The Birds review

So I think I'm going to use this blog to continue my film reviews for whichever movies I happen to see (young and old).  I'm back from Cannes, the craziness having finally ended, but damn it I think I'm addicted to film reviewing.

I'm currently watching Hitchcock's The Birds so I think I'll do a little write-up.

It seems Hitchcock could make a film about massing, attacking pieces of toast, and it would still scare the hell out of me.  Actually, that sounds about like a Shyamalan film, but we all know that fool couldn't even begin to pull off evil birds.

The arrival of Tippi Hedren's character Melanie Daniels to Bodega Bay, California spurs a sudden onslaught of bird attacks that escalates at just the right degree.  The Master of Suspense is really on his A-game here.  There's the right amount of waiting paired against sudden horror.  The climax of the film will always give me chills simply because I still can't believe it was made so many years ago.  Even if the terror doesn't strike you, watching what Hitchcock does as a filmmaker is striking enough.  Everything is planned like a perfect maneuver.  All angles work together to create the feeling of claustrophobia or panic or anxiety.

The Birds is a testament to Hitchcock's prowess and stands with the best of his canon.

Holy Motors Review

Holy Motors is a wacky pastiche of black comedy, musical, satire, and drama, a melting pot in which Leos Carax dumps the history of cinema.  Don’t label it an experimental film; the stigma of such a title would undoubtedly detract from its appeal.  Carax makes no move to explain what’s actually happening, but that didn’t prevent me from naturally settling into the film’s groove.

            The film opens with a movie screening, but we only see the audience staring back.  I found myself pondering the absurd moment: two audiences staring at one another.  One is on the screen, and one exists in this tangible world with me.  The shot sets up the rest of the film and reminds us that we are watching a movie. 

Carax then cuts to the meat of the film.  Denis Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar (which may or may not be an Academy Award reference), who spends the majority of the film in his limousine.  Over the course of a day, Oscar must see to several appointments, each of which requires him to change his character.  He applies makeup, changes his wardrobe, and acts out a different role.  At one point, Oscar is an elderly woman with a cane walking down a road.  He becomes a crazy Leprechaun that runs wildly through a cemetery.  He’s a dying man, a sentimental lover, and a hit man.

Oscar is an actor, and these appointments are the roles he must perform for his occupation.  We only see Oscar’s director once, but for the rest of the film, we watch Oscar as he grows weary from his always-changing, theatrical persona. 

Arguably, the turning point of the film occurs as Oscar, in his crazy Leprechaun garb, stumbles upon an American photo shoot (with Eva Mendes, of course).  The photographer repeats the word “beauty” while snapping shots of Mendes.  Once Oscar bites the fingers off an intern and continues his rampage, the photographer’s mantra changes to “weird.”  He chases Oscar while repeating the word, even more fascinated by his subject than by the statuesque Mendes.  It seems Carax is laughing at the critics who will undoubtedly love his film because of its weirdness.  Mendes is beautiful, sure, but nothing gets a critic hot and bothered like the uncanny.

Keep in mind that Holy Motors is not weird for the sake of being weird.  The film is unlike a lot of movies being made right now, but it’s not off-putting because of its weird qualities.  Rather, it operates as an ode to cinema itself, and Carax punctuates this point with his many allusions to film history.  Two musical themes from Godzilla are heard as Oscar continues his romp through the cemetery, and even the deathbed scene visually echoes Keir Dullea in his role as the dying David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Paralleled with these allusions are the absurd high points of the film.  A character randomly bursts into song.  A gravestone reads “Visit My Website.”  Oh, and Carax throws in a brief entr’acte in the film’s middle, which again calls attention to his obsession with theatrics.  This is no typical incidental music.  Carax’s entr’acte shows Oscar and company walking through a chapel while playing some sort of rollicking prog-jam on accordions.  It is completely over-the-top, and the song itself had me cheering.  Accordions should never rock this hard, but like everything Carax puts in the film, he pulls it off.

At the film’s end, Oscar goes home, but the home we see is a house populated with chimpanzees.  You can argue that it’s the only fitting ending to such an absurd piece of art, yet his going home is just another appointment.  Oscar never really “goes home.”  He never escapes from this routine of changing faces and of living a life that is not his own. 

            When his driver, Celine, parks her limousine at the Holy Motors garage, she picks up a phone, shakes loose her hair, puts on a white mask, and makes a call.  “I’m coming home,” she says.  Now, we don’t see her final destination, but it appears that Celine is the only one going home in this film.  Though, even she must wear a mask to reach some “real” destination.  The answer to this strange question of what living in reality means as an actor might be found in a discussion on cameras that occurs previously in the film.  Oscar mentions the camera’s increasing smallness; cameras are now so small that they’re practically invisible.  Anyone could be filmed at any given time, and though no cameras are present as Oscar takes on his several roles, I can’t help but feel that he’s been making movies the entire time. 

            So yes, Holy Motors is absurd and blurs the line between art and life.  I have to ask though: if life is absurd, then why can’t art be?  The absurdity should not sway you from seeing the film.  It’s a strange trip, and Carax wants to take you with him while also illustrating the stranger points of art and reality.  

Shut Up and Play the Hits Review

Shut Up and Play the Hits is an intimate view into LCD Soundsystem’s final moments as a band.  The documentary follows post-punk auteur James Murphy as he prepares for his band’s final show and then reveals what happens after the lights dim and Murphy awakens the following morning.  Interspersed with these narratives is the actual concert footage from Madison Square Garden, which will make anyone feel they attended the concert in person.  The documentary seems a bit staged in its early moments, but when Murphy kicks into “Dance Yrself Clean” live, I am reminded of LCD’s status as one of the greatest bands of our time.

Vous n’avez encore rien vu Review

Drawing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the satires of Bunuel and Resnais’ own catalogue, Vous n’avez encore rien vu presents a gathering of cast members paying homage to the life of a famous theatrical director after his sudden death (likely, Resnais himself).  The vanguard thespians watch a performance of the play Eurydice cast with younger talent while reliving their roles as past performers.  The old versus young dynamic illustrates Resnais-as-artist: one of the most prolific directors of our time bidding farewell and passing the reigns to the next generation.  Though lagging towards the middle, the film serves as his capstone.

Written by Alain Resnais and Laurent Herbiet

Directed by Alain Resnais

Produced by Jean-Louis Livi

Starring Mathieu Amalric, Lambert Wilson, and Michel Piccoli

115 minutes

Cosmopolis review

There was a time David Cronenberg shocked and awed us. 

            There was a time Don DeLillo showed us the world and reminded us we were the ones plotting our downfall.

            There was never a time Rob Pattinson could act.

            A bad apple can definitely ruin the whole bushel, but in the case of Cosmopolis, a bad apple, bloodlessness, and worn-out clichés will just about make anyone swear off apples together.  The film, based on DeLillo’s hardest flop, is a reminder that even the best artists can fail with fantastic display and that hearing Pattinson recite lines is about like hearing someone read the telephone book. 

Don DeLillo kick started his career with White Noise, the disturbing portrait of 1980’s consumerism told through the eyes of a family caught within the noise of microwaves and buzzing refrigerators.  Characters talk in circles, search for meaning in the television and become utterly self-aware of death in the era of shopping malls and simulated evacuations. 

Since this novel, DeLillo has delivered hits and has cranked out some enormous pieces of crap.  The latter creations (Cosmopolis among them) are comprised of the worst postmodern tropes realized to a wordy, exhausted limit.  Cronenberg could have chosen any DeLillo hit, but instead, he nabs his most panned novel.  His decision to adapt Cosmopolis is similar to someone adapting Joseph Heller’s Closing Time.

But Cronenberg loves to film the “unfilmable.”  He did make a solid Naked Lunch, though I would refrain from calling it an adaptation.  Naked Lunch can’t even compare to Cosmopolis, which is nothing more than DeLillo exercising his dialogue acrobatics.  The characters speak their minds, and only vapid, faux-philosophical mush vomits out of their mouths in convoluted tongue-twisters.  Cronenberg spent about one week writing this screenplay, so (surprise!), the movie suffers from a similar fate.

Eric Packer, played by Rob Pattinson, demands a haircut from a specific barber across town and rides in his limousine the whole way there.  Never mind that the president is in town; Packer wants that haircut.  On the way, Packer entertains a whole host of characters in his limo, each one able to speak in volumes on the state of the world and its approaching collapse. 

I really shouldn’t judge a movie by its acting alone, but goodness, who taught these hacks how to deliver lines?  Sure, the lifted script would be nigh impossible to work with, but no one in this film, save Paul Giamatti, can recite a line with any sort of heart or soul or whatever.  Speaking of Giamatti, he plays a worthy character bent on killing Packer.  His character appears at the end of the film, and he speaks his lines (which happen to be a little less nauseating) decently.  Some of the dialogue exchanged is quite honest, and we are able to see Packer at his most vulnerable.  He becomes a human somewhat, but at this stage in the film, I find the whole thing hard to settle into. 

If Cronenberg is doing the best he can with what DeLillo has offered him, then the least he can do is present an aesthetically pleasing direction.  Well, no, he fails there too.  Everything within the frame is bland and lifeless, giving me no reason to believe Cronenberg knows what he’s doing.  The cinematography isn’t striking at all, and the design of the limousine appears too technological for its own good.  What I mean is, all the flashing screens and gizmos inside the limo make it look cheap (not futuristic or sleek).

Some detractors of this film will cite its dialogue-heavy script as the main fault.  Keep in mind there is nothing fundamentally wrong about a movie hinging on dialogue, provided that the dialogue has meaning within its words.  The dialogue in Cosmopolis is filled with weightless sound.  No one talks like this, and no one ever will.  That being said, the state of this world DeLillo and Cronenberg have created is unbelievable because of this stilted language and cheap look of the film.  Even as a dystopic vision, I don’t believe it.  It’s funnier than it is terrifying.  

I’ve mentioned a lot about DeLillo because he is as much at fault here as Cronenberg.  Cronenberg chose the novel, sure.  He also managed to shoot the entire thing with as much indifference as possible.  I really don’t think DeLillo should join the ranks of Ray Bradbury and Shakespeare as the unfilmable canon whose characters speak only in soliloquies and overly philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but the reality is the film doesn’t work at all.  Cronenberg is not a bad director, and we have Shivers, Videodrome, and A History of Violence to remind us.  DeLillo is one of the greatest authors of all time thanks to White Noise, Underworld, and Libra.  But neither artist can save Cosmopolis.

Written by David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo (novel)

Directed by David Cronenberg

Produced by Paulo Branco

Starring Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, and Juliette Binoche

109 minutes

Amour review

I had a few drinks and then walked into my bathroom to find Emmanuelle Riva in her role as Anne, naked and moaning while a nurse bathed her methodically. 

It wasn’t the first time I had one of these experiences.  Sober or not, I have been seeing clips from Michael Haneke’s Amour in my waking life ever since screening.  If the best films settle inside of you and stay with you forever, then Amour is the best at the Cannes Film Festival.  The film has haunted me since I stumbled in a stupor out of the theatre.

Michael Haneke is the mastermind of cinema.  Calling him an academic would diminish his aesthetic; there’s enough emotion in Funny Games to capsize The Strangers and every other home-intruder horror knockoff.  His films jar the heart in a way that suggests Brakhage and Aronofsky.  Let me put it this way: watching Haneke is an exercise in how we see everything¾love, hate, horror, et al¾with our own eyes.

Arriving three years after Haneke’s Palme d’Or-winning The White Ribbon, Amour is a voyeuristic study of the end of life.  Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Georges, an elderly man who shifts from husband to caretaker after his wife Anne suffers a debilitating stroke.  Both Georges and Anne are retired music teachers, and other than this barely-mentioned fact, Haneke provides little background information on their life and relationship.  Is it out of character for Georges to talk sternly to Anne in their old age?  How can anyone know?  Haneke skips these facts, and an argument over character development may arise in certain critical circles.

Haneke likes to probe, and his razor-sharp eye picks apart everything in the screen.  The house seems less like a house and more like a laboratory or a theatre set or a dollhouse.  Georges and Anne are on display, and this filmmaking decision is bold, especially in the context of a film concerning an elderly couple.

However, Haneke does not focus on Georges and Anne’s previous life because he intends Amour to be a sentimental ode to life and love, even though the title is clearly translated as “love.”  Haneke wants to show us the starkest realities of love: the diaper changing, the feeding, the blank stares, the nightmares, and the helplessness.  For a first-time viewer of Haneke, this approach to cinema and “love” in general may seem alienating and even boring.[1]  I’m not saying that in order to perfectly view the film, one has to know the catalogue, but it certainly helps.

The bulk of Amour is comprised of Haneke showing us these realities.  As the film progresses, Anne’s physical and mental state worsens.  She becomes incoherent in her speech, and she no longer recognizes her family.  Watching Anne devolve into a vegetable is shocking and almost impersonal, but Haneke pairs this narrative with the outlying problems related to the nigh impossible task of keeping someone alive whose body is failing.  Georges works day and night to aid his wife, but even he becomes frustrated.  In one appalling but altogether human scene, Georges slaps Anne on the face because she refuses to eat or drink anything.  I can tell myself I would never do such an act, but I don’t know a damn thing about what it means to live with death stalking around every corner.

The majority of responses I have heard about this film deal specifically with that previous sentence.  Those who can relate to a similar life event while watching the film find it to be sad and heavy.  This way of looking at Amour is valid, but the film is much larger than that.  You don’t have to know someone who had a stroke to be able to feel the seismic smack to the gut when Anne sits at her piano and moves drunkenly with the music she seems to be playing.  The camera cuts to Georges (with Trintignant’s characteristic stoic expression), who turns and shuts off the music coming from their sound system.  Anne has not been playing the piano at all.  The scene is surprising in a strange way (think of the dog falling out of the van in Funny Games) but also unashamedly heartbreaking. 

Michael Haneke has taken everyone at the Cannes Film Festival to the edge of death with Amour.  Like the best art, it is hard to endure and poignant in the most unrelenting fashion.  The images are still seared into my brain, and somehow, I find that fact both unsettling and comforting.

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[1] Even the idea of Haneke making a film about love is funny, almost as if he’s mocking the fact that others may view him as a cold director.  Those people, along with the aforementioned Haneke virgins, are in for a ride.

Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap review

What better way to study the art of rap than to have Ice-T as your guide through all the rhymes and beats of this enormous musical genre.  Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap invites rap historians and casual listeners to delve into the DNA of hip-hop.  Director Ice-T interviews his rap cohorts, and the footage is jaw dropping.  Eminem details how rap saved his life.  Kanye rips into a vicious rhyme.  Dre remembers Tupac.  Though no attention is given to Atlanta or the emerging hip-hop underground (OFWGKTA, A$AP Rocky, El-P to name a few), the documentary successfully taps into select artists’ minds and into the roots of this enigmatic art form.