September 2009

September 2009

Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) 8

Sally is a great character.

One Missed Call (Valette, 2008) 2

Hot damn that was crappy.
It's almost awe-inspiring in its uselessness. Did I just watch an actual movie, really? Did they actually spend time, money, and physical and mental effort, to make this? Was this more like a paid vacation for the actors considering they're working with nothing? It's kind of fascinating, really.

* Audition (Miike, 1999) 8

W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev, 1971) 8

* Dead & Buried (Sherman, 1981) 5.5

* Pumpkinhead (Winston, 1988) 5

(500) Days of Summer (Webb, 2009) 5

(500) Days of Summer is a movie made entirely out of musings and good points. And it's a movie that thinks movies can be made out of musings and the cleverness of its points. That's why the film is told in bits and pieces, because of its strong belief in its vision of a film built entirely of its writer-director's probably-somewhere-out-there-in-list-form series of musings and good points, lucid observations, and clever cinematic renderings of love neurosis.

There's the scene in the film where Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a breakdown in a company meeting and gets on a soapbox about greeting cards. It's one of those in-your-face points the film has to make, and by god it makes sure to make it. But in making itself (or its character) so pedantically shout out this mildly revealing and I'd thought already pretty obvious epiphany, it just made me uncomfortable. I thought, "Everyone knows this. Everyone knows greeting cards are bullshit. So the fact that it has to make this point so pivotal must mean that this movie is yelling at someone who apparently doesn't get it enough..." Followed immediately by: "I hope it's not me. I get it, you're smarter than me, movie!"

The film, Webb, his screenplay and the film's whole slickly-packaged DNA as a quirky, edgy concept picture is driven by its unbearable omniscience. Not that it necessarily gives all the answers - the film pleasantly surprises with its down-to-earth subverting of clean-cut romantic conventions - but yet, when it comes to considering all the questions, the film seems to suggest all the answers are out there to be quickly figured out. The film becomes a bit po-faced and didactic when, in its query-response structure (its happy-time/sad-time, fantasy/reality, dialectical jumping in time), it's practically giving an answer a mere moment after any possibly challenging, and possibly challengingly upsetting, question is posed.

The ultimate message is admirable: a romance film all about the folly of romantics in a world that fosters and encourages the lighting of flames beneath asses and the will to get moving again -- then, the resultant growth and the cornucopias of opportunity. The film is mostly likable, slickly romantic, and, thankfully, often truly perceptive, with a good knack for melancholy to get you in the right mood. All much, much too slickly packaged, but if you have a great postmodern idea that you know'll be a hit with the audiences (plus with the way-too-appealing Joshua Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in the leads), what can you do? Pump up the indie rock.

One Missed Call (Miike, 2003) 7

Silent Hill (Gans, 2006) 4

The Legend of Hell House (Hough, 1973) 5.5

Exte (Sono, 2007) 5

Exte has the usual Sono attributes going for it, despite it being the Japanese genre auteur's obligatory send-up of J-horror, a la what Miike was going for with One Missed Call. Sono has a knack for appealing cuteness (that is, idiosyncratic cuteness), his drama is genuine and candidly shot, and his vision - his commitment to genre and sensory thrills that address an eccentric and personality-filled, adult and abusive world - is intact here. But I just don't think Sono's my guy. This film is way scattershot, often obnoxious, and I enjoyed the film much more when it was being whimsical to when it was being a horror film with a plot. As a horror film, it's redundant; got tired of the cops and the main antagonist really quickly. Chiaki Kuriyama and her hip-hop roommate are very appealing here, though.

Portrait of Jason (Clarke, 1967) 5.5

An hour and forty-five minute interview with a 60s-living, black, gay man, one-time hustler, now aspiring nightclub owner and performer. It is lively subject matter, with a jovial subject who knows how to entertain with stories, and it's also a knowingly intrusive probe into the man's life, as we see his tales go from anecdotal to deeply personal, as he gets progressively drunker (and soon even breaks out a joint) as the evening progresses. The B&W camera captures Jason lounging, pacing, and generally inhabiting a rather neutral living-room-type space as he speaks to the camera and is given short, prodding directions from Clarke and co., behind the camera and never on screen, as they occasionally zoom in inscrutably on his face and then go to momentary blackness (but with the audio recording device still taping) as they switch the celluloid that Jason's vocal self-offering clearly surpasses in surely a number of ways, including both duration and honesty. The film is often engaging, due to the subject laying all his cards on the table with touching genuineness, but ultimately, the work is a monotonous exercise that, at some points, begins to smack of injudiciousness, not only in running time but in how freely and without guidance Clarke and her associates let this man bare his soul in service of their austere little exercise - although likely intentional, for the rather clinical regard towards Jason coming from behind the camera seems equal measure familiarity and acceptance, as it is cold analysis.

* Dark Water (Nakata, 2002) 5.5

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009) 5

Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001) 8

I feel like Denis making a film here with a relatively chugging plot and narrative variety did her a great service. The separate plot threads that give her different locations and character behaviors to work with provoked nice and varied style from her, which keeps it from achieving the certain monotony of her two other films I've seen, Beau Travail and Friday Night - elliptical mood pieces that fling narrative drive wayside for the building of mood.

It's an ingeniously structured film, too. It weaves romantic-scientific waywardness not just with its two central couples but with close attention to a slew of supporting characters and even bit characters. It ends on a gentle and ambivalent note that, similar to Redacted, ends up being the perfect way to end the film and left me with a positive final impression. It's a very romantic film... even with the demented Cat People-like plot point involving Gallo's enforced onanistic lifestyle (which, looked at as concession made to having any relationship with his fresh-faced new wife, is still a bit romantic). I'm surprised no other vampire movie's had thought this element up sooner. And is there another horror film (per se) out there that makes zero attempt to scare or be horror-y like this one?

Redacted (De Palma, 2008) 5

Redacted gets off to a good start by not making any sense. The video diary suddenly segues into a glossy documentary. Thus we have a camera inside a car it has no reason to be in. Then it segues into an Iraqi news segment. It's a barrage of media without any throughline, and its level opaqueness makes it fascinating. But when the film starts to systematically construct the moments that lead to the film's central event, the film's proud indelicateness just becomes that: rote and indelicate. There's worth to be had from strong and unaffected characterizations, such as the two main offending soldiers, and likewise from a strong and unsoftened plot. But De Palma's staging just gets more and more uninteresting as it goes along, culminating in a scene of atrocity that comes off more contrived than upsetting. The film regains itself a bit towards the end with more interestingly associative use of mixed media, then a final scene - the one back in the US - that I found really worked and was a perfect, expertly ambivalent way to finish the film.

* Ju-on: The Grudge (Shimizu, 2003) 4.5