Zombieland…. oh yes

(Though I do feel that, in the interest of my continuing education on zombie-survival, that killing zombies is in fact not the way to go. Survival is key and survival is to be found in zombie-avoidance techniques)

Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon image from IMDB - click to follow

I enjoyed it and it’s a good piece of work. But… I felt that perhaps it exposed too much of itself. Which is, I think, I failure in a lot of Ron Howard’s work. There are two instances of this which really stand out in my mind.

Firstly the realisation of the power of the close-up in television and how it reveals so much of the person. The camera itself was telling that story all by itself. The character of James Reston, Jr., a college professor drafted in as a researcher by Frost, also serves as a cypher for the audience to analysis the growing influence of telelvision… but it didn’t need to be highlighted time and again in awkward choppy dialogue.

Secondly, the metaphor of a boxing match being used in the interview. This was brilliantly told, again by the camera. I felt the rise and fall of energy and the rapidity of blows being told as the two combantants leaned in close to each other, question – question – question; Frost leans backing reeling – pause – and Nixon delivers a slow powerful blow. The lights flick; the bell dings. Their coaches flock in to mop their brows and whisper rushed strategy in their ears. A wonderful idea; brilliantly realised. Brought low by it being spelled out to the audience.

In doing so some of the pleasure of the experience of going to the cinema, or for that matter reading any work of art, is lost to the audience. There is little discussion afterward. You do not appreciate it more on rewatching. Every nuance and subtlety has been laid bare and spelt out and that’s a shame.

Having said all of that;  I always greatly enjoy Ron Howard’s work. He’s a good solid director who, while I’m rarely left stunned by a new form of cinema, produces good stories every time.

The Fall

A stark black and white pan of a bridge. A train has been derailed it seems. Onlookers gather as a horse, injured in a fall perhaps, is hoisted by a crane out of the river. The Fall’s opening scene engages the audience straight away.

With echoes of Pan’s Labyrinth, it tells the story of the dreams of a young girl. The girl meets a broken weary young man in his hospital bed. She is being kept in to recover from broken bones sustained from a fall while working as a fruit-picker; it is unclear to begin with what malady confines him to his bed. They strike up a friendship based upon a mutual need. Her to simply be amused and entertained; him to have a connection with someone. He tells her stories. Great fantastical tales of pirates and cowboys and adventure.

The adventure borrows characters from both their lives and allows them to express the losses and frustrations they have felt in the safe environment of story-telling. But (predictably enough) the two stories gradually merge and the dangers of the real world begin to force their entry into the fantasy.  The man’s deep depression and his manipulation of story to trick the girl into aiding his suicide is tragic and all too real for fantasy to survive.

What I found so unique in The Fall is that it succeeds in two very different genres; it is a rich sumptious cinematic experience; a beautiful and sensual adventure reminiscnet of The Princess Bride and Koyaanisqatsi and it also tells a touching simple story of a young girl who needs very much to believe that her friend is good and brave as he cuts a path toward his own death.

The dialogue is superb. The actors wonderful; the little girl especially has all the half-formed thoughts and trailing ideas of childhood. The settings strikingly beautiful.

Go and get this movie.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Justine-Waddell/dp/B001C4OTC8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1231777848&sr=8-2

Funny Funny Beat Takeshi

Erok commented recently on this fantastic comedy show by Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano. 

Footballing with bizarre telescopic goggles does indeed merit the tag of ‘hilarious’.

What’s funnier still is the progression of Takeshi’s career from this point onward. We can see that his sense of comic timing remaining central:

Apparently, having built up a reputation for stand-up comedy, he was upset when, sitting in the backrow of an early screening of Violent Cop, he saw that the audience assumed it was a comedy and erupted in laughter at each of his lines. I think it’s an interesting example of audience expectations altering a text as, as you can probably assume from the title, Violent Cop isn’t really comic fare.

Sunshine

You see, I like Danny Boyle a lot. I keep waiting for him to make that film that he will one day make. That classic that no one can find fault in and everyone remembers years from now. Unfortunately he keeps scraping along grasping at profundities in movies like The Beach and 28 Days Later… but every time he loses his bottle and falls back on guns & ammo… and Sunshine is no different. Basically I think it’s derivative, self-indulgent, hollow shite and that Danny Boyle should just fuck off and make that psycho-slasher flick he so desperately wants to make. But hey, that’s just me. What do you think?

Superman Returns

Pretty good. Pretty pretty good.

I don’t know what I was expecting really but.. sitting in front of the Imax screen (so big as to exert gravity), hearing the staff member welcome us to this presentation of Superman and then hearing that classic theme tune… well… it just sent shivers up my spine.

But I’m a sucker for things like that.

Which is why I liked this movie. With the slew of superhero films recently released and more on the horizon, this have its own distinct style and muth and it succeeded admirably. This was not a confused teenager coping with great power, a group of young outsiders pleged to save a world that fears them, nor a beaten blind man using just his fists to stem the flow of crime in his neighbourhood; this was an alien with enough power to seize authority over the earth but paralysed by his own morality. This was Superman.

Okay, so Katie Holmes is waaaaay to young to have a pullitzer and the son thing is a bit hokey and unnessecary and Lex Luthors weird plan to sell real estate on a remarkably undesirable plot of land is … well… it’s just odd… but the audience is granted glimpses into the world of a man who can never stop hearing cries for help and muttered prayers stretching across the planet, who can see every child starving and who has the raw power to stop it. To force everything to be good, but who choose to show the world an example of goodness instead. That’s just great.

This is perhaps not the movie it could have been. A sterner editing would have improved it greatly. The familial ties and Superman’s intrusion into a content and secure family was distracting and belaboured the theme of isolation that was already well formed. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a pretty good one and well worth a view.

See more progress on: make a list of 100 movies I want to see this year and see them.

The Jacket

Okay, so the premise is a bit hokey. In an asylum straight out of some Cuckoo’s Nest fantasy a doctor is conducting wildly unorthodox and cruel experimental therapy on supposedly incurable inmates. So far this sounds like a poor ’80’s slasher flic. But wait, by placing them in a rather Dickensian straitjacket, pumping them full of LSD and putting them in a corpse tray of a morgue for an hour or so, they are transported through time into the future. Like I said, it’s a bit hokey.

But, surprisingly, put Adrien Brody (who still has my seal of approval for Joker in the new Batman; why oh why can no one else see that????) in the lead role. Give it solid dialogue and make absolutely no effort to explain why this is happening and voila! You’ve got a bloody good drama.

Through a Scannner Darkly

Now, answer honestly, when you saw the image for this did you really notice that it wasn’t Keanu? … Really?

I had a few problems with this movie.

I think including such a stellar cast in a film that’s essentially a tale of everymen; of nobodies is a mistake. Plain and simple.

I also think that the rotorscoping techniques are used here (much as in Linklater’s Waking Life) just for the sake of using it. Its removal from reality simply serves to detract from the point of the story; which is a gradual move away from sanity. When the central characters hallucinations begin to wind their way across the screen, they fail to contrast significantly with animation that preceded them.

Rotorscoping (as Linklater uses it) also fails to focus the eye. In a camera there is a depth of field which carries the audience about the screen and tells the story. This is also true of computer animation and its virtual array of cameras and lenses and of classic animation where different painterly techniques are used for the background and the characters. Here with every part in sharp focus; they eye wanders about and the audience, ultimately, grows bored.

I had an inkling halfway through the film that there was some profundity to be found there; that, if I concentrated hard enough and scraped away the layers of mediocrity I might find something of worth. But, after a while I concluded that I’d probably be better off reading the book.

The Woodsman

Controversial; a movie with a sympathetic child abuser as the focus of the story.

It’s a brilliant film. Kevin Bacon excels as Walter, the child abuser recently released from prison and trying so hard not to fail again. His barely restrained rage and confusion are expertly portrayed through body language and a limited vocabulary. Eve (a one word name; perhaps a Cher fan) is superbly cast as the girlfriend who “sees the good in him, even if he can’t see it himself”. Hannah Pilkes and Mos Def also add such depth to the accusations and shame that fill Walter’s life.

I found the pacing brilliant. The use of colour superb. Finally, that the movie’s climactic moments of painful catharsis are realised entirely through dialogue is incredible.

While Kevin Bacon’s comments that he did not consider a moral in the story but simply chose a good script is noteworthy; this is a thought-provoking and challenging story that is definitely worth making time for.

Night on Earth

Back when Winona Ryder was young and not yet typecast, Jim Jarmusch made a rather charming movie called Night on Earth.

It’s got something of an ensemble cast; Béatrice Dalle (of Betty Blue Fame), Roberto Benigni (of La Vita è bella) and a few other faces you’d recognise.

It’s just a very nice movie; a witty and charming tour around the Earth told through the vehicle (if you’ll forgive the pun) of four taxi drivers in contrasting cities. They tell their stories and we hear the stories of their fares. Not a classic; but worth a watch certainly.

See more progress on: make a list of 100 movies I want to see this year and see them.