amongst the CGI, she's a passable dancer who wants to ultimately wait for the ugly duckling of Benjamin to grow younger and become the shag-fest prince that is, wait for it... Brad Pitt. Fincher is the one director to have used Pitt intelligently in the past, but here he indulges in the worst aspects of the Pitt mythology. Pitt oozes the class of a hick from a Marlboro Man clothing catalog. Perhaps the adage of 'run Benjamin run' doesn't quite have the same ring about it.

Amongst the CGI trickery of making actors who are glamorous look younger or older than they really are, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button manages to seriously bore me. The emotional depth this film aims for never hits home, the characters on screen seem so unreal in constantly unreal settings. This film supposedly heralded Pitt as a serious actor. I mean, seriously? Vacuous and preposterous, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button panders to the worst aspects of Hollywood excess. Just stick some good looking superstars playing themselves on the screen and some serious special effects and that should be enough to pacify the masses. It's unfair to the The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to be wrapped up in my most negative state of mind. On a day when I despair for human intelligence and compassion, I just think we need more than this.

The Wrestler (2008) Directed by Darren Aronofsky

2011-07-16T17:02:00.000+03:00

Nick :
My body has been changing shape in a manner I've still not come to terms with. It really happened when I turned 40. I've always been very slim and it used to be the case that whatever I eat doesn't effect my weight. Not any more. I was first diagnosed as lactose intolerant, which meant if I drank fully pasteurized milk, I would initially pass out, fart and then my stomach would bloat out to double the size. I gained weight on my stomach. It's the spot where all the fat gathers. I have something approaching a pot belly. I'm fighting it, but feel I'm losing. Should it matter? I don't feel so unhealthy. Is my vanity about my public perception effecting me and actually stopping me being relaxed about my looks? I would have thought Mickey Rourke gave up caring what people thought of the way he looked a long time ago. For me, his plastic surgery face, long lion's mane of hair and hulking body make him look better now. It's a face that's lived.

The Wrestler is a Rourke tour de force. Apart from a very good supporting turn from Marisa Tomei, the only reason to watch this is for Rourke as fading wrestling legend Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. I'm sure Aronofsky would claim it tries to expose the truth behind pro-wrestling (the drugs, the fakery etc), but it really does not go far enough if it's trying to be an expose. No, Rourke gives us a masterclass in playing himself and it's fascinating. This could be one of the greatest performances I've seen. Unfortunately, Aronofsky, after an assured beginning, throws in cliché after cliché to the story, that even Rourke struggles to deal with these possible knock out blows (ahem!) The family sub plot, chasing the stripper dream and The Ram's redemptive final actions could all have come from a Rocky movie. It might be time for Aronofsky to tackle that comic book adaptation franchise, and leave the apparently serious film making to someone else.

As for Rourke, when has he even come close to this? He was cute in Diner, more presence than anything else in Rumble Fish, OK in Angle Heart and do we even consider 9 ½ Weeks? Yes, it was his looks, not his acting that attracted us to start with, it's why we were bothered. When his looks changed, the public lost interest (as did Hollywood it seems). That's the key to The Wrestler, Aronofsky delays showing us Rourke's face at the beginning, he's banking on our shock at his appearance as an audience. It's not enough to carry the film, but Rourke is magical here.

Astrid:
I'm beginning to dislike Darren Aronofsky's melodramatic directorial perspective. I fear I would not enjoy his latest film about the tormenting horror of the ballet world. Don't worry, I haven't made it there yet, as it's taken us three years to get to The Wrestler. It is not such as dramatic and over-stated film as it could be in the circumstances, yet it portrays Aronofsky's bleak outlook on life: people end up lonely, addicted and hopeless in life – change is a momentary illusion.

The Wrestler is a stage for Mickey Rourke. There are hardly any other characters with a story here. It would have been an interesting experience to watch Rourke play the washed-up wrestler Randy with even less contact with other meaningful characters. They could have chucked out the angry daughter and the girlfriend-to-be stripper without losing anything of the core drama.

Randy admires and aspires to a body aesthetic, which is very artificial and to my eyes very 1980s. It requires a lot of work. His body and image is what he finds most important in life. He is willing to risk his health with steroids and the sun bed, and of course extensive bodybuilding exercises and the wrestling fights. In fact, the film suggests that it is this obsession that has driven him to his loneliness.
In The Wrestler there is a sense that the relationship body builders and wrestlers have to their material bodies would be considered too feminine in other male contexts. Randy is at an intersection of macho masculinity and femininity. That's the interesting part of a film that's otherwise pretty forgettable.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) Directed by Robert Benton

2011-07-11T17:34:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
Kramer vs. Kramer is full of questions about family, which became political in the atmosphere of the 1970s second wave feminism. The film takes sides, judges and argues for the father, while showing that the mother is not always the best and most natural parent just because she is the biological mother.
A lot of the content, or the way it is presented, looks pretty black&white from today's perspective, while at the same time I feel that at times of dispute we have not moved very far from the 1970s way of thinking.

The mother, played by Meryl Streep, leaves her son and husband after what she describes as years of not being heard or seen. She leaves her son behind because at that point she feels she is unfit to be a parent. She then remains away for 15 months, after which time she returns to claim sole custody of her son. What disturbs me, is that Meryl Streep tells on her making-of-interview that she considered her character to be mentally ill. Apparently that was the only explanation for her behavior she could think of, which would allow her to feel empathy for the absent mother...

Most of the film concentrates on the remaining father and son (Dustin Hoffman and the child actor Justin Henry). They go from a bad insensitive relationship to a very loving and trusting one. The father has to sacrifice his career, but he is glad to do it because of the bond he has established with his own child. The film is kind of saying to the 1970s and 1980s workaholic dads that they could find rewards if they took the time with their children. Still, Kramer vs. Kramer paints a very heroic and noble picture of the sacrificing father thus depicting him as an exception (created by an unfit mother).
These days we are closer to a time when a part-taking stay-at-home dad is becoming a true option and a necessity. You will not get special points from the society for much longer, but more and more men want to be there anyway. And the women? They still attract all the criticism of the world.

Nick:
Kramer vs. Kramer deals with the practicalities of parenthood when one parent, the most present (mother) leaves the roost to find herself, whilst leaving the breadwinner parent (father) compromised. The offshoot, in a trite Hollywood movie that just scratches the real issues involved, is that father, who's never been home to watch his son grow up because of work commitments, realizes his 7-year- old son is the greatest thing ever. When mother, after an 18 month absence comes barging back into the father/son bliss claiming custody of the son, a tense court case ensues.

Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep play the parents, the very cute Justin Henry plays the son. Hoffman and Streep can walk through these roles, they are so good in front of camera. Reality, which the film strives for, is immediately dispelled of with such a perfect looking family. Benton, who directed the excellent Bad Company as well as writing Bonnie & Clyde and a host of other New Hollywood pictures could be a safe pair of hands as director and writer. Although sentimentality on the whole is avoided (despite the seriously cute kid), smugness is constant. This film was made with the Oscar academy in mind. The real issue the film tries to grapple with is a father's rites. Even though Streep abandons her child at the beginning of the movie to find herself in LA, and Hoffman was more than a neglectful father pre-split, you never feel any real venom or judgement aimed towards either parent. To preserve the moral code, the mother makes up for her abandonment at the films end, the father seemingly still in love with his former wife to forgive her anything. One wonders what the kid thinks of all this back and forth.

So, Kramer vs. Kramer ends in some kind of happy, why-did-we-bother flux. Having been divorced twice, I can tell you it's never this easy. The incessant gossip from strangers and half-acquaintances, the morality that people amazingly find and throw in your face, the heartbreak, the financial hardship, the compromise and so forth. Yes, happy endings occur, I know, I've experienced it. In a film trying to deal with realities in the portrayal of family breakdown, the self-satisfied yuppies in Kramer vs. Kramer don't know the half of it.

The King's Speech (2010) Directed by Tom Hooper

2011-07-03T19:02:00.000+03:00

Nick :
What hold does the Royal Family have over the Oscar Academy? It's worth asking as any picture which seems to be based on any Royal family members, current or past, seems to clean up big time at the Oscars – regardless of weather the film in question is any good. Royal movies are Oscar gold dust and even the most calculating amongst us have cottoned on. It must be the same hold that the Royals have on their huge number of fans the world over. The recent Royal wedding spread a far-reaching fever, even in Helsinki people were huddled over their computers in offices watching the latest act from one of the most dysfunctional families. So, now the latest Royal cinematic masterpiece, which, excuse the pun, everyone was talking about at this years Oscars.

As entertainment or even good cinema I struggled with large parts of The King's Speech. It gave me that Merchant/Ivory sickly feeling, you know the kind: show us how the other decadent half live, whilst trying to portray sympathetically how said decadent bourgeois inbred tries to mingle with the common man. The usual role call of British luvvy inhabit The King's Speech (hello Helena Bonham Carter, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Anthony Andrews & Timothy Spall). Mixed in with some Australian talent (the both excellent Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush) and of course the very hot Colin Firth as the stuttering future King. Yes, it's well acted, tasteful, full of reverence to the former King, and maybe even shows how the head of the British Empire used to mean something more then mere tourist trade and scandal sheet. But The King's Speech takes an earth to unravel and leaves me ultimately asking why should I give a shit? The privilege afforded King George VI his whole life should have given him the confidence to perform his duties.

I miss the urgency and edge that Hooper bought to The Damned United. This feels rather stately and stagy and made with complete approval from The House of Windsor. A bunch of real-life toffs faffing around. The King's Speech, maybe intentionally reveals a man out of touch with "his people" who was vain and was tormented about how he came across. The PR industry has been in full swing forever and probably started with the Royals. Politically, I find this kind of film objectionable for many reasons. We can argue another day as to the worth of the Royal family, then and now. As cinema, The King's Speech is of the distinctly average variety.

Astrid:
I know The King's Speech won a lot of Oscars this year and it was very popular, as well as being a relatively cheaply made film. I just couldn't get interested in the film when it came out. This week Nick came home with the film one day because he had found it cheap somewhere. I was actually curious to see it, because I had just watched a documentary on Wallis Simpson. I had also watched Kate and William get married earlier this summer, and just today I fastforwarded (it was so boring) through Prince Albert's and Charlene's wedding in Monaco (she seemed awfully sad)... So I was kind of ripe for another film about the Royal family.

The King's Speech looks very gray and feels slow. At first I was downright bored by the film. The stuttering king-to-be, David (Colin Firth), failed to make me care for his troubles. He was so cold and so privileged. Little by little and with a lot of help from the speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), the film got more emotionally involving. It turned into a film about empowerment and friendship. It's kind of too bad that the setting had to be the Royal Family, because the stiffness and grayness remained.

The past and present of the English Royal family seems to be an endless source of fascination, and not so only in the UK. Why do we want to see kings and queens as ordinary flawed people, when at the same time, their higher value is stated and restated by our admiration/hatred? David/George VI as played by Firth, asks what's the point of being king when he doesn't even have any real political decision making power. That's a good question. And was it really that important to the English masses during WWII that the king managed to deliver his speeches without stuttering in the end?

The Doors (1991) Directed by Oliver Stone

2011-06-30T20:19:00.003+03:00

Astrid:
The Doors is one of those films I watched as a preteen with my very good girlfriend on one of the many over-night-stays at her house. She always knew the best movies with sex, drugs and rock'n'roll...Back then we loved Meg Ryan and we learned to love Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. Later we actually loved Jim Morrison, or at least she did for a while. I was always a little uncomfortable with Jim's imbalanced ways.

This is my second time watching The Doors as an adult. It has lost all its allure, if the confusion I experienced as a kid can be interpreted as infatuation and enjoyment. This film makes me physically sick and mentally frustrated. I'm not an Oliver Stone fan in general, but I must say this movie is a low point even for him. It would be insulting to young people to claim that this film is juvenile in the most predictable and uncool manner. But it is. It looks down on young people, it simplifies everything from the 1960s counter culture to The Doors as a band. I know some people highly rate over-simplification, but I have to remind you Oliver Stone, usually it's just a result of being lazy and unwilling to see more than one side to a narrative (or to life). Simplifying narrative or a perspective is not the same as paraphrasing. I want to stress that point.

Sometimes it happens that time makes something kind of rubbish turn into a decent depiction of at least the time it was made in. It's not going to happen with The Doors. The film is now 20 years old and the wig-like hair on everyone still looks ridiculously 90s. Meg Ryan looks like Stevie Nicks in the early 1980s, and Nico from the Velvet Underground looks like a hooker from 1991. And for a so-called biopic I learn very little about the story of The Doors or about Jim Morrison. What's the point?
This is not a brilliant movie, don't believe the poster.

Nick :
Confession time: I went through a period in the late 1980's early 1990's where I wore black leather pants. Cowboy boots too, flowery shirts and I grew my hair pretty long. I could easily have been a roadie for early Primal Scream. Around this time I really got into The Doors. Jim Morrison and his cohorts received a serious re-appraisal in the music press. A reprint of Hopkins' and Sugarman's insightful Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive (The Doors is based on this) reignited the mythology. I bought into it, it lasted a couple of years then my punk/indie roots resurfaced. I still like most of The Doors music, but the idea of Morrison as some shamanistic, Dionysian God is something that Oliver Stone really buys into with The Doors.

It's hard to know where to start with this mess of a movie. I could mention Stone's terrible sequence of acid trip scenes that seem to dominate the film. His cliched look at the 1960's counter culture. His determination to show women as creatures who are here on Earth expressly to lose their clothes. Val Kilmer as Morrison smugly believes he's God's gift. Even more baffling is the casting of Meg Ryan as Morrison's beleaguered girlfriend Pam, it's like watching Martha Stewart on drugs. The costume/set departments give everything in The Doors a 1990's take on the 1960's. I've never seen a film with so many bad looking fake beards or wigs. Let's not even touch on the subject of Nico's portrayal here as some cheap looking porn model.

More importantly, being in the band The Doors is portrayed as being no fun whatsoever. This is a movie where Kilmer utters the line, "I'm the poet and you're my muse" whilst keeping a straight face.You know you're in trouble when Billy Idol shines in a cameo! The Doors reaches a nonsensical nadir when Stone, already killing us with his attempts at aligning Morrison with Shaman and Red Indian chiefs only Morrison can see, mixes his own version of the 1960's key events during a scene where Morrison faces meltdown. It has no relevance and is so laughable. When you consider the source material, Stone really lost the plot here. The Doors fails because it doesn't make you want to go back to the music. At the height of my The Doors fandom, I enjoyed this in 1991. In the cold light of 2011, The Doors is no fun and just plain embarrassing.

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) Directed by Robert Mulligan

2011-06-27T18:11:00.000+03:00

Nick :
Whilst summer gets to be of the schizo variety here in Finland, ultra hot some days, rain and autumnal the rest, workloads in our household seemed to have had a detrimental effect on My Lawyer Will Call Your Lawyer. We're watching as many films as usual, but the time to write about what we watch is lacking. It probably means in the future there won't always be the standard eight posts a month we try to reach.

Harper Lee's book To Kill A Mockingbird is one I read approaching my teen years, it passed on some valuable lessons on tolerance and understanding as well as appreciation of an innocent perspective. I still value Lee's book, and the movie adaptation has the same feeling, yet with the added bonus of Gregory Peck's dignified turn as Atticus Finch. You get the feeling Peck's pretty much playing himself here, that easy liberal wisdom that seems to have characterized him as a human being as well as, lets not forget, Hollywood superstar.

It's interesting that To Kill A Mocking Bird was produced by Alan Pakula and has Robert Duvall's first screen performance. To Kill A Mockingbird also gives us further clues with its camera work and general feeling as to the new American Cinema that was to explode by the end of the 1960's. It never feels sentimental, the children's perspective that the movie views events from are handled with grit and humor. The racial issues discussed in To Kill A Mockingbird convey power, if not a somewhat depressing perspective on the outcome of such racist attitudes. Watching after many years, I still felt moved at times and enjoyed the film's overall innocence. One of the better book adaptations I've seen.

Astrid:
This should be an ode to Gregory Peck. He is so noble and simply good without any arrogance what so ever. Before we watched To Kill A Mockingbird, we watched a documentary on Peck. I had seen it before, but it was just as touching second time around. He tends to his orchids, he always has time for his daughter, and he adores and adores his wife. And all this sugary love and caring seems more than sincere.

To Kill A Mockingbird is an amazing film. It creates the world and perspective of children with rare accuracy, without any patronizing or looking down. And from their perspective the movie looks at many serious social and cultural issues of the last century. I cannot believe I have never seen this film before. It seems so essential, so important for its content. I am also embarrassed to admit that I have not read Harper Lee's book (on which the film is based) even though English used to be my major with America literature as my focus.

Atticus Finch is such an admirable single father and a lawyer. He is just so up-right in a way that doesn't seem boring, but daring. There's the thing: people in their thick-framed glasses fulfilling their duties are not necessarily boring or nerdy – they are dangerous because they can change the world. No wonder Gregory admired and loved Atticus the most.

North By Northwest (1959) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

2011-06-20T18:03:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
The title North By Northwest makes me think of the Austin festival South by Southwest every time. There is really no comparison between the film and the festival. The festival is all about bumping into your biggest musical hero at breakfast, playing your own show in tiny clubs or make-shift venues, watching way too many amazing bands play in a few days, too many parties, too many margaritas and never enough Austin food or good old sleep. North By Northwest is a classic piece of über-stylish cinema with well-fitting gray suits, figure-hugging dresses, cocktail hours, rich villains and Hitchcock's realization that romance is more important than telling a believable story about crooks.

I've seen North By Northwest before and come away a little disappointed. Perhaps I felt it was all surface and nothing underneath. This time around I had no such concerns, but could enjoy the suspense and the developing love story fully. Most of all the film is lovable for its perfected aesthetics. This is one of those films that makes smoking look way too classic, and drinking too – especially on trains.

Cary Grant is great in his role as the baffled but very clever advertising man, who becomes the target of the villains and a means to an end to the FBI. Sometimes Grant can just walk through a film looking good, but here his character is developed more and it makes the actor more interesting too. Eva Marie Saint is the usual (or should I say compulsory?) Hitchcock blond, but her open need to bed Thornhill (Grant) immediately and then later her Scandinavian-like stern love for him are nicely dished out by her. I'll watch it again sometime.

Nick:
The pain of being blamed for something, or some action being attributed to myself, an action which one is completely innocent of, is trying. This applies to things you might say. Only this week, a quote of mine, passed on by someone to someone else, the someone else then claiming to be the receiver of said quote, passed the quote on to someone else (2), who passed on the quote to someone else (3). By the time someone else 3 passed the quote back to me, context and meaning had completely altered. So, I had to then spend time correcting the misquote and relieving myself of any unjust cause of discontent my misquote may have caused. You see how easily things get twisted?

However much annoyance this may have caused me, it's nothing compared to the level of blame attributed to Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) in North By Northwest. First, he's mistaken for someone else which leads him to being kidnapped, then he is force-fed copious amounts of alcohol and then almost murdered. Then he's wanted for a very public murder of which he's innocent, so he has to go on the run. Next Thornhill falls in love with the very forward Eve Kendall (Eve Marie Saint) who turns out to be the squeeze for the very dodgy Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) who was the guy who got Thornhill into this mess to start with. Confused? Just imagine how Roger feels, even though he is the most impeccably dressed advertising executive in the history of the movies.

So North By Northwest, on this 20th or so viewing for me, just keeps getting better. Here Hitchcock presents us the essence of his style of film making. Hitchcock's imagination has never been so well visualized on the screen, the numerous iconic set peaces including the Mount Rushmore finale and the crop duster plane pursuing Grant. Still, Hitchcock finds enough space here to include weird shot after weird shot, without disrupting the flow. The black humor (Earnest Lehman supplies Hitchcock with one of his best scripts) is always on the money, the dialogue sharp. A great Bernhard Hermann score keeps the action moving. At the center of all this is Grant, the perfect leading man who knows how to wear a suit. North By Northwest sets the standard for all action/suspense thrillers to follow, it's still king. This is pure cinema entertainment, if you've somehow missed this, do yourself a favor.

Magnolia (1999) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

2011-06-14T10:42:00.000+03:00

Nick:
It comes in waves. Building relentlessly. I try to resist, but the waves just keep building.
Will it drag me under? I don't know. But the level of heavy content that never lets up is in danger of suffocating my senses. Not only that, but it still keeps coming at you, like a Great White Shark, it never stops. As a matter of fact, it goes on forever. Actually, I could still be watching Magnolia as I'm writing this. I had completely forgotten how intense and depressing Magnolia is. It's a struggle for sure. But does the weight of the subject matter hide a shallow heart?

I remember at the time that Magnolia was compared to a Robert Altman -style of cinema. Multi-layered stories interchange and characters that are closely related by coincidence or the proximity of The Valley. Magnolia however is far too stiff and calculated in its execution to remind me of Altman. It's also missing Altman's light touch. Magnolia is also missing the humor that made Boogie Nights so endearing. One can be bowled over by the sheer ambition of Anderson's film. The script is well considered, the cinematography excellent, music overwhelming and finally, brilliant acting performances. You can take your pick here who stands out. Tom Cruise steals the film for me and has never approached this level since. William H Macy, Philip Baker Hall and Melora Walters are all stand-outs for me. One scene where the principle characters sing along to Aimee Mann's Wise Up is cinema gold, the emotional quality this brings is never matched by the rest of the film. But still, what a moment.

But watching Magnolia again reminds me of how weird the late 1990's feel right now in 2011. There is disconnect. This seemed so cutting-edge and important at the time. Now Anderson's film seems ponderous and at times pretentious. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a good film. But right now it feels like an act of self-indulgence on Anderson's part. I feel he's improved so much from Magnolia with Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Magnolia could just be part of his growing pains. I'd like to think of Anderson's bleak look at life's travails as being his springboard to greatness.

Astrid:
I remember seeing Magnolia for the first time in 1999 or 2000. It was a religious experience for me, I was converted – to Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Julianne Moore, PT Anderson, the likelihood of frogs falling from the sky and the bleak bleak vision of life as a battle between co-incidence and reason. Watching the film this time around, I find Magnolia unbelievably heavy, dark and continuously depressed. I wonder if it was just me who felt comfortable in such disturbing levels of depression in the 1990s, or was it common culture that the most valued pieces of art were always the heaviest? (Maybe it was, as other very popular 90s movies in addition to Magnolia were Blue by Kieslowski and Eyes Wide Shut by Kubrick – sad and dark).

What did I do for the early 2000s then? I read Vogue and I watched Sex And The City on TV and allowed the series to heal me with its light and reckless consumerist philosophy on life. I went from 'life is suffering' to 'which self-tanning lotion dries fastest and is the least orange'. I never had an It-Bag, but I was very glued to knowing which bag was It right then. But now Carrie has also become more of a past-curiosity and an uncomfortable reminder of how selfish and unethical the early-2000s ideal woman was.

Magnolia is still a touching film. It has a couple of moments of cinematic beauty, where music, acting, plot and emotion all join together forming something unforgettable. In 2011 I don't relate to its perspective on life as tragedy, instead I watch it as a sympathetic outsider and feel a little worried for PT Anderson's well-being. I'm so glad it's not 1999 anymore.

I'm Not There (2007) Director Todd Haynes

2011-06-07T11:23:00.000+03:00

Nick:
As Bob Dylan's recent 70th birthday has shown us, Dylan's cultural worth is as high as any living artist's. It's hard to fathom the reason why this is. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Dylan nut. I've read various books, seen all the documentaries. I crucially own most of the records and have seen him live a few times. Could Dylan represent our last view of the genuine Outlaw? As affluent society becomes blander, does Dylan represent our last real comment on the way things are/were? This hero status, cultural value and sense of political belonging are just some of the themes that Haynes tries to tackle in his picture of Dylan's many lives in I'm Not There.

Various actors play Dylan at various stages of his life, under various pseudonyms (mainly of Dylan's own name or Dylan song characters). Most people just offer direct impersonations (Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw), while the other Dylans offer a more dramatic and speculative retelling of chapters of Dylan's life (Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin and Richard Gere). As a side note, Bale and Ledger add a surreal sense of viewing a rock'n'roll Batman movie, so fresh is the memory of their The Dark Knight. Unlike his previous, confused Glam Rock film Velvet Goldmine, Haynes doesn't use a Citizen Kane type investigative frame for his picture, which does benefit I'm Not There. What he does use to reveal his view of Dylan is found material. Whether it's from the two D.A. Pennebaker documentaries on Dylan, Don't Look Back and Eat The Document or Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home, I'm Not There basically has the actors re-creating scenes from these documentaries with some added Dylan lyric as dialogue. And this is my main problem with the film. The real events of I'm Not There are so well documented and viewed, I've no need actually to see Blanchett as the Electric Dylan, however well Haynes recreates Dylan's mid-1960's period.

The other major flaw for me is that so much documentation of Dylan is hearsay, which Haynes buys into. We really don't know for sure if Dylan had a motorcycle accident which forced his mid-1960's retreat or even if he had a poisonous affair with Edie Sedgwick. We only know any intimacies of Dylan's marriage breakdown with Sara Lownds through his Blood On The Tracks album. And that's the real fascination with Dylan. After all the books, movies, records and documentation on his life, we're no closer to knowing who he really is or what informs the man's art. It's that mystery that keeps us interested and wanting to know more. And this is where I'm Not There, for all its faults as a bio-pic, works – it features the man's music. Cover versions or Dylan's originals, the secret to who Dylan is, lies in his music. I'm Not There creates a potent visual setting for the songs, and makes you want to go back to the records. I enjoyed this movie still, being such a Dylan follower. A more apt title for Haynes' picture might have been : I'm Not Here, Maybe, Positively, Who Knows, You Work It Out.

Astrid:
I'm Not There is a great idea. I prefer the thoughts it provokes to the film it becomes. It takes the Bob Dylan imagery and mythology and jumbles everything up to question cohesive identity or linear narrative. I'm Not There might be a theory, or an attempt to apply a theory over a piece of art. There is something so cerebral about the film, it is as if the thinking is there to hide the fan-boyish basis for making the movie.

It's impossible not to be a Bob Dylan fan. Not appreciating Bob Dylan comes across as ignorance these days. Hating Bob is a futile attack on the cultural history of the 20th century. Bob won't go anywhere as a result. So, choosing a perspective is a preferable alternative: which period is your favorite? Which look, which album, which girlfriend rumor, which religion, which style of singing? Like I'm Not There points out, Bob can represent almost any cause or identity – it's all in the interpretation.

Despite my love for the deconstruction of a coherent self, my favorite storyline in I'm Not There is the most conventional relationship tale: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Heath Ledger as a sort of version of Bob with Sara. There the film becomes more than a parody of previously seen scenes of interviews, or other iconic images. There you can forget for a while about Bob and just enjoy the acting, the great sets and style, and feel something. In the end, the best introduction to Bob Dylan this movie offers, are the scenes where his original music is performed by himself.

Cool Hand Luke (1967) Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

2011-06-04T15:54:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
As the poster announces, this film is essentially a vehicle for Paul Newman. Whatever else he represents in the story of Cool Hand Luke, he is always recognizable as The Film Star, as a very beautiful and calm presence always there for our feasting. I thought I could sum up my review in a melodious sing-along one-liner: Paul Newman without his shirt/ Paul Newman without his shirt (then some nice whistling). But maybe I could sort of scratch my brain for something more on the subject of his divinity.

Like that I bought Paul Newman Salsa for New Year's Eve 2010, mainly because the jar had a funny drawing of him on it. The salsa was bland and remained pretty much untouched until it molded in the fridge. I kept the jar. Then a bass player who used to live up north with a basement filled with copies of one particular Paul Newman poster, decided to give me one of those precious pictures. Paul Newman is now in our hallway (a little too large not to feel intimidated by him every time I walk by).

Cool Hand Luke is a pretty serious and painful film at times. It's more than a vehicle for one actor really. I have to take back what the poster prompted me to say. I feel claustrophobic when I watch films about prison life. Especially ones with escape scenes. Add to the discomfort a scene where Paul Newman eats 50 eggs in an hour and you can be certain that I could not sit through it whistling to my new tune about Paul Newman without his shirt on.

Nick:
We all have our favorites. I'm a serious fan of various musicians and authors and actors – well mainly creative types. Paul Newman is definitely a favorite for me. Yes, he came out of the Actors Studio, enthralled by Brando & Clift. But throughout his career he had a certain dignity, even though he was massively popular. He's always watchable in whatever movies he's in, but in a handful of films Newman is exceptional, the brooding outsider. Cool Hand Luke is one of those pictures and one of his most iconic roles.

It's been a few years since I've seen this. I picked up the movie the other day cheap, seemingly remembering the film as light-hearted social comment. Actually, most of Cool Hand Luke is grim viewing. The comment the film makes concerns the crushing of the individual spirit by the State. The non-conforming behavior of Newman's Luke Jackson is initially celebrated by his fellow prisoners from the Southern State prison they inhabit. But as the prison authorities attempt to crush Luke's rebellious actions towards his own life's futility, his situation descends into that of the eternal loner.

The famous egg consuming scene offers light respite from the prison guards' brutality, with Cool Hand Luke still packing today a weighty social punch. Joining Newman is an excellent, then mostly unknown supporting cast, including George Kennedy, Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Waite and Strother Martin. Lalo Schifrin supplies a great score (Flaming Lips later covering Plastic Jesus). Cinematography is excellent and Rosenberg keeps sentimentality at bay. We've later seen similar scenarios played out on film, most notably with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But Cool Hand Luke is all about Newman. His Luke is as great a rebel sticking it to the man as I've seen on screen. To quote the picture, "Oh Luke, you wild, beautiful thing. You crazy handful of nothin''" If you're a fan of Newman, this is essential.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) Directed by Clint Eastwood

2011-05-31T10:02:00.000+03:00

Nick:
I like to be contrary. Also, I like to play devil's advocate. I like a good argument, even if I'm not really believing what I'm arguing for. So for quite a few decades now I've been seriously into Clint Eastwood movies. This has pissed off various friends over the years. It's very hard for people to imagine, Mr Eastwood is nowadays very critically approved of, even a genius to some, but at one time, Clint had the critical credibility of say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, that's right, that bad. Since winning the Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven, Eastwood as a film maker has seen his work, rightly I feel, reappraised. There are the classics (Spaghetti Westerns, Unforgiven, Mystic River etc), the worthy (Bird, Honkytonk Man, Letters From Iwo Jima etc) and the terrible (Firefox, Pink Cadillac, Every Which Way But Loose etc). You could place Midnight In The Garden Of Good & Evil in the same category as the terrible. This film has a stinker reputation. What was I mentioning about contrary?

It's my second time round with Midnight....and this time I enjoyed the very casual direction, the laid back atmosphere, and unfussy portrait of Savannah's eccentrics. The wit of the script seemed well pitched and not overdone. John Cusack was not so smarmy and annoying as he often is, this time approaching some of the cool he thinks he oozes. Kevin Spacey still sports a ridiculous fake mustache and is the real let down here. He just seems wooden. However, add a decent Jude Law cameo (pretending to be Jimmy Dean), a strong supporting role from Clint's daughter Alison and the performances are uniformly good. But I forgot to mention the real showstopper : Lady Chablis. The drag queen Lady Chablis plays herself, a comedienne at one of Savannah's club's. Chablis pretty much has all the best lines and steals the picture, it's worth watching Midnight...for Chablis alone.

This true tale of one of Savannah's leading socialites James Williamson, on trial for murdering his gay lover, again, as so often with his cinema, defies Eastwood's usual conservative profile. Yes, the trial section of the film really is rather ponderous, but Eastwood manages to focus on other characters and incidents, which perhaps takes away some of the trial's tension, but does make the film more interesting. So, in the end, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil was not as awful as I expected or even remember. It works, in a lazy-bed-ridden-with-illness kind of way. No masterpiece, and definitely faulty, this is still unusual and out of left-field for most Hollywood fare. I can see its reputation growing over the years.

Astrid:
Kevin Spacey is always an intelligent crook in the 90s movies. John Cusack is usually boring. Jude Law begins his Hollywood career playing the beautiful reckless type. Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil is a compilation of clichés, but it is put together from so many pieces that as a whole it's pretty good entertainment.

There is an old-fashioned dryness in the storytelling. The setting in Savannah is overly romantic, especially as it concentrates mostly on rich people. Lady Chablis steals the show any time she is on screen, although you could ask why is she given so much time when she doesn't really advance the plot? But at least Lady Chablis adds a bit of humor and lightness between the dragging court scenes.

To add to the collection of clichés, there is a witch woman called Minerva walking around Savannah night and day. She provides a layer of magic, the good and evil. I like her. Alison Eastwood, Clint Eastwood's daughter plays the love interest. I don't know who to blame, the dad behind the camera or herself, but she is very uninteresting. Had I not been told, I would have never guessed that this was a Clint Eastwood film.

Capote (2005) Directed by Bennett Miller

2011-05-27T10:02:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
For artists life is material. Life is the source from where to steal for art. The dilemma is to decide where to draw the line. Do we have to plow deep in our personal lives to create material, or should we observe other people's stories and use them? Should we befriend and care for people if they seem like good material? Do we become responsible for their well-being or can we just follow their path and report elsewhere?

Truman Capote wrote a novel about real people and I watched a movie about Capote writing that book. Each act fictionalizes reality. The onion is peeled and each layer that's taken off becomes narrative. In the end, here I am feeling all kinds of feelings about the living artist, Truman, and his choices. As if what I just said about fictionalization went over my own head.

Capote's In Cold Blood became a best-seller once it was released in 1966. He needed to see the two killers of his 'story' hanged for him to be able to write the ending. If Capote, the film, is to be believed Truman was very calculated in his approach to the murderers. He helped them when it helped him and left them alone when he got tired of waiting to be able to write his ending. Capote pictures its protagonist as an unlikable self-obsessed man, who has an almost psychopathic ability to deal with the murderers and his own friends (Harper Lee and his boyfriend) without real emotional involvement. I wonder if it is Hollywood simplifying the character so as not to confuse the audience. How ethical is that then?

Nick :

I first came across Truman Capote from a record sleeve. Yes, he adorned the front cover of The Smiths single "The Boy With The Thorne In His Side" It sparked some interest in Capote. I read In Cold Blood. After Capote died I read his trashy unfinished book Answered Prayers (where he lays into his various literary friends). Yes, Capote was neither likeable nor reliable. That such a figure could become a literary giant in the ultra conservative 1950's is astonishing. Morrissey could have been referring to Capote directly with the title of the single Capote adorned. The real life killers of In Cold Blood would not die, and Capote could not finish his masterpiece. So, the killers Smith and Hickock became the thorns in his side.

Capote deals with how Truman wrote In Cold Blood, the story of two young men who murder a family of four in a small Kansas community in 1959. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Capote, it's an impersonation performance and it's immaculate (Hoffman won an Oscar for his efforts). We watch Truman befriend everyone in the Kansas town where the murders happened, the police chief and his wife, the local farmers and especially one of the two killers, Perry Smith. Dutifully accompanied by Harper Lee (an excellent Catherine Keener), Capote patches together a non-fiction novel of the grizzly events. It takes him years. Great claims are made for In Cold Blood as changing the face of the American novel whilst Truman is portrayed as a user of people to further his career.

And there lies the rub with Capote the film. Excellently acted, well written and directed, Capote engages. But at it's heart, it can't decide weather it's trying to salvage Capote's reputation as the great American author, or reveal his true nature as a bit of a shit. Even with his close-relationship to the killer Perry Smith, there is an overbearing sense of manipulation in Truman's actions, we don't really feel his sadness towrds Perry's death. I re-read In Cold Blood some 10 years ago, it's a good book, nothing more. Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (constantly mocked throughout the fim) feels more induring to me. Even Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's novella is nowadays more affectionately known as Audrey Hepburn's iconic moment. As we see in various scenes, Truman Capote's sharp toungue and cruel ridicule of the New York literary glitterati has caught up with his reputation. Could it be that Truman just pissed too many people off?

Coming Home (1978) Directed by Hal Ashby

2011-05-24T12:34:00.000+03:00

Nick:
Hal Ashby is often regarded as the good guy from the New Hollywood era. Much loved by actors, his modest hippie temperament ultimately turning to drug dependency; he is one of the casualties of New Hollywood. Bruce Dern, who stars in Coming Home, said: "What happened to Hal Ashby, both what he did to himself and what they did to him, was as repulsive as anything I've seen in my forty years of the industry." Coming Home could be the last big hit from New Hollywood, its many problems as a film, a great example why the director-led New Hollywood era came to an end.

Coming Home feels like a rotting corpse. It's smug, indulgent, self-satisfied. By 1978 punk was happening and the 1960's reverence on show in Coming Home must have seemed like arch sentimentality. It really feels like that now. Sure, Coming Home is really well acted. Yes, it makes a comment on the wastefulness of the Vietnam War. But by this time, Hollywood and America itself had really discussed and considered the Vietnam War. As similar rallying calls and comment on this war, both the later Apocalypse Now! and the same year The Deer Hunter would show more ambition and edge. Offering no new perspective or insight, all Coming Home leaves us with is the romance. Jane Fonda and John Voight have chemistry for sure. But you never find it believable why Fonda's liberated nurse would stay with her Vietnam returning husband (an ever reliable Dern). It's also inconceivable that Voight's character would change so conveniently from bitter paralyzed war veteran to all round good guy and the sensitive spurned lover.

Coming Home has its great moments. Unfortunately, Ashby reduces the tension on screen with a soundtrack of great hits of the era (Stones, Beatles) constantly playing in the background like muzak, often unrelated to the scene. I'll remember Ashby for The Last Detail and Shampoo. Give me Jaws and Star Wars over this any day. Coming Home is well-meaning, but ultimately fails with its simplified and sentimental portrait of why America didn't deal with its war casualties with more empathy.

Astrid:
Coming Home is a film I wanted to see because it is a 70s movie, and it has Jane Fonda in it. The Director Hal Ashby is also interesting. I had forgotten that New Hollywood is not always a synonym for subversive or great. Coming Home turned out to be strangely conservative and coy. At times it reminded me of Forrest Gump (1994), which was my first cinematic encounter with the Vietnam War.

Yet, on entertainment level, I was quite content. I was well entertained actually: The angry and dangerous war veteran (John Voight) turns into an adorable lover and a campaigner for peace. The stifled and overly sweet Sally (Jane Fonda) is liberated from the constraints of a boring marriage. Sally's husband (Bruce Dern), returns from Vietnam the same arrogant and ignorant person he was when he went there, although now he is traumatized. When he finds out Sally has been seeing one of the veterans from the recovery hospital (where she had gone to volunteer), the husband threatens to murder someone or himself. A little tense, yes, but not really, because Hal Ashby has added a pop soundtrack on every scene of the film. Even while intimate dialogue is happening, there is always a Rolling Stones song or a Beatles tune playing in the background at a disturbing volume.

Jane Fonda had been vocally against the Vietnam War from the early 1970s onwards. After her visit to Vietnam in 1972 she was dubbed Hanoi Jane and deemed unpatriotic by the US press. In light of her activist past it is not surprising that she said yes to Coming Home, but it is baffling that the film handled the issue so lightly.

The Brothers Bloom (2008) Directed by Rian Johnson

2011-05-20T10:01:00.000+03:00

Nick:
Car boot sale. I picked up The Brothers Bloom at a sale in someone's back yard. 2e. I've had some bargains over the years (especially some incredibly rare vinyl) and I love the idea of rummaging through people's cast-offs. Unfortunately, other people's cast-offs is an apt description for The Brothers Bloom. It's well made, but we've been here before.

This could be a homage to the cinema of Wes Anderson or even PT Anderson. Yes, The Brothers Bloom looks amazing, everything is stylized (in a 1960's way), costume exquisite, casting great. Script? This is the problem, there is a level of wackiness and smart arsed knowing to The Brothers Bloom that is off putting. You can drown in the great visual opulence on screen, but It's vacuous too.
All the principles are good, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo and Rinko Kikuchi. This film about confidence tricksters actually plays a good one by making you think you're watching something emotionally engaging. You're not.

Still, I can really admire Brody. What a strange looking man, yet beautiful. At the end, where there is the possibility of love, I almost felt a twinge of something. It was nostalgia. I was hoping The Brothers Bloom was some other picture and I could drown in the possibilities. On some other day, in some other mood, this might work. Right now, it feels like a waste.

Astrid:
Last weekend was funny: I suddenly found myself living with two magicians. Both equally bad and both equally enthusiastic about their new and fabulous tricks. I was supposed to play the part of the understanding audience member, who makes the magic work by believing in it. In fact I was the sole target of all this magic and I begged them to leave me alone until they would really learn something...

I'm usually very encouraging, but sometimes you have to be brutally honest to save untalented people from wasting their time on something they will never figure out. Do I really think so? Surely you can learn anything if you put your mind and time to it? The Brothers Bloom has characters that suggest so. It is the story of two con artists. They have made their living through elaborate chains of lies followed by well-timed actions. They are masters at making something look like something that it is not. In the process they have lost themselves. Rachel Weisz plays an eccentric millionaire who passes her time mastering different hobbies all by herself. When she becomes the target of the Bloom brothers, she unravels them in their own game. Love is the antidote to being lost.

The Brothers Bloom is at times an uncomfortable mixture of fairytale, psychoanalyzing, stylish looks, lazy narrating and great actors breezing through various sets in various countries. A quivering naivety persists with a few joyous results, like when Penelope (Weisz) tells the younger Bloom (Adrian Brody) to live life as if the most fantastic story ever told. Then again, it is a little sad in cinema these days, when something that could easily be done visually (that's why it is cinema, right) is only blurted out in lines.

Bulworth (1998) Directed by Warren Beatty

2011-05-17T10:16:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
In 1966 Bob Dylan was on acid, tired and forever touring. He gave an interview to Robert Shelton and spouted adorably arrogant and poignant "truths" about everything and nothing. It's entertaining stuff. Luckily, Uncut magazine published the interview in their latest issue to honor Bob's 70th birthday. In 1966 Bob Dylan had lost the need to please someone or to care for what others thought of him – or so he said. Not caring what others think of you is one of the most dangerous social weapons we have, because usually that feeling is accompanied by a need to get one's own perspectives out there. A rambling follows.

In Bulworth an aging democratic senator begins to tell the truth about his own ineffectiveness as a politician. He talks these truths on TV and rallies where he is supposed to campaign for re-election. He breaks the facades carefully constructed by his aids and financial supporters. He begins to see the extent in which racism persists on every aspect of American society. He adopts a new way of dressing, he begins to rap his political speeches, he falls in love with Halle Berry... Bulworth is entertaining. It is also infuriatingly simplistic, while at the same time a little too cynical. Warren Beatty is preaching his politics, the stuff he thought would be too radical if he actually did involve himself in real-life US politics. So, Beatty stayed where he has power, in Hollywood, and commented with this film in an overly ironic way. At times I feel embarrassed watching his "mad white politician".

Much earlier in 1966, Bob Dylan said to Shelton: "Why, I don't even want to talk about college. It's just an extension of time. I hung around college, but it's a cop-out, you know, from life, from experience. A lot of people started out to be lawyers, but I venture to say that 100 per cent of the really groovy lawyers haven't gotten through school the way they ought to. They've always been freaks in their school, and have always had a hard time making it; So many lawyers just take people for what they are worth." Thanks Bob. The enigmatic silences that followed are a much more effective way to handle a public image. Warren knows this too.

Nick:
It's tempting to offer a view that Bulworth has been dated inexplicably by the course of history. US politics and its treatment of racial minorities (or nowadays majorities) has been well documented outside of cinema and partially within. Now we have an African-American in the White House, is the message of Bulworth relevant? Does mainstream US politics still serve a sweet line of bullshit to gain votes from the racial underclass and then fail to deliver? Obviously yes, despite some of us all wanting Obama to succeed, it's obvious the call of big corporations still carries the loudest. And even a man like Barack Obama is unable to counter corporate dominance of American policy. These things take time I guess.

It's not the rather cliched political message that Bulworth carries, that politicians lie and corruption is rife in mainstream politics, why this film works. What's impressive is watching a former A-lister make a movie where he lets it all hang out so honestly. The usual accusations of vanity are wasted on Beatty with Bulworth. As liberal LA Senator Bulworth, Beatty orders his own assassination on the eve of his re-election campaign. After a visit to an impoverished black area on his campaign trail, Bulworth decides to adopt a bluntly honest tone and tell it like it is. Not only this, he decides to do so using hip-hop rhymes and black culture to get his no BS message across. So yes, Beatty raps. Not only this, it's embarrassing and ridiculous.

And that's the point. It's to highlight the whole stupidity of the political process that we buy into and we allow to shape our lives. As a film, Bullworth is a mess, full of racial stereotypes and clichés. But it gets away with its message because its heart is in the right place and it is a genuinely original and bizarre film. Bulworth is similar in many ways to Beatty's hippy sexual comedy Shampoo. Like Shampoo, Bulworth feels like it's all over the place, while slyly making political points and being cohesive at its core. I'm not sure if it's a very good film, but Bulworth is brave and at times a funny curiosity which takes risks with conventionality.

Revolutionary Road (2008) Directed by Sam Mendes

2011-05-10T10:58:00.000+03:00

Nick:
Oh, pity the poor artist. In 2011 trying to be an artist on any level is a thankless task. There is a growing attitude that one must place one's artistic endeavors to one side: "get a proper job" and keep your artistic ideals at the hobby level. This is regardless of talent. Of course those who burn with the desire to express themselves will ignore such pious attitudes and push on. The Wheelers in Revolutionary Road, in the much harsher environment of 1950's American suburbia have put their artistic pretensions aside. They have settled down, had some kids, bought a nice house in a Connecticut suburb whilst Frank Wheeler has a job in computing. April, Frank's wife realizes that conforming is killing them.

When I first read Revolutionary Road over 10 years ago, the book impressed me so much I delved into the world of author Richard Yates head first. I would recommend Revolutionary Road to anyone who would listen, I tried to read all his other novels (though many were out of print at the time). Hell, I even named an album after one of his novellas. Despite receiving some coverage due to this film, the patronage of lesser lights like Nick Hornby and seeing all his work re-issued, Yates remains a well kept secret. I believe him to be one of the greatest writers of the last century and Revolutionary Road one of my favorite books, period. So, as objective as I can be, the film adaptation of Yates' debut novel was always going to be hard.

Revolutionary Road is a fine film, but not a great one. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler. This is an actors' movie. My main problem with the film is Winslet, not how she performs, but more the attention her role gets. It feels compromised on the premise that it defines her character too clearly, therefore spelling out her thoughts and actions. It's a major flaw in the films' telling of Yates novel and betrays the book's essence. Mendes manages to re-create 1950's Connecticut perfectly (surely the look here a major influence on TV's Mad Men?) But Mendes misses on the flip side to the suburban decadence, the darkness and seedy aspects that so informs Yates' work. There is some over acting in some scenes and the soundtrack seems American Beauty light. DiCaprio is excellent, could this be his best role? One thing Revolutionary Road gets right though is the danger awaiting the Wheelers. It's not an iceberg that's going to finish off Kate and Leo this time. It is that less obvious killer, the white middle class suburban malaise. Watch out, it's gonna get you every time.

Astrid:
I can't remember how, but in the early noughties we came across Richard Yates and ever since we have hunted his books and read them feverishly. They are not so easy to find. It all began with Revolutionary Road, the novel (originally published in 1961). When the film Revolutionary Road was finally made in 2008, it felt to me like a personal secret of mine was being aired without asking for my consent. I was afraid of the novel not being well interpreted and I was scared that any criticism of the film would be devastating to the novel. I was also rejoicing, thinking Richard Yates will finally become a very famous and successful, (dead) writer. I guess he did not. The story was too painful and direct for the masses, even with the Titanic two on screen.

April and Frank Wheeler (Kate and Leo) are at the point in their life together, where the early courtship has ended and has been replaced by a new reality: a suburban marriage with two kids. The dreams they had, the sense of being different and special, their artistic aspiration have all been washed out of their routine lives in the 1950s American suburbia. This story begins where romantic comedies can never venture. It peeks behind the veil called 'happily ever after'. Generally, nobody wants to go there in fiction because they live there every day.

I still take this film personally, maybe more than ever. Now I am the same age with the main characters. I know what it means to argue over how possible 'another life in Paris' is. I look at my life and my friends and I refuse to see April Wheeler around. Yet I know the more I refuse the more likely she is going to rear her 1950s-dead-housewive's head and whisper something venomous in my ear. I will tell her: "April, if you lived now you could keep acting and realizing your dreams, you could get a job of some kind, you could matter outside of your house, you could divorce and have a legal abortion, you could really see the shrink too and not just talk about it."

Even still, Richard Yates punctures through the seeming changes for the better. If he was alive, he would smirk at my delusion while lighting yet another cigarette. Is life really a horrible trek through endless disappointments where happiness is only a moment, never a state? Has life been sold to us with false promises? Are people in the advertisement business the most evil of us all, because they sell us happiness and false hope? I cannot help but to think of Bill Hicks here: Hicks thought the messenger of the uncomfortable truth in America always gets whacked somehow. It certainly happened to Richard Yates, when nobody wanted to keep his books in press or buy them if they were available. Why is the truth always so quiet and undemanding?

Touch of Evil (1958) Directed by Orson Welles

2011-05-06T15:52:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
The genre of film-noir is something that I fail to grasp. I know I should appreciate it more, but there are problems between me and the 1940s and 1950s noir pieces. It's almost as if there is an explanation I am owed. A connecting thought is missing. But who would give me the missing links, when Nick for example, is so in love with good old film-noir he could probably just get by watching Touch of Evil every evening. It's like we're watching a different film sometimes.

Ok, so there is always the criminal side; the bad guys, the bad cops and the dubious women. Then there is the law-biding rookie or something to that effect, in Touch of Evil it is the Mexican cop played by Charlton Heston. Then there are the beautiful but treacherous women, the blonds and the brunettes and the red heads (although it is hard to tell which ones are red in black and white). The two important aspects of noir (my analysis) are wrongful deeds and sex. And then there is suspense (and how it was maintained back in the early days), it is crucial and it can be excruciating if it manifests in slowness.

Yes, Touch of Evil is pretty good. It brings drugs and rock music into the equation. It looks breath-taking. Orson Welles is genuinely repulsive. Marlene Dietrich is genuinely deep and mysterious as a Mexican fortune teller. She still has a hint of the sexy German accent – sehr gut.

Nick:
Do we have any idea of the tiresome nature of Orson Welles' art? I'm referring to his constant battles with studios about the control over his work (or lack of). Artistic license. It's occurred to me that hindsight proves to be the prevailing insight in these matters. But in reality you should trust the people you work with. The original spark that gets us all excited should be the yardstick by which we measure other people's visionary zeal. So, going back to poor old Orson, is it possible to watch any of his films (bar Citizen Kane) without reading a disclaimer at the beginning that this is as close to his original vision that remains? That obligatory disclaimer pertaining to Welles cut of Touch Of Evil starts the DVD.

I last watched Touch of Evil on the big screen at the start of this century. I confess now, even in its hacked state, it's a favorite of mine. There's the famous one-shot opening, that establishes the crime and introduces Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh as the newlyweds crossing the Mexican border. They enter a world of drugs, wild flat-top Mexican youth, corruption, extortion, darkness and ultimately the evil of the title. Welles' bloated, hideous cop Quinlan, a man out of time, using old methods to crack cases, up against Heston's future-looking Mexican narcotics cop. Their conflicting methods sets the stage. Welles as director and writer cracks taboo after taboo, from drug referencing (mary jane, heroin, mainline) to a dark sexual suggestiveness not seen on the screen before. David Lynch, for example, tapped into this aspect of Touch Of Evil heavily for his own Wild At Heart.

But Welles use of the camera, the stark black and white photography still stuns with its invention. You can just marvel at scene after scene. Yes, this is the deepest, most intense, twisted noir you're likely to see. All the supporting group of actors (Welles regulars) bring much to the film, including an uncredited Joseph Cotton. But Welles use of Marlene Dietrich tips the film into magical. Dietrich has some 10 lines in Touch Of Evil but she owns this film. What presence, what a face, what a woman. You could argue no actor has had this much impact on a film with so little screen time. Dietrich's Tanya could be talking of Welles when she finally states "He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?" Dietrich's scenes burn in the memory, the essence of cinema.

Notting Hill (1999) Directed by Roger Michell

2011-05-04T10:54:00.001+03:00

Nick:
As we finished watching Notting Hill on Sunday night, the news was about to break of the death of Osama bin Laden. What a weird world we live in. It's hard not to feel cynical about bin Laden's death. An eye for an eye and all that. The quick disposing of the body (fuel for conspiracy theorists), no trial for bin Laden to face, a USA election campaign around the corner, Pakistan now taking the flack – martyrdom is waiting for bin Laden. I'm half expecting a new video tape to appear with bin Laden declaring he's alive after all. In a world where imagined WMD are a cause for invasion, forgive me for asking if bin Laden really existed. His death was as ghostly as his life. I could try to think of a witty way to link this to Notting Hill, unfortunately, there isn't a way. Just musing.

I've seen this film at least a dozen times. It's the kind of movie you want when your mind can't deal with anything demanding. But recently I've realized I always expect a certain level of demanding, even in the trash I watch. Richard Curtis hit comedy gold as the writer for the excellent Blackadder, the OK but dated Four Weddings and a Funeral and finally achieving genius with Love Actually (which he also directed). Notting Hill sits somewhere in the middle of Four Weddings...and Love Actually. It has some genuinely funny scenes, a decent Hugh Grant performance and the imperious Rhys Ifans who totally steals the film. A big minus point is Julia Roberts. Yes, she's OK pretty much playing herself, but her character is so unsympathetic. She's a classier version of the character played by Andie Macdowell in Four Weddings...but you do wonder what Grant's foppish sensitive soul sees in her. Not credible.

This is also Notting Hill from the pre-1950's Britain. Multiculturalism has not arrived in this version of Notting Hill. It's so fucking white. Director Michell also delves in the shadowy depths of sentimentality that so often afflicts this kind of rom-com. Throw in some choice Ronan Keating on the soundtrack and it's time to reach for the sick bucket. Admittedly, the use of Al Green and Bill Withers on the other hand are inspired. This is so close to comedy gold at times, and I'm sure my view of Notting Hill is stretched this time round by over familiarity. I'm sure the next time I'm feeling completely vacuous, I'll dig it out again.

Astrid:
Films from the year 1999 are special for me because that's the year I traveled alone to the USA for the first time with my pink-covered first solo demos in the suitcase. I was going to be an exchange student in Michigan. I would be one of those exchange students who had to endure high school while in their head they were an artist waiting to be discovered like Cinderella. The point is, I was convinced I was special. Kind of like Julia Roberts playing Anna Scott, while really being Julia Roberts. I felt like somebody who was Someone, although currently hiding in the local Waldorf high school.

In Notting Hill Anna Scott went hiding in a travel book store owner's home. And Julia Roberts went hiding in the role of Anna Scott, although it must have felt a little confusing and too revealing at times. Her whole role is based on the audience leaking into viewing her as Julia, the Pretty Woman. What's shocking this time around is that Anna's style, shades, bags, leather jacket, everything looks so awfully dated. Was 1999 really still that 90s-like stylistically? Was this still a time before Sex and The City (the TV series, not the damned movies) inflicted a fashion and style requirement (like a straitjacket) on every actress in every film produced? The Julia Roberts of Eat, Pray Love (2010) looks much more polished and controlled than here. It is as if in the years between then and now she has honed herself into a product.

Anna Scott in Notting Hill is not a reliable and nice person. She's a spoiled selfish famous person who is used to evaluating others by how much they can help her to remain invisible and hidden from the media. The film gives no justification for William Thacker's unconditional love for her. Other than that he is simply star-struck. Why am I almost weeping at the end when Anna lies on a park bench and her hippie dress reveals a 6-month bump? I guess these times are hard and to naively believe in love and transformation for a couple of hours a day is necessary. I have learned that happiness comes from being less analytical sometimes.

Raging Bull (1980) Directed by Martin Scorsese

2011-04-30T19:09:00.003+03:00

Astrid:
Raging Bull is great cinematic storytelling. It is visual narration at a high artistic level. It is admirable dedicated acting. Its cast and makers are all the best, most creative and professional people around.
It's black and white, it knowingly situates itself in the history of cinema while producing something entirely new out of a Hollywood favorite; a true story. Raging Bull is so good, it almost becomes boring.

It is a narrative storytelling classic to take an unsympathetic character and tell a story portraying him without judgment to any direction. There used to be an unpronounced preference for these stories because as we know, life is often ambiguous and art is the place to deal with that. Right now I feel there is a needed shift in arts taking place towards a more openly subjective work. Endless ambiguity can be distancing and uninvolving. Never-ending acceptance and understanding can be damaging to our sense of self.

This time I watched Raging Bull and hovered between being entertained, bored and disgusted. Jake La Motta, as played by De Niro, is a disturbing, controlling and violent person. I could not find anything to like in him. I don't have to like him – that's my realization. I don't even have to empathize or try to understand. There was entertainment: plot turns, great acting, fabulous period detail, admirable movie-making. Yet, I am left with the question SO WHAT, and that is not a very great mental place to be in after a film.

Nick :
I recall walking home from an evening at a friends house many years ago (I was barely 20 years old). It was late, gone one in the morning. The streets were bare. All of a sudden a figure appeared walking towards me. In a flash, the stranger was thumping me in the face. He hit me quite a few times, very hard. Standing in shock, I heard a voice behind him telling him to go. Without a word or explanation for the attack, he left and I was left with a sore head. There was no reason for the attack, no provocation (as if that would justify the strangers actions).This kind of casual violence I've experienced a few times in my life. I've come across the type of person like the boxer Jake La Motta. A scary, no-messing, psychotic, paranoid, obsessive violent thug. Oh yeah, and I still like watching violent movies. Go figure?

Raging Bull is a deceptive film. The first few times I saw the picture, I was mistaken into thinking it was a real-life bio-pic. But as I've grown older, I've realized that along with Robert De Niro's fake nose, everything in this picture is super-stylized, almost superficial. The celebrated fight scenes, orchestrated and overblown. You'll find as much genius editing, interesting camera angles, and Scorsese's usual arsenal of tricks as in any one of his other pictures. De Niro as La Motta is a grotesque, both as a young lean boxer and as the middle aged man who has lost everything apart from his sense of humor. Yes, he is good in this role, but again, every word and action is exaggerated. Playing the part of his brother Joey, a restrained Joe Pesci matches De Niro here.

But that exaggeration and over-the-top performance from De Niro is what makes Raging Bull work. Yes, it's like Rocky with grit. It's still a soap opera. One of the powerful aspects of Scorsese's bio-pic is that we rarely see a character like La Motta dominate a film nowadays. Raging Bull stands up to scrutiny, it's one of the celebrated films that deserves its reputation. I've always found new things in the picture whenever I've seen it. Was it deliberate for Scorsese to record the dialogue so quietly? Was the reason to enhance the sound of the violent scenes? Or was it just bad sound? Or my last thoughts this time around adhere me to consider that this school of machismo and male dominance as portrayed on screen in Raging Bull is verging on parody and dated.

The Fortune (1974) Directed by Mike Nichols

2011-04-27T21:38:00.001+03:00

Nick:
Can you smell it? It's steaming? It's on the pavement, just over there, don't step in it!...oh...yes, it's a turd. Of course, if you excuse the shit analogy, I'm really talking about expectation. The cruelest way to refer to a failure or a let down, is to bring out the turd. This year, I've experienced a few. The new Cut Copy album, the Finnish election results, Spurs' collapse against Real Madrid and the book I'm currently reading; Star : The Life & Wild Times of Warren Beatty by Peter Biskind. I've enjoyed Biskind's gossipy tales in the past, but 400 pages into his Beatty tome you realize Biskind has got no real idea who Beatty is and why, occasionally, Beatty was a cinema zeitgeist. To be fair, it piqued my interest enough to revisit The Fortune, a film that has had over the years a reputation akin to that steaming pile of...oh you get the idea!

You won't find much zeitgeist in The Fortune. When I first watched this film a couple of years ago, I was forgiving. It was hard to find, a neglected New Hollywood picture that featured Beatty and Jack Nicholson, both in their respective primes. It's directed by the often good Nichols, so why was this picture so not rated? In a clearer frame of mind it's fair to say that farce, combined with hammy hysterical acting and jokes that fall flat (although there are a few laughs) just add to the general feeling that everyone was lost making The Fortune. Nichols shoots from a distance, we never get close to the characters. Beatty and Nicholson try to find some comic chemistry, but both are cast against type, so they struggle for empathy. Worst of all, you never believe that either Lothario would waste their time on the pretty yet plain Stockard Channing, even if they are trying to swindle her out of her fortune.

Saving graces here, as in most Hollywood pictures at this time is that it looks good, and the period feel (1920's) is well evoked. But an hour into The Fortune you wonder how any of the principles didn't begin to feel how flat all this over acting was going to be and if they all lost interest. A curiosity at best, sadly The Fortune's reputation is deserved. A missed opportunity still.

Astrid:
I like Mike Nichols and I love Jack Nicholson and I grimace and admit to liking Warren Beatty. I really love the 1970s cinema. And the 1970s as the romantic chaotic decade before I was born into this world. Yet, somehow The Fortune fails to impress me.

The Fortune is a hostile movie. I'm not certain how much of it is in the script and how much of it is in Warren's and Jack's performances (they cannot hide their disappointment at the looks of the leading lady). Anyhow, what is supposed to be funny and satirical turns into an embarrassing and serious story. It's Jack already playing his usual crazy hair-sticking-up jerk and Warren stiffly portraying a controlling and flawed lover boy. There were a few times that I chuckled though, and Stockard Channing was alright.

I guess the hostility of the film is in its narrative: how to kill a woman for her money and get away with it. That's the question of the film. When I write it down it becomes clear that it's a simplistic and boring subject matter. Well, at least she does not die that easily. Amongst all the fresh new feminist rhetoric and the joys of the freed Western woman, the 1970s was boiling over with open hatred towards women. The Fortune is a reminder of that.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) Directed by Wes Anderson

2011-04-25T20:24:00.001+03:00

Astrid:
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou has been one of my favorite feel-good movies since I first saw it six years ago. I have not seen it for many years though, and this time around I realized it's not really a feel-good film. What does that say about me? What kind of a person feels comforted and happy watching a strange twisted story about a mid-life crises, dysfunctional relationships, dying loved ones and a father-son relationship, which is based on not knowing each other? A not very conventionally happy person I guess. Someone who feel familiar with dysfunction in relationships. What about the mid-life crises? I was 23 when I first watched this movie.

I still know nothing about mid-life crises. But I love Bill Murray as Steve Zissou. I also love him as the washed-up actor in Lost In Translation, a film published a year before The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, in 2003. It feels as if Murray is pretty much a continuation or an expansion of the same character here. As someone notes on the extras to The Life Aquatic, it is difficult to know where the role begins and Murray ends. Feeling lost and uncomfortable, pressured and distanced from one's own life is not of course only a privilege of the mid-lifers. The Life Aquatic has a pregnant journalist who is separating from her married lover while drifting at sea with Zissou's gang, it has a long-lost son who shows up after his mother has died, and it has a host of other characters equally struggling for a place in their changing lives.

Life is always changing in the movies. Static existence does not make good narrative and it is unrealistic too. The reason that must have weighed heavily on The Life Aquatic gaining its status as one of my feel-good movies in the mid-noughties is Wes Anderson's aesthetics. He does detail, he does color and style. Another reason why I had a special relationship to this film is that it was one of our first DVDs that we actually owned. Owning things creates repetition. Repetition is safety.

Nick:
As a child in the school playground, I would peruse my fellow student's satchels and duffel bags for any signs of badges or iron-on patches. Strange behavior you might think, but any badge or such notice of fandom would invariably be unique and belong to an exclusive fan club. I remember distinctly at the age of eight my mate Andy having the coolest Planet of the Apes badges, only available to fan club members of the TV series. Abba, Evil Knievel, Starsky & Hutch and quite possibly Jacques Cousteau were all ripe for fan club indulgence. I was too poor to subscribe to any fan clubs, but I did manage to trade comics for Planet Of The Apes, Abba and The Fonz from Happy Days badges. All boys' own stuff if you like (except the super girly Abba). I mention Jacques Cousteau as he was the underwater explorer of the era (early 1970's) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou pays homage to Cousteau, although, in reality it's a bit more complicated than that.

Wes Anderson always has a strong sense of family and relationship in his films. From Rushmore through to The Royal Tenenbaums and onto The Darjeeling Limited, dysfunctional, lost family members reunited under trying circumstances dominate his films. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou continues these themes under the backdrop of the life of undersea explorer and documentary film maker Steve Zissou (played by the effortless Bill Murray). Steve's life, far from going well is in a rut. His legend is fading, his movies flop, his best friend has been devoured by some new species of shark and his marriage is a sham. His vessel, The Belafonte needs replenishing and his crew, although loyal are weary. But into Steve's life appears his possible son from a previous relationship (Owen Wilson as Ned) which belatedly ignites Steve's sense of fatherhood whilst against all odds pushing him to new deep-sea adventures.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is eccentricity incarnate and often very funny while keeping the emotional tug strong. Anderson supplies great support for Murray and Wilson, with a reverent portrayal of Angelica Huston (Anderson remembers how Huston should look on screen), Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum and Michael Gambon all delightful. Color co-ordination of every amazing set is exquisite, photography richer than a 1970's copy of National Geographic. The soundtrack, as usual with an Anderson movie, is knowing and uplifting. This is a rich feast for the senses. But Anderson doesn't stop there, because not only is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou an original in almost every sense, it reminds us that nothing pulls and tears us apart quite like the inner or outer turmoils of families we all strive to be part of. Just watch and wonder.

Erin Brockovich (2000) Directed by Steven Soderbergh

2011-04-21T10:05:00.001+03:00

Nick:
Let's leave the sentimentality at the door. It's a trait that can effect the best artistic endeavors. Lets not confuse sentimental feelings for real emotion. What's impressive about Erin Brockovich is it never brings sentimentality to the table. Erin Brockovich could be one of the last great American mainstream films.

This film deals with class, sexism in the work place, human rights, big corporate corruption and anything else you want to throw into the kitchen sink. Yes, it's a political beast with a David & Goliath bent. But what make Erin Brockovich work is that Soderbergh never forgets to entertain. The script is sharp and foul mouthed. Erin as portrayed by Julia Roberts is an old-school New Hollywood turn. Roberts is an actress I've not particularly enjoyed on screen (although she seems to save her best work for Soderbergh), but this is one of the least self-conscious turns by a mainstream actor I've seen. Yes, she carries the film.

Albert Finney is perfect as the head of the law firm that employs Erin. Finney has rarely been so well used in recent years. All the bit parts are well cast and as is typical with Soderbergh there is a lightness of touch which seems effortless. He's a director when on form, as he is here, never feels like he intrudes on the storytelling. You don't feel there is heavy moralising going on. The fact that this is a true story only confirms the injustice we already know exists amongst the world of big coprporate business. If you've shied away from this picture in the past, thinking of it as just more maintream fluff, leave your prejudice at the door and check it out. Smart and vital cinema such as this is rare these days.

Astrid:
I wonder if the True Finns (Perussuomalaiset) party who just marched in force into the next government of Finland see themselves as a kind of Erin Brockovich phenomenon? Mr. and Mrs. Avarage saving the world from the evils of corporate power? Who knows what they plan at this point...

Although I have long since missed out on becoming the next Erin B – I am over-educated, fearful and I don't have Julia Roberts' looks – Erin Brockovich is still an entertaining and strangely empowering movie. I love its claim on reality, because Erin really does exist and has won her fight against an evil corporation. Once in a while it is nice to know that the stories of cinema have a connection to our non-movie-like realities. And sometimes something positive happens in life, not only in movies.

Erin Brockovich says: you can have prominent boobs, know it and still be able to think, fight and argue for yourself. I guess something in that statement continues to be revolutionary to some of us.
The film also shows that even though a woman has three children, it can be crucial to her to build an identity through her work, be recognized for her influence in society. Also, this movie does not claim that Erin would be happiest if she listened to her motorcycling boyfriend/neighbor and quit her job to play house with him. He fades away because her priority is her work.

Erin Brockovich is a call for common sense. I'm worried though that sometimes common sense can be hijacked by hillibillies and then it becomes oversimplification.

Four Lions (2010) & Dead Man (1995)

2011-04-16T17:47:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
I know I should write about death here, but somehow I want to talk about the beauty of young men.
It took me a long time to appreciate Johnny Depp for his looks. I do now, I don't deny that. The way young men look used to be of no appeal to me because I mixed youth with unreliability, arrogance, disconnection between expression and intention. When I was the age of young men, I simply found men uninteresting. I was absorbed in women of all ages and older men. Maybe the problem was that I wanted to be a young man. I envied their place, their freedom, I saw a lot of freedom out of my reach.

The other night when we watched Dead Man, I was in pain and through the discomfort I lost myself and felt I looked exactly like Johnny Depp in Dead Man. I was also experiencing his discomfort on screen as if it was happening to me, so we had to stop for the evening. The next day I no longer felt such affinity. I was a woman watching a kind of rock'n'roll lost soul in a western. Beauty wasting away. Nick said he was lost and that was the point. I thought the point was the way he looks, but I didn't say anything.

Young men seem to have the freedom and naivety to act on completely short-sighted plans. It's a gendered privilege. Some can afford to play with their lives and die, they like the idea of war. Yes, many still do. There's always the talk of justification through necessity. Four Lions is a story of young men who plan a bomb attack in London. Their plans go wrong, the deaths that follow are not the right kind of death. How bizarre. I felt uneasy watching Four Lions. Comedy has a piercing way of highlighting the ideological contradictions that we continue to live with each day. Also, the stupidity of beautiful young men can sometimes be a tragedy in itself.

Nick :
For me it's a taken that people consider their mortality on a far deeper level in Finland than in other countries I've visited or lived in. I feel this on a spiritual level, not just on a depression level (although I think the harsh winter contributes to a certain level of contemplation in these matters). Death, either pending or delayed, is a common theme that links Four Lions and Dead Man.

Chris Morris acquired hero status for me many years ago through his work on The Day Today, Brass Eye, Blue Jam (Jam) and the only partially seen Nathan Barly. You could call him a black-humored satirist, but that simplifies matters. I'm sure Four Lions upset a lot of people who support the War On Terror with its subject matter: the film follows a group of British Jihads' attempt to blow themselves and something up. I love the fact that Morris humanizes his Jihadists, they have a sense of humor about themselves and their religion. Amongst the laughs (there are many) Morris' film ultimately leaves a feeling of sadness and outrage. It's a crazy messed up world out there and even the birds have got to go come the final reckoning.

Is Johnny Depp any good? Before he hit his payday with the Pirate franchise, he was the doyen of many an art house picture.

In Jim Jarmusch's abstract Western Dead Man, his face, or more accurately, Robby Muller's cinematic capturing of his face brings so much to the film. Depp is pretty lost as the accountant on the run, intentionally I'm sure. Jarmusch adds a roll call of inspired bit players who drift in and out of this slow meander and make up for any lack of thespian craft: Robert Mitchum, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, Alfred Molina, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover and Lance Henriksen to name a few. Gary Farmer as the Indian Nobody almost steals the film. Depp's face in black and white close up is a dream, as is the whole picture. Neil Young supplies the music, probably his last great work. Dead Man lives on in the subconscious, spiritually evoking a true sense of one's mortality mixed with dream like wonder. The last great Western?

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (1963) Directed by Vittorio De Sica

2011-04-10T14:12:00.002+03:00

Nick:
It can cause snickering. People start looking at you in a different light. Once, you could walk on air, then all of a sudden, everything you do is analyzed and evidence for the prosecution. A fall from greatness can be painful and irrefutable. Last night we watched the latest Woody Allen film, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. This along with Vicky Cristina Barcelona are two of the most vacuous films I've ever watched by anyone, let alone Allen. He seems to have forgotten what made him great. First clue: it starts with the script. In many respects, by the time De Sica got to Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (Italian title : Ieri, Oggi, Domani), the same fate had befallen him as Allen. De Sica, once such a shrewd narrator of the Italian working classes on screen, descended into caricature, cliché and, worst of all, sentimentality.

It is easy to think De Sica saw Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren and was starstruck. By now they were Italy's biggest screen exports, international superstars. With Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, De Sica casts the two as the principle actors in three different stories which cover the post-war Italian class system from top to bottom. You could look at this film as being about the three different women that Loren portrays and her relationship to men. A pre-1960's life in Naples selling cigarettes in the street and conceiving to keep the roof over your head and avoid prison, a millionaire woman driving around Milan picking up artisans to relieve her boredom, a flirtatious upper class hooker in Rome. Loren is very good in these roles, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow shows us something she rarely gave in English language films.

Mastroianni feels wasted in all of these stories, you miss his cool presence from his earlier Fellini movies. In short, all three stories are farces and here lies the problem. De Sica, still sees these gentle comic tales as a means to make comments on class distinctions, but the edge had gone from his commentary by this stage. Was he too comfortable? Probably. There's still a lot to admire in the look of the film, especially in De Sica's nod to the French New Wave of the Milanese set road story. Loren's strip in the third part is the highlight here, her sensual playfulness shows a daring missing in most of this three-hander.

Astrid:
Sophia Loren is a goddess. There is a sense of humor in her and it works wonders for perfection. It humanizes the inhuman beauty. I once had a neighbor who liked quilting and breeding. She was extremely beautiful so it was not difficult for her to arrange new pregnancies. It was her influence that I learned to read Vogue – I fell in love with the vacuousness of the presentation. It was also my first encounter with the privilege of having money. I was a child, impressible and eager to turn into a swan and let go of the awkward rubber duck inside me.

But what about the fact that this beautiful emancipated neighbor seemed to make mothering her main purpose in life? Should this be a question about sex or babies? In Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow Sophia Loren plays three different women: a mother, a whore and a crude lost rich woman. The Italian stereotype of women as either mothers or whores is alive and well in this piece of cinema from 1963.
I'm not sure if the film offered any special perspective into the stereotyping of women. At the same time, I'm convinced that De Sica is splitting his work into three sections like this and keeping the same actors in tow, precisely because he wants to portray them as sides to one woman. So, the perspective must be somewhere. Perhaps it holds no power of subversion and thus evades me completely.

Feminine beauty in its 20th century splendor requires endless work and reconstruction. The resulting aesthetic has been passed on to me via literature as well as the above mentioned neighbor and cinema. The novel Wonderful Women By The Sea by Monica Fagerholm was another early influence on my personal feminine aesthetic (in good and bad, obsession and health). The novel by Fagerholm and Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow share a time context. They take place in the 1960s. That's important. It is around then that the yearning for a personal freedom becomes a requirement for beauty, it changes and complicates the purpose of beauty. It questions reproduction as the end result. It renders Marchello Mastroianni a helpless clown.

Mystery Train (1989) Directed by Jim Jarmusch

2011-04-05T20:16:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
I know I am someone who is supposed to have watched the Jim Jarmusch catalogue of movies a long time ago, but this was my third ever Jarmusch film. Mystery Train speaks in a visual and narrative language I find easy and inspiring to relate to. It finds outsider perspectives to the insider identity. The story breaths letting the viewer feel, interpret and analyze however much or little they want. The most powerful cinematic tool, the visual images are telling most of the story. That's rare in 1989 and it's rare today.

There is a lightness and a kind of nonchalant rock'n'roll attitude to the Jarmusch films I have so far experienced – Mystery Train definitely has it too. Even though bad things happen in life, you can always take off, change the scenery, still wear the red lipstick and keep your dignitity. Or if you can't hold on to dignity, maybe your life is enough. Maybe that's the message.

I've never been to Memphis or that southern part of the USA, but I'll be satisfied in seeing it in pictures and through the eyes of others. I'm afraid the reality would be somewhat different to the Jarmusch version. The Memphis pilgrimage time has passed me by. I hate finding myself in tourist crowds and I have already tasted pancakes with syrup and blueberries and banana and cream. Now I'm going to fix myself a bowl of ice-cream with canned peaches and I'll give some to my panicked boyfriend too.

Nick :
I write this review under duress. My football team (Spurs) play in the Champions League this evening. It could be our biggest moment yet in the modern football era. On top of this, we just finished watching the whole of Deadwood. Yes all three seasons. A big hole has now appeared in our lives from today onwards. How will we cope with the withdrawal symptoms? I just have to convince Astrid that The Prisoner box set sitting on the shelf is of equal quality (it certainly is) and hopefully we can get our TV series fix back under way. Music creativity is afoot in our house too, on multiple fronts. It makes sense to visit a film that pays homage in some way to the origins of popular music.

Rock'n' Roll iconography doesn't get any bigger than Elvis Presley. Mystery Train is drenched in Elvis (and named after an Elvis song). Elvis is in the hotel rooms, the street corners of Memphis, the smalltalk and the background noise that fills Mystery Train. Three stories, which occur simultaneously, often in the same seedy Memphis hotel makes up the premise of Mystery Train: The Japanese couple who visit Memphis to see the historical landmarks (Sun Studio, Graceland). Then there is an Italian woman transporting her husband's coffin back to Rome and who is visited by Elvis' ghost. And finally the crazed, gun-popping Englishman everyone knows as Elvis (a lean and mean Joe Strummer). Their lives are entwined in the slow everyday grind of Memphis real life and folklore.

Mystery Train deals with the Other, especially the foreigner in America (one theme that unites all three stories). Cultural differences amid the frank squalor in which Jarmusch depicts Memphis are the order of the day. Jarmusch's film reminds me of a time when American independent cinema was a unique voice and you never quite knew what you were getting. Jarmusch was at the forefront of a new breed of like minded film makers, what happened? Mystery Train still breathes a healthy sigh. All aboard...

The Witches of Eastwick (1987) Directed by George Miller

2011-04-01T17:53:00.000+03:00

Nick:
Today I crashed my Ferrari sports car into a Jumbo Jet that had crash-landed on the Helsinki Highway 666. As passengers fled the burning wreckage I somehow manged to disengage my car from the crumpled steel and aimed to make a quick getaway. Unfortunately the plane seems to have been a transatlantic flight and in my haste to flee the scene I ran over some fleeing passengers. Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon were all caught under the wheels of my raging horsepower. Of course, today is April Fools Day, so take my story at the expense of the stars of The Witches of Eastwick with a pinch of salt, please.

In reality, if such an occurrence happened way back in 1986, it may have saved us from this car wreck of a movie. I could point out this kind of star vehicle rarely credits the audience with much intelligence. The personalities of Nicholson and company is all we have to go on here. Slow direction by George Miller (this definitely has more in common with his Happy Feet rather than his Mad Max pictures), a puerile script, and giving Nicholson the license to overact creates an often painful watching experience.

Nicholson didn't ever recover in any meaningful way from this kind of role. Cher, Pfeiffer and Sarandon should have known better. We could go into The Witches of Eastwick's representation of the genders, but I really can't be bothered. Not even good trash.

Astrid:
My memory serves me badly here, but I must have been less than 12-years-old when I first watched The Witches of Eastwick. I was staying the night with a very good girlfriend, sleeping on mattresses set out in front of the TV and somehow we ended up finding a VCR about witches...I remember this film had a lasting influence on me and my thinking on adulthood. It would be fun to grow up with my girlfriends and have our dreams answered in the form of a man. You know why it would be fun? Because for a short period we would have fun with pink balloons, gold-lame gowns and bog castles and then he would go crazy – like they do – but we could move on. That's what I learned. Also, it would be good to be one of these stereotypes: a blonde, a redhead or a brunette. I was very aware of the connotations. Later, I have tried all of the colors and am currently wavering between being Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Last night I felt a little worried for my childhood self. What sense had I made out of all the sexual talk? What preconditioning had I taken with me? Did I, like the movie seems to believe, that lonely divorced women looking for sexual pleasure are likely to bring on the devil? Although Michelle, Cher and Susan are the superstars we know we can root for here, isn't it a bit worrying that after their pleasure and fulfillment they have to kill the man who they had it with?

Yes, I know The Witches of Eastwick is written like a Gothic tale and usually their prime content is presenting feminine sexuality as dangerous, disastrous even. But John Updike wrote the novel in the early 1980s, a couple hundred years late. I was offended by the chauvinist take this film has on women, gender equality and hetero relationships in general. The fact that it was made into a movie in 1987 situates it in the middle of a strong feminist backlash. Jack Nicholson's raging woman-hating Van Horne (the devil) is first citing basic gender equality arguments just to chuck them out for "What about me?" –Oh, you poor heterosexual men of the 80s! Is that the ultimate reason why they made this film?

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) Directed by Orson Welles

2011-03-30T18:41:00.000+03:00

Astrid:
Are there really people who conduct their lives as elaborate games? Are there platinum blonds who besides money and beauty, can get every human being to fall in love with them if they want to? And are these femme fatales in fact the murderers in life? I don't know, but it seems like I'm missing the point here.

The Lady From Shanghai looks fabulous and it has brilliant scenes with funny lines for the actors. Unfortunately it also fails to touch me. It is difficult to watch this film from 1947 as anything but a summer style guide. My attempts to fish for some content leave me with the notion that surface is content. Yet, here that's not so satisfying.

I guess there was a time when cinema was truly a reality of its own. The gold, silver, diamonds, champagne, sailing around the Americas on a clipper, the exotic Acapulco – all of it offered the audience an escape. This time around I remain too far-removed. I am only watching as a bored film-buff waiting for the classic mirror scene at the end – it was magic.

Nick:
New ideas and originality are rarely rewarded. Once those ideas become common place and put into practice, often over a long period of time, acceptance and a general air of looking back in a more positive light is often regarded as the perceived wisdom of hindsight. Orson Welles is a case in point. Citizen Kane broke the rule book for cinema. It took many years after its release to be rightly acknowledged as THE game changer. Meanwhile Orson, so precocious, casually brilliant and increasingly obese, would have the Hollywood toys taken away from him. It is hard to imagine, but after Citizen Kane they should have given him anything he wanted. Instead, Orson often lost control of his films (if he even finished them), and looked elsewhere (Europe) to pursue his goals. A visionary, a liar (or exaggerating storyteller, depending on your view) and the essence of a certain kind of cinema, Orson Welles was punk rock incarnate.

The Lady From Shanghai was one of the last times Orson got to play with the toys. This could have been his commercial breakthrough as director. Rita Hayworth was Welles' real-life wife at the time of shooting, and one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the day to boot. The Lady From Shanghai was shot in 1946, making it one of the first Film Noir pictures. After studio meddling (60 minutes was cut from Welles cut prior to release), it wasn't just Welles' vision that suffered, his marriage to Hayworth was over by the time the picture was finally released. But still, this is an intense ride. Amazingly shot in various locations, this murder mystery is a mess. At the same time, there is enough imagination and never seen that before bravura from Welles that makes The Lady From Shanghai always interesting and on occasion brilliant.

The Lady From Shanghai is dark and heavy with atmosphere. Dialogue (written by Welles) is often confusing and clichéd. It's also autobiography. Welles was too much of an artisan to make this just simple entertainment. However badly this has been cut (and it has been) enough of Welles vision survives. Hayworth (blond here) has never been sexier on screen. Welles has a strange Irish accent as our innocent yet flawed narrating hero. It's double-cross and be damned and take the money and run. The fun house hall of mirrors at the end is nowadays regarded as one of the great movie scenes. Welles can divide opinion. I'm a big fan. The Lady From Shanghai only increases my awe for him.

Another Year (2010) & The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)

2011-03-24T16:18:00.001+02:00

Nick:
As I was watching The Romantic Englishwoman on Tuesday evening, I had thoughts of Elizabeth Taylor. The Romantic Englishwoman is a Joseph Losey picture, who made the now revered 1960's pictures The Servant and Accident as well as the fun, supercamp Modesty Blaise. We've featured him here with The Go-Between, but he made a couple of curiosities with Elizabeth Taylor in the late 1960's. Some of the weirdness of the Taylor pictures Boom! and Secret Ceremony could have elevated The Romantic Englishwoman.

Boom! (1968)

Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson heat the film up as the successful author and the bored housewife who's looking for an escape from upper-class domestic hell. She has an implied affair with a drug running poet (a very European Helmet Burger). In reality, it's all faintly ridiculous. Tom Stoppard's script, when dialogue finally arrives, is sharp. A Servant-like ménage à trois scenario is played out, but unlike the previous Losey picture, The Romantic Englishwoman fizzles out. A slow start, strong middle and a whimper. To be honest, this is average Losey.

So, onto Wednesday. As I'm getting ready to pick up the cinema tickets to go see the new Mike Leigh film, Another Year, the internet breaks the news of Elizabeth Taylor's death. It's easy to forget with Taylor, who in later life was more like this ailing patron saint of lost souls and worthy causes, that she was a very fine actress. Yes, people will talk of the glamor and an old-fashioned sense of beauty (Taylor was probably my first on-screen crush), but don't forget the reason we care: some excellent films.

I was consumed with Taylor entering the cinema, but Another Year wiped away such thoughts. Mike Leigh just gets better. Losey and Leigh both deal with class and its effects on others, often from different perspectives. Another Year's themes on mortality, on the passing of time, loneliness and mental illness sound heavy, and at times Another Year has a graceful solemnity. But this is a film about the closeness of family too. The class divide within a family is dealt with, but nothing here is cliché. Leigh's script and direction brings the most mundane aspects of life into sharp focus, at the same time portraying a poignancy that stays with you. Another Year is a film that ruminates on themes that truly matter to us. Go see Another Year, it's what we need from cinema to understand a little more about ourselves.

Astrid:
Through a combination of co-incidence and preference we ended up spending the last two evenings watching English cinema. Both Another Year and The Romantic Englishwoman have a long-term relationship at the center of events. Similarly, they both discuss a woman's unhappiness: one from the perspective of a bored feminist wife of the mid-1970s, the other in relation to her failed relationships and her current loneliness.

The loss of a loved one makes romantic cinema – tolerating their idiosyncrasies years on end does not.
Usually, long relationships do not make such interesting films. They cannot be romantic comedies, because, tragically, long-term love is not considered romantic (or comic for that matter). The longer my personal relationship is lasting, the more tired and one-sided traditional romantic films seem – they end at the beginning. I am interested in depictions of the difficulties, the companionship, the changes, the infatuations, infidelities, friends outside the couple and so on. I found myself delighted that Another Year and The Romantic Englishwoman had reading-in-bed scenes. That to me is a depiction of reality (and it is also quite romantic).

The Romantic Englishwoman is an even better idea than its realization. The wife of a rich writer is frustrated not so much by her real life, but by the freedom she discovers she should be pursuing. There's a social question: How to liberate a wife in 1975? Let her have an affair with a French crook – she'll run back to the husband in the end. But there are murkier tones here: the husband is jealous to begin with, the wife suspects an affair with their au-pair, the husband urges his wife to be unfaithful so that he can write about it...I have a sneaky feeling that some level of understanding was lacking from the makers of the film towards the wife.

In Another Year such lack of empathy is nowhere to be found. At the end the camera draws the audience out in the middle of a dinner by focusing on the confused and disappointed face of Mary (Lesley Manville). The sound disappears, there is no music to tune our emotions to. Yet, it is not a cruel and cold drawing out. Mike Leigh has always depicted the life of the lower classes and the middle class. That must be the reason why I feel he is dealing with reality – I relate. Hollywood films rarely bother with anyone poor or average unless they want to contextualize. Like long-term relationships, getting by with very little is not sexy. Lets just say that although sexy is fun, a range of other feelings and experiences are important too. That's what I've learned.