I can think of several ways the movie could be more satisfying, but the truth is, after the death/resurrection/emotional climax, Cameron had nowhere else to go except into the pit. The theatrical version cuts his hokeyness a bit (thankfully), but it would never satisfy so long as he was committed to bringing us into direct contact with the aliens one last time. He forces them to become a contrived plot point rather than a mysterious texture.
Thankfully, there's lots of sturdy suspense and memorable setpieces leading up to that moment so the film still works for me overall.
There is a raw, relentless physicality to this that makes the film particularly intense. The death of Vazquez has always resonated with me in a strange way. The pain in her voice when she cries out "oh no" after being paralyzed by an acid burn on her leg....it's more than just imminent death, it is the deep sting of failure.
Stone's overwrought professional football movie is very entertaining (I've seen the film several times even though I don't think it's that great) but it thinks it is way more insightful and observant than it truly is. Add to that Stone getting a little carried away with his collage style editing and some frustratingly thin characterizations. I think Jerry Maguire played the changing-face-of-pro-sports-in-the-90's card way better, though it is fun to watch Al Pacino scream at Cameron Diaz.
Rossellini, who soared with his careful examination of Louis XIV, stumbles here as he is completely baffled by the notion of a Christian physicist and mathematician. The only way he can really reconcile it is by playing up the religious environment as an almost dryly comic horror movie, and then making the rest of the movie like a long series of excuses for how a rational man embraces the spiritual. Though a master of form, Rossellini can't overcome his own prejudices in the end, cutting the heart out of his subject altogether.
Altman's utterly bonkers takedown of American Exceptionalism finds in Brewster’s naïve dream of winged flight a metaphorical prophecy that will be fulfilled years later for the aviary that contains him. In 2013, the Astrodome is no longer "the 8th wonder of the world" and can’t even be opened publicly because it is so far out of code. The $200+ million it will take to bring the cutting edge back up to date is more than anyone really wants to invest and the building will likely be destroyed. A strange roadmarker in the history of modern American thing-building, the only significance it has is as a spiritual forefather to the dozens of stadiums and arenas built since 1965. If your only asset is how far ahead of the game you are, what happens when the game catches up? Even the eponymous AstroTurf has become obsolete with new developments in field design and technology.
Though the Dome is "historical," the thought of its preservation raises a curious question as to the purpose of historical preservation. The area around the Dome has changed too. AstroWorld also has been shuttered and the notion of Houston as a city on the brink of outer space is probably laughable to many today. Altman knows none of this though yet thanks to his integrated setting, the movie even speaks more clearly to its theme of the limitations of innovation now than it probably did in 1970.
Oh John Woo: I don't care what people say about Tarantino, you are the true Travolta whisperer.
It tries its hardest to rise above the worst trappings of the biopic formula while still falling prey to its easiest pitfall: important person's life played as greatest hits collection. Kudos for a touch of self-awareness toward the end but it still ends up as a movie that doesn't quite know what it wants to say about King, race and America. Still, spending two hours with Ving Rhames is a heck of a consolation so I'll call it even.
What a frightening landscape where terror has been completely internalized within the populace and the arbiters of justice may have an absolute authority, but are not invincible and certainly not in the majority. I enjoyed this thoroughly for creating a living world and then taking it seriously. I hope there's more where this came from...
John Woo simultaneously deconstructs the American macho action fantasy while giving us one of the genre's greatest texts.
It's pretty obvious to me that from 1994 onward, Hugh Grant basically just channels Emma Thompson's performance from Junior.
I would say this is more fun and effective than it has any right to be, but that's wrong. This movie has every right to be this enjoyable, it's the common practices of the genre that have lowered expectations. Game performances from all involved, decent effects, a winking understanding of genre convention (as was the post-Scream landscape) and a legit goofiness that doesn't get in the way of the suspense. I mean, no one's reinventing the wheel here, just showing we still know how to make wheels that can go round without having to completely sacrifice our intelligence. We've seen what a decent writer can do to standard genre material (John Sayles, Kevin Williamson), I don't know why this is still so hard.
As joyful and inspiring as a film about being deaf and blind can be, but not without a sadness lurking underneath. It is the care in observation Herzog takes with his subjects that makes this so affecting and humanizing. Watching the companions sign out everything on the hands, watching the doctor carefully help the young man no longer fear the water, watching the son wander away and find a tree that captures his imagination. Though not as aesthetically captivating as his future documentaries, we still see here the particularly observant and unwavering eye that has made Herzog one of the great filmmakers of our time.
Ok, we're way past due for a critical re-appraisal of this masterwork. Only Hollywood can use the power of Hollywood to deconstruct Hollywood while creating Hollywood.
A not-so-great Alien rip-off that never commits to a consistent tone, despite having some nice art direction and a slightly interesting sci-fi atmosphere. Peter Weller simply lacks the charisma and dynamic screen personality to make this work (see Stallone in Cosmatos' 1986 film, Cobra for an example of the opposite). Everything Cosmatos got wrong here James Cameron improved upon with his own deep-sea alien adventure from the same year, rendering this film doubly obsolete.
I love the atmosphere, the sense of place, the performances, even the underlying notion of shipwrecked masculinity (and thank you Jeff Nichols for avoiding too much Malickian magical realism that seems so en vogue these days), but it still felt only half-cooked. Don't get me wrong, I'll take half-cooked Nichols over most of Sundance now and forever, but I have two major issues: 1) overly calculated sub-themes that stretched the movie too thinly, and 2) I'm not completely positive Nichols believes any of this or just really thinks its cool. In the end it feels a little too calculated to be real and a little too rugged to be calculated. I liked it and really wanted to love it but found myself wanting to love it more than I actually did because it got so many things right that so many other American indies get wrong.
Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013) [letterboxd capsule]
Relentlessly grim and frustratingly stupid, Nicolas Winding Refn lives up to his name in offering us the cinematic equivalent of Wingdings: arbitrary symbolism self-consciously devoid of feeling. It's only natural this would be dedicated to Jodorowsky.
How do you put these three guys together during the height of their comedic powers and not care to do anything with them beyond fill out some rudimentary plot theatrics? Missed opportunity.
Malick gives into his worst tendencies and presents a self-parody of the everything-is-connectedness pap, which is supposed to lift a fairly mundane love story to the heights of transcendent art. Only, it has no real insight into human relationships and completely eschews human interest at every turn by refusing to give us anything besides vaguely poetic descriptives. I call baloney on Malick's overhyped spirituality too, which is really just a glorified universalism, embracing all the best of humanity, not blaming people for their bad choices and selfishness but deifying the journey while assuming there is no destination. Suburban Oklahoma never looked so stunning but it still felt just as empty.
It's not that I don't appreciate Carruth's immersive aesthetic, it's that he gives me so little to cling to throughout that I get to the end having felt very little except some vague unions between people and places. I get that he's eschewing conventional narrative for a sort of poetic grandeur, but poetry resonates most clearly if the reader can associate something of himself to the writing.
So there are a dozen things worth liking about the movie (the astonishing opening sequence, Steimetz's performance, a number of cyclical juxtapositions that crackle with originality and bold vision) and I would take it over the heap of cookie-cutter Sundancers out there, but in the end I see something I'm trying my hardest to connect to because of the promise and the boldness I see in snippets, but I have to consult the Wikipedia page afterward just to make a basic timeline of events and characters. There is a difference between representing a fragmented psyche and cutting over top of the truth you are trying to sift out.
Even though I had a bunch of similar issues with Primer, I will watch anything Carruth makes because I'm sure at some point down the line, he will put it all together and build a true masterwork. As much as I wanted this to be it, it wasn't (or at least, it wasn't yet).
I was a little concerned Woo's grandiose masculinity was going to play really poorly in wartime, but instead of using his techniques to create an atmosphere of absurd control by the hero, he creates an environment of steady chaos, where the common denominator is death and the common differentiator is luck. Really, there's no more astute way to deal with equality than to put everyone within an environment of relentless oppression.
It was fascinating to see Woo's choregraphy transported to the battlefield, where his roving camera finds every assault on identity, where one soldier jumps into frame only to be blown out of it just as another fills his place only to be shot to pieces. That dehumanizing constant counters beautifully with the scenes at camp where we are slowly building relationships with these guys, their commonality being that they somehow made it through the day while they try to forget what lies ahead tomorrow.
Solid, heartfelt and technically accomplished, I have no clue why people have decided to hate this so much.
Wim Wenders rips out the barely beating heart of the German post-war existential crisis and eats it for breakfast by breaking the golden eggs of despair, suicide, meaninglessness and absurdity on top of the aimless wanderings of would-be poets, lovers and carinvalé and seeing what sticks. The fact that he's able to do this with a great degree of cynicism and dry humor while keeping the whole thing light and engaging is testament to his strengths as a filmmaker.
Beautifully lensed yet insufferable in many respects, Antonioni just can't fully sympathize with free-spirited youth because he's too much of a materialist. Indeed, he shoots the stuff of modernity better than nearly anyone else ever has (especially architecture), he just can't hang it on anything worthwhile here. I found myself way more interested in the outcome of the real estate deal than I did the plight of the youth, which I don't think was his intention.
No comments:
Post a Comment