Movie Update 29

Well, here we are again.

The Castle of Cagliostro


Hayao Miyazaki's first film as a director, before Studio Ghibli was a thing, is based on the Lupin III television series he worked on, which was based on a manga created by Monkey Punch, which was inspired by the Arsène Lupin character created by Maurice LeBlanc. The film's plot is also based on one of the original Lupin stories. So yeah, there's a lot of adapting going on here. Cagliostro is a lighthearted action adventure about Lupin and his buddies stumbling on the world's biggest counterfeit currency operation in one of its smallest countries, and trying to both thwart their plans and rescue a princess at the same time. I've only seen a bit of the show, but it doesn't take much of that to get familiar with the principal characters, and they all show up here and have fun little parts to play. It's a simple movie, but there's a nice energy to it, a reasonable amount of excitement in the twists and turns, and like all works by Miyazaki there's a nice feeling to the animation, which isn't the most fluid ever but does what's required to set the right tone. It's kind of a standard adventure movie, but it's a well executed one.

Killer's Kiss


Not Stanley Kubrick's first feature film, but the first that's readily available for public consumption. It's also his weakest that I've seen. There's nothing very bad about the movie, but there's just not much to it. A boxer meets up with a dancing girl, and they try to leave the city and start a life somewhere, but her crook of a boss isn't a fan of the idea. It's a pretty bare-bones noir story, with the only thing that really makes it work being Kubrick's great photography. There's lots of great little shots that stick out as distinct for the era, including use of reflections, some stuff with shadows that I haven't really seen before, and a memorable conclusion in an unusual setting. There's not much to the characters though, and the tacked-on ending doesn't really work. Its only real use is to show the potential Kubrick had for his work later on.

The Killing


The very next year Kubrick made this, his first really good movie. It actually feels a bit less distinctly his than Kiss, but it's certainly a lot more fun to watch, and might actually be the most purely enjoyable movie he ever made. In one of the few instances I can think of of him using an actor more than once, he has Sterling Hayden as the main character, a criminal trying to pull off one last job, robbing the take at a horse track, with a complicated scheme that involves multiple people both inside and outside the place. It's a pretty good plan, though there's also a lot of moving parts, and of course things get screwed up and the situation eventually gets pretty hairy. There's a lot of build up, and the pay off when it all starts falling into place is pretty great. Stylistically, there's not much in the movie that wouldn't be in another noir movie from the period. But it's also just a really good example of the genre, and sometimes that's all you need to be successful.

The Tree of Life

This is a film about life, and growing up, and pretty much everything that entails. I said before that I imagine a film by Terrence Malick entirely in his reflective/observing-nature's-beauty mode might get tedious, and that's somewhat true here, but the film is so beautiful and poignant that it's hard to be really bothered by the slow bits. The film isn't exactly in chronological order, but what it's basically about is Sean Penn remembering his youth growing up with his parents and two brothers, and also experiencing some sort of vision of the birth of the universe and what possibly lies beyond it. It's a staggeringly gorgeous movie at times, especially in the scenes showing the early moments of existence, with visuals that avoid computer animation in favor of more natural means. The more normal stuff looks great too, though it's mostly just people walking through houses or the woods. Brad Pitt plays his father, and does a really great job making him into a terrible dad that should really be feared and despised without being over the top about it. Just the way he touches his sons on the neck is enough to establish that loving parenting doesn't come naturally to him. I don't think the movie needed a name like Penn to play the adult version of the main character though - he doesn't really do much acting besides walking around and looking at things. The Tree of Life is a bit ponderous and in love with itself at times, but what it does right is memorable and unique enough to make the film worth watching, especially if you're a fan of film as a visually artistic medium.

Movie Update 12

At this point I'm starting to see the finish line on the list of classic movies I compiled last year (and have repeatedly expanded on since), about in time for Netflix' two disc plan with streaming to increase in price. I might just watch regular old crap for a while after that, though there's plenty of lists I haven't gone through yet, mostly consisting of winners of various awards. Anyway, movies.

American Graffiti


This is the first non-Star Wars film directed by George Lucas that I've seen... not very surprising, since only one other such film exists. It's an entertaining and charming nostalgia-laden film about mid-century cruising culture, which consisted of teenagers in California hooking up and aimlessly driving their cars around town while listening to music. It's obvious Lucas has a history with this sort of thing, and it comes through in the movie, which is too light on plot to really be a sex comedy or anything like that, but tells a simple and interesting story about two high school graduates struggling with whether to go to college at the other side of the country while summer comes to a close. The young cast is pretty good, it's funny, and it's shot well enough to make you forget for a little while what Lucas' career has turned into. Nothing too incredible, but a good film.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button


I liked this more than I expected, but it's still pretty far from the best work by David Fincher. Despite the apparent grab for awards with the sentimental, broadly-reaching script and big name cast, you can still definitely tell it's a Fincher movie from the specific color scheme and interesting using of CGI (the effects to create young/old Benjamin are far from real looking, but they're definitely interesting) among other things. And I liked most of the performances, especially surprising ones like Mad Men's Jared Harris as a salty, drunken sea captain. It's just much too long of a movie for how much story it has. It's like screenwriter Eric Roth couldn't think of anything beyond combining an intriguing short story concept with an earlier-set version of Forrest Gump. Some cool ideas, but the experience is kind of a drag.

La Dolce Vita


This is the third film by Federico Fellini that I've seen, and I was again impressed by some things he did without being really drawn in or terribly entertained by the work itself. It's very much a 60s European art film, and is very identifiably good at that. I was somewhat intrigued by the episodic nature of the story, as it progresses through various mostly unrelated events, examining the mindset of the central character. Really though, the part that grabbed my interest the most was when Anita Ekberg was just sort of walking and dancing around on screen, so maybe I'm not quite the target audience. This is another film that was quite long, and I got through it fine but wouldn't want to watch it again.

Nashville


Robert Altman is definitely known for those ensemble casts, and this is a premiere example of that. Nashville is about the coming together of many people, lots of them musicians, at a political rally for a candidate that is never actually seen. Much time is dedicated to the musical performances, and it's quite a long movie, giving fair shake to a lot of different stories. It's a well put together film, and while I'm not familiar with a lot of the cast, they all tend to do good jobs. I didn't like a lot of the movie though, which I found to be incredibly uncomfortable and hard to watch. It's the product of a very dark sense of humor, some real proto-cringe type stuff. I understand what they were going for, but too much of it was too far on the painful side of the spectrum without being that funny. It's just personal taste, and I respect the movie, but I had trouble with it.

Sullivan's Travels


Sullivan's Travels is about a comedy director who thinks people don't know enough about the real suffering going on in the world, and tries after a few false starts to discover real trouble so he can honestly make a movie about it. I tend to like movies that hold up mirrors to Hollywood, and Travels does it about as well as any. It's a nice snappy 40s road comedy, which happens to take a strange, dark, and surprising turn near the end. It's a little off-putting, but not enough to really damage a film that's otherwise got a pretty good point to make about what people really want to get out of cinema, and is honestly just entertaining on its own. The biggest issue is perhaps the movie trying to get me to believe a girl who looked like Veronica Lake would have trouble getting a break in Hollywood, but that's pretty much how movies work. Somehow not as famous as other movies of similar type and quality from the period, but deserving of a watch.

Se7en

One of my friends has been trying to get me to see this for maybe a decade now. I'm not sure why it took so long. David Fincher's Fight Club is one of my favorite movies. Maybe being repeatedly told to see it was subconsciously pushing me away. Whatever it was, it's definitely a good film. It's part crime movie, part suspense. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are a couple detectives in a strange city where everything looks run-down and it always rains. Pitt just moved to town to replace Freeman, who's set to retire at the end of the week, but a string of related murders start showing up, pointing to a serial killer obsessed with his own sense of justice and the seven deadly sins. It's a slow burn as they examine the aftermath of his painstaking, disturbing work and try to find connections that will lead to him before he finishes the job. It's clear that he's toying with them, almost challenging them to catch him while he goes about his business. As a look at the possible endpoint of what a human mind might be capable of putting together, it's intriguing and chilling at the same time.

In between checking crime scenes, the movie takes some time to develop the detectives when they're off the job. Pitt comes home to his wife played by Gwyneth Paltrow and their three dogs, while Freeman goes to the library, rarely able to stop thinking about work. There are a couple scenes where Paltrow confides in Freeman, the only man besides her husband she knows to turn to in a new city that she hates. It's unclear at first what the point of this stuff is besides preventing the entire movie from being a creepy detective story, but as the depths of the killer's horrifying plan are unraveled the truth becomes clear. Kevin Spacey has a good role, one of the more interesting in his career (which was nice to see, because it's been a while since I've seen him do a whole lot). It all builds to a huge downer of an ending, one that the studio fought against but ultimately had to happen for the movie to totally work. I should be more diligent about seeing Fincher's films, because he's certainly one of the most interesting directors of the last couple decades.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's last couple films, the Kill Bill series and Death Proof, were a bit different than his first few. They feel similar in a lot of ways, but they're ultimately genre films whereas his others were not, although they did pay homage to certain periods and styles. Based on advertisements, I thought Basterds might follow suit, as a sort of road/war movie featuring a band of hardened killers. And parts of the movie are exactly that. But only parts - the basterds are but one aspect of the two and a half hour film, one that I enjoyed immensely and just might have taken Pulp Fiction's place as my favorite by the eccentric director.

Tarantino has previously called Basterds a spaghetti western in WWII, and "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France" was once a considered title for the movie, and ended up as the name for the first chapter. Yeah, he's back to the chapters thing, and the film is a story in five parts. The first two are twenty minute vignettes that could work as shorts on their own, and basically establish the major players. There's Hans Landa, AKA "The Jew Hunter", the primary antagonist and quite possibly Tarantino's best character ever. Christoph Waltz turns in a completely stunning performance that got him an award at Cannes and should earn him some nominations next Spring. Shosanna Dreyfus is a French Jew who escaped death and runs a cinema. Lt. Aldo Raine is played to great humorous effect by Brad Pitt and leads the basterds, a unit of American Jews, to disrupt the Nazi war effort inside France. After these introductions, the next three chapters introduce, develop, and resolve the main plot - a new propaganda film (directed in real life by Eli Roth, creator of the Hostel series and starring as the enjoyably menacing and slightly crazy basterd known as "The Bear Jew" by the Germans) is being premiered in Paris, and a plan is concocted to burn it to the ground while a bunch of important Nazis are still inside. As you might guess with a Tarantino movie, there are multiple forces at work and things don't go quite as planned at any point.

As is his trademark, the movie features lots of long, leisurely conversations. The entire first chapter is a single scene where we learn to absolutely fear Landa, and all he does is drink some milk, smoke from an absurd pipe, and talk to a French farmer. There's a moment where they switch from French to English in a slightly clunky way, and you might think it's just the film excusing having foreign characters speak what the audience can understand. But it's just a clever subversion, as there's a specific reason the switch is made and the rest of the movie sees the majority of its dialogue be spoken by French people speaking French, German people speaking German, or whatever is appropriate. There's some humor in the subtitles too, as occasionally an obvious word will remain in its original language, such as "merci" appearing instead of "thank you". I was a bit surprised at the amount of foreign dialogue, but I appreciated it. The movie sure as hell ain't historically accurate, but it does feel fairly authentic, and the use of language goes a long way. Whereas Tarantino used dialogue in other films to mostly entertain the viewer and establish character, here it's all about building tension. A quite lengthy sequence in a German bar might have been interminable in less able hands, but I loved every minute as it slowly goes from funny, to uncomfortable, to downright dangerous. You can tell where it's going, but every step there can be excruciating.

I've seen a couple people praise the acting but dismiss Tarantino's direction, which seems foolish to me. You're not going to get a lot of good performances out of actors if you don't know how to direct them, unless they're seasoned thespians or something. When it's this universally good throughout the movie, maybe the guy behind it all deserves some credit. I mean, look at Diane Kruger. She's been in her share of movies, both in Hollywood and Germany, and she's never impressed anyone to my knowledge with anything but her looks. And here she is in Basterds, perfectly capturing the 40's movie star persona in one scene and completely desperate and disheveled in the next. She was seriously great, and she's just one of many, many actors you can say that about. The movie is shot pretty beautifully and traditionally by Tarantino, although it also has several touches of flair like the brief cutaway sequences narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and anachronistic music because while it doesn't make sense, damn it, this is his movie and he'll do what he wants. The soundtrack is mostly (entirely?) made up of songs taken from other movies, primarily those westerns, and it works pretty damn beautifully with the mood he creates. One scene in particular with Melanie Laurent, who's alternately charmingly sympathetic and frighteningly vengeful as Shosanna, as she prepares for something while a David Bowie song plays in the background is a great encapsulation of this. The brief gun fights are fairly normal if enjoyably chaotic and rapid, but it does tend to linger on some other violent moments, usually to brutal, darkly humorous effect. The climax is wonderfully explosive and hellish. The final scene, with Pitt in the same form he's been in the whole time and BJ Novak (most recognizable from The Office) as his calm companion, is a perfect ending to a film I seriously loved and can't wait to see again.

12 Monkeys

Another time travel movie. I've never seen any of Terry Gilliam's non-Monty Python work before, but it's really not too different in feel. The plot is an interesting, violent science fiction story, but there's a fair amount of silliness in certain scenes. There's something odd about the way he films things. I don't know if it's a lens or what, but just like his short before Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, it feels flat and contained or something, not exactly low budget, just a little antiquated in the apparent scope of the image. It doesn't make the film worse, it just seems unusual. The performances are odd, too. Bruce Willis is totally not his in his standard mode for serious movies, and Brad Pitt's character is completely nuts. A couple of his quirks seemed forced to me, but otherwise it was an extremely entertaining job.

Basically Willis lives in a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by a deadly virus, and he's sent back in time to gather information about what happened. I like how the plan isn't to change the past, just to help make the future better. Of course, things in time can become distorted and everything's not quite what they assumed, as the plot gets more and more convoluted. What I found interesting was how the main characters became more mentally disturbed and confused as they went on. In movies like this the characters always take things more in stride than we might realistically expect, but here they begin to seriously question whether they're imagining everything or not. It all leads to the inevitable circular ending. Really enjoyable film.

Burn After Reading

As far as movies by the Coen brothers go, Burn After Reading is merely in the middle of the road. Fortunately, it's such a damn good road that saying it's in the middle is hardly a knock. I didn't love it as much as their best work, but I've only come to appreciate it more since I've watched it, and it's not nearly as close to bad as say, The Ladykillers. It's a unique addition to their body of work, mixing the humor of their sillier movies with the very frank violence of their serious films. It's sort of a satire of espionage thrillers, but also not really. It's pretty short, but also takes a while to really get going. The plot's a pretty tightly coiled knot by the end, although I kind of wished there was some more convolutions to really take it all the way. I feel like it could have been great with a tighter script, but as it is, it's still pretty good.

Production-wise, it's as good as the Coens have ever been. The score is bombastic and completely over the top for the content, adding to the satirical vibe. It's their first film without their usual cinematographer in a long time, but they don't miss a beat, with plenty of wonderfully shot moments, especially the ones at the CIA headquarters. There's some really cool zoom shots that show the location, and I love the way the camera follows people's feet as they walk from room to room. The CIA scenes in general are great, with JK Simmons hilarious as usual as the man in charge of the incident, and the coda where they talk about what happened sums up the movie perfectly. The cast is their biggest yet, with Oscar winners George Clooney, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton, and nominees Brad Pitt and John Malkovich. They all play their roles very well. Swinton's character seemed more pointless than the others, and Malkovich's dialogue wasn't as funny as it tried to be, but they still fit appropriately into the story. Pitt was great as a moronic gym instructor, and I ended up wishing the movie had more of him. McDormand and Clooney are in a lot of their movies, which makes sense for Frances since she's married to Joel, and they're great again in parts written for them.

After a good amount of time introducing the characters and how they know each other, the story begins when Pitt and McDormand find what they believe is Malkovich's "secret CIA shit" and try to ransom it back to him, and then a bunch of crazy things happen that result in some characters dead, some on the run, and some intact. The CIA is paying attention, but even they're not sure what's happening and don't seem to care too much. They're pretty much in the same position as the audience, wondering what the point is. It's kinda gutsy to make a movie with no point, but in a way that IS the point, and the way they go about showing it is pretty great. It's pretty funny too, and I'm looking forward to watching it again more than No Country for Old Men, so take that for it's worth. They're already filming their next movie, which has a cast of unknowns instead of one of stars, so we'll see what happens.

PS: I just noticed that this is the second review of a Coen movie in a row that I've derided The Ladykillers, which I didn't intend to do. It's really not a terrible movie, it's just definitely not what you should watch if you want to see what they're about.

Babel

I haven't seen either of Iñárritu's other films, but apparently they are similar in structure to this; several different stories of human drama interconnected by a single event. In this case it's the accidental shooting of an American tourist by a Moroccan child with a Japanese former hunter's rifle. The narrative jumps between Morocco, Japan, and the California/Mexico border area, where the tourist' children are being watched by their immigrant babysitter. The different stories take place at different times, where we see glimpses of the future in one place and a callback to the past elsewhere. It's an interesting structure that rewards close watching. Although the plot is intricate, the movie is really more about people coping with tragedy and their own problems while others ignore their need for help. It's a true human drama. The acting is really good, even the child actors do their jobs competently. Pitt and Blanchett are easily the most famous people in the movie, and their presence could have been very distracting, but they do their jobs and handle their roles very well. Despite their star power, their segments don't jive improperly with the rest of the scenes. The entire film is very technically proficient, with good editing, beautifully shot vistas, and lots of subtle film-making touches that add to the effectiveness without being overbearing. The original score is also wonderful and deservedly won an Oscar.

I do think it had some problems though, mostly having to do with lack of resolution. A couple threads are wrapped up satisfyingly, if also a bit second-handedly. However, a lot, and I mean a LOT, is just left unfinished. Characters run away and are never heard from again. Fates of families are left in the balance. Soul-searching letters are written and not revealed to the audience. What's the point of a movie like this? Is it really saying all that much with just the bits of story it tells us? It wasn't nearly as sad as I expected it to be, and it kind of feels like a couple of hours of worrying without finding out what I was really waiting for. There are plenty of little plot giblets that go nowhere, and just ask more questions without answering any. The film itself is brilliantly crafted, and I did like it a lot while I was watching it. But it just comes off as a bit pretentious and meaningless in the end, like they just got bored and decided to stop making it, saying "It's good enough, the critics will love it." It got solid reviews, a bunch of award nominations, and is one of his most successful movies. But I think it could have been better.