February 5th, 2010
Two strong films about desperation amid tough times in Eastern Europe. The bleakness of the former is haunting even as it verges on becoming a crime thriller. Import/Export paints a much seedier, grittier portrait. Much (all?) of the interior scenes are filmed in static/unmoving camera shots reminiscent of the recently released 1975 classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
The Seagull = Fine
Screened as part of the National Gallery of Art’s “Celebrating Chekhov on the Russian Screen” series. The best parts were the subtitled translations of Russian insults. I’m still waiting for an opportunity to call someone a “Bourgeois Kievian.”
Encounters at the End of the World = recommended
Werner Herzog’s documentary about Antarctica focuses on the people who live there: scientists, adventurers, wandering philosophers. A nice detour touching on some of Herzog’s old man vs. nature themes. The shots of strange ocean creatures living deep under the Antarctic ice are amazing.
New World Order = highly not recommended
Clearly at least one of the “best documentaries of the decade” lists I added to my Netflix queue was a mistake of enormous magnitude.
Categories: Blog, the cinematical
February 3rd, 2010
I have no problem with the Academy’s choice to expand best picture nominees to ten this year. It is high-profile exposure for great films. Unfortunately, I’ve seen most of the just-announced ten and they are not great. A look at Metacritic’s assessment of Blind Side inspired me to highlight that site’s clearest critical insult of each nominee.
- Avatar
- “Avatar clears the hurdle in terms of being optical candy. Its story, though, is pure cheese.”
—Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
- The Blind Side
- “…peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of African-Americans who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them.”
—Melissa Anderson, Village Voice
- District 9
- “It’s a bad joke that District 9 will be hailed for its ‘originality.’”
—Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
- An Education
- “…a third-act tonal shift makes for an incongruous, excessively moralistic fit with everything that’s preceded. Most insulting, though, is the way in which the climactic passages miraculously tidy up every frayed edge of Jenny’s life.”
—Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
- The Hurt Locker
- “Stretched both timewise and for plausibility.”
—Kyle Smith, New York Post
- Inglourious Basterds
- “The only hope for Inglourious Basterds is that audiences will embrace it the way the Broadway crowd did “Springtime for Hitler”: because it’s so bad they think it’s good.”
—Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
- Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
- “In its eagerness to drag us through the lower depths of human experience, Precious leaves no space for the audience to breathe or to draw our own conclusions. For a film about empowerment and self-actualization, it wields an awfully large cudgel.”
—Dana Stevens, Slate
- A Serious Man
- “All the Coens come up with is a movie about bad things happening to limited people.”
—Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
- Up
- “Save for a few inspired canine gags and a handful of very pretty visual details, Up left me cold. Its charms appear to have been applied with surgical precision; by the end, I felt expertly sutured, but not much else.”
—Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com
- Up in the Air
- “[Writer/Director Jason Reitman] feels the constant need to “deepen” his characters, granting them wants and motivations–especially during the moralistic third act–that are totally alien to how they’re initially portrayed.”
—Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
I’ll probably try to see The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air before the 22nd, but so far I’m not excited to call any of these films the best of 2009. The big winner this year might end up being The Baltimore Sun.
Categories: Blog, the cinematical
February 2nd, 2010
Mandoo Soup at Java Green
The best thing I ate this week was Mandoo soup at Java Green here in DC. The broth is flavorful, the dumplings are pleasantly plump, and a nice mix of vegetables and rice cakes (with perhaps a touch of sesame) round out the soup. Highly recommended.
P.S. Eat is the second in a series of series I think maybe I can possibly post to this space regularly. Eat will highlight the most delicious things I eat.
Categories: Blog, dc, the edible
January 28th, 2010
Moon = fine
My recollection of the trailer for Duncan Jones’ Moon deceptively had me believing that the film would be a long, drawn out contemplative work focusing on boredom and isolation in a mining shack on the Moon. I am a big fan of films about boredom. Instead, it turned into a tight little corporate dystopia flick. On the moon. Sam Rockwell was great. The film was enjoyable. Not enjoyable enough that I’d call it “recommended.”
Lesser films seen this week:
- Vision = not recommended. Saw this as part of the Goethe Institute’s “Film | Neu” German language festival. Hopefully there were better films in the series. This story about a group of 11th Century nuns earning a tiny degree of liberation under the leadership of a charismatic absinthe-addict certainly offers an unusual historical setting. Unfortunately, the narrative is completely conventional.
- Up = fine. Watched via Netflix because it figured prominently in respectable end-of-year lists. As a part-time curmudgeon who likes to travel, I identified with Carl. I just didn’t find this particular flying house adventure all that entertaining.
P.S. Viewing Habit is the first in a series of series I think maybe I can possibly post to this space regularly. “Habit” does not imply that each post will involve nuns. I will continue to rate films on my five point scale as either highly recommended, recommended, fine, not recommended, or highly not recommended.
Categories: the cinematical
November 30th, 2009
I’m happy to report that with The Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson seems to have turned things around. The chart above is probably a bit unfair, but his films have definitely had diminishing returns for me over time. I’ve always loved the aesthetic of his films, but I’ve been less and less patient with his stilted characters, relationships, and plots. Animation is a great match for his his visual language, and adapting Roald Dahl’s children’s book gives him a simple enough story to tell that falls in line nicely with the families and teams-on-a-mission he’s chronicled from the start.
Categories: Blog, the cinematical
September 19th, 2009
Movie posters for Food Inc, Fresh, King Corn, and Julie and Julia
I’m not going to defend Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia as Oscar-worthy when that season comes around, but I think it has an important lesson for Documentary filmmakers. Watching it made me a lot more excited about eating good food than any food-policy documentary I’ve seen. I’m thinking specifically of Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc., Ana Sofia Joanes’ Fresh, and Aaron Woolf’s King Corn. With various degrees of success, each aims to educate Americans on the ills of industrial agriculture by weaving a storyline or four around an interview with Michael Pollan.
Julie & Julia does not mention corn subsidies or perhaps even the word organic. It simply tells two true stories about people who love food. It makes you want to go home and cook something wonderful in your kitchen. This is the radical action that the food docs (and Michael Pollan) aim to accomplish. If you get excited about cooking, it won’t be long before you start seeking out fresh vegetables at your local farmers market and learning about evil corn lobbyists.
Cinema (especially activist nonfiction) succeeds when it remains focused on showing through storytelling.
Categories: Blog, the cinematical, the political
April 7th, 2009
Apparently the President will be there. Another possibility is that Barack Obama clip art can sell anything. I’m buying my ticket now.
Categories: Blog, dc, the political
