February 2008

FEBRUARY 08

Severance (|||||4
Michael Clayton (Gilroy, 2007)|||||6.5
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais, 1960)|||||9
Margot at the Wedding (Baumbach, 2007)|||||6.5
The Bicycle Thief (de Sica, 1946)|||||8.5
Remembrance of Things to Come (Marker, 1993)|||||7
* The Mangler (Hooper, 1995)|||||5
Berkeley (|||||2
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominick, 2007)|||||8.5
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1944)|||||9
Sans Soleil (Marker, 1978)|||||9
Faces (Cassavetes, 1968)|||||8.5
The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck, 2006)|||||7

The film has artful delicacy seen in its consistent peppering of cohering visual cues, many times evoking the film's central focus of "surveillance." The character Christa's final moment is particularly well-handled, utilizing the "head-on" shot of Christa, one of the film's most often used visual cues, to a devastating - and ironic (rather indelicately emphasized in my previous scare quoted turn of phrase) - effect.
The film is too long, though, and it lacks a forcefulness to it, whether regarding its politics or its very construction I do not know. The film is overall a bit rudimentary in its storytelling and character-centric approach.
The Boss of it All (von Trier, 2006)|||||7
Black Book (Verhoeven, 2007)|||||8

*spoilers* Black Book is so close to being great, if it were not for its last minute plot twist, the very last double-cross heaped upon the previous doubles-crosses. It only served as overkill, forcing the film's incisive point - about war not being about good vs. evil, but a complex network of pricks screwing each other over - to a point more literalistic than, and less metaphoric as, it should have been. The Doctor had come in a hero, taken her away, allowed her finally the "Victory Jeep ride" we anticipated for her, yet he is all together unheedful of why she breaks down crying about the executed Mutze. That showed his soulless mechanization more than enough, but unfortunately the film had to go and make him a one-dimensional villain. If the film had ended with the moment where she breaks down crying, sobbing the phrase "Will it never end?", the film would have been superlative. That one moment so perfectly encapsulates the dashed expectations and irrevocable epiphanies and humiliations Ellis has had to endure as a wannabe Mata Hari.

Other than that, the film is exceptional and Verhoeven perfectly over-stylizes the film to fit Van Houten's romantic hopes of transgressing the Nazi regime. Throughout, he tinges the film with a very contemporary, matter-of-fact touch that puts various overly dour romanticizations of World War II Europe to shame. The best thing about the film is Ellis (or Carice Van Houten, no need to give-or-take distinctions between them). The vagueness of what exactly is the true fiber of her character, and Verhoeven's strange hints at an off-putting artificiality in the convictions she takes on, creates just the right balance to make her both involving and enigmatic: a surrogate heroine as well as a character to analyze and scrutinize.
Teeth (Lichtenstein, 2007)|||||5
The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)|||||9
Gone Baby Gone (Affleck, 2007)|||||8.5
Shadows (Cassavetes, 1959)|||||8
* Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938)|||||8
Enchanted (Lima, 2007)|||||5
12:08 East of Bucharest (Porumboiu, 2006)|||||7
The Company (Altman, 2003)|||||9
* There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)|||||6
Exiled (To, 2006)|||||7
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976)|||||9