Change Your Image
joughin
Reviews
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Perhaps the most tedious, irritating film I've ever sat through
Let's start with the positive: good Art Direction.
OK, that's over.
Histrionic acting - especially Daniel Day Lewis playing late-career Sean Connery (WHY???) playing a timewarped American who barely changes in any respect from 1898 to 1927 (or is it finally 1929?... nobody else changes physically or otherwise, either, except his irritating son and the son's arbitrary girlfriend, who suddenly morph into different actors in order to get married).
Oh, the LENGTH, the LENGTH of this ordeal... and the pretentious editing. And the S-L-O-W-N-E-S-S... apart from the occasional hectic scraping of violins, like fingernails drawn manically across a blackboard.
I can't be bothered to go on. I've wasted far too much of my life on this misanthropic, nihilistic torture already.
The Hungry Ghosts (2009)
A TV star's idea of cinema?
I saw this at Rotterdam last night, and like almost everyone I talked to afterwards, couldn't understand how it was selected as opening film. The best explanation, from a festival employee, referred wearily to the mindless 'mechanics' of the process.
The new director of the 'art' festival, who himself comes from outside film, introduced it by talking about breaking down the boundaries between traditional media forms.
But his choice, here, would in fact provide a great laboratory for Film & TV Studies students to explore fundamental differences between a TV series funded by commercials that has to keep a viewer engaged over 24 hour-long slots with meandering and intersecting plot-lines held together by familiar 'characters' - and an artwork that must stand by itself as it reconfigures our perceptions and realities over 2 uninterrupted hours.
Actually, this 'film' would probably work better as a 4-hour American TV miniseries with 16 long commercial breaks (maybe that's the underlying logic). It looks like a way-overlong unedited amateur pilot for a series, and trying to 'read' it as a 90-minute (though it seemed like 3 hours) 'film' became frustrating after a couple of minutes.
To call the script and direction 'amateurish' is to be polite. The kindest take would be to imagine there was no direction at all, and that the TV actors, camera, lighting & sound and editing crew were just assembled over lunch one day, then left to themselves to churn out their usual mechanical product dominated by smallscreen closeups and dialogue.
I think that might in fact have provided a better result. But the script (by the first-time 'director') was so self-absorbed, cliché-ridden and undisciplined that it's very, very easy to see the same confused signature throughout this incoherent, flaccid, misconceived and misdirected mess (no, I didn't say that about Altman, too).
If this is the future of 'film' and film festivals, then goodbye film. As for festivals, the audience (or those who hadn't walked out) gave it a standing ovation.
Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (2003)
Pretty shallow
6 out of 10: a 'middle way' between 10 for style and 2 for content. And maybe I should make that 5, because the triumph of style over content, surface over depth, is in a way a complete antithesis of what the film seems to think it's about.
The director could make great pop videos (for very slow music) or fantastic TV ads (for the Korean Tourist Board). But Buddhism as pop video, or beautiful adverts for the Buddha's path to release from beautiful illusions, well...
I found this basic contradiction so irritating that I couldn't watch the whole movie, but since the bit I did see was so crudely schematic, I doubt that I missed any profound message in what was doubtless a final closing of the circle.
Nietzsche praised Greek culture as deeply superficial, and contrasted this with German culture as superficially deep. This film is to me as pretty and shallow as the lake on which it's set.
'Film': a thin surface. Don't be taken in. You can drown in an elegant Korean dish.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
A painful waste of time.
There were lots of these movies through the 90s - Groundhog Day, Strange Days, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Pleasantville, Memento and others, using Film as a metaphor for an illusory life. I liked most of them... but found this late arrival relentlessly contrived, pretentious, narcissistic, vacuous, tedious...
It would have been better if they'd just played it all out in front of a big mirror as home entertainment, with loads of breaks for self-congratulation. In fact, most of the time, looking at the screen was like staring cringefully at the hammy acting, lousy direction and terrible script through a two-way mirror. Why did all these sad characters have to rope in a cinema audience to convince themselves how hip and clever they were? I thought Tarantino was the ne plus ultra of pretentious narcissism. This runs him pretty close, without the art.
I guess you'd call this self-conscious tripe 'postmodern'. It's basically a very old genre - as old as the illusion of moving pictures themselves. There are great German Expressionist examples, like Nosferatu - but my all-time favourite is Jacques Rivette's Céline et Julie vont en Bateau (1974). It is not 10, but a thousand times better than this embarrassing dross, and infinitely more engaging, imaginative and playful. See it instead. Please.
Oh... and I liked the Dylan song (and screamed in dismay at the Freewheelin' cover cover). What were you thinking of Bob? What were you on?
The Quiet American (2002)
Cast aside
Michael Caine, 68-year-old son of an East-End barrow-boy, who left school at 15, plays a 52-year-old Oxbridge Times reporter - or rather, as always, plays himself, here at half-speed - with a deep romantic attachment to a complex oriental woman (representing Vietnam in the lead-up to open American involvement) played by a 19-year old pin-up, whose acting amounts more or less to a nice smile. OK, a very nice smile. A bumptious Canadian plays a mysterious quiet American, who also develops a deep romantic attachment because he also likes the exotic teenager's smile 'at first sight' (who wouldn't?).
In chemistry, this reaction (apparently serving as a deep metaphor for the shift from colonialism to neocolonialism in southeast Asia) simply wouldn't happen. And the chain-reaction that ought to follow, drawing me into the film, didn't get started. I won't get into domino-theory...
Apparently there was a casting director called Christine King. Christine, which planet are you from? I couldn't force myself to keep watching this after 30 minutes.
The Path to 9/11 (2006)
The ABC 'dossier'
The strangest thing about this interesting ABC exercise so far (I've only seen the first half on British TV) is the basic cognitive dissonance between the very strong disclaimers at the beginning and end of each episode that this is all 'historical fiction', with the 'facts' adapted to the needs of dramatic coherence, and the veneer of realism in the hand-held camera-work, the datelines, the fly-on-the-wall sections (about all we see or hear of Bill Clinton are his flies).
This a lot more sinister than, say, Fahrenheit 9-11, with its knockabout in-your-face rhetoric, precisely because here the rightwing rhetoric that subtly articulates what I've seen so far is so understated and subtle. The nearest political equivalent that came to mind was the Nazi propaganda in the 1920s that Germany had been robbed of victory in WWI because of the shortsighted machinations of self-interested cowardly politicians in Berlin (the 'Stab-in-the-Back'). Perhaps Bush will get the same treatment tonight, though I rather doubt it...
As for the requirements of 'dramatic coherence', we see the main Northern Afghan feudal leader, Massoud, escorting some CIA operative to a hill overlooking an Al Qaeda training-camp near Kandahar, in the extreme South of Afghanistan, and suggesting they could knock out Osama on a day-trip to visit his Taliban friends in Kandahar. Then there's a problem with the phone to those awful Democrat politicians in Washington, Osama escapes, and the Taliban suddenly turn up back at Massoud's farmhouse (well, that's what it looks like), rather cross, and the CIA man is forced to escape through the smoke, cursing his ineffectual bosses.
Now look... Massoud was the main non-Taliban remnant, apart from Osama, of the victorious Mujahedeen that with American and Saudi money forced the Russians from Afghanistan in the 1980s. And it was probably a couple of Osama's guys posing as TV reporters who took out Massoud two days before 9-11, BUT, Massoud's secure base was several days to the North of Osama and Kandahar, and the warlord would hardly himself lead a distant reconnaissance mission in hostile territory several days from his base, To watch this film, Afghanistan in the mid-nineties had the mythical geography and 'dramatic coherence' of the Wild West in the Hollywood Era - and 'dramatic coherence' Hollywood-style requires reducing the rest of the world, too, to a small stage on which a small group of recognizable actors are responsible for anything significant that happens in their and our world. Then, of course, some of these guys are goodies, and some are baddies - and don't let any sophisticated liberals confuse that simple distinction.
If only things were so simple, then the frustrated Action Men here would have a point against the complicated liberal politicos back home. And the American people would by now have rallied to some simple Action Man who would sort things out: 'Osama, Dead or Alive!' .
Whoops, Americans, the world really is (actually) a bit more complicated than that - have you noticed yet?
UPDATE (9-11-06): For me, the most interesting thing about Part Two, was the way that its opening summary of Part One simply extracted the 2 minutes of pure anti-state propaganda buried in nearly 3 hours of TV wallpaper the previous day. After a few more hours today, I still can't really understand the point of this very expensive exercise. I mean, the target audience that would think: 'Yeh, if only Rambo had been allowed to take on these guys, history would have been different' will have zapped elsewhere after 20 minutes.
Gods and Generals (2003)
Praise the Lord, it's over, after 4 hours
What next? A Turner Original about the heroic struggle of a divinely-inspired Al-Zarqawi leading his noble warriors in resistance to evil Yankees out to grab his land and resources? With Ted in a cameo as Osama, and two brief speaking parts for adoring Iraqi women Zarqawi's leading to freedom? The speeches could hardly be much longer or more monotonous, and at least the mujaheddin extras would ban music in the film. Who knows, there might even be some focus, coherence and dramatic engagement with the characters...
I'd like to stop there, having wasted far too much time on this film already, but my essay project apparently has to be at least 10 lines. Could whoever sets the rules here perhaps be forced to watch this film several times, so they begin to appreciate the virtues of brevity?
Lek (2000)
Another Film from Flatland
I live in Amsterdam, and it's interesting to read all the critical Dutch comments on this film and on Dutch Film in general. The camera-work, as usual, was OK here, but I couldn't get involved in the plot, if that's the right word for the sequence of scenes. I felt as though I was standing outside and watching the film go by. Not even the loud music and some fast editing could draw me in. Why?
I have a theory. Holland is 2-dimensional. Flat. Images anywhere are flat, as Mondriaan reminded us, but people who live in 3 dimensions build narratives, with flat images, in a 3-dimensional space or rather, in a 4-dimensional spacetime. They see images in a sort of deeper landscape, with a sense, an idea, of other things in the foreground and background the images have depth, 'meaning', which can be organized in a complicated pattern and dynamic, a plot. The Dutch simply can't do this, and their attempts to construct stories in 3 dimensions always seem amateurish, childish. They can't build a story into which you can enter. Some people - even some Dutch people - say: 'they have no imagination'.
They make some great documentaries, and they have some good cameramen and women. But they can't do fiction, which articulates images in the play of imagination. Documentary makers, even some wayward filmmakers like Paul Verhoeven, can turn this around and make a virtue of the problem. They can build a collage of images into something like a question, or an ironical game, leaving the third dimension, the meaning or depth, radically open in ways that people living in 3 dimensions find very difficult to do, because 'normal' people are always themselves caught up in the play of meaning from the outset, unable to stand radically outside it.
I guess the best thing would be for the Flatlanders to recognize their strengths and their limitations, and stop trying to make 'normal' films like this one. But to do this would require a lot of imagination
.
Jefferson in Paris (1995)
Brilliant art direction, dumb script
Interiors, costume and makeup were some of the best I've seen, but the script was laughable from the outset. In fact, the film would probably have been a lot better without the sound - or rather, without the dialogue (the period music was as good as the art direction).
(Oh... says I have to make the comment at least 10 lines long... that was too short... so I'll add this, and a few hard returns.
Hey IMDB, how many people want to read student essays...?)
La reine Margot (1994)
Merde!
It is over! 160 minutes of utter codswallop! With every carefully split second over-acted as if it were a matter of life or death! Adjani vacant and pouting till the very end! And the final triumph! Every actor's name in the credits in large capitals! Banishing every trivialized historical character to minuscule irrelevance!
Yes! This is France! 56-year-old Virna Lisi can't actually look old (and they wouldn't want an old lady in a leading part)! So they pile on an inch of makeup to make sure we know this is a 56-year-old ITALIAN woman who, through the mystery of French cosmetic art, is made to look like a 45-year-old playing a 95-year-old (who sometimes seems to be chewing gum like she forgot she wasn't in Little Italy)!
(And just in case you forgot that French dramatic art is based on seventeenth-century theatre, where everyone talks and emotes and postures a lot, but nothing really happens, they cleverly forgot to have anything like crowds or long shots (or medium shots) or anything too closely reminiscent of life, reality, narrative, action &c.) [!!!]
Just (like I said) endless, unremitting self-important histrionics! All in close-up! And shouted! Just in case you forgot this is drama!
Wow! Its over! It's really over!
Crap script, crap direction, crap acting, crap art direction, crap cinematoragraphy, crap 80s music and hairstyles (ten years late). Total crap. Nul points.
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Yuck...
Oh for many more degrees of separation from this self-indulgent exercise.
. It felt like being stuck between the writer and a mirror, and half the time I couldn't bear to look. There's something claustrophobic about theatrical adpatations at the best of times, but the sense of intruding upon vicarious narcissism here was
well
just creepy. Why didn't they leave this sick metaphor for middle-class New-Yorkers wanting to be Cultured Brownstone Eastsiders where it belongs: somewhere all the creepy theatrical people can doughnut their witty friend at the bar in the interval, rather than trying to drag in nice anoymous classless cinemagoers with their knowing synchronized glances?
Highlander (1986)
Crap
Oh yeah, samurai (who happen to be Egyptian with a scottish accent and a Spanish name) in 600BC; 'Toledo Salamancas' (some sort of lizard?); organic human bodies with metabolisms immune from, well, just about anything other than decapitation (true, you don't see the immortals eating). My 8-year-old kid would probably think this 80's punk cartoon was cool, for all the wrong reasons (lots of fighting, with a few boring bits in-between).
I wouldn't normally bother voting for this sort of crap, but was astounded by the IMDB rating for a tedious adolescent fantasy with almost no serious effort put into plot, characters, or anything else. This is the pubescent equivalent of cheesy porn. If I ruled the world I would probably decapitate its perpetrators.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
A Revelation
At last the Truth about WWII. It was won by disorganized groups of neurotic existentialists, with late-90s haircuts, speech-patterns and concerns, who never got the plot because John Travolta didn't get enough time off from finishing Primary Colors to explain it to his men. Airplanes were used only for ceremonial purposes, before and after battles led by psychologically damaged commanders with no strategic direction. In fact, film is not really an appropriate medium to depict the geopolitical forces at work in the conflict with Fascism. We can best understand it as Off-Broadway studio theatre, with the individual anxieties of the small cast a subtle composite projection of the director's state of mind. Unfortunately, the director had to work with film, but he managed to maintain the intimate studio feel by concentrating on close-ups and monologue, and eliminating any wider narrative frame.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Tedious amateur hiking movie
Irritating, pretentious, mannered, contrived, histrionic, self-indulgent, self-conscious tedium.
Hey - wave the Hi-8 around a lot to show it's handheld. Shout and swear a lot to make everyone think you're REALLY wound-up and scared (but keep on shooting whatever happens - hey they're going to kill me. what a really INTERESTING shot.)
An amateur attempt at conveying an amateur attempt at making a film, with everything in underlined capital italics. With plot and dialogue and characterization that don't work, so that the whole basis of fear - identification with the characters and suspension of disbelief in the plot - never begins to work either.
It might have been a bit better on radio.
All that said, the marketing was pure genius, and deserved a special Oscar.
The Beast (1988)
Why hadn't I heard of this film before?
I watched this film by complete chance on TV - I was zapping as it started, and watched, riveted, till the end. I can't work out why I've never heard of it before.
It's almost abstract in its dramatic force. 'Us' and 'Them' stripped down to the inside and outside of a tank in a hostile desert. Only Us and Them is more complicated than that, and a thick metal shell turns out to be as much a crazy prison as a secure image of identity, self, Us, in the Middle of Nowhere. ...So I think 'Us' inside the tank speaking (like most of the audience) American English is a brilliant piece of casting or direction. The echo of Vietnam is powerful of course, and the film is a very rare and amazingly prescient attempt to bring some mass-media insight into something that we see all the time on the news, but hardly ever in the movies: Afghanistan was maybe the beginning of the new East-West contest of Humanism vs Islam, replacing after 1989-91 (and this film was made in 1988!) the old contest of Capitalism vs Communism. The Russians are still fighting this war in Chechnia.
But the real war that the film's about, the war of Us and Them, will go on for ever, and really, the greatest strength of this 'semi-abstract' film is that its echos and prefigurations of specific conflicts are precisely echoes and prefigurations: particular illustrations or dimensions of the basic human drama of the film, which is abstracted from one particular war, rather than itself being just a schematic illustration of some particular historical fact. I guess that's 'Art'.
Great unknown film.
Vertigo (1958)
Contrived and Schematic
I'd been meaning to see this film for years, but sorry, I just laughed at the silly end.
The Master seems basically to be illustrating some more or less 'Freudian' idea about 're-enactment' (or 'acting and re-enacting', maybe), but cuts (sometimes expertly, of course) an awful lot of corners with the characterization and plot.
50-year-old Jimmy Stewart rather suddenly decides he's 'in love' with 25-year old Kim Novak (26 in the film, married for some unexplained reason to a 54-year-old husband - but she's supposed to be the rich one..). Even more suddenly the 25/6-year old risks a very long jail term (and in fact worse, but I'd better not give it away) by inexplicably 'falling in love' with the rather sketchy character of a stranger twice her age the first moment she meets him. When she indulges what can only be called Jimmy's necrophilia later on, I found myself just cringing for the actors (who didn't always seem completely convinced of characters and plots either) rather than succumbing to fear, suspense &c.
Maybe the world was very different in 1958, but I found what I'd expected to be a masterpiece more like an irritating didactic exercise: an unquestionably brilliant filmmaker subordinates the logic of a film to some half-digested idea borrowed from outside film, instead of finding his ideas in the logic of film itself.