The Official Review Thread of 2008

[Mister Tee]

BJ, what would you say to starting a SPOILERS ONLY thread for the film? I have a number of thoughts about the big revelation, but they're impossibole to discuss in anything but forthright terms.

[The Original BJ]

If I will remember one single image from I've Loved You So Long, it's the simple opening shot of Kristin Scott Thomas's face: the bags under her eyes, the worn-out cheeks that seem to suggest a woman who's been through hell and hasn't come out of it, her hand supporting her chin, as if will alone can't keep this woman's head high. Throughout the film, I continued to be impressed by the mileage Thomas gets out of her face -- the way she cracks a smile at inappropriate times, how she suggests holding back tears during the most simple of circumstances, the way every word she speaks seems to be carefully thought out (because it has to be). It's a very fine, complex, tantalizing performance that then explodes into a great big awards-scene for the actress at the end of the film. It's impressive work, and, as Mister Tee says, the reason for seeing the film...

...which I otherwise had all sorts of problems with. Perhaps my opinion was colored by the fact that I knew going in there was a plot reveal at the end, but even during the film's first act, I was painfully aware that the film would end with a big revelation. Mostly this is a problem of the way the film doles out information -- it simply didn't feel natural to me at all. I kept wondering why it was taking so long for the audience to get basic details about these characters' situation.

Now, in and of itself, I'm not opposed to slowly waiting for (or even not knowing) specifics about characters' back stories. But in I've Loved You So Long, I didn't understand why the characters kept avoiding discussing these things, particularly The Big Reveal. (Obviously I'm trying to be as oblique as possible here.) It seemed to me the film was withholding information from the audience so it would have to culminate in The Final Sequence Where We Learn Everything, but by doing so, it relies on a story that features a number of people doing things that, in retrospect, don't make that much sense.

It's the kind of film that often bandies about some interesting ideas and has memorable and moving moments...but at the end you wonder why anyone would hang a narrative on so thin a premise. As the film went on, I became increasingly frustrated with what Mister Tee calls the striptease fashion of the story -- to me, less started to feel like less, and I started to worry about if we'd get any kind of satisfying payoff. The payoff does come, in predictable fashion, but for me, it wasn't anything like the satisfying conclusion I'd hoped for.

On a minor note, did anyone else not buy at all the number of years Thomas's character had been away? Again, I hate to elaborate and give away anything, but this was a potentially rich area I thought the film greatly missed out on exploring.

And can we please agree that the worst scene in the film involved the Oh-Wow-I-Just-Discovered-The-Piece-Of-Information-That-Will-Reveal-It-All-Wasn't-That-Convenient Prop? That's the kind of creaky dramaturgy that it's difficult to recover from, and the film doesn't, with more scenes of characters not talking about things they obviously would be just to prolong The Big Reveal a bit more.

[Sabin]

'Tropic Thunder'

In as magnanimous an irony as one is likely to find in the year of y/our Lord 2008, the film ‘Tropic Thunder’ is its own Tropic Thunder. That doesn’t make it necessarily any less fun but it’s certainly something of a disappointment that as gravy a premise as Ben Stiller’s mega-budgeted opus presents isn’t lived up to as egomaniacal actors ranging from the ultra-method, ultra-drug-addicted, ultra-gangster, and ultra-pampered are genuinely led into the real shit they are supposed to be trudging before the camera. So strange then that Ben Stiller truly unleashes with a barrage of jags against the industry and it still seems like a game of pretend and embraces the hand that feeds it so dearly like on gargantuan In Joke that everybody can nod their head to and then go back to work on Monday.

‘Tropic Thunder’ is bound to be remembered as one half of the one-two punch that was Robert Downey Jr.’s uncompromising return to stardom and in truth his post-modern blackface is the kind of subversion the film outwardly avoids and desperately needs. There are few monkeys as subservient and ready to shill as Ben Stiller and ‘Tropic Thunder’ is replete with the kind of indulgences that ‘Entourage’ churns out on a weekly basis. Gangster rappers are gay. Actors don’t read their scripts. Nick Nolte is insane. Tom Cruise has a sense of humor about himself. Hollywood is all too ready to digest its own. This isn’t satire. It’s not even HBO. And yet before its myopically self-reflexive end, ‘Tropic Thunder’ is a pleasant enough merry-go-round of potshots that plays like the closest thing we’ve had in a while to “The Ben Stiller Show”.

It’s telling then that a film in which the auteur can star as an action icon destined for accolades can see him take such a backseat to the action. Having oversaturated the market with innocuous comedies, it’s entirely possible that we’re not likely to see anything as bracing as ‘Zoolander’ again. On the other hand, as his re-ascension has seen repetitious-yet-welcome variations on the same motormouth, it’s refreshing to see that Robert Downey Jr. still has genuine greatness in him. Kirk Lazarus is his Jack Sparrow, the kind of asinine tour de force that should have never made the big screen in the first place. He provides the true bump in the grind that the rest of ‘Tropic Thunder’ is all too self-content to groove to, ultimately becoming an end credit sequence of a fat, hairy Tom Cruise jamming in as much self-awareness as we’re bound to see in ‘Valkyrie’.

[Sabin]

'clerks.' is the only movie in which Kevin Smith's shortcomings as a director were excused in any form. It's outward lack of funding or visual imagination or joy of performance was chic and outwardly embraced by most. Every movie he has made since was criticized for its insulated worldview and look. Smith became America's most criminal underachiever since Bart Simpson. He just refused to learn. The flip-side is that were Kevin Smith not directing, these movies would probably never get made in any capacity, or at least remotely resembling what's on the screen. For most people myself included sometimes, that's fine. I don't need 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' or 'Clerks II' in my life at all. On the other hand, I'm immensely grateful that 'Chasing Amy' and 'Dogma' were made as they were despite their flaws. And there are many, many of them.

Kevin Smith has made two earnest attempts to grow as a filmmaker and the two aforementioned films are not them. They are 'Jersey Girl' and 'Zach and Miri Make a Porno'. The former is an outright failure and the latter is a very endearing failure. The biggest laugh heard in the theater during the showing was when I leaned over to my buddy and asked "Did the camera just move?" Film nerd humor. Kevin Smith at the age of 38 actually moves the camera on this his eighth feature and he does a miserable job of it. The miserable part is that it comes rather close to resembling a movie done by somebody else. I mean that in a good way. If there's any way for Kevin Smith to competently direct a feature (like he does as a competent screenwriter in 'Chasing Amy' and 'Dogma'), I want to see it. There are stretches in 'Zach and Miri Make a Porno' when I thought: WOW. WHAT A LOVELY SECOND FEATURE.

As an eighth feature, I don't know what to say about it. It doesn't really work. There's no reason for Elizabeth Banks to be more smitten with Seth Rogen than the other way around. The high school reunion is absolutely needless and the film takes a half hour to get to a point it could've reached within ten minutes allowing for the film's strongest, most autobiographical conceit to shine through more: making a shoestring-budgeted movie with your friends after hours in the store you work in. Instead, it weirdly zigs and zags from vulgarity to puppy dog and he doesn't really get either one of them right. Which is a shame because he could've got the latter fairly easily.

I wrote a piece recently called "Androcentric Ham on Rise: The Man-Child Cinema of 'In Search of a Midnight Kiss' & 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' basically asserting that between Woody Allen and a 33 year old Austin hipster with a boner for uninspired black and white, there's little difference by way of giving two shits about the way women think and feel. Add 'Zach and Miri' to the equation. What could be a rather incisive (and still just as vulgar and funny!) comedy about sexual politics between men and women is turned into a John Hughes film. I suppose that's where Kevin Smith was always headed. I enjoyed a lot of it but I doubt Kevin Smith has made a more disappointing film in his career even though it's certainly better than two-thirds of them by far.

[Mister Tee]

I feel much the same about I've Loved You So Long as I did about Rachel Getting Married -- it features a lot of truly top-grade work done in the service of an at-best second-rate story. The novice director is apparently a novelist, and he certainly displays a novelist's sense of detail -- there are all kinds of wonderful, almost throwaway behavioral moments. He gets super performances, particularly from his two lead females, but also from a Vietnamese child actress who I'd adopt on the spot. And, scene to scene, he evokes reasonably complex emotional responses.

The problem is his core premise -- the revelation of Kristen Scott Thomas' past -- which is done in slow psychological striptease fashion, at the end of which (to extend the metaphor to absurdity) you're looking at a drab body you don't especially care to see naked. I don't actually think the big hidden secret is even very credible, for reasons I'll be happy to discuss after others have seen the film. But, more than that, it feels flimsy and unoriginal, and gets in the way of the film's many fine points lingering in memory.

Chief among those points, and the big reason to see the film, of course, is Scott Thomas' performance, which for me is the best thing she's done by far. I've never truly warmed to her in the past; she projects less personality than most actors (extending to real life: I once saw her interviewed by Charlie Rose, and thought, This is the dullest woman on the planet), and even her best work has seemed to me lacking in flavor. Part of her success here comes from USING that bland exterior to suggest torrents inside. She's got a spectacular guard up, and rightly so: every little moment is a challenge, with the threat things could blow up horribly. The way she looks at various people -- people just doing their everyday get-along thing -- tells us their simple lives and actions are unfathomable to her. Watching her slowly, delicately let some of that guard down is mesmerizing. This is not a demonstrative performance -- until one big scene near the end -- but it's a deeply felt one, and a dominant one. I'm not sure if she'll make the best actress cut-off -- she'll probably need to win a critics' award or two to qualify -- but she's the best I've seen so far this year.

Almost as good is Elsa Zylberstein as her sister, who approaches the standoff from a completely different perspective, and manges to create a good, thoughtful character who's also interesting. Zylberstein's chances of Oscar attention are slim (it's an Academy tradition to ignore supporting performances not in English), but she's just the sort to win the LA Critics prize.

All told, a 3-star movie, where top-drawer execution execution triumphs over a humdrum concept.

[Sabin]

I think it's a very good movie with a narrative that begins with a very intriguingly paced narrative that ends fairly conventionally though is still very satisfying. I really like the film would very much like to discuss it as a film rather than a phenomenon. I think think what needs to be strongly emphasized is that what 'Let the Right One In' does very right is portray adolescent adoration better than most films in the United States right now that I can think of.


SPOILERS...

This was a movie I didn't entirely want to end. I wanted something more expansive. The fate of Eli's "father" has a very interesting parallel to Oskar's choice that is unremarked upon. This made 'Let the Right One In' feel like almost half a movie.

[Okri]

Go see 'Let the Right One In' right now before it is overrated to the point of absurdity.

Yes. This is a nice little movie that, judging by its IMDB rating already, is likely to be oversold to a ludicrous degree. But as a modest, Scandinavian-cold-n-stoic twist on the vampire myth, it's pretty intriguing.

Yeah, I think it's too late for the film to avoid overrating it - I thought it was good but rather disappointing.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241382106

[Eric]

Go see 'Let the Right One In' right now before it is overrated to the point of absurdity.

Yes. This is a nice little movie that, judging by its IMDB rating already, is likely to be oversold to a ludicrous degree. But as a modest, Scandinavian-cold-n-stoic twist on the vampire myth, it's pretty intriguing.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241382123

[Sabin]

Go see 'Let the Right One In' right now before it is overrated to the point of absurdity. Right now, it's a wonderful surprise. I knew nothing about it outside of the fact that it's a foreign coming of age story with vampires and was pretty floored. By the end of the year, it will be an absurdly co-opted cult film. It's beautifully shot, beautifully directed, beautifully performed, and adopts an interesting tangental narrative that while rooted in very standard tropes contents itself with the mundane and atmospheric to (for me) an almost welcome degree, such that admittedly when it comes to fairly conventional resolution, it's a little disappointing. It's also rich in understatement and halfway subversive sexual commentary...but more so than anything else it is touching as hell. Shame about the overbearing score.

It's already set for a remake by Matt Reeves of 'Cloverfield' fame for next year. Please see beforehand.



Edited By Sabin on 1226481235

[anonymous1980]

QUANTUM OF SOLACE
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Gianini, Gemma Arterton, David Harbour, Jesper Christensen.
Dir: Marc Forster

Although not quite as good as the previous Bond outing, Casino Royale, Craig still retains his gritty, devil-may-care appeal as 007. Kurylenko tries her best but Eva Green was missed (still the best recent Bond girl). Amalric as the villain, however, is probably my favorite among the recent villains. All in all, just okay.

Oscar Prospects: Editing, Sound, Sound Editing, Original Song.

Grade: B-

[Sabin]

They're all fine, though it appears I was less impressed than other people who saw it. Ultimately, every character in the film is a cipher in possessing of various degrees of amusement and personality definition. I think one of the genuine flaws in 'Synecdoche, New York' is that Caden's romance with Hazel is never adequately set up. It begins as just another disappointment and then continues over the years. Samantha Morton is lovely but she's above this. She's essentially Clementine Redux, and 'Synecdoche, New York' is a merging of 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Eternal Sunshine...' [QUITE NOTE - I now believe the movie to be about the process of writing 'Being John Malkovich'].

Michelle Williams is fine in a small-ish role as the actress that Caden begins to date and court and spend a small lifetime with but within the constructs of his play. She has a fairly vanilla girlfriend role but she's fine. Jennifer Jason Leigh has nothing to do. Dianne Wiest is given a small-ish role at the end that's rather pivotal and it's just so lovely to see her on-screen again.

[flipp525]

The women in Caden's life make passing impressions, some stronger and more flattering than others.

I'd like to hear a bit more about the female performances in this film. It's like a cast of dozens. Nothing more to report there?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241382202

[Sabin]

'Synecdoche, New York' is the roof atop the house that Charlie Kaufman has built over the past decade, and to tear it down to the ground for any number of myriad reasons (all with validity, mind you) is akin to snickering at a eulogy or dismissing an epitaph for poor grammar. This is the life of Charlie Kaufman and this is the death of Charlie Kaufman, which is to say his work as well. Much as Woody Allen's recent fixation with Europe as if he is only learning now that there is a world outside of Manhattan, Charlie Kaufman is extolling the virtues of things that the rest of the planet has hopefully learned ages ago. But in telling it with such terrifying throttle between now and end and rabbit holes as maddening and exquisite as such, I find I have no place in my right mind to dismiss it as I've been touched deeply if not intermittently frustrated.

Charlie Kaufman writes with the ideology of a fifteen year old on death's door. In 'Synecdoche, New York', his most recent developmentally challenged man-child Caden Cotard (P.S. Hoffman) is married to Adele (Catherine Keener), a bohemian artist who creates what appears to be oil panted canvases shrunk down to miniatures you need magnifying lenses to see, and their marriage has devolved into painful ritual. In a therapy session, she outwardly confesses to fantasies of his death; and, before long, Adele takes his daughter Olive away to Berlin in what is intended to be a refreshing separation that ultimately never ends.

This follows a litany of heath crises that Caden will never get to the bottom of and ultimately feel his life threatening to fade for the rest of his life, which he will devote to making a lasting impression on the world with a simulacrum New York within a play house and enlist a small army of actors to live in character in the search for something real. After years of Kaufman-esque melancholy in a marriage of stasis, he is prompted by the wife to do something besides the local Arthur Miller productions and make a mark on the world which results in Kafka-esque obsession. As is the case with all Kaufman films, this is a projection into a mushy sad sack in which the man can explore the real life vs. fake art conundrum but in taking the L-train of Caden's obsession nonstop until the end. This is self-serving but the stops along the way are quite interesting: Caden eventually casts someone as himself directing the play, and follows "himself" giving direction while giving direction himself, and ultimately hiring an actor to play that man as well; and then to his assistant, and the actor playing his assistant; and all the while, Charlie Kaufman makes Caden construct a towering world around an idea of which he has no idea how to begin or end. The conclusion he arrives at is as strange a mea culpa as I've ever seen from a writer/director as he outwardly acknowledges that he needs direction...all within the film he himself is writing and directing!

Call it 'Kaufman's 1 & 1/8' all rooted in male inferiority. There is a persisting gender crisis in his life and work for both Caden and Kaufman, one that is refreshingly absurdist though here mined for deeper revelation. The issue is not whether or not Caden is a repressed homosexual, but what it will take for him to relish any form of pleasure at all. This can be something of a challenge because it allows Philip Seymour Hoffman to indulge in a moroseness that I don't believe is his best quality. He ricochets through age only intermittently allowing his shields to drop, but I saw far more quiet joy and courtesy for costars in 'The Savages'. The women in Caden's life make passing impressions, some stronger and more flattering than others. The performance I really enjoyed was Tom Noonan's as a man who has been watching Caden all his life just waiting for the opportunity to stand in at the right moment. When he appears on-screen, it appears that the film is flirting with an existential crisis that Kaufman treats as a throwaway gag and instead of one man forced to confront his insecurities, it only aggravates Caden's need to build constructs around his set as he does his heart as well. The choice Kaufman is making is to eschew easy sentimentality for at times oppressive inevitability and decline.

You know what the funny thing about Charlie Kaufman directing his own work is? Nothing. There are smirks here and there but none of the whimsy of Gondry or the mundane absurdity of Jonze. Essentially, everything Charlie Kaufman writes is a Bertolt Brecht play, something set within overtly theatrical framework to be presented to the audience for a greater sense of human understanding. Without another sensibility to groove to, 'Synecdoche, New York' becomes a work of heightened reality presented to inform us of the inevitable decline of life, a cautionary fable of how not to live. I find that innately problematic but simpatico with the story he is telling. Less defendable is his inability to choose a specific tone in which to tell his story; certain flights of fancy such a house perennially on fire or a "stagey" suicide are not to be taken seriously because it's as if Kaufman's "It Is And It Isn't" credo isn't anything more than complicit indecisiveness. I'm glad we have a movie that Kaufman has written and directed and that is is this one, if only because it wasn't one of his better ones. 'Synecdoche, New York' isn't one of his stronger ideas but it is the most elaborately developed and by far the man's most complex linear narrative to date, like a line of existentially bothered Matryoshka dolls. Some will get lost, some will feel trapped. I felt somewhere between, because although the choir to which Kaufman preaches is a tune one should have learned decades ago, I will admit it's one that gave me pause for reflection.

I imagine a conversation between the aliens who visited Woody Allen in 'Stardust Memories':

ALIENS: We like your work, especially your earlier, funnier films.
KAUFMAN: But they're not funny to me.
ALIENS: Well, their director is.

[FilmFan720]

I just got back, and agree with what everyone else said. I thought that the last image was Bush unable to see the ball, but my wife brought an interesting third interpretation: the ball hasn't landed yet, it is still up in the air, and perhaps there is a chance for it to still be caught (but you imagine by someone other than W).

[Penelope]

Thrice Oliver Stone shows us George W. Bush on the field waiting for a fly ball. The film ends with him about to jump for a fly ball...that he can't see. Too many lights in his eyes. He has lost track of the ball.

That's all that Oliver Stone says about George W. Bush. Lost track of the ball. The problem is, George W. Bush never saw the ball to begin with. He never did. And Stone refuses to smack him in the face with it.

Perhaps because I have a different, very antagonistic relationship with baseball (long story), I saw this differently. Catching the ball was demonstrative of showing him making his daddy proud, and thus himself proud. In the end, he couldn't catch the ball, because the ball was an illusion.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241382213