The Official Review Thread of 2010

[anonymous1980]

The only reason I haven't seen the film is that the official distributor of Scott Pilgrim has decided not to release the film theatrically over here.

[Damien]

/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/ (Edgar Wright)

Why have none of you seen this film?

Because it's a movie for the kids.

[Sabin]

(flipp525 @ Sep. 27 2010,9:17)

(Sabin @ Sep. 27 2010,9:13)

/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/ (Edgar Wright)

Why have none of you seen this film?

Because Michael Cera is annoying.

Michael Cera is a fairly annoying presence these days. While I think he's fairly wan in this role, the movie is pretty outstanding.



Edited By Sabin on 1285642704

[flipp525]

/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/ (Edgar Wright)

Why have none of you seen this film?

Because Michael Cera is annoying.

[Sabin]

/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/ (Edgar Wright)

Why have none of you seen this film?

Although it comes with a few caveats, it's such a major piece of filmmaking! I still feel that Michael Cera is a bit too wan to have an inner-Street Fighter or hipster Don Juan, but the relationship-angle is a little more complex than at first glance. The film skims over relationship niceties and focuses on an inability to be truly in the now with a partner. It's actually fairly shrewd. And it has a bevy of hilarious supporting turns, especially Kieran Culkin as Cera's gay roommate whom he is incredibly comfortable around.

This is my favorite studio film this year. Can't wait for The Social Network starring Jesse Eisenberg, the shoulda-been Pilgrim.

[Okri]

Made in Dagenham

Eric's gonna hate this Oscar year.

Basically, this is Billy Elliot with women's rights. Recently snubbed actress + oscar bait moment? Check. Based on a true story biopic scrubbed clean of anything controversial? Check. Overwritten to hammer home the point for the dunderheads who might not actually get it? Check (though not as bad as you'd expect).

That said, it's brisk, efficient and reasonably entertaining. The crowd I was with applauded at the end. Terrific ensemble cast makes the film work. Pike does wonders with a miniscule role, Andrea Riseborough is a vivacious presence, nice to see Geraldine James and I really like Daniel Mays when he's not scary intense. Richardson's fine but I wish she had more to do (see "scrubbed clean" comment). And in terms of oscar, I could see Bob Hoskins sneaking through. He's got a good role, some nice moments, a sympathetic character, etc. AMPAS would have to really like it though.



Edited By Okri on 1285472669

[Damien]

A Film Unfinished (Yad Vashed)

A slight correction. The name of the director is Yael Hersonski, and the film was made in association with "Yad Vashem" (literally "a memorial and a name") which is the most significant institute in Israel, and probably the world, for commemorating the Holocaust.

Thanks for the clarification, Uri, Sloppiness on my part.

[anonymous1980]

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Rush, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Neill, Joel Edgerton, Emily Barclay, Anthony LaPaglia, David Wenham, Hugo Weaving, Barry Otto (voices).
Dir: Zack Snyder.

This film is basically The Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter but with owls. If you think you can buy that concept, you may just enjoy this animated offering from Zack Snyder. As for myself, I wasn't buying it at first (although it was refreshing to see that they didn't shy away from the fact that owls are predators and actually depict them killing mice) but as it goes on, I learned to enjoy myself. The animation is pretty damn good. Zack Snyder employs his now trademark slo-mo shots that irritated me during Watchmen but it surprisingly mostly works here.

Oscar Prospects: It's going to be an uphill battle for Best Animated Feature even with 5 slots. It has a better shot for Original Song ("To the Sky"), Original Score, Sound Mixin and Sound Editing.

Grade: C+

[Uri]

Oh, An Unfinished Film, or by its Hebrew name The Silence of the Archives, lost the best documentary award at the Ophirs (the Israeli academy awards) this weak, although it was considered to be an overwhelming favorite. The winner was a small film about a sick Palestinian girl from Gaza who's being treated in an Israeli hospital and all the hardships and the conflicts of this situation. And while it was made by a tv correspondent who is one of the few voices in Israeli media who really cover the occupied territories in a balanced and even, God forbid, empathic approach, still, the nature of this particular human story probably corresponded with the righteous guilt of many of the Academy members.

[Uri]

A Film Unfinished (Yad Vashed)

A slight correction. The name of the director is Yael Hersonski, and the film was made in association with "Yad Vashem" (literally "a memorial and a name") which is the most significant institute in Israel, and probably the world, for commemorating the Holocaust.



Edited By Uri on 1285399560

[Damien]

A Film Unfinished (Yad Vashed) I have mixed feelings about this documentary about an uncompleted Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. I'm glad that the footage of the original film -- sickening as it is and difficult as it often is to watch -- is being seen for it does present images of the Warsaw Ghetto we hadn't seen before and it's an important historic visual document, even though much of it was staged .

But the director only seems half interested in pursuing the stated objective seems only half-interested in pursuing the theme of disconnect between reality and the faux-reality of the Nazi film (and, by implication, of documentary films as a species). One could argue that her use of an actor to portray a key character in the scenario without informing the audience that it is an actor means that she is also guilty of manipulating reality -- although, of course, for not nearly as nefarious a reason. And since the film has no real narrative arc, and footage is repeated, I found that ultimately it got a bit tedious -- I think the subject and material might have been better served as a short film (say 45 minutes or so).
6/10
=======================

Let It Rain (Agnès Jaoui). A small-scale, but lovely meditative film about coming to grips with the shortcomings of others and accepting them in oneself; the film also sagaciously suggests that part of being human is accepting the imperfections of life and relationships. Not as rich as Jouai's The Taste of Others perhaps, the film suffers a bit from some of the humor bordering on the coy and some characters not being fleshed out enough. But it is still a smart, literate and very nice movie.
7/10

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Army Of Crime (Robert Guédiguian). This account of non-native, mostly Jewish, Frenchpersons who fought in the Resistance has a thrilling and extraordinarily moving tale to tell. Unfortunately, the film itself is not so thrilling or moving. The main problem is its diffuseness – it covers so many characters that nearly all of them remain only surface deep. Just as we are beginning to care deeply about a character, he or she fades away and another person takes center stage. There are also some intimations of moral ambiguity from time-to-time, but ultimately these seem more like lazy screenwriting rather than attempts at psychological insight. It does have some outstanding and unbearably tense moments, and it is very evocative in showing day-to-day Parisian life during the Occupation but it is one's awareness of the real life historical events that carries it along. (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, whom I first saw in Christophe Honore's Love Songs is the biggest Dream Boat in movies today.)
6/10

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Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin) What a disappointment this slight and annoying comedy is, since it comes from the director of the masterful Head On and Edge of Heaven. It's silly, but not inspiredly so, with unlikable characters, unconvincing inter-relationships and under-developed characterizations. Plot contrivances also abound. It’s as if Akin got tired with making psychologically acute politico/socio studies and decided to ape Judd Apatow. Maybe he had fun, but it’s a shame for the audience. Misconceived from start to finish.
3/10

==================
Making Plans For Lena (Christophe Honoré) This too is a disappointment from a filmmaker who has done excellent work in the past. A character study of a young mother who's on the brink, it suffers from the fact that the tirle character -- both as conceived and as played by Chiara Mastroianni -- is not particularly likable or sympathetic, nor even mpathetic, plus we are never privy to exactly what the roots of her malaise are, so she comes off just as a pill. And a not-very- interesting one either. Not that the other characters are that well-drawn or interesting either, not even Marie-Christine Berrault -- it's good to see the wonderful star od Cousin, Cousine playing Mastroianni's mother (her real-life Mom is Catherine Denueve) and she does manage to be charismatic even with a relatively dour character to play.
3/10



Edited By Damien on 1285425175

[Damien]

My Dog Tulip (Paul and Sandra Fierlinger)

Not just a goddamn cartoon, but an appallingly smarmy goddamn cartoon focusing on a crotchety man trying to mate his dog. It’s both charmless and unseemly in its scatological concerns. And also tedious as hell. A must see for people who want to watch animated dogs fucking, sometimes successfully, sometimes with coitus interruptus the order of the day. Or to witness a guy rubbing Vaseline on a dog’s genitalia. Nice musical score and some of the hand-drawn art work is whimsically clever but, overall, the entire thing is awful.

The film ends with a quote from the book on which it is based: “She offered me what I had never found in my life with humans: constant, single-hearted, incorruptible, uncritical devotion, which it is in the nature of dogs to offer” – which is why I’m a devotee of cats and not a dog person.

3/10

[ITALIANO]

Mamma mia. I hate to be the one here to openly say that the emperor is naked - but when I see the name of Antonioni being mentioned about The American, I can't be diplomatic anymore. The American is a terrible movie - full of would-be artistic silences, but without any real atmosphere. It's not only flat and uninspired (Clooney's worst performance ever) - it's also ridiculous. Ok, I admit that they shot it in an uniquely beautiful - and relatively little-seen at the movies - part of Italy, Abruzzo, with its sad, cold landscapes. But everything else about the location is absurd - I mean, I don't want to spoil the movie... but it's the typical Italy of American movies, where everyone, including old small-town priests, speak English, in which a classy prostitute can exist in a tiny mountain village and can work in a brothel of the type we haven't seen here since the 50s. People get killed in this village without the police ever appearing (and arresting or at least investigating the most logical suspect), and at one point one of these killings happens during a crowded religious procession without anyone except the priest reacting in any way. Where do these filmmakers live? (There are countless other contradictions and absurdities, unexplained actions, etc, but I should really go in too many details about the storyline).

Paolo Bonacelli is one of our best actors, and he's good even here, but the "big" secret about his character doesn't lead to anything and feels rather forced. As for Violante Placido, she's not Eleonora Duse but, especially naked, she has an undeniable screen presence. Her mother, actress Simonetta Stefanelli (who, despite the rumors, is still alive and in very good health), was even more beautiful - she appeared in a few cult Italian movies and of course played Al Pacino's Sicilian wife in The Godfather.

[Mister Tee]

I haven't seen Control, but, based on The American, Corbijn has the clear instincts of a filmmaker. His images are singular and expressive. I got the strong impression he was in full command of his material; he was doing with it precisely what he'd intended. Whether that will, over the long haul, please general audiences, or even me, is another matter.

Comparisons to The Passenger have been widespread, and it's easy to see the links: major American star, foreign locale, affair with European babe, muted storyline. The difference I felt was, where Antonioni's film seemed steeped in Camus-like alienation, Corbin's was more focused on isolation. The opening snowy shot conveyed middle-of-nowhere better than anything I can remember (some audience members began to cough during this brief sequence, and it almost seemed a defensible reflex against the emptiness). Corbijn is fond of shooting Clooney, or his car, from a vast height, as if to emphasize his insignificance (it's like the Cary Grant retreat-from-the-UN-shot in North by Northwest made into a central motif). And when Clooney walks home late at night through empty streets, the deserted-ness just about grabs the audience by the throat. This isn't a film about wishing to be alone (as The Passenger at least somewhat seemed); just about someone who IS.

The film moves along fairly briskly, despite being rather austere, and not having much in the way of drama. I'm not sure I'd want to see alot of movies like it (minimalism is not my favorite style), but for these 100 minutes I was engaged. The details of Clooney assembling the weapon seemed to carry weight for him in the way Nick Adams' actions in Big 2-Hearted River did. And the encounters with the two female characters, and the priest, were interesting enough on their own. But the story arc, such as it is, doesn't much bear up to examination -- what happened and why isn't all that clear in the end, and has all sorts of cliche elements to it: the loving whore, and especially the butterfly image, the last of which made me do a Cousin Vinny "You were serious about that?".

A word about Clooney: he does some of his best acting here. During his final drive, the look on his face quietly let me know what was happening a moment before the cutaway shot revealed it. And he appeared to visibly age during those last grueling moments, as he did something vitally important to him, even if meaningless in the overall scheme. Nice work.

Two things about the leading lady. 1) What a body! 2) What a name -- Violante Placido. I gather her first name actually translates to "related to violet", but, for an English speaker knowing rudimentary Italian words, it looks like the most wonderfully paradoxical name imaginable.

[The Original BJ]

The American wasn't the only movie I saw this weekend that featured a trailer that sold the film as something it wasn't. I had the exact same reaction to Catfish, a film I think will generate plenty of buzz when it opens in a couple weeks for its timely and interesting story about a real-life relationship formed on Facebook. It's a difficult movie to really discuss, and so I'll wait to say more until others have seen it, but believe those early critics who have said that the less you know going in, the more you will likely enjoy the movie.

And, honestly, try to avoid the trailer at all costs. Not only does it reveal WAY too much about the story, it also advertises the movie as something that's pretty different from the one you end up getting. I found the movie mostly compelling, but I was definitely NOT blown away -- the story is low-key, and after hearing so much hype and witnessing a trailer which built up certain expectations, there's no way the movie could feel revelatory for me. I have a feeling this is the kind of movie that, if you saw it at Sundance knowing NOTHING about it, you might be knocked out (as so many clearly were), but the later you come to it, the more likely you are to want a little bit more from it.

But there are some interesting aspects to the story, which I think plenty of people will want to discuss, here and elsewhere. But I'll wait until at least the movie opens to open that can of worms.

The trailer actually made me want to stay 100 miles away from the film. The tone suggested these guys traveled all this way only to walk into something horrific/Saw-like. If you can assure me that's not the case, I might give it a try. But I'd have no interest in seeing THAT movie.

Mister Tee, I can assure you that the film is not even remotely Saw-like -- what you see in the trailer is the most horrifying/scary footage in the entire film.