What a shame! At the BAFTA awards director Inarritu had the nerve to define the film as a “tender story” about a father-son love. Whom are you trying to fool Mr. Inarritu? The film lost so much money while in the making so that now the producers are ensuring some big awards for the film so that they can force-feed it to audiences throughout the world and try to recover some of this money. The award system is so rigged! Now we will have to watch the same circus at the Oscars…George Miller is ten-times better director than Inarritu and he does not even get nominated. What about “Trumbo” – no nomination for film at all, just for Cranston? The Revenant is such a boring film – no characters, no dialogue, simplistic and violent… Poor DeCaprio – he is being awarded for enduring hardships while shooting the film – because there is no real role worth mentioning there…The visuals are of course “inspired” or rather “copied” from the great Tarkovsky, Urusevsky, etc. Boycott this film, don’t bail it out.
Category: Film
Film: Trumbo, 2015, Directed by Jay Roach
Film about the black-lists in Hollywood and the story of the Hollywood ten whose ordeal started in 1947 and ended in the 60s. A must see! Great performance by Bryan Cranston! All the actors were actually very good except for Helen Mirren who thought she was playing in a comedy. Some very good moments in the script by John McNamara when he succeeds in avoiding melodrama and depicts with complexity the characters’ motivations — not necessarily heroic. Talent wins and the line between integrity and cowardice is fragile but clear. There are no heroes in times like these – but how does the atmosphere of fear become dominant, what are the mechanisms that bring about “times like these”?
Film: While We'are Young, Directed by Noah Baumbach (2014)
Another good movie by Noah Baumbach! It’s all about “the old” vs “the young” in art. In Baumbach’s story – it’s film making.
The young can pitch you anything and you will love them for that. You are old and uncertain and self-doubting and you can’t complete things. The young make things with ease. They record stuff and pass it on as “documentaries”…They are shameless, cool, and master the game of appearing authentic. They steal from anybody and everybody and make it their own. They can justify their lack of artistic integrity with irresistible charm. The young can use “fuck you” playfully but — fuck you “young” – for real…It’s all going to pass…Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame while it lasts.
Highly enjoyable – if you are in the “industry” or if you are “old”!
Film: Ex Machina, Directed by Alex Garland
Went to see the film because it was generating some buzz. It started out as a limited release and then it was suddenly showing in a lot more theaters.
I watched it with patience that it did not deserve. As the film progressed, my patience started to transform into curiosity as to how this is going to work out and finally it turned into disappointment. First of all – a lot of ideas were thrown out and never developed (from semantics to automated neuropschylogical testing). A lot of name-dropping occurred as well — from Wittgenstein to Jackson Pollock — without actually deriving any meaning from that. Name-dropping was a fancy backdrop and did not create a CONTEXT for the action. Some of the issues discussed were so tired and tiresome: e.g. global loss of privacy , the internet as Big Brother, behavioral patterns as source of the new enslavement of the individual by the big technology corporations. The display of the ‘enslaved’, ‘closeted’ robots (all women), interchangeable, and disposable – was the lowest point of the film. This part belonged to “dungeon” movies aesthetics, if there is such a genre.
Isn’t it sad that the underlying message of the film eventually turned out to be that the robot “becomes” human when it learns to lie, back-stab, and be manipulative? This is the test for humanness? Please…If the movie sends a cynical message that does not mean that it is very intelligent or intellectual… The final shot was quite ridiculous – the robot’s (now human) dream to stand on a cross-section and observe what happens IS accomplished!? I thought the director would at least send her to manage The Big Software Corporation …
Oscar Isaac is unrecognizable in the role of Nathan and as good as ever. Hope he gets the role he deserves in the future.
Film: Wild (2014), Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. Based on the book of Cheryl Strayed
Watching this film, one can’t help comparing it to other films based on the metaphor of the road or endurance or self-discovery – films like “On the Road” or “Into the Wild” and going further back – “Easy Rider” or even — “The Odyssey.” The comparison is not in favor of “Wild.” It relays a very personal story, as opposed to generational, unlike the above-mentioned films. And being so personal, or individual, it does not possess the intellectual baggage to turn this story of ordeal into a more meaningful one. If it wasn’t for the final monologue of the character which injected some meaning and some element of self-analysis, the film would have remained a mix of painful memories recalled against the backdrop of some beautiful natural vistas or somewhat threatening landscapes. If it wasn’t for the sentimental scene with the little boy and grandma with the lama it would have left the viewer unperturbed by Cheryl’s earlier misfortunes.
And “Election” is still Reese Witherspoon’s best film.
Film: Still Alice (2014), Directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer
Julianne Moore plays a 50-year old linguistic professor afflicted by early-onslaught Alzheimer’s disease. Plays quite well – reserved enough to make you identify with her and face your deep instinctive fear of the disease, and passionately enough to make you weep. Her fans should be happy for her because she was quite terrible in the role of the hysterical actress from Cronenberg’s “Map to the Stars”. She most certainly has a shot at the Oscars given the award potential of disease-suffering characters. Entertainment Weekly have compiled nice visualized stats on the professions of Oscar nominated roles. They should have done one on healthy vs sick personae, a graph like that would have definitely been in favor of the sick.
The film is cathartic — plunging the viewer into the fear and trembling of modern Fate – incurable diseases. Helplessness and horror gradually take over the plot as it follows Alice’s demise through her slowly loosing hold of her Self. At the end she is still there and not there. The reason why she could be still Alice is the thin thread of love still linking her to her beloved and prodigal daughter. The film ends with a close-up on a totally lost Alice still mumbling “love” to a face she probably does not recognize… A weepie!
Film: Birdman, 2014, Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
The irony of the Golden Globe Award for original script this year for “Birdman” is that it is exactly the script that is the problem of this movie…
It is half “back-stage” comedy/drama (with all the cliche moves typical of that genre), and half allegory. A very confused allegory at that, which cannot draw a clean parable of meaning or communicate a clear message. Its appeal, I believe, comes from this confusedness which some snobbish viewers take for complexity. Well, the story is a complete mess. The writers put every idea that crossed their mind (many of them totally unoriginal and annoying) into the script. It has everything – an actor whose stage life is more real than his real life (how tired is that?!), another actor who wants to make art but is only recognized as a celebrity (another cliche), a critic who just “hates” an actor and is determined to destroy him without even having seen him perform (a totally random and whimsical argument), a mixture of life and art with art dominating life (cliche), etc.
The genre of the allegory is quite treacherous – it requires everything to be thought out on two different planes – on the plane of reality and on the plane of allegory and to make sense on both. All the elements should click together precisely in order to be meaningful. Multiple components of this film are puzzling and defy meaning – the multiple endings, the transformation of the actor into the character of Birdman (after the success of his show?!), his final flight….It is hard to try to interpret a mess — seems like a waste of time.
Mr. Inarritu, mumbled some pretentious nonsense in his acceptance speech about “mirroring” – he seems to be considering himself an intellectual. While he should simply stop writing his own scripts.
Film: Codebreaker, 2011, A Documentary by Clare Beavan, Nic Stacey, Written by Simon Berthon and Craig Warner
A must-see movie! It drives painfully in the viewer mind its tragic truth about the life and fate of Alan Turing, a pure genius, who played crucial role in the winning of WW II by breaking the Enigma code, and who was tried and convicted on the basis of the same laws used against Oscar Wilde in the 19th century. Turing was forced to accept chemical castration in order to avoid being imprisoned for his homosexuality. Eventually, he committed suicide – he could not accept the deteriorating effect of the drugs on his intellect. And this all happened to a man who helped defeat Hitler (and we know what the latter’s treatment of homosexuals was…). The plain facts, delivered in a documentary manner, can be more shattering than the suggestive power of art. The fictionalized story of Turing, as told in “The Imitation Game” and as performed by Benedict Cumberbatch has a sentimental streak that clouds the sheer tragic irony contained in the actual historical events and prevents the realization of truth. Instead of the realization of truth, “The Imitation Game” offers empathy…
TV Film: Olive Kitteridge (2014), directed by Lisa Cholodenko
“Olive Kitteridge” is probably the best film I have seen in a year now. It is based on Elizabeth Strout’s book which won its author a Pulitzer prize for literature. This is one of the rare cases where everything – literary
material, script, acting, directing, music – is in such perfect sync and of such high quality – that the mere pleasure of watching is added on top of experiencing and understanding the drama of the characters. The sentiment is just the right amount and the wittiness – just the right degree.
And even though Frances McDormand’s acting has some excess of curtness and a programmatic element in it, it balances well with the melancholic coolness of Bill Murray and the soft presence of Richard Jenkins. Lisa Cholodenko demonstrates once again a superb taste in choice of material and actors and a deep understanding of the human condition. Thie film is just excellent. Nothing is overstated and nobody is spared yet a gentle forgiveness and despair dominate the ending – a mix that is true to life and lacking in fake “uplifting” messages. It’s a matter of “can you handle the truth” to really enjoy it…
Film: Maps to the Stars, 2014, Directed by David Cronenberg
Can’t quite figure out the source of David Cronenberg’s appeal. He has a claim to originality and intellectualism but everything I have seen from him is pretty mainstream, plus snobbish and murky when it comes to a film’s intellectual message. Quite often, his films border on the tasteless and kitschy. “Maps to the Stars” is a perfect example. (Other past works could serve as an illustration as well – “The History of Violence”- tasteless and banal with one of the worst performances by William Hurt. But also, isn’t Vigo Mortensen, Cronenberg’s favorite actor, one of the most tacky actors alive? He looks like a hairdresser or a pimp or a child molester…Actually, “The History of Violence” looks like something shot by Verhoeven…)
Anyway, why is “Maps to the Stars” such a bad movie? It desperately wants to be a satire (and does it in a hysterical way, matching only the hysterical performance delivered by Julian Moore as a crazy-bitch-Hollywood-actress). The satirical intention is stuffed into a tacky, soapy plot about an incestuous family with murderous tendencies. They are rich and famous but tragically deprived of normality.They talk to themselves, they are suicidal, violent, they whimper in their bathtubs, smoke like maniacs or display other similarly “original” signs of “inner suffering”. The so called “satire” is so trite and literal – e.g. Julian Moore’s character is insanely happy when a tragedy befalls her competitor-actress because she gets to play the role she was after… How flat and unimaginative…Every scene in this film is as contrived and square as this little example.
If you are looking for a real satire of Hollywood, check Robert Altman’s “The Player,” of course…
But once proclaimed an “intellectual,” David Cronenberg will stay one, I suppose, as long as he makes claims to this status either by talking about psychoanalysis, Jung, Burroughs, or quoting Paul Eluard. Though the products he manages to churn with Canadian state support, are not quite intellectual.
No lipstick! Book & Film Reviews 