Import Week: the lost film reviews- anything with Jack Black

Another couple of 'gems' from the lost reviews.  I have an unreasonable dislike of Jack Black's films.  I'm sure he's a grand chap in real life, but on screen he's up there with Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler as things that make me go eeeugh.  Marsh quite like him, so these are revirews of movies seen through LoveFilm.  Pretty soon after that I stopped her ordering any new titles and deleted all her suggestions. 

As before I've decided not to edit the content.

Be Kind Rewind (dir: Michel Gondry, 2008)
(**1/2)

Everything I usually say about Jack Black applies, however the mere fact that he didn't completely hijack the plot made it watchable. The highlights were definately the 'sweeded' films themselves. I'm sure if I watched a shorter, pithier, sweeded version of this it would earn an extra half a star. I know, I'm too generous.

Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (dir: Liam Lynch, 2006)

Sadly half a star is the lowest rating possible.

This film is up there with Pearl Harbor in terms of hours of my life I will not get back, and with Pretty Woman as one of the movies I have foolishly allowed myself to see because a girl wanted me to.

Yet another instance of self indulgent twaddle from Jack Black: you will never be a rock god, not even an ironic one, and stop sullying the music of The Who with your cheese-ridden gyrations and wailings. The high point of their lyrical dexterity was rhyming rock with cock.

Enough.

Import Week: the lost film reviews- Once

This is one of the reviews I forgot to transfer over from the other place.  I'll be brave and not edit the content.  One of the songs from the film popped up on my mp3 player and a whole host of memories flooded back.  

I watched this with Marsh just after we got together, I think you can probably tell how happy I was by the tone.   Two and a half years later, it just gets better and better.  


Once (dir: John Carney, 2007)

Finally got to see this after two failed attempts and it was worth waiting for. First of all with my objective head on: you have to be prepared for the fact that the final product is a little unpolished, rough around the edges and somewhat plot light. But if you're not carried along by its charm, stunning soundtrack and honesty, then I worry about you. Go and watch it with someone you love, hold her close and it will be the most life affirming cinema ticket you'll buy all year.

Found myself comparing it to to 9 Songs, and it does for the emotional intensity of a relationship what 9 Songs attempted for the sex. It's gritty, painfully real and poingnant, but you don't feel voyeuristic or intrusive at any point- feels like more of an invite than a sneaky peek.

The Czech-Irish cultural divide added an interesting element, allowed more fun with the language but it didn't descend ito a tale of love across a divide. Was genunely impressed wth the conclusion: sentimental but not trite, and a genuine feeling of a new beginning rather than an ending.

A special mention has to go to the fucked hoover. Easily the most surprising comic and romantic device I've seen in years! 

Picture:  Hercules vacuum cleaner, 1930s / Sam Hood

From the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales www.sl.nsw.gov.au
Persistent url: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=153374 

The Lovely Bones: not a review, but thoughts.

I don't want to review this film, so I won't.  But here's some of the things I thought about while I was watching it.

Parental relationship

This started off so well, illustrating the changes experienced Abigail by the book she discards in order to make love to Jack.  Take one is a philosophical text whilst in a single College bed; take two, a double bed with a photograph of a baby on the bedside- a novel (I think) is thrown away in the heat of the moment.  By take three an older version of Susie is the subject of the photograph, and the pile of books by the bed are concerned with parenting and nutrition.  This element was what interested me most about the novel: the way that Abigail has to sacrifice her identity as an individual as she assumes her roles as wife and mother.  In the novel this is something Susie discovers by accident as she snaps a photo of her mother without her knowledge; the woman in the developed photo is almost unrecognisable to Susie. 


Marky Mark and his one face

Mark Whalberg wears some excellent shirts in the film, but he only has one expression. He does do concerned father well, but perhaps he could have stretched himself a little further. 

A teenager's view of heaven

Much of the criticism surrounding Sebold's novel concerned the lack of God in her rendering of heaven, similarly the film was also criticised for its CGI-heavy paradise.  Two points: first, the heaven we encounter through Susie is the narrow one.  Wide heaven, potentially the fluffy cloud, angel bedecked place where God lives, comes once you have relinquished your ties to Earth.  This draws me into point two: this is Susie's heaven.

Susie's heaven was far too bright and twee for my liking, but she is a young teenager in the 1970s and I wouldn't have expected anything less.  What I liked were the repeating motifs which tied disparate elements of the story together.  The large coloured ball which appears in the heavenly sky is associated with another girl's heaven; I don't want to give too much away, but this one of those instances where film trumps the written word: the seemingly casual placement of an object on screen which then reappears, forever linking two seemingly unassociated persons or events.  More about motifs later. 

My idea of heaven would include armchairs, novels and a steady supply of tea and biscuits.  Just so you know. 

Recurring motifs and Jackson's style

Hurrah! We're back to the motifs.  I always say that I'm a fan of Peter Jackson, yet I've not really watched a lot of his films, what I suppose I'm saying is that I'm a great fan of Heavenly Creatures.

Heavenly Creatures is a curious mix of macabre murder, an intense teenage friendship and some amazing fantasy worlds.  The film opens with the gruesome murder of  Honora Parker, one of the girls' mother, the audience are in no way shielded from the fact that this was a horrible, pre-mediated attack, but as the plot unfolds, telling how the girls got to this point, the end seems inevitable for poor Honora.  One is unexpectedly sympathetic with the plight of the girls who merely want to be together. 

Their intense relationship includes the creation of fantasy worlds and characters, notably the plasticine kingdom of Borovnia- real in every way, and the ethereal 'Fourth World': a heaven based around their cult of popular opera and film stars. These worlds, and the objects and characters that appear in it, seem innocent, but Honora's fate is sealed when objects from the girls' fantasy begin to appear in the real world and, for them at least, the line between fantasy and reality is irrevocably blurred.  It is one of these items, the pink jewel, which allows them the opportunity to distract her as the fatal blow is delivered.

Both Heavenly Creatures and The Lovely Bones share these repeated fantasy motifs.  The ships in bottles, an important bond between Susie and her father, appear as ice sculptures dashed on heavenly rocks.  The coloured ball, the Mall's gazebo and the charms from her bracelet- giant in heaven- are other such examples.  Jackson shies away from some of the more grisly aspects of Susie's murder, her rape isn't mentioned, but he does not spare the viewer in Heavenly Creatures.  One of the inventive techniques he uses to turn up and tone down the tension is the delicate application of music.  He uses arias, themselves echoes of the girls' Fourth World motifs, to cover periods of silence which are inevitably broken by more discordant sounds and events, this technique is brilliantly employed in the final scenes as Honora is lead to her death. 

Stanley Tucci and his portrait of practiced normality

Tucci's was the stand-out performance of the film, and rightly earned him an Oscar nomination.  His portrayal of George Harvey was one of quiet menace beneath the veneer of normality.  Harvey set alarm clocks to ensure he opened and closed his curtains at appropriate times, his verbal tick of 'okay' kept conversations which must have been an ordeal running smoothly.  Narrating from Heaven, Susie tells us that she didn't notice her killer even though he noticed her- the audience scans the screen, searching for a suspicious character- I didn't see Tucci's character, but poor, innocent, Mr O'Dwyer (about to suffer his own tragedy) gets my glare as he eats his hamburger: staring into the middle distance or staring at Susie?  Good directing. 

Susie didn't notice him and I didn't notice because he blends in, he hides in plain sight.  That is what is most frightening of all: his character can move around freely, take his time disposing of the body, because he seems so dammed normal. 

Grandma Lynn

Cool, smooth, classy and with a generous measure of sass, Grandma Lynn was my favourite character in the novel, and probably in my top ten grandma list- there's an post waiting to be written!  I was pleased when I heard Susan Sarandon would be playing her: I wasn't disappointed.  Fab montage scene as she cleans the house.

Picture: Was ophangen / Hanging out the laundry
Nationaal Archief / Spaarnestad Photo, SFA003003315
Vrouw hangt de was op, gebruikmakend van een hangbakje met wasknijpers, 1965.
That's a dutch lady hanging out her washing on a balcony, Netherlands, 1965.

Sneaky, cheeky Friday afternoon movie (take 2)

The Road Cormac McCarthy, 2006
The Road (dir. John Hillcoat)

Ok, so this is an odd one, part book review, part cheeky flicks trip.  It began as it usually does, Marsh and I at the Arts eating cheese and mushroom toasties and drinking beer.  Quite possibly the best preparation I can imagine for a post-apocalyptic horror, or a mindless rom-com for that matter.

She won't admit it, but I probably dragged Marsh there.  I had read the novel the weekend we were in Germany, more than just reading it, I had devoured every page of it, anti-socially often spending the entire evening with my nose in it.  I hadn't intended to get so involved: this was just a substitute for the Philip Roth novel I was reading, the only reason it was temporarily ditched was due to the unfortunate presence of a swastika on the cover.  I had picked up The Road as a suck-it-and-see, with a view to a proper future read through.  After the first few pages I became involved in the story of Man and Boy on their journey to the coast.  I didn't know what they would find there if they reached it, and I suspected the journey itself (planned on a freebie oil company map) was more of a distraction from their impending deaths from starvation, rather than any real physical or spiritual journey.  What I liked and loathed in equal measure was the reluctance of McCarthy to detail the event that led to two people alone and cold on the road, scavenging husks of wheat from barns and cans from burned out supermarkets.  Quite simply, something happened and now nothing is as it was.  In the book the Man refers to cows as being extinct; in the film the Boy quibbles the phrase 'as the crow flies', as crows only exist in books.


There are two particularly distressing aspects of the story, dealt with differently in both book and film.  The most graphic is the threat of cannibalism, perhaps best illustrated in both by the farm they accidentally stumble upon where terrified, mutilated people are kept in a larder by a gang of survivors: the film will spare you from much worse.  There is constant reinforcement from the Man to the child that they are one of the 'good guys', the fact that one of the defining features of a good guy is that he doesn't eat people is a measure of how despairing the situation is.  Equally upsetting but much more subtle is the recurring motif of murder-suicide.  Charlize Theron, playing the Boy's mother, has a role that only exists in brief flashbacks within the novel.  Pregnant when the cataclysmic event takes place, she disagrees fundamentally with the Man about how, and if life can go on in this new world.  By the time we meet the characters they have only two bullets remaining in their handgun; we see them mime and rehearse a possible future murder-suicide, always with the knowledge that with everyone they encounter the need to defend themselves may leave them with an awful decision to make further down the line.  There was a constant fear as I read the book that the Man would kill the Boy to stop someone else killing him, using the same, twisted logic that hamster mothers use.

The experience of reading the book is one of breathtaking compulsion.  Despite the truly grotesque scenes throughout I was driven to read on, desperately hoping that there could be some kind of happy ending in this unwaveringly unhappy world.  A feeling joins you on the journey, one that convinces you that there can never be a truly happy ending, even if the novel ends on a high note.  This is because the book is the story of the road, and the motif of the road is always the journey through life, which inspite of the pleasing vignettes- the meal they eat in the bunker, the can of cola, the Boy's first bath- can only end with the main character defeated. 

On the technical side, the movie was very well shot on great locations mostly in Pennsylvania, but with some of the more urban scenes shot on in Katrina ravaged New Orleans.  The strength of the movie was in its realism, or perhaps its attempt to capture a real situation.  CGI was largely spurned in favour of using disused mines and, in a memorable scene, the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike.  Make-up too was excellent, rendering Tinseltown lovelies as mouldering down and outs.  Mortensen, Theron and Duvall in particular shined; I found Kodi-Smit McPhee's portrayal the Boy as a little saccharin sweet for my liking.

I watched this film about a week after Up in the Air, another, but very different road movie.  The motif of the road, which represents the metaphorical journey through life, is one that interests me in the way it changes through the different stages of life.  Clooney's character in Up in the Air, Ryan Bingham, has very little in common with the Man apart from the fact that they both learn something about themselves and others on their journey.  The reason for this is that Bingham is in the middle of his journey, in what a commentator on Shakespeare (his/her name escapes me) called the tragic phase.  The critic believed that the early years of a character could be characterised by comedy, especially the joy of falling in love; the middle years are the times of jealousy, discomfort, dislocation and the tragic; finally, old age brings the prospect of resolution, reconciliation and forgiveness.  This doesn't entirely fit with Shakespeare or the road motif: for every Rosalind and Van Wilder, we have a Juliet and the entire cast of The Rules of Attraction.  You do get the feeling though that Bingham is in that transition phase where tough questions are being asked about his lifestyle; when we left him in the departures lounge at the end of the film, you thought that those questions aren't going to get any easier any time soon.  The Man copes with problems of another kind: the differences between comedy and tragedy are very subtle flavours- how do you decide whether you've had a good day or a bad day after the end of the world?  It's as unimaginable as defining good and bad by what, and who, they eat.  So does this make The Road a Romance?  Not quite, but it is about resolution, being in the wilderness, and the old giving way to the young; the preservation of hope and keeping the fire alive, which is probably the best ending we can hope for. 

The Moon Under Water? Screen 1

This post comes to you inspired by this enjoyable epistle from the Failed Spinster, which provoked a humorous and most vocal response this morning.  


Being a classy professional with an arts degree I wouldn't deign to cross the threshold of a common multiplex to watch a mindless Hollywood offering, instead my viewing experience of choice is the indie cinema: with its classic movie posters, the aroma of espresso in the air, it is ever so slightly edgy- in a we show films with subtitles kinda way.  I am a cinema snob, and never again will I endure a film punctuated by adolescent texting and snogging, throwing what passes for popcorn around the auditorium, and listening to the mindless running commentary that pours forth from the imbecile sitting next to me.

Being a cinema snob, I watch movies in foreign languages, filmed in black and white and often with titles consisting of just one word.  I do this because I'm better than you.  I lounge around in the bar before the film drinking black coffee or overpriced European beer, poring over the Guardian culture section.  I seem absorbed in an article about whatever is currently filling the turbine hall at the Tate, but not so much that I can't glance around to check that I'm being seen.

At the snack counter I umm and ahhh between the fair trade popcorn, hand harvested by a new wave of beat poets in the Midwest, or the organic ice cream: made and marketed by a co-operative formed by the very cows themselves.  But that's nothing in comparison to the choice I had to make at the ticket booth.  Indie film #1: Silent movie from the '20s in a glorious new reprint (nothing at all like watching it at home on DVD), complete with pianist from the local arts college who will interpret it in a free jazz style.  Great.  Indie film #2: A plot-free sex romp in which an attractive girl will sleep with multiple older men and perhaps one woman.  The film will be in Spanish, Italian, or if you are unlucky, German; a motif in the final scene will represent the director's grand theory about the meaning of life.  The motif is likely to be a bull alone in a field.  This is the type of film that would be wholly unacceptable for someone like me to watch if it were in English, but as it's foreign: it's not a blue movie, it's art.

As it happens I opt for indie choice #3, the animated film that's probably aimed at kids, perhaps made by Pixar, but I can stretch it enough to say that it borrows heavily from the anime genre.  If that doesn't cut the mustard with my mates, I'll just say I enjoyed its postmodern pastiche of the cartoon genre; truth is I wanted to watch it when it premiered, but I just can't *bear* the kind of people who go to the multiplex.

So I settle down with my ice cream made by happy, unionised cows and my skinny macchiato doppio (marked with a caramel foam), all ready to mock the trailers.  In pops mum and two kids from the local independent school, you can tell by their deckchair blazers.  "Now, settle down you two," she implores, "this is a postmodern pastiche of the cartoon genre, I think you're really going get a lot from it."  I observe as she struggles with her scarf, trying not to spill her grande soy latte, when one of the kids pelts his brother with an object I don't recognise in the dark.  "Rupert," she yells, "don't throw olives at your brother!"  The younger boy begins to howl: "that one had a pimento in it, that really hurt!" and launches a return salvo of Japanese rice crackers.  

Yes, independent cinemas, an altogether classier viewing experience.  

Cheeky, sneaky, Friday afternoon movie

Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman)

So Marsh and I snuck out yesterday afternoon to watch Up in the Air at the Arts. Watching movies in the afternoon is something that I always enjoy, you get to mix with an odd blend of retired people, students and one guy who looked like he worked a constant night-shift. After cheese toasties and beer for lunch (which always remind me of Blackburn library- the toasties, if not the beer) we settled down to watch George Clooney illustrate the ways in which air travel can still be glamorous and romantic. George's character, Ryan Bingham, lives in a whirl of loyalty cards, air miles, upgrades and Hilton suites; certainly not the kind of character who flies Easy Jet or ever struggles through security with three children and five suitcases. The routines of express check-in, complimentary drinks and room service are the circadian rhythms of his life on the road. "To know me, is to fly with me," he declares in an opening scene voice over, but there is more to him than the jet lifestyle; for every complimentary vodka tonic there is a faceless snowy car park or anonymous office block. Ryan's job is an emploment transition specialist: he fires people for a living, fires people whose bosses have been too cowardly, gutless or busy to actually do the dirty themselves. His very entrance into a building provokes a sense of terror and recoil in the unfortunate soon to be ex-employees, like a spectre of death or pestilence moving across the drab industrial carpet tiles.

During his regular motivational speaking engagements Bingham declares 'We're not swans. We're sharks,' his message in 'What's in your backpack?' is that if you want to live the no strings lifestyle he promotes, then we must down-size our stuff; stuff includes our personal relations. A chance meeting on the road with Alex, Vera Farmiga on top form, piques his interest. She's smart, sassy, sexy and most importantly, she's a shark too- line of the film for me was 'just think of me as yourself, only with a vagina.' The easy route for the story would be for Bingham to fall in love with and be reformed by Alex, but this film resists easy, twee conclusions, witnessed by Alex and Ryan's post coital laptop schedule checking to arrange their next encounter.

There has to be thaw though, and when it comes it seems quite hokey. The groundwork is done by Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a new high flier (but not in the Bingham sense) at the company. A soft centre affecting a hard shell, Natalie becomes a walking , talking conscience for Bingham when she accompanies him on the road- her emotional outpouring in the hotel lobby is also one of the best incidents of schadenfreude I've ever experienced. Natalie's grand idea is to cut the travel budget by introducing sacking by web cam. Bingham is naturally appalled: despite the tie wallet, miniature scotch and airline sushi, Bingham believes that if you're going to wreck someones life by sacking them from the company they've worked for for thirty years, then you might at least do it to their face. There's also the small matter of his miles. Bingham has amassed a serious number of air miles and is chasing a number that he will not share with Alex, could Natalie's grand idea ground him before he makes it? The second wave of emotional thaw takes place at his sister's wedding, ostensibly and discordantly hokey, but a necessary interlude for the conclusion to exert maximum effect.

Away from the story line I was very impressed with the aerial photography of the cities on Bingham's journey, the cinematography was slick throughout, with interesting angles and great locations. Clooney was impressive as the likeable Bingham, but Vera Farmiga stole the show for me- fresh and funny with her talents running the gamut from hopeful and world-weary to darkly manipulative. Mention must also be made of the extras, real-life redundant employees who padded out this unorthodox love story with gritty, real reactions.

I won't reveal if Bingham reaches the magic number or whether the lifelong shark sprouts feathers and a long neck, but the conclusion was pleasantly revolutionary; refreshingly, not in any way you'd expect.

Marsh also liked it, but thought it wasn't Oscar material.