Bloggish review blog

Under discussion:

LOL  (2006)

Well, it certainly took me long enough, but I finally got around to watching and reviewing "LOL," Joe Swanberg's movie about the effects of modern technology and relationships. I'd been hearing a lot about the Mumblecore genre, especially since the folks here at Spout have all but canonized Swanberg and his fellow Mumblecore artists as the patron saints of a new generation of filmmakers. I was curious to see how the movie lived up to all the hype. What I found was a movie that, while interesting, didn't really reveal its message until the last possible moment. In fact, up until the last fifteen minutes of the film, I was prepared to write off "LOL" as just another interesting but ultimately failed artistic experiment.

The movie is about a group of friends (Swanberg, Kevin Bewersdorf and C. Mason Wells) each going through some relationship issues that have something to do with their addiction to online porn.

These guys all seem perfectly normal and good otherwise, but when it comes to their relationships, the sexual disconnection seems to be a major stumbling block. Tim (Swanberg) has been unable to truly connect with his girlfriend Ada. Mike (Wells) is missing his long-distance girlfriend Greta (Greta Gerwig) and has her send him nude pictures of her, which she finds a little wrong, and he finds unsatisfactory. Alex (Bewersdorf) is obsessed with a girl who is the subject of several pornographic photos and videos on a web site.

While both Swanberg and Wells' storylines are good, Bewersdorf's predicament is the most heartbreaking. He is so wrapped up in a relationship that appears to be entirely one-way while cute young hipster Tessa pines after him to no avail.

Another neat aspect of the movie is the use of "Noisehead" videos between different scenes. Bewersdorf (who also wrote the film's soundtrack) is creating a project of his friends making random noises in front of his camera, and uses the clips to make unique songs. These videos are easily the most interesting part of the movie.

My biggest problem with "LOL" is the fact that it takes so long to get to the actual point. I didn't really feel like I was interested in the movie until the very end, when I looked down at my video counter and thought "Really? There's only three minutes left on this thing? But it was just getting good!" I think Swanberg could have benefitted by cutting off about half an hour of the film's beginning and adding more onto the end. As is, the plot just drops off, with Tessa driving, disappointed, back to Chicago and Alex wandering around St. Louis looking for the online girl of his dreams.

Under discussion:

In the Name of the Father  (1993)

Dragonheart  (1996)

American Psycho  (2000)

A Beautiful Mind  (2001)

Sweet Home Alabama  (2002)

Syriana  (2005)

Good Night, and Good Luck.  (2005)

I'll admit that I'm a real sucker for interview shows. I've been a fan of "Inside the Actor's Studio" for years, so I was really looking forward to Professor Richard Brown's series of interviews with (mostly) well-respected actors, and for the most part, this disc delivered. I got "Leading Men," which contained interviews with George Clooney, Josh Lucas (huh?), Daniel Day-Lewis and Dennis Quaid.

Clooney's interview provided a lot of interesting information about his background. I thought his description of his childhood and his idealistic journalist father really explained a lot about the kind of public figure the actor is today, and why he's taken on so many of the recent projects he has, like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck.  While he still seemed pretty self-important, Clooney's view that his stardom has everything to do with luck and ability, and less to do with arrogance was a great point of view to hear. It seems as though Clooney is very grateful that he's gotten to where he is today, and realizes that without the occurence of certain events, he might still be doing dozens of failed television pilots.

Josh Lucas' appearance was very hard for me to understand. I know he's been working for a number of years now, but as far as I can tell, he hasn't done anything that noteworthy. Whenever I've seen Lucas in a film, it's a supporting (or barely noticeable) role in a good movie like "American Psycho" or "A Beautiful Mind," or a bigger role in a terrible movie (see "Sweet Home Alabama"). I'm not sure what made Lucas think he was entitled to seem like a "serious actor" when talking with Brown, but all he succeeded in doing was making himself seem more puffed-up than he has any right to be. I thought this one was a definite miss in the series.

Day-Lewis, on the other hand, was the interview I'd anticipated the most, and the one that I felt had the most in-depth disucssion of the actual craft of acting. Method actors have always fascinated me, and Day-Lewis is really the method actor's method actor. This is the guy who, on the set of "In the Name of the Father" spent the night being screwed around with in a jail cell and interrogated by British Special Branch officers for several hours just to better understand his character. That's some hard core devotion right there.

Dennis Quaid's interview was by far the most enjoyable. It was clear the crowd got a big kick out of seeing him talk to Brown, and Quaid, in turn, seemed genuinely pleased at the audience's enthusiasm. His answers seemed very straightforward and honest, and he came off as a very nice, genuine sort of guy. I get the feeling that Quaid is the kind of guy all the other guys want to have a drink with. His body of work hasn't been consistently great (there'll always be "Dragonheart," after all), but Quaid was so charming and willing to talk that I ended up not caring.

Under discussion:

Africa Unite  (2007)

I'll admit I was skeptical about "Africa Unite." I didn't think I would find the film very interesting, since I'm not a huge fan of reggae, nor do I understand rastafarianism. But I was pleasantly surprised by Stephanie Black's documentary about a huge concert and African unity conference in celebration of Bob Marley's 60th birthday. While the film serves mostly as rasta propaganda, there are parts of it that I found touching, inspiring and on the whole very informative about the subject matter.

One of the threads the documentary follows is the story of a 70-year-old Rasta from Jamaica, whose community raises the money for him to attend the conference/concert in Ethiopia. For this man, who has spent 50 years in the Rasta faith, this trip is the opportunity of a lifetime. It tugs a little at the heartstrings to see the man so impressed, excited and inspired by the message of African unity preached at the conference, and by his visits to sites such as Emperor Haile Selassie's Cathedral.

Another point I found particularly interesting was the in-depth description of Rastafarianism, and the Rastas' worship of Selassie, who ruled over Ethiopia from World War II through part of the 1960s. Selassie's message of personal freedom and inner resolve still resonates in the Ethiopians today, as well as people like Marley, who furthered the cause of an Africa without borders and separate governments. While I don't really advocate the worship of one particular human being, I do find Selassie to be an inspirational character, and the documentary does a good job of explaining why.

I was a little disappointed, however, that there wasn't more concert footage from the film. I feel like "Africa Unite" might have been a more effective film if it had been almost exclusively a concert movie, interspersed with information about Marley, Selassie, Rastafarianism and the conference. As it is, the majority of "Africa Unite" is footage from round table discussions and conference attendees. While some of these vignettes are interesting, they don't add together to make an interesting film. It serves more as a long, narrationless news report.

I couldn't see renting or  buying this film, even if I was a big Bob Marley fan. It's not quite a concert film, not quite an interesting documentary. It's something of a mashup, and never quite coheres. While I did find "Africa Unite" informative and inspirational, I also found it lacking in several areas.

Under discussion:

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things  (2004)

It was hard for me to watch "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things." I don't usually take well to films about child abuse (for obvious reasons), but I was willing to give this one a shot. I shouldn't have.

Asia Argento's directorial effort is based on the "autobiographical" novel by J.T. LeRoy, who is in fact not a real person, but a character devised by writer Laura Albert. It's the story of Jeremiah, a little boy taken from his foster home to live with his completely drug-addled and unfit mother, Sarah (Argento). After going through several boyfriends and one husband, who rapes Jeremiah after Sarah scarpers, the boy is left in the care of his strict Christian grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Muti). After three years living and preaching under their creepy but more stable care, Sarah takes Jeremiah back and pulls him with her on her fast journey to rock bottom.

First of all, I have a hard time figuring out why any social worker would think Sarah was capable of caring for a child, seeing as how she's obviously gone off the deep end from the very beginning of the film. Secondly, I can't figure out why Sarah would want to have her son around, since he's obviously nothing but a burden to her. It's possible she wants the boy because he's the one person who truly loves her, but towards the end of the film, Sarah says that Jeremiah has caused her no end of trouble, and that she got along better on her own. The whole premise and logic of the film seems deeply flawed to me, not to mention Argento's one-sided, stereotypical and almost cartoonish representation of Christianity.

There are parts of the film that are well-shot and interesting, and it seems clear from the soundtrack (Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Subhumans) and the oddball cameo roles (Peter Fonda, Winona Ryder and Marilyn Manson to name a few) that Argento is trying to make some kind of cheeky, badass punk rock film. But it's hard to consider the artistic value of a project when the subject matter is so disturbing. Meth labs and neglected children do not a masterpiece make.

I watch movies for two reasons, reasons I suspect are universal: entertainment and artistic merit. "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" is certainly not entertaining, and it hasn't got enough style to be considered a work of art. At the very least, this film could have served as a slap in the face, a cold stab of cruel realities we often ignore, like abuse and drug addiction, if J.T. LeRoy had been a real person. The fact that the story the film is based on was part of a major literary hoax takes away almost all its credibility. So instead I found myself subjected to one domestic horror after another, not in the service of telling someone's life story, but simply an exercize in sadistic, poorly realized fiction.

Under discussion:

The Natural  (1984)

Seabiscuit  (2003)

Cinderella Man  (2005)

The Rocket  (2005)

While I'm not much of a sports fan, I do enjoy watching sports movies. There's just something about watching an underdog beat the odds and take the necessary risks on the road to success that just makes me feel good. I know I'm not alone in this. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much of a market for movies like "Cinderella Man," "Seabiscuit" or "The Natural."

That's what filmmakers tried to do with "The Rocket," a movie about the career of legendary hockey player Maurice Richard and the racism against French Canadians both in sports and in regular society, during the forties and fifties. Technically, "The Rocket" is a pretty good piece of work, with great music, lovely, rich cinematography and a good story. But  due to some seriously weak writing,  the movie never really takes off.

What "The Rocket" mainly suffers from is relying on telling more than showing. We are only shown vignettes of Richard's life, and these chunks of narrative are stretched almost too far apart to be strongly connected. If the filmmakers wanted the audience to be paying attention for the 124-minute running time, they should have been paying more attention to continuity.

Also, we don't actually get to see much of Richard's particularly great games. The facts of these supposedly spectacular displays of athleticism are instead told to us by fans, reporters, and (in a particularly irritating example) Richard's barber who describe the action in long monologues that I somehow doubt would have been used by those people in reality. I'd rather have seen the actual games being played out than listened to the implausible lines spoken about them.

Another result of this cut-and-paste style of storytelling is that the characters aren't given much of a chance to develop. Richard's relationship with his teammates is never explored, and the conflict with his blue collar brother-in-law doesn't get much attention either. The characters don't even seem to change much. Richard is stoic and modest, his wife is always concerned but proud of her husband, and Mr. Irvin, Richard's coach, is always an enigmatic, reverse-psychology dependent S.O.B. While these details might not have seemed important to the people making the movie, they are just as instrumental as any action sequence.

All of this may sound kind of hypocritical when I complain about the lengthy running time (two hours and four minutes is a long time for me to watch bad screenwriting), although it probably could have been avoided had there been more action and less talk. "The Rocket" after all, is a sports movie. Why don't we get to see more sports? 

Under discussion:

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen  (1989)

Brazil  (1985)

Time Bandits  (1981)

12 Monkeys  (1995)

The Boondock Saints  (2000)

Overnight  (2003)

It's the ultimate Cinderella Story: A young, first-time screenwriter working as a bouncer in Los Angeles gets the opportunity of a lifetime when Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Studios buys his script, gives him a hefty advance, lets his band record the film's soundtrack and promises his new discovery co-ownership of the bar he works at.

Well, as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. This is the story of Troy Duffy, writer and director of the cult hit "The Boondock Saints" as told by two of his friends in the documentary "Overnight," which recounts Duffy's meteoric rise and spectacularly depressing fall. The documentary is surprisingly objective in that it is effective from two angles. Those who are great fans of "Boondock Saints" will probably see Duffy as an embittered tragic hero who continues to fight for his art while everyone around him loses faith. Those (like me) who just don't "get" Duffy's film see the director as an opinionated asshole whose sudden success turns him into a power-mad paranoid. His attempts to retain complete control over his movie and his band make him lose credibility in the eyes of his family, friends and bandmates, whose lives and livelihoods are pretty much destroyed by Duffy's antics.

What happens is this: Duffy makes the monster deal with Miramax and becomes, in his words "Hollywood's new hard-on." Then, suddenly and without warning, Miramax drops him. The band makes a record deal with Maverick records, then the record company pulls out at the last minute. Franchise pictures ends up buying the "Boondock Saints" script, and giving Duffy less than half of the budget Miramax offered. Duffy accepts and makes his film, but no major studios are interested in distributing the film. Finally, Indican pictures, a small independent studio, releases the film for two weeks in five theaters accross the U.S. The band does eventually get a label and cuts a record, but the record sells less than 1,000 copies in six months and they are dropped, at which point they break up rather unceremoniously.

"Overnight" did definitely make me feel sympathetic to Troy Duffy. Although I don't consider myself a "Boondock Saints" fan, and Duffy and his friends aren't exactly classy, clean-cut guys, I did feel a certain amount of pain seeing this blue-collar guy from Boston who thought he had something big going get continually screwed over by almost every Hollywood establishment. I suppose one might compare Duffy's predicament in "Overnight" to the famous battle between Terry Gilliam and the major studios over the distribution of "Brazil." But the difference is this: Gilliam is a director who started off as a financial success with "Time Bandits" and went on to make some great films, both commercial hits like "12 Monkeys" and movies that were artistically beautiful but tanked at the theater (see "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"). The only movie Duffy has under his belt, seemingly because of the situation laid out in "Overnight" is "The Boondock Saints," a movie that I was surprised ever got made at all, let alone something that could ever have been optioned by Miramax. "Brazil" was a movie worth fighting for. "Boondock Saints" not so much.

Under discussion:

Waiting to Exhale  (1995)

Amélie  (2001)

Under the Tuscan Sun  (2003)

Agata and the Storm  (2004)

I like to think of myself as a diverse movie viewer. I can watch a horror movie, then turn right back around and watch a period drama, followed by a screwball comedy. But there are some genres that I just really get a kick out of. Well-done, inspirational romantic comedies are one. I love movies like "Amelie" and, yes, even "Under the Tuscan Sun" that are light and fun and leave you feeling great. "Agata and the Storm" is one of these movies. Something like a hybrid of "Amelie" and "Waiting to Exhale," it had me grinning from beginning to end.

The movie centers on the life, relationships and adventures of Agata, a forty-ish bookstore owner in Genoa with a strange ability to make electricity go haywire when she gets emotional. She's seeing Nico, a married man about half her age. Her brother Gustavo recently discovered he was adopted as an infant and appears to have abandoned his family and successful architecture career to find himself and hang out with his biological brother Romeo and his wife. It's all a bit complicated, but oddly enough the varied plot lines all work out. As we get to know Agata and her family, we become more involved and turly begin to care about these sweet, unique and utterly human characters. Romeo's dream of owning a trout farm, Gustavo's search for his father and his true identity and Agata's relationship issues all become terribly involving and engaging the longer the film goes on.

Most importantly, "Agata and the Storm" has a great playful sense about it. Even the film's dramatic moments (and there are quite a few) aren't much of a downer. The movie, like Agata's spirit, moves on the happy parts of the characters' lives. Everything from the colorful visuals to the characters' quirks to the film's music is very entertaining and lighthearted.

That isn't to say that there aren't a few problems. There's an awful lot of infidelity going on in the film, and nobody seems to make a big deal out of it. Romeo, especially, seems to have serious problems remaining faithful to his wife, Daria, but when pressed by Agata he states that he knows he's got a problem but brushes it off, saying "I am what I am." Another plotline, involving Agata's estranged 20-year-old daughter, is never resolved, nor really even followed. It would be interesting to see what Agata's daughter would be like, or what she thinks of her mother having an affair with a man 13 years her junior.

Overall, however, "Agata and the Storm" is good watching. It's the kind of movie you can sit down to watch with your girlfriends and a bowl of fresh popcorn. Or, for that matter, a pint of Ben and Jerry's. It's romantic escapism of the best kind: the kind that wraps you up like a warm blanket and makes you feel like running out into the street afterwards and hugging everyone you meet.

Under discussion:

Familia  (2005)

In the opening shots of "Familia," director Louise Archambault poses an interesting question. When we have children, do we pass on simple genetic traits like hairy knuckles or hitchhiker's thumb? Or does the transfer include pieces of our own personalities?

If "Familia" had answered these questions, I think it would have been a much more interesting film. Instead, when I had finished watching it, the only question I had (a question that also remained unanswered) was "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

The movie focuses on the relationships between friends, mothers and daughters. On one end of the spectrum, we have Michele (Sylvie Moreau), a compulsive gambler, and generally irresponsible woman. Her daughter Marguerite (Mylene St-Sauveur) is a fourteen-year-old club kid who thinks herself more streetwise than she truly is. After deciding her boyfriend is being abusive after he accidentally hits her with a car door and refuses to give her any more money to waste on the gambling machines, Michele decides to move to California with Marguerite. Michele's lack of funds ensures that they never get that far, and instead end up staying with Janine (very convincingly played by Macha Grenon), a childhood friend of Michele's.

Janine is the exact opposite of Michele. She is a successful interior designer with two kids and a mostly-absent husband. Where Michele is charming and lenient (albeit rather leechlike) Janine is frigid and controlling, as evidenced by her failed relationships with her husband and children. Her daughter,  Gabrielle (Juliette Gosselin), is sweet and obedient, but befriending Marguerite gives her the opportunity to break out of her shell, which she does in grand rebellious fashion.

"Familia" was a hard movie for me to watch. While it does explore the topic of relationships, it's just as much an exercise in Bad Parenting 101. It shows how leniency with a child, or, alternatively, fierce control, can do nothing to help the development of a kid. It was also difficult to like the characters. Both Michele and Janine are almost too flawed to be sympathetic. While I did feel sorry for Janine having to put up with the frustrating and generally obnoxious Michele, her totalitarian view of her family was just as frustrating as any time I saw Michele gambling away her paychecks on slot machines or poker.

In fact, the best parts of "Familia" come right at the very end, when both the women witness the consequences of their family relationships. While Janine's life falls apart at the seams in a long, downward spiral that ends in some nasty confrontations, Michele learns the necessity of responsibility, and realizes that if she is to save Marguerite from becoming like her, she needs to step up and put just as much importance on her child as on herself.

As far as the performances go, Macha Grenon's Janine was far and away the most impressive. She really gets the best dramatic scenes, since she's the one who gets to break down and watch the life she's built for herself fall around her. Moreau is good as Michele, but at the end of the movie, it was Grenon's performance that I remembered the most. As much as I really disliked Janine, her situation made me feel for her.

"Familia" is just as much a drama about the importance of relationships as it is a great example of two very different ways in which a person can screw up their lives and, unfortunately, the lives of their children. The film presents some interesting situations, but it lacks truly sympathetic characters. Had I not wanted to slap the two women nearly every time they made a decision or alienated their kids, I might have enjoyed the movie more. As it was, "Familia" is a movie I watched with gritted teeth.