movies

Winter's Bone

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Winter's BoneIt’s the end of 2010, and in cultural reporting that means best-of-the-year lists,  which for film usually folds in Oscar predictions. I’ve written before about how much I get excited about the Oscars, and this year I’m pleased to report that I’ve seen most of the movies that are making the rounds.

Winter’s Bone was released in the spring here, and I dragged my feet seeing it, but it actually is a film enjoyed on the small screen. Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a teenage girl taking girl of her younger brother and sister and mother, who is alive but mentally absent. Her dad dealt meth, was arrested, and placed their home as his bond. When he disappears, Ree decides to go find him.
The movie was filmed on location in the Appalachians, where the land is sturdy but not lovely. Each character Ree meets knows her and already knows what she’s looking for (and probably where he is), but they all look upon her suspiciously. This is not an open and welcoming community, and even as Ree is part of and understands their world, she is asking too many questions.

I read some reviews where they described it as a noir movie, and it’s true that Lawrence is as fierce and dedicated as any Marlowe detective. But she has the added determination of protecting her home and family, whereas I always see noir leads as flippant and louche.

Winter’s Bone is as unflinching as the title suggest. It’s a lean, cold slice of a movie. As far as my Oscar best go? Best Actress nominee, Best Cinematography nominee.

A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël)

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Ever had a Netflix movie hang around your neck like an albatross? (Literary allusion explained here, for those who fell asleep in 10th grade English class).

In my defense, A Christmas Tale (in French Un conte de Noël) seemed to sneak up in my queue. It was meant to arrive around the holidays LAST YEAR, but instead got co-opted by repeated Party Down (RIP) viewings. The disc arrived around April, and I had been putting off watching it. So many excuses: it’s long, in French, and Christmas-themed.

The disc seemed destined to return unwatched, but a cold front in the Bay Area sometime in August inspired me to make some tea and watch it. (That’s right, this post is fraught with procrastination, from watching, to writing, to posting).

Now that it’s actually the holidays, I can justify a recommendation, for it’s a lovely, rich movie, if perhaps more melancholy than your typical Christmas cinema (although It’s a Wonderful Life is quite dark when you think about it).
Mid-way through watching, it struck me how much A Christmas Tale reminded me of The Royal Tenenbaums. There’s a sick parent, an elegant matriach (Catherine Deneuve, natch), a killer soundtrack, depressed grown-up siblings, a suicide attempt, a family hanger-on, even a play put on by children.

The two movies would make an interesting side-by-side viewing. Anderson’s films have such wonderful, tightly manicured art direction but the characters verge on being caricatures. Any sort of real emotion on their part creeps in on the edges. A Christmas Tale, directed by Arnaud Desplechin, has  similarly beautifully shot scenes in French hospitals and the wonderful, rambling family home, but the  characters in A Christmas Tale wear their childhood  traumas on their sleeve and always seem ready to erupt.  One especially harrowing scene has Deneuve and her grown son  joking about how much she didn’t love him after the childhood death of another son. Another example of Gallic cruelty: if a partner of mind slept with someone else under my nose, would I be able to wake up and breakfast with them both? Is this another of those Gallic things? Yes? OK.

In short.  It’s a rich and devastating movie. Recommended pre or post actual holiday interactions with family (i.e. good for some perspective).
Plus, it introduced me to this Otis Redding song, which I’ve listened to 8 times a day so far this month:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBmPIQvovD0]

Coffee & cigarettes

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Sometimes I get a craving for both.

Watching this video won’t satisfy that craving (in fact,  it might intensify it) but it’s one of my favorite things in the whole world.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Mw6b1T50U]

If that doesn’t satiate your yearning, maybe this list from Mojo Magazine of the best Tom Waits videos will.

Happy freaking Friday.

The Red Shoes

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Boy oh boy do I love revival movie houses. I studied in Paris for a semester in spring 2006. My host family did not have internet, and I never felt like I wanted to use their television. Without the internet, or television, I was forced into what seems already an antiquated cultural pastime: going to the movies.

A weekly Parisian publication, “Pariscope“, cost less than a Euro and listed all of the concerts, plays, and movies that were playing that week. When I say movies, I don’t mean subtitled versions of Hollywood blockbusters. Paris boasts so many small and hidden theaters – “salles” I think they were called – in each arrondissement.

And you could see anything. A Jimmy Stewart retrospective, Down By Law, Chaplin, etc. etc. Many people agree that there are some movies that work best on the big screen (no matter how big your television is). But I think there’s something to be said, too, for sitting in the dark with strangers, hearing the projector whirr, experiencing the same thing.

In the Bay Area, there are far fewer revival movie houses, but does boast some gems. The Castro Theatre in San Francisco is a beautifully restored Art Deco theater with gilt, painted ceilings, and an organ that gets played before each performance.

I finally made it there a few days ago, when it played the 1948 film The Red Shoes. I had heard of the movie from design*sponge, favorite blog, in one feature that shows products that try to capture the essence of a movie (I’m not doing it justice; it’s very well done and completely addicting).

The Red Shoes was the perfect movie to see in such a theater. It is the story of an English dancer, after World War II, that loosely follows a Hans Christian Andersen fable, in which a young girl puts on a pair of red dancing shoes, only to find that they keep her feet dancing and never come off.

The movie has been beautifully restored, and the color pop brightly. I adored the dancing, although some of the set design veered from Dali-esque surrealism to hokey musical cheesiness.

I was quite surprised at how many films that referenced The Red Shoes. The plot is very similar to that of Moulin Rouge, down to the female lead’s flaming red hair. The meticulous use of the Futura font (I think) in the credits? Pure Wes Anderson. And I’m sure that this must have been required viewing for classic Disney animators.

The best part was, after the epic dance sequences, the entire audience erupted in applause, as if  we were actually been transported to a show with live dancers. And it reminded me of those tiny theaters in Paris, and how strangely soothing I found it, uniting me and my fellow movie-goers, strangers no more for the two-plus hours we sat behind the flickering screen.

Review: The Hurt Locker

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My roommate and I finally admitted to ourselves that the Netflix three-disc at a time option was not only wasting $4 a month for us (split!), but making us feel like failures. We would both get very virtuous and request documentaries about Katrina or Criterion foreign films….only to see them pile up and collect dust for embarrassing lengths of time. Somehow you feel judged by Netflix by not watching the “good” movie, like they know that instead you’re watching She’s All That on cable. Again.

What is so satisfying in sending back those red envelopes back almost immediately? I don’t know – but somehow it seems like you are beating Netflix at its own game.

Now that the Oscars are almost here, I feel an added (totally irrational) pressure of seeing the most-nominated films. Recently I caught Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Many critics have complained about the glut of war movies set in Afghanistan and Iraq. I too, was struck by how many movies were produced – but mainly because of how much the critics complaining about it (another clue that I spend more time reading movie reviews than actually seeing the movies being reviewed).

So to The Hurt Locker: I was blown away by the first third of the movie. Indeed, the opening ten minutes had the most graceful and elegant bomb explosion that I have ever seen.

A lot has been made of Bigelow, a female director tackling a so-called “masculine” subject matter. In my opinion, there was no marked difference in her style from other action, male directors. However, the film did lack female presence –  probably five minutes of footage total even included a speaking female character… but it’s impossible to say whether or not I would have noticed this had it been a male director.

The sphere of the movie purposely excluded women, focusing on three Marines in Iraq tasked with diffusing IEDs in Iraq. What was especially fascinating about The Hurt Locker was how different the art of war (at least the cinematic version) has evolved in the last sixty years. The most striking visual was the main character, Jeremy Renner, in what looked like a space suit, staggering in deserted, dirty Iraqi alleys, while the locals peeked from windows and balconies. We attack small pieces of wire now; there is no direct enemy.

Of course I couldn’t speak to how accurate the film is to what happened/is happening in Iraq. In movie trailer terms, it was “gritty” and “real.” But it certainly captured the desolation and impotence felt by members of the armed forces. And it hinted at what I see is the real tragedy: our inability as a country to reintegrate and heal our soldiers once they return.

It’s not a film that I would watch again soon, but I would very much recommend it.  Plus! We sent it back the same day that we got it! Us: 2! Netflix: 81!

Who watches the Watchmen?

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I did! I finally made it to the movies! For the amount of reviews I read, blogs I follow and general interest in all things movies, I don’t end up at the cineplex very often. (Of course, I prefer when things make it to the Parkway–beer, nachos, and cheap!)

But I did manage to make it out to see Watchmen tonight. It was a movie that grew through the exhaust of geek hot air… fueled of course by the legal battle over its distribution. Personally, I would be that Alan Moore had placed a voodoo curse on the movie. I totally dug the graphic novel though, but got less and less excited with the hype (is it good? is it bad? is there a giant blue wang?).

I found the movie quite awesome though. It managed to be both punchy and dark, and, while this may sound like heresy, I enjoyed watching it more than I enjoyed watching The Dark Knight (which was too damn dark for me to see what was going on). Some shots were frame-for-frame like the graphic novel. As I had not read the graphic novel in a while, man of the images had stuck in my mind and the movie was able to build upon them.

Some images, of course, were better suited for page than screen. The meat cleaver, the metal cutter, the sheer amount of guts I saw (through my fingers). I’m sure there’s an interesting study done about how people process print violence and screen violence differently. I process it from behind my bag of popcorn (seriously, it will give me nightmares). But that’s what draws people to the theater.

The other thing I couldn’t stomach was the music. Seriously, they got the rights to all these great, classic songs (“All Along the Watchtower,” “Sounds of Silence” “The Times They are A-Changin'” but it made the movie seem dated–and that the music coordinator only lived between 1963 and 1969. I think more modern music could have been used to greater effect.

The love scene in the helicopter, scored to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was a riot. The rest of the movie was catered to young boys, but this–glory days in recovered hot rod! Smoking young girl! Redemption after not being able to get it up! Leonard Cohen! Yup, that had middle-aged divorce all over it.

In short, it’s certainly not the worst comic book movie out there. I think it did the book justice, and I’m pretty happy it was made before this fad slows down.

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