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Cloverfield (2008)
A destruction movie with the purest intentions
There's been a lot of talk going around that Cloverfield is a creature feature that tries, and fails, to put a humanistic face on the experience of destruction. But Cloverfield, which is filmed entirely with a hand-held camera operated by several of the main actors, does not need to be a humanistic; it's just human. With its characters' almost total lack of information, its sensory limitations, and its shortness, Cloverfield presents a truly real view of destruction. We cannot see everything, can see almost nothing, and that is where the horrific truth lies. Its success lies in its ability to capture how weak humans are in the face of terror, how insignificant and cursory our sufferings.
No, the acting isn't terrific; no, the writing isn't even close to original; no, not all the plot points click together just so. But what is clear here, and what lasts and lingers and is remembered, is the producer's and director's deep affection for monstrosity, for fear, for buildings falling down and people being sucked up into abysmal misery. Cloverfield is all at once visceral and clever, shamelessly entertaining and uncompromisingly scary, emotionally sadistic and wisely comic. Maybe everyone, in the end, does die; but no recent movie has offered as much proof that blood is still pumping through American cinema's veins.
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Terrific, but highly misunderstood
Movies like this, including Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, are so highly misunderstood because viewers don't know how to watch them. The Virgin Suicies, and Coppola's other films, are not about plot or even character. Her concerns are more with era, beauty, youth, innocence, and a general pathos of longing that transcends the limits of our exterior identity and melds, like the noses in I Heart Huckabees, with our surroundings.
To look for a plot with this movie in particular is to look for a reason for the girls' suicides. Some argue that the parents' strictness was to blame, others argue that they only wanted attention (a misguided idea picked up by the tone of the boys in the end of the book and movie). Really, the reason matches the entire mood of the movie. The girls were bored with mundane life in America, having nothing to look forward to, and The Virgin Suicides is a beautiful study in just that--mundaneness. Its simplicity and unpretentiousness are what most astound.
L'enfant (2005)
A distinctly French picture of ruined innocence
Bruno and Sofia are kids, teenagers. They spend their days turning stolen items in for cash just as fast as they can burn the cash on items they'd like for themselves. There are, without a doubt, Frenchly in love. (There is a wonderful scene where they lean against a rented car and rub their faces against one another's--a strongly felt alternative to the Hollywood kiss.) But there's a problem. They also *have* a kid. One that Sofia loves, like one might love someone else's puppy, and one that Bruno is Camusesquely indifferent to. Very suddenly, and not very far into the otherwise short film, he sells the baby to carriers that will find an adoptive family. When he reports this to Sonia, waving the cash he's received in her face, he expects her to be just as content and unbothered as he is. Instead, she faints. And in the hospital he takes her to, she tells the staff what he's done.
So begins the downward spiral Bruno finds himself in for the rest of the movie; the details of which I won't divulge here. But if you were to graph Bruno for the last half of the movie, there'd be a negative slope for personal safety, a negative slope for happiness, but a positive slope for moral justness. That's the irony--the sad irony--of Bruno's character. As he goes about trying to redeem his sin and reclaim the love of Sonia (who now refuses to talk to him), he gets himself in more and more trouble, regenerating himself by way of the only means he's familiar with--crime.
The title of this beautiful, haunting film is "L'Enfant." And while that may ostensibly refer to the infant in question, what it really refers to is the child that Bruno is. For instance, in a scene where he and younger boy are anticipating robbing a woman, he still has the naiveté and kiddishness to laugh when the younger boy farts. It's a movie not about crime and punishment, but about youngness, innocence, and a beautiful life shortened, blackened, by poverty--poverty of the wallet, and of the soul.
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Kitschy clichés and poor characterization
This has to be, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time. I say that with great disappointment, because pre-viewing, I'd heard great things and I, indeed, wanted it to be great.
It wasn't. What Miranda July has managed to do is stir together some very promising story lines (a lonely artist, a failed interracial marriage, sexual curiosity among youngsters, and modern art), and ruin each and every one of them by trying to the make the film too "cute," too "aww," to "indie." Her characters are, though not shallow, badly developed. A lovelorn artist with charming naiveté turns into a weirdish stalker type who likes to say very random things. A single father with two biracial sons turns into an angst-filled teenager all grown up, deep thoughts and insecurities included.
The problem with this movie is that July has written a lot of plot lines that really make no structural sense. It's like a collage of half-finished story lines for a multitude of other, just as bad indie movies. The script is full of very unrealistic dialogue, and stupid, awkward situations. All in all, these people don't make sense. For a movie whose objective is to mirror us, the world, me, you, everyone we know, this film, for one, fails miserably.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
A very moving portrait of wasted youth and ruined innocence
"Y tu mama tambien," like a lot of the films from the new generation of artsy Mexican directors (Inarritu, Almodovar), is seemingly unpretentious. At its surface, it's a short movie about two young teenage boys who take a road trip through the countryside of Mexico with an older and more experienced woman. Up to this point, the two boys have spent most of their days dallying in drugs, alcohol, one-minute sex and, occasionally, longing-filled masturbation. Their innocence and naiveté is charming enough, but in the company of a relative-by-marriage named Luisa, the boys realize they have a lot to learn. Their friendship is tested by their shared desire for this woman, and, less obviously, by their curdled and misspoken feelings toward each other.
A lot of critics and fans praise this movie because it is unafraid to show sex. True, many of the scenes are graphic and even have a the ironic flavor of bad porn. But people who can't get over the sex are missing the point--and believe me, that's tough to say as a seventeen year-old male. The point of the movie can be summed up in one of Luisa's lines near the film's end--"Life is like the surf, so give yourself away to the sea." As the trio travels through dirt-poor sections of Mexico, they collide with disturbing vignettes of death and disaster--the side of Mexico that these three rarely see. Drugs, sex, partying aside--all that these very confused people are trying to do is enjoy the small slices of life they've been doled. And aren't we all?
Marie Antoinette (2006)
An affecting portrait of an 18th century Paris Hilton
We all know the story: Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. Social brat, rich, politically unaware, spoiled little girl. I'd thought this movie would offer some new revelations into Antoinette's life, but, for the most part, it didn't. Which is to compliment the movie. What the movie does succeed in doing is pulling sympathy out of the viewer. We come to know Antoinette as pure and rather innocent, guilted by the very people in government for not being aware of France's misery that had sheltered her away from it in the first place.
The very last shot of the movie epitomized this tragedy, and also the tragedy of the end of monarchic France. (Those who have seen the film won't be able to forget this shot.) It is a still shot of the chandelier of Antoinette's bedroom, on the floor, shattered. I don't have time or room here to explain all of the things this shattered chandelier means. But it sums up a lot: France's ruined glory, Antoinette's ruined innocence, the end of the king and queen, the end of their parties and misters and mistresses, the end of it all. It is a heart-wrenching, Ishiguro-esquire ending. And it makes the movie, despite the film's errors of cinematography and context development, very worth-seeing.
Hard Candy (2005)
Hard Candy asks a lot of important questions...
...But does it answer them? I'll assume everyone already knows the basic storyline. A girl who seems interested in an older man she met on the Internet transforms into some kind of lunatic bent on revenge against pedophiles. Indeed, the girl is a lunatic, and she is terrible. There are long, drawn-out sequences of torture both physical and emotional. I'll throw the word out there, "castration." Some of these scenes are the most disturbing in film I have come across in years. But, here's the first question Hard Candy asks: how terrible can you really be to a pedophile? But then again, another: what defines a pedophile? As we come to learn, Jeff is lonely, and appreciative of young, pure beauty. Hard Candy offers the answer to pedophilia that Nabokov uses in Lolita: Jeff was once in love when he was Hayley's age. His life is built on a constant chase to find that young love again, even as he persists to grow older and older. Are there some legitimate excuses for pedophilia? Is it wrong for people to try and understand it? How much of our lives is based on sexual pursuit? And is seemingly sexual pursuit always, on its deepest level, just simply sexual? Does educating young teenagers about the dangers of sex with strangers and Internet stalking necessarily help them, or does it ruin their innocence just as severely as that which it is used against? And finally, how mean can people truly be to each other? These are the questions Hard Candy asks, but unfortunately, the movie drags out the thriller aspect and turns itself into too much disturbing "fun" to serve as any kind of allegorical answer.
All the King's Men (2006)
Pretty good acting, but terribly misguided directing
Despite myself (I am one of many who thinks Sean Penn is full of himself and need a break from the screen), I do think the man gave a startlingly good performance as governor Willie Starks. James Gandolfini, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo, and Jude Law all gave deft performances as well. Kate Winslet was unusually weak in this movie, but what really ruined the film for me was the odd, almost strange directing. There are camera shots that will make you cringe (at least a two second pause on a shaking chandelier after Hopkins raises his voice); the symbolism is very, very obvious and so it loses its credibility; and finally, the film tries to be too dramatic. Dramatic music plays while Sean Penn delivers speeches, there are dramatically loud chords signaling a shift in mood characteristic of 80's horror movies. I rated this movie a 7, because it is powerful, and because it is important, but its fatal flaw lies in that it attempts to be far grander and far larger than it really is.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Fascinating and Fantastic
When you watch Mulholland Dr., you will not immediately understand everything (you might not understand anything). But an intelligent viewer will gather that, though they might not get everything right away, there is at least something to get. There is a structure to Mulholland Dr., there is a rhyme to its reason. What's important to remember is that it is about dreams. And not only those we experience in our sleep. Dreams that are projections of what our futures might have been like, dreams of going back and changing things, dreams of becoming something important and necessary to the world. But as Peter Travers stated in his Rolling Stone review, just "let it take you in." I am confident that if you do let it take you in, with all its colors and beautiful score pieces, etc., you will take from this movie perhaps not a gist of the real plot, but instead what is truly important--the actual feel of a film that is destined to become a classic.
Jarhead (2005)
Sexual Deprivation, and other elements of war...
My favorite movie of all time is American Beauty, so I expected a lot from this movie, directed, of course, by Sam Mendes. Its sharp opening and initial surreally bright cinematography is reminiscent of Mendes, but throughout the movie I made the mistake of comparing this to Mendes's early work--when it in fact is nothing like American Beauty or Road to Perdition. And I think that is the mistake a lot of critics make in reviewing this movie--you must not look at Jarhead as another Mendes, you must look at it as a "war" movie superior to its contemporaries. Another mistake Jarhead reviewers make is looking at this movie as all action, snappy character development, just like other movies of its genre. This is the story of a man descending into anger and depression ignited by war. There are a lot of symbolic elements, a lot of themes that most people will not see when viewing. There is also the theme of political blindness, and sexual deprivation, maybe even suppressed homosexuality? In any case, Jarhead is a movie to see, and not one to just watch for entertainment. Is "Mendesian" in its literary qualities--irony, metaphor, symbolism, but at the same time, a thrilling and tragically hysterical movie experience.
The Village (2004)
A Gallery of Brilliant Performances
Let me preface this by saying I thought this movie was very underrated. It's not that people didn't get it--they were simply expecting something else. And I would caution you to confuse disappointment with surprise.
I personally thought that Bryce Dallas Howard's performance was so brilliant that I was disappointed she was not nominated for it at the Oscars. Her pouring of her emotions--the natural flow and grace of her character. She is a breath of fresh air among what many modern critics consider great acting. No, she wasn't a lost soul caught in the center of a mid-life disaster--she did not love the bottle and she did not love strange men. She was only a girl with a blindness that, rather than incapacitating her, made her stronger. She was bright, charming, and insightful...and alas, you forget it is only an act.
I also thought John Hurt's performance was remarkable, as was Adrien Brody's. Although Brody's role as a mentally retarded young man was subtle and seemingly unimportant to the storyline, his presence is felt throughout the whole movie.
Tremendous movie, chilling performances. And perhaps if we did not all see this as a horror film, it would not prove to be such a disappointment.
Crash (2004)
A Menagerie of Raw Human Emotion
In the first scene of this film, Don Cheadle says, among other profound things, "I think we just crash into each other, just to feel something." This short quote, in actuality, sums up the entire point that the filmmakers were trying present. In the sleepy city of Los Angeles, the viewers are taken on a wild ride - perhaps a corny simile, noting the title - in the lives of numerous, nameless souls, all lost and confused. We see the lives of racial minorities living in the back alley slums of the city, and in the next scene, the lives of rich bigot whites. By the end of the film, we realize that whether black or white or rich or poor, we are all looking for answers, and that, although we do not realize it, those answers lie in the most unlikely people around us. A menagerie of raw human emotion - fear, anger, sadness, joy, and above all, dysphoria. Although it seems like quite a list to take on in one film, perhaps too long, Crash tackles them all with both open-mindedness and subtle restraint, in only 113 minutes. It took Magnolia three hours, and believe me, Crash leaves Magnolia in the dust. This wild ride of a film - by the end of it, the viewer will have crashed into the truth of their own lives, going home to their beds, popcorn stuck in their back molars, stunned - and emotionally drained.