This is the fifth list that I've made here and this year it seemed very easy. So in no particular order, here are the ten:
Brick
The Science of Sleep
Away From Her
Brothers of the Head
Clean
Strangers With Candy
Volver
The Proposition
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Brendan: I won't waste your time: you don't know me.Film noir is an inferred genre, born out of the combination of French film criticism and pulp detective novels. The films considered to be classic film noir (from about 1941-1958) were never made as film noir, but as thrillers with low budgets and european directors. The conventions of film noir emerged from the constraints and sensibilities of post-war America with an existential dread casting dark shadows over it all. It's a purely cinematic genre that draws you in with stories of passion, lust, greed and murder.
Laura: I know everyone, and I have all the time in the world.
I've been watching a lot of films lately, which is a lot of fun. Much of that is due to subscribing to a DVD-by-mail service called Zip.ca. You add films to your Ziplist (which is like the Netflix queue) and then they are shipped to you. Since I've signed up I haven't been able to get the number of films on my list below 200. That's because I keep adding films to the list. What is great about it is that it makes it possible to fill in gaps in my viewing habits. Lately I've been navigating through a fairly rich vein of French cinema where I've been able to alternate back and forth from Nouvelle Vague to more recent (and related) films such as Sur Mes Levres (Read My Lips), De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), and Rois et reine (Kings and Queen). It is very good to be able to see some of the great work that has been done and it's an inspiration as well. I love watching films.
tags: film, dvd, cinema
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If you write about films, you have to make lists and this is the time of year that you make those lists. 2005 was a pretty good year for films and with my joining of Zip.ca I was able to see many more films than I ever have before and the Atlantic Film Festival allowed me to immerse myself in film, so I have a larger body to choose from. That being said, it was easier to pick out ten films that loved. Here's the list in roughly ascending order:
What matters is the journey.Cillian Murphy is wonderful as Patrick "Kitten" Braden in Neil Jordan's latest film, Breakfast on Pluto. It's based on a novel by Patrick McCabe (who cowrote the screenplay with Jordan) and there is a wonderful novelistic tone to the film which is divided up with handwritten chapter titles. The story is told from Kitten's point of view which gives the events a relentlessly positive tone, no matter how horrible things become. Set in Ireland and London in the 70s as Kitten the transvestite looks for his mother against a landscape of political conflict and violence. Gorgeously shot by Declan Quinn, it manages to mirror the spirit of the main character with perfectly composed and lit frames.
The music mockumentary is a difficult form due to some outstanding films that established the genre. It's All Gone Pete Tong starts off as an over-the-top mockumentary about a DJ that has many funny bits in the opening act, but they start to seem a bit routine. But then the film begins to shift tone as our hero, Frankie Wilde, begins to lose his hearing. The performance by Paul Kaye is amazing and he manages to go from slapstick to serious as the film progresses. His manager, played by Mike Wilmot as a sleazy self-absorbed show business-type perpetually on the verge of a heart attack serves as Frankie's connection to the world. Things start to fall apart for Frankie and his manager can't make any more excuses as the world goes silent for the DJ.
Up to this point I was a bit confused by the shift in tone, but one scene with the appearance of Beatriz Batarda as a lip-reading teacher, completely won me over. The film is visually and sonically gorgeous and the critical scene where Frankie learns to lip read is an amazing use of sound and visuals. The lighter tone of the earlier scenes didn't prepare me for that scene and it hit me just right and all my doubts about the film were erased. For the first time I have more of an appreciation and understanding of how it is possible to read lips. With the shift in tone in that scene the film pretty much becomes a drama that worked very well for me.
Shot and mixed in a bold and aggressive style, it's sophisticated and polished and I was even more surprised when I found out it was shot on HD. Structurally and in technique I loved the film. It begins as a mockumentary, then some of the over-the-top elements begin to drop out as it looks and feels more like verité, and finally it moves into more traditional drama. It's an unconventional structure and that's what threw me off, but I'm very glad that I stuck with it.
tags: film, review, itsallgonepetetong
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What is the purpose of life?Niceland is a quirkly little film that takes us on a search for meaning. It's a simple story constructed out of complex characters. Set in a vaguely Scandanavian city and with an international cast with a range of accents but pretty much all in English (with English subtitles). All this results in a film that is set in a place that seems to be a strange hybrid that allows broader points to be made about consumer society. The good thing is that director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson wisely chooses to focus on the personal stories rather than the social commentary. The main characters are mentally challenged, but it's never explored or explained in any detail... it's about the people and how they relate to each other. I loved the characters and the answer to their problems is quite obvious from the beginning, but we watch as everyone tries to make things much more complicated than they are. It may not be for everyone, but I found it sweet and refreshing. tags: film, review, niceland, aff2005
Take the million, write something else.I don't know what it is, but it seems that if Patricia Clarkson is in a film, there is a strong possibility that I'll like it. She's one of the main actors in The Dying Gaul and she delivers another layered and nuanced performance. The Dying Gaul is based on a play by Craig Lucas and the film is also his film directing debut. It's an impressive debut and while the film has the focused characterization and simple locations of a play, it's very cinematic and I think that I'd like the film more than the play. The film is gorgeous with wonderful performances all around. It's a complicated, noirish story that doesn't lapse into formula. I'm glad that I knew very little about the film as it moved around in interesting and surprising ways.
A thriller often is an interesting exercise. How are things arranged and how do they play out? A thriller can be constructed out of many well-worn plots and be reasonably pleasing depending on the skill of the director, the crew and the actors. The smart way to handle a thriller is to combine an interesting plot with some interesting characters. A film should never be just about the events, but the people.
In Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres) Jacques Audiard stylishly presents two unforgettable characters.
Emmanuelle Devos is great as Carla, a woman who is almost deaf and works in an office where she is overworked and ignored. When she is given the opportunity to hire an assistant she chooses Paul (played by Vincent Cassel), who has just been released from prison. They begin a strange friendship and the film constantly keeps you intrigued in figuring out what is going on between them. Is she someone who is plain and not noticed, a femme fatale, a victim, or a seductress? She is all of those things and more.
Far more interesting than the intricacies of the plot are the ways that parts of their personalities and desires are teased out of them. I would think that I understood what was going on, but then things would change. It's a somewhat twisted, somewhat sweet story about two people whose plain surfaces hide very complex and deep individuals within.
Shot in a distinctive, sensual style with an amazing soundscape, it looks, sounds and feels completely unique, just like the characters. There is a loving attention to detail and a subjective point of view that shows what is going on with an efficiency and style that I loved.
tags: film, review, readmylips
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I don't know how to describe the film other than to say that Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a film that Jim Jarmusch in 1999. Like many of the films by Jarmusch, it's a fascinating mix of well-crafted filmmaking with a diverse range of talents combining together to create something unique. While overall there are some parts that may not completely work, it has a remarkable range from broad comedy to scenes that are surprisingly moving as well.
Ghost Dog is built around the character played by Forrest Whitaker and he holds the entire thing together. He's a hit man who lives his life according to the Samurai code. All of the characters in the film seem to be slightly out of place in varying degrees. The ice cream man who speaks no English, the mobster who loves hip-hop music, everyone who watches tv seems to watch cartoons, and the little girl who carries around books in her lunch box, and Ghost Dog himself who communicates with his contact via homing pidgeon.
The film is lovingly constructed and like a great song you can get something different out of it every time you experience it. Everything fits together and I watched it twice in one day and saw different things. What does the colour red mean? What do the quotations from Samurai code mean? How does it all fit together? Why does Ghost Dog always set the volume of music to 21? The mixture of styles, characters, tone and technique combine to create something unique that sticks with you as you roll things around in your head.
tags: film, review, ghostdog
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The 1970s were a turbulent time in the U.S. and a lot of interesting films came out of that time. Niels Mueller firmly sets The Assassination of Richard Nixon in the 70s as he shows the transformation and decline of a man who slowly becomes disconnected from reality. Shot in an evocative high-contrast style (by Emmanuel Lubezki) that carefully mirrors the state of mind of Sam Bicke played by Sean Penn. It's another controlled burn with Penn trying to make sense of his life in an unrewarding job while separated from his wife and children. The world doesn't make sense and as he watches the news he begins to connect with those who fight the system and who are opposed to Richard Nixon.
The film feels as if it was made in the 1970s (in a good way) and I couldn't help but think of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver which also follows the decline of a man who doesn't fit in. But Sam Bicke isn't Travis Bickle and while Taxi Driver has a sense of dread from the very beginning and Robert De Niro has a sense of menace, Penn's Bicke is a person we feel sympathetic as the world doesn't make sense and he tries to do the right thing. But the routine grinds him down and he only seems to connect with things he sees in the media which helps him form his plan. A dark and precise portrait of a tragic figure.
tags: film, review, theassassinationofrichardnixon
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Just because he speaks a little guilty, that don't make him innocent, you know.Touch of Evil is a fascinating film in many ways. It was the final film that Orson Welles made in Hollywood, it could be considered one of the last of the classic film noir and I even think it seems like a precursor to the French New Wave. I haven't seen the version that was released at the time, only the restored version based on a long memo that Welles wrote after seeing the rough cut once. He wasn't allowed back into the editing room and never saw a version that followed his advice.
In 1967 Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth made the short film, Det Perfekte Menneske (The Perfect Human), which is a sparse short film that shows people doing things, presented in a slightly abstract sense in black and white. 34 years later Lars von Trier proposes a set of challenges where Leth will remake the film five times and we see it all in The Five Obstructions (De Fem Benspænd.)
While remaking the film with different sets of challenges, it's really about Leth, von Trier and their filmmaking philosophies. The glue that links the film together are the documentary segments where von Trier lays out the obstructions and Leth listens and writes them down. It's a great way to see how a filmmaker works and thinks and they respond to the challenges that they face. Von Trier constantly tries to trip up Leth with various challenges and the film surprised me several times. It's beautifully constructed and moves along quickly as we watch the battle between the two filmmakers, who once were student and teacher. The roles are reversed and there is a degree of perversity that is introduced as we wonder what the point is. They laugh about destroying the original film as they set off on the first obstruction. The various films are different and have varying levels of success, but overall the two oddly distant filmmakers manage to create a film that seems to transcend them both. Filmmaking can be a magical experience and this film is a singular and fascinating look at a game that reveals the players as we examine what a film can mean and how the process can shape the product.
Afterwards I thought about the obstructions and how it was similar to some of the things on "reality" tv. The arbitrary contests and obsessive attention to "the game" and how it is played. But while the obstructions were arbitrary at times, it wasn't about the obstructions, but about people and the creativity. Both filmmakers are not only trying to battle each other, but to understand their work and themselves. Ironically they seem to understand each other better than they understand themselves. It would be fascinating to see how other filmmakers would battle each other in remaking films, but I suspect that the unique combination and chemistry of von Trier and Leth would be very difficult to achieve.
tags: film, review, thefiveobstructions, documentary
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Maybe it's just the films that make it over here, but I've loved every film from Scotland that I've seen over the last while. The latest one is Dear Frankie, directed by Shona Auerbach, who also was Director of Photography. The film is built around the characters and the wonderful performances that the actors give. The key is in the writing which sets up a dramatic situation that highlights a story about a family dealing with a secret. Emily Mortimer is a mother who hasn't told her son that she is estranged from his father. She has told him that his father is away at sea and corresponds with her son as his father. But when the ship that she chose is coming in to port and she has to decide what to do.
While the plot moves the characters around, the film lingers on the characters as we watch them struggle with their lives. I loved the look of the film and the pace, which allows us to watch performances and interactions between characters. Mortimer is wonderful and much of her performance is in her face and body language. One of the things that I've been enjoying in many recent films is messiness in situations and characters. Things aren't neat and tidy, but with ambiguity and suggestion. I like it when you get a sense of watching something unfold... it's a better approximation of reality than so-called "reality" television. Dear Frankie is a great film about unconditional love.
tags: film, review, dearfrankie
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Filmmaking is a collaborative art that builds upon other media and the work that has come before. There are certain filmmakers who advance the art and have a powerful influence either directly or indirectly on those who follow. Sergei Eisenstein is one of those filmmakers. In Strike he tells the story of a factory strike in Czarist Russia. It's propaganda, but filled with bold techniques and experimentation. The editing of the film is outstanding with some very obvious symbolism, but also with sequences that are cut with a rapid pace. Many of the techniques that are still used were pioneered by Eisenstein. The easiest (and most effective) way to suggest violence and action is through rapid cuts juxtapositions. While Eisenstein's theory of montage and his demonstration of it in his films is well-known, it's easy to forget that he wasn't innovative in terms of montage. He also was able to construct memorable sequences that flowed very well and are textbook examples of how to put shots together.
tags: review, drama, strike, eisenstein
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