Parasomnia (Malone, 2008)|||||2.5
The Naked Kiss (Fuller, 1966)|||||8
Inception (Nolan, 2010)|||||6
Chicken Soup for the Corporate Spy's Soul. Slick, grandiose pablum.
The movie has heart, and if anything, soulless it is not. On the surface, it's a very competent, well-thought-out thriller/mind-bender; underneath, it has the virtue of Nolan's ambition and audaciousness, and he has succeeded in big blockbuster action movie-making that has genuine passion, soul, and a need to communicate an emotional story. The film reveals itself in the end to be filled with a refreshing anti-cynicism, where we get corporate shenanigans that can actually morph into personal, positive odysseys for all involved. Are anyone's nasty energy industry take-overs panning out or not? Is it all peachy because the goodness-of-life has been affirmed so mind-blowingly for even the entrepreneurs? The film effectively circumvents those quandaries. This is movie-fantasy, where the illusions and the romances of such are all that matters. If it lacks in practical considerations - such as the nitty-gritty of dream technology, the ethical history of such, or any relevant social or political worldviews held by itself or its A-team roster of vaguely self-involved dream frolickers and science mercenaries - it's because it's one of those metaphoric emotional-journey films first and foremost. If it is one ultimately devoted to a complete cipher of a main character, one without any apparent principles outside of a Love-of-My-Life complex, then that is the fable Nolan visions. If any social prerogative is evident, it is that it is the most privileged and most comfortable who get to dream for recreation (we just have to hope their dreams leave them happy enough that they don't fuck us little people over). There is little doubt DiCaprio's reunion with his children is a moment to warm the heart, but it is all in spite of the fact he and his wife had it all coming, shooting up on subsidized dream vacations and turning a blind eye (and still turning a blind eye...) to the unethical power this technology harnesses. Anyway, while Nolan's thesis is often simplistic, it is also often provocative: dreams and ideas implanted can both build prisons and "build nations." Its deeming "nation-building" at its most monumental when it sprouts from the mere personal catharsis of a lovelorn man or an anguished son is a combination of intriguing, beguiling, and naive - and the film would be perceptive if it actually had a sense of its naivete.
Thematic content aside, before the often thrilling last half (that is, the whole "Heist"), the movie plays out like a feature-length montage, which is no compliment considering my very low opinion of the all-too-common cinematic shorthand that is the montage sequence. I get it that sometimes that's what the film is going for - disjointed narrative for a film about dreams - but Nolan's anemic screenwriting seems to think the only way to create circulation is fragmentation - not of textures and narrative idiosyncrasy, but of banal exposition, thus serving only to make more and more incredulous a story already teetering on the cliff of credulity. The "planning" chunk exists off an unbearable over-dependence on exceedingly pithy discursive on dream logistics that would - in a different, less prosaic context - be tolerable, if it weren't exacerbated more so when mixed with the film's endless, endless non-scenes! Making it even worse, did Zimmer's violins have to be gnawing away underneath the entire film, like Eye of the Tiger during a Rocky training sequence? Is this the only way Nolan can weave together a movie?
Some final straws: Nolan's script is laden with schmaltz and circumlocution poured liberally over the dialogue; the unadorned action movie antics are well compared to a James Bond flick and take away from the strong imagery often achieved (in its show-offy, dazzle-inclined way, anyway), and as a result we get a premise, which is more suited for the magical realism genre, burdened by literalism. Think along the lines of a bungled treatment of the premise to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Cotillard's character's psychology could've been fascinating and deeply unsettling but it's written away into accessibility. The ending is less ambiguous as it is revealing of the film's dependence on external, very impersonal symbols, as well as its commitment to the puzzle, instead of on its half-convincing attempts to conjure an emotional core or its half-baked attempts to apply a cogent real-world context to its dream spy story. Recommended Reviews: Big Other on Inception
* Inferno (Argento, 1980)|||||5.5* Suspiria (Argento, 1977)|||||7.5
I've always been critical of Suspiria, agreeing with many detractors about that rubber stamp on its forehead proclaiming "STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE." Its fairy-tale simpleness, a children's tale nightmare, made it easy to condescend to, as it even lacks the knowingly loaded softcore-isms of giallo/Eurotrash tradition, which mix a knowingly fraudulent concoction of low culture titillation and damningly universal psycho-sexual mimicry-cum-analysis.
But Suspiria may have considerable credibility as the often-cited Argento masterpiece (although that mantel may, for myself, still go to Tenebre, after my most recent, somewhat disappointed viewing of Deep Red), undermining my long held dismissals. It stands strong as a spectacular and consistently stunning film, with, I'd say, just as equal a study on perception and experience as Deep Red, without that film's opportunistic distractions and shaky moral (non-)center. At least Suspiria, in spite of all the still-extant flaws, one can see as building a thin but at least concentrated and purified picture of petty little girls and fascistic, entitled, hypocritical administrators/witches, building it carefully instead of haphazardly, with an eye for awe-inspiring horror instead of mere uncontextualized masochism, which Deep Red suffers from.
* The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)|||||7Small Soldiers (Dante, 1998)|||||6
Monster House (Kenan, 2006)|||||7.5
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)|||||8.5
* The Brave Little Toaster (Rees, 1987)|||||8
* Maniac (Lustig, 1980)|||||5
Maniac has got a handful of things going on for it, I'll give it that. Lustig's not the hack filmmaker - he's got a knack for powerful editing rhythms (the doomed foreplay of the first scene's hooker), lush and potent imagery (e.g. the modeling session, the female photographer's walls of imagery), and the film has a number of elegant (sometimes even stunning) tracking shots that jar with the seediness around them (like those patterned shots of Spinell returning to his apartment). But while it's a skilled (you get the feeling Lustig is schooled in horror and the masters, with one sequence a clear homage to the dark street stalking in Cat People) and atmospheric approximating of the mind of a maniac, it's an exploitation picture through and through, one that's ultimately unfailingly sensationalistic and morbid and high on victim-fear. The movie does a lot of interesting things, things that suggest the film as more darkly comic than just an abject exercise in fear-preying (Fernando Croce of Cinepassion calls the film's odd fog-filled climax a sly "trompe l'oeill"), but its ends do not live up to its very capable means.
Toy Story 3 (Unkrich, 2010)|||||7.5
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