| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Age of Stupid - Unrated |
"The Age of Stupid" is like one of those TV programs consisting of four of five reports on various interconnected topics, except these reports are intermingled and bound together by the conceit of a future narrator (a multi-billionaire who is given the rugged, proletarian face of Pete Postlethwaite) shown viewing archives from the early XXIst century and reflecting on how stupid you and I were.
The problem with the film is that the futuristic conceit (global warming has happened, the ecosystem and, with it, human civilisation have collapsed, look what you've done) is nothing more than an afterthought, the bulk of the movie consisting in the 2007 interviews and reports. The filmmakers have not bothered to work out a realistic worst-case scenario in detail, but simply scare you with blurred views of climate refugees, a decrepit Taj Mahal and an accelerated future history consisting of overlapping soundbites, and prefer to devote about 90% of the future action to Pete Postlethwaite pretending to be editing his archives using virtual reality moves a la Tom Cruise in "Minority Report." Another flaw of the film is that it says almost nothing about the science of global warming. And very much like a Michael Moore movie, it shoots at anything that moves, blurring issues (making Shell responsible for all the violence and injustice in Africa, for instance) and literally simplifying things to the level of funny, fast-paced cartoons narrated by children. Where the film does succeed is in showing us how self-contradictory and mutually contradictory we all are. Indeed, rather than "The Age of Stupid", it could have been called "The Age of Contradiction". One of XXIst century protagonists of the film, for instance, is a retired oil industry engineer, who lost everything in the Katrina hurricane, and claims to have learned that happiness does not lie in possessions, and that we have been squandering our resources (he is the originator of the title), but says he would not do anything differently if he were to live his life over again, and now seems to delight mostly in smoking, drinking, riding his bike and fishing. British citizens who claim to care about global warming are also shown defeating an attempt to build windmills close to their property. And while a British couple save on carbon by growing their own food and cutting on their plane trips, and an eighty-year old mountain guide rather ineffectively tries to slow down invasive trucking through the Mont Blanc tunnel, a super-rich Indian entrepreneur plans to eliminate world poverty by creating a low cost airline company, reducing all the efforts of those well-meaning environmentalists to nil. However anecdotal it might be, the film is nevertheless worth seeing, and although it is nothing more than a patchwork, it almost miraculously manages to come to a rather emotional climax. |
January 5, 2010 | N/A | |||
| Grey Gardens - Unrated |
Having seen both of the Maysles brothers documentaries ("Grey Gardens" and "The Beales of Grey Gardens") and read what there is to lear about the two Edies on the Internet, I was in rather familiar territory with this movie, watching the unfolding of the pathetic riches-to-rags story the viewer of the original documentaries has to reconstruct by himself.
This story is told through an interweaving of the two time periods, flashing forward and backward between the 1930s and the 1970s, with the signs of future decay appearing quite early on amid the glamour: the two Edies may have been high-society, but they were not ladies, and once the money stopped flowing, they simply collapsed under the weight of their frivolity and amorality (the film functions very well as a cautionary tale: indeed, as the priest said, Little Edie was in need of a strong hand.) As I don't have a very high idea of Drew Barrymore's acting talents, I was pleasantly surprised at how well she nailed Little Edie. So whatever her worth as an actress, she was a wonderful impressionist here. Indeed, seeing the well-known scenes from the original documentaries recreated before our eyes makes up most of the charm of the movie. However, I wish the film had tried to make us see Little Edie as she saw herself, to make us enter into her completely distorted vision of her own life and surroundings, something a David Lynch would have excelled at, all the more so as "Sunset Boulevard" is his favorite film, and this is very similar stuff. The viewer does understand that Little Edie lives in a fantasy world concocted out of an idealised past and completely unrealistic ambitions of stardom (growing even more unrealistic as the years pass by); Big Edie even tells her she doesn't "see herself as others see her"; but I wish the film had made us enter into her madness, made us understand where her apparent contentment and even joie de vivre stemmed from. Maybe her life was richer that way after all. Maybe cats, raccoons and an open beach are greater treasures than the prestigious marriage(s) she could have aspired to. As it is, "Grey Gardens" is a very decent, if slightly redundant biopic, a loving homage to the original documentaries, well-worth seeing especially if you are already a fan, but not as powerful as it might have been. |
December 28, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel - Unrated |
With films like "Cronocrimenes" and "Primer", the noughties have decidedly been a good decade for time travel. But "FAQ About Time Travel" does not belong with these disturbing, high-brow meditations on the dark side of time travel: generally described as "Shaun of the Dead" meets "Back to the Future" or "Doctor Who" (because it is about a group of nerds - sorry, imagineers - timeslipping in a pub), it is more like the British version of the very clever Japanese comedy "Summer Time Machine Blues" (which you haven't seen but should have.)
FAQ is all about character interaction, witty dialogue, and pop culture references to everything from the movie posters for the "Back to the Future" trilogy to "Aliens", "The Corbomite Maneuver" and beyond. It is about what happens when a recently unemployed science-fiction fan finally gets his wish to become a Time Lord (which is also my calling, after Doctor of the Church), though not much lording over time happens here, so that he would be something closer to a Time Vassal, which has less of a ring to it. Apart from the rough language and some very mild gore, neither of which I found too obtrusive, the film is quite delightful, and makes for a nice Christmas experience: I watched it on December 23, and it did put me in a Christmassy mood, with its sense of wonder, and the dust from the nuclear armageddon looking just like snow. Anna Faris makes a good romantic interest (she is the perfect intersection of cute and funny, though I've seen her cuter with less make-up on) and the film ends on a perfect note, making me wish for a sequel. How long will we have to wait for "FAQ About Parallel Universes"? (Not counting this FAQ.) |
December 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Terminator Salvation - PG-13 |
"T3: The Rise of the Machines" was the first Terminator movie not directed by James Cameron, and it showed. This one is the second, and in addition to that, it is also the first Terminator movie that doesn't star Arnold Schwarzenegger (though he does have a CGI cameo), doesn't include any time travel element, and isn't set in the modern world. As a result, one doesn't get the feeling of watching a Terminator movie, but something like a cross between "The Road Warrior II" and "Transformers". The recognisable elements are the polaroid of Linda Hamilton, two or three recycled lines, a few T-800's (lost among the T-600's, the giant terminators, the terminator eels and the moto-terminators), some vocabulary (Judgment Day, Skynet), a boy named Kyle Reese and a man named John Connor, though the latter is not altogether the hero of the film, and is not yet the leader of the resistance, but a so-called "prophet", mostly because he is the only person in America with a radio transmitter, making him a one-man media consortium and the continent's only opinion-maker. I had misgivings about a film directed by one "McG", whom I don't know anything about and don't even want to find out (he probably likes heavy metal and Wipeout), and they were not assuaged by the fact that the cast also includes one "Jadagrace" and one "Common" (what is this? A hippy commune?) But then, I have misgivings about virtually every film that gets made these days, and they usually turn out to be right. Billed as a complete make-over for the Terminator franchise, the film is actually one action scene after another, with some "philosophising" thrown in about "what makes us human", which is either the fact that we bury our dead or that we have a heart, or so says Marcus, the Tin Man of Oz of the film. (By the way, if someone replaced my innards with a T-800 endoskeleton, I guess I'd notice first thing in the morning.) The cast includes Bryce Dallas Howard, the redhair from the Shyamalan movies, and Moon Bloodgood, who looks both slimmer and sluttier than in the TV series "Journeyman". As for Christian Bale, he is his usual inexpressive self, putting on his best raucous male voice to deliver Connor's one-liners. As I once remarked, I never really liked any of his films, and I never liked him in any of them. I'm still giving the film two stars, because I watched the whole thing (unlike that other modern sequel to an actioner of the eighties, "Die Hard 4") but I can't say I liked anything about it. It was a real let-down after the brilliant two seasons of the short lived "Sarah Connor Chronicles." |
December 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sunshine - R |
I usually have more sense than this with films that bad, managing to quit within the first fifteen minutes, but quite inexplicably, I watched the whole thing straight, with only a few minutes of sleep in the middle and some fast forwarding towards the end. I think the main thing that kept me going was the fact that it has Rose Byrne in a spaceship (I'll volunteer for any EVA if she will suit me up) and and that I didn't expect so much talent to be wasted on such a pointless script.
"Sunshine" is the kind of mixture of silliness and pretentiousness ("It's about meeting God"! And global... cooling!) that you wouldn't expect from a writer over twenty-one (Alex Garland was thirty-seven when the film was released.) It could almost be described as "2001" meets "Jason X": a sort of mock cerebral, pseudo-contemplative, fake hard-science odyssey interspersed with disaster movie scenes and much slasher horror (you just know someone is going to die in that cooling tank when they introduce it.) The cinematographer seems to have developed his esthetics while looking at the ceiling of a nightclub through a glass of vodka, after having drunk about a bottle. The image is often blurred and hazy, with all sorts of parasitic colour and light effects, and although you often get the impression that something is actually going on, it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what. It was a very good idea to make a movie with Rose Byrne in a spaceship. I think they should make more of these. But like the Rose Byrne movie with zombies ("28 Weeks Later") or the one with Rose Byrne in Versailles ("Marie Antoinette"), this one was forgettable, and I definitely hope it will remain the worst one I've seen her in. |
December 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Moon - R |
I read somewhere that Duncan Jones conceived "Moon" as some forgotten sci-fi classic of the seventies, and in this he perfectly succeeded. "Moon" looks as if it was made about a decade after 2001, a kind of big-screen big brother of "Space: 1999", the first season of which may well have been the best looking sci-fi TV show ever (however crappy the science and the scripts were.) The design is superb, and the main character(s) initially look(s) like some hippy out of "Dark Star".
The script as such is interesting, but rather predictable. Once I had figured out what had actually happened (for the first few minutes, not knowing how hard the science would turn out to be, I thought of some time loop), I virtually had the rest of the film (i.e. the last hour or so) figured out (down to the shelf-life aspect), and merely watched out the unfolding of what I had predicted. I regret that the scriptwriters felt the need to add so much foul language in a film that could easily have done without. But what I found particularly gripping was the way the nightmarish, dystopian vision gradually gave way to something more humanistic and hopeful, even if the hero's prospects were not that good even in the end, and the computer's "psychology" was a little inconsistent (however faithful it may appear to be to his "protect Sam Bell" prime directive.) "Moon" is really recommended to amateurs of hard science and contemplative sci-fi, especially those whose regret the way the future we imagined in the 70s was hijacked by the kidult generation. |
November 28, 2009 | N/A | |||
| For All Mankind - Unrated |
Constructed out of film footage shot from 1968 to 1972, in the heyday of the Apollo program, with audio commentary by the astronauts who were in missions 8 to 17 and either flew around the Moon or actually set foot on it, "For All Mankind" (a title borrowed from a Kennedy speech) portrays the whole Apollo program as one single composite flight, and is therefore structured not chronologically, as one might expect, but according to the various stages of the journey, from preparation to ocean plop.
Puzzled as I was by this unusual narrative order (which I only figured out after the film was over), and a bit left behind by some of the astronauts' heavy accents, I found this very informal documentary less engrossing than, say, "In the Shadow of the Moon". It is not about context and history, or even science and technology, but about the human experience of going to the Moon, and especially the moments when nothing significant is happening, and the astronauts are just goofing around on the surface, listening to country music or having fun with food and zero gravity. The two things that fascinated me about this documentary, apart from the stark beauty of our satellite and the surprisingly good definition of the later films, were how often religious language and references popped up in the astronauts' commentaries, and how quickly these outlanders began to feel at home on the Moon, and form an attachment to this inhospitable, black and white dustbowl. |
November 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Objectified - Unrated |
"Objectified" is a documentary about modern industrialised objects, the thought processes that go into them, and the impact they have on our lives. It is composed mostly of designers and design curators and editors from all over the world expressing their philosophies of design; explaining how specific objects such as a very early laptop computer or a pair of garden shears were conceived; or actually brainstorming about the way we keep our teeth clean, potentially leading to a revolutionary toothbrush or the end of toothbrushing itself.
At its best, the film evokes a zen-like mood with its shots of beautifully designed everyday things and its unobtrusive electro soundtrack, but some of the time it looks only like a cluttered reflection of our vain consumerist lives, beating the latest blockbuster in terms of intrusive product placement. One of the interviewees explains that most of what designers do is not solve users' problems with better thought-out models, but simply respond to manufacturers' demand for "more SKUs": "They want more stuff and they want more people to buy it." The environmental costs of our constant demand for the "very new" and the "very next" are also dealt with in the final part, where designers confess that virtually all they have ever produced is probably decaying in a landfill somewhere. I may have had excessively high hopes about this documentary. I somewhat expected it to make me see the world in a new light, to transform my relationship to the ominipresent manufactured objects that surround me. It did strengthen my appreciation of the work conscientious designers do, the expertise they have ("we know better what people need than they do, in terms of ergonomics, design, etc.") and the validity of the values they try to embody in their creations (clarity, honesty, durability, consistency, etc.) but it didn't transform my perception of my manufactured environment. |
November 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Children of the Corn 4: The Gathering - Unrated | October 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Mothman Prophecies - PG-13 |
"The Mothman Prophecies" is a kind of double episode of the X-Files that ends like a Smallville season finale. It feels very much like a remake of a supernatural movie of the 1970s, something Ira Levin could have written, and I was not surprised to learn that it was based on a 1975 book. Perhaps because that book purported to be about real supernatural events, the film does not bother to have anything to say: it does not explore any themes, not even "loss", which seems to be what it is about at first. It merely seeks to create an atmosphere of eeriness, using some clever cinematography and a disturbing soundtrack.
That the original book was certainly a hoax makes the whole film rather pointless, because it earnestly "documents" something that never happened, and doesn't even fit any supernatural category I believe in. I initially saw the "mothman" as an angel, portrayed in a non-silly, biblical fashion, but the book was called "Visitors from Space" and the film at one point describes "mothmen" as being "more advanced" than us, which suggests they are indeed aliens. But apparently author John Keel rejected the "extra-terrestrial" explanation of UFOs as early as 1967... If you're looking for a Fortean movie, you might enjoy this one. But I personally do not think it really needed to be made. |
October 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Le Renard et l'enfant (The Fox & the Child) - G |
"The Fox & the Child" should have been called "The Child and the Fox", because it shows more of the child than the fox, and the whole story is filtered through her own experience, as her adult self does the narration.
The child in question is a red-haired little girl who wears the same purple outfit throughout the film, giving her an almost medieval appearance, and blotting out all references to modern culture and logos. She has the kind of freckled face that is generally used to sell you strawberry-shaped candies or allegedly "natural" foods with 5.8% honey and 3.4% nuts. She is the child of an obviously wealthy family, living in the kind of countryside house generally used to sell you olive oil or other farm products, and she seems to have nature all to herself. Despite the splendour of her surroundings, there is not a single tourist in sight, nor are there any planes in the air, obnoxious teenagers riding cross country motorbikes, or nearby motorways. The only sound of a car you'll ever hear is daddy's as he comes back home in the distance. The girl's parents (heard but not seen) are so permissive and carefree that they let her roam all day in forests inhabited by bears and wolves, and never seem to worry about any human harming her. "The Fox & the Child", in other words, in not a nature documentary, it is not about reality: it is a fairy tale, and it has a very sound, if rather unpleasant, moral to deliver. It is almost spielbergian in its efforts to please the crowds, and it even recycles the Gospel borrowings Spielberg made in E.T. One of its flaws is that in its focus on the fox, it tends to belittle all other animals, who are either seen as evil predators or rightful preys (not a tear is shed over the mice that get eaten by Mrs fox and her cubs, or for the pigs that seem to have gone into the little girl's sandwiches, and frogs and hedgehogs are objects of derision.) And one thing that is left unexplained is how the little girl recognised "her" fox after months searching for her in vain. This said, the film has its touching moments, and even though the moral is a bit bleak and abrupt, it is the most honest aspect of the film, and can teach kids a thing or two about what animals are. However, I think children under five are probably too impressionable for the film, which often features a strong level of threat, and is not always tender with its audience. |
September 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Surrogates - PG-13 | September 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Pandorum - R | September 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| I Am Legend - PG-13 |
I guess I liked this film more than I realise (hence the generous three stars), because I was reluctant to erase it from the hard drive and finally burnt it to DVD. Post-apocalyptic settings have been a fascination of mine ever since high school, especially after I had bought a friend's copy of the "Aftermath" role playing game and started reading some of the fiction it listed. I am thrilled by the idea of being alone in an urban landscape slowly giving way to nature. The best thing about "I Am Legend" is that it has the money to visualise that situation, and make you believe that the producers got New York city completed evacuated and made over for the duration of the shooting.
I was completely in my element during the first part of the film. I liked the hero's deep bond with his dog, and all the tricks he used to stay sane. The rest of the film I liked a little less, but that's probably because loneliness and animal friendships are more in tune with my own moods than what happens in the second part. The CGI ghouls were also a let down, lacking soul and presence (but then again I didn't like the flesh and blood hordes of "Ghosts of Mars" or "30 Days of Night" either, so I must be hard to please in that area.) One thing I also did find annoying is the first scene. Will Smith careening through the streets of New York over the top, and justified only by the filmmakers' desire to open the film with a bang, probably fearing that the contemplative mood induced by a lonesome man's ramblings through deserted streets and buildings might alienate the summer crowds. In a world without ambulances and emergency rooms, anybody would get paranoid about driving accidents, and probably drive at ultra-safe speeds, unless they had a death wish. Next items on my to-watch list: The History Channel's "Life After Us: The Series", and season 2 of the British TV series "Survivors". |
September 22, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Skellig - Unrated |
Starring two of the stars of the hit mini-series "State of Play" (Kelly Macdonald and Life on Mars' John Simm) as the hero's parents, and Tim Roth as the mysterious, smelly and belching homeless beer-drinker of the title, "Skellig" is one of those modern children's stories that blend fantasy with the real-life (and death) issues of contemporary kids: a baby sister's illness, a father's rage at his powerlessness, a mother's anger at her husband's selfishness, a budding friendship with an old woman suffering from "Arthur-itis" and a kid's ambivalence about the arrival of a new family member.
My favourite aspect of the film was the hero's friendship with the girl next door, homeschooled artist Mina. As teenage film girl friends go, she was one of the best I can remember, and made me wish I had one like that, even though I'm 42 (but emotionally retarded.) John Simm was also very good, and managed to make me cry once or twice. |
September 22, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Becoming Jane - PG |
I saw a cropped version of this film on British TV (16/19 reduced from the original 2.35:1) and I didn't enjoy the first part that much. I thought it was a bit chaotic, with a lot of handheld camera, choppy editing and scenes of revelry. But the last half-hour paid off emotionally, even if it was not as compelling as, say, the ending of "The Age of Innocence", which deals with a similar situation.
One reason why I was not so drawn by the film is probably that I had already seen "Jane Austen Regrets", starring Olivia Williams, and I knew what choices Austen would ultimately make. I also think much of the ideology of the film is anachronistic, and even though I have no firsthand knowledge of Austen's biography, I would bet much of the story is pure fiction (Ebert says all the mentions of a Tom Lefroy in Austen's letters were made between Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, 1796.) So this is less a biopic than an Austen pastiche, in the same vein as the novels and series that reimagine Conan Doyle or Doctor Bell as real-life Sherlock Holmes. |
September 20, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Fountain - PG-13 |
Before watching "The Fountain", I only knew one thing about its plot: that it intertwined the love stories of three couples, all of them interpreted by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, at three different dates: 1500, 2000 and 2500. As someone with an interest in history, science-fiction and the passing of time, I was intrigued.
Unfortunately, about twenty minutes into the film, I had connected virtually all the dots, and the remaining three fourths of the film were only a matter of being told what I had already figured out: so while Roger Ebert is waiting for a longer "director's cut", I think the best thing that could happen to this film is to be reduced to about half an hour. The "historical" section of the film is quite atmospheric, but it is historical only in name. There are references to "Spain", "the queen", a "conquistador", a "Great Inquisitor" and "a Franciscan"; some of the costumes look appropriate; and the Spanish were indeed looking for a fountain of eternal youth in the New World. But basically, the whole thing looks like a fantasy devised by a teenager based on vague reminiscences of pictures from a child's history book (written by no-popery Protestants.) It is, in fact, no less fantastic than the "futuristic" section, itself a kind of surrealistic New Age dream sequence rather than a genuine science-fiction tale. The film mixes element from Genesis, Mayan mythology and yogic imagery (with Jackman levitating in the lotus position and having his "third eye" opened), together with (drug-induced?) personal visions. It uses a very restricted colour palette, most of the scenes being very dark, with a predominance of cold, blue-green greys and splashes of blinding gold and white. The music is rather plaintive, and the dialogues are often whispered, with actors shot so close that the screen is often filled with part of a face. The result is something of an idiosyncratic mess, "beautiful" in the way TV advertising can be: lush, sophisticated and professional, but artificial, aloof and inauthentic. It didn't bore me, but with such a premise, I really could have loved it much more. |
September 17, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Trail of the Screaming Forehead - Unrated |
Three irrelevant factors may explain why I enjoyed this film less than "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra": first, I saw it in a painfully cropped 1,85/1 version (from the original 2,35/1), courtesy of the philistines of the Horror Channel; second, I am in a Vulcan mood at the moment and hence less receptive to humour; and third I watched it with my wife, whose mere presence tends to make anything much less funny. "Trail of the Screaming Forehead" is a pastiche of the invasion movies of the 1950s, prominent amongst which was "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (whose lead actor, Kevin McCarthy, has a cameo here.) It involves crawling alien foreheads (animated by Ray Harryhausen himself), human experimentation with the newly discovered substance foreheadazine, and two seadogs with a coveted cargo of foreheaded cadavers (otherwise referred to as dead corpses.) The whole cast of "Lost Skeleton" returns here, including a singing Jennifer Blaire (a.k.a. Animala) and "The Journeyman"'s Brian Howe in more substantial roles. Unfortunately, Susan McConnell, who was one of the comic geniuses of "Lost Skeleton", is given much less screen time here. I think the biggest flaws of the movie are its lack of a competent director and cinematographer, and its rather amateurish (or low-budgeted) recreation of the 1950s. I wish they had paid more attention to period detail, and gone for a more noirish type of cinematography. The whole story, of course, is deliberately ludicrous, with a good parody of the pseudo-science talk that was prevalent in the sci-fi movies of that era (and has not completely vanished since), but it is nevertheless entertaining. Moreover, it has a very good title song by the Manhattan Transfer (a band I used to enjoy in the 80s) and small roles for Dick Miller and veteran James Karen (who was in "Return of the Living Dead" and the remake of "Invaders from Mars", to mention only two of his 173 screen appearances.) |
August 31, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Day the Earth Stood Still - PG-13 |
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a well-made re-imagining of Robert Wise's 1951 classic which greatly suffers from ideological inconsistency. First, although the movie is supposed to be a modern update of the original, complete with recomposed families, global warming and a female Secretary of State, it recycles much of the 1950s naivete about science and scientists. As in the 1951 version, they are still presented as the only people a representative of an advanced alien race would wish to talk to ("one of our [true] leaders" is a humble Nobel Prize winner with obscure equations on his blackboard, even though his field is "biological altruism"...), and as people with superior moral values to the other classes of society ("As scientists, we can?t consent to that"- yeah, right, we know your record is spotless.) Second, the film has replaced the anti-violence message of the original with a deep ecology stand, but it only expresses it very tepidly (if tepid deep ecology makes sense, which it doesn't.) Klaatu, for instance, is here "to save the Earth", meaning mostly the plants and animals whose very survival is threatened by humans. But he is shown eating a tuna sandwich, when tunas are one of the species overfishing has almost drawn to extinction. And the film is not afraid of offering its best product placement to a chain of fast foods that is the first brand that comes to mind when you think of threats to the environment (the message is probably: go and eat there, you know you'll go vegan when things get really bad, which apparently is not yet.) Klaatu is still very much the deep ecologist in several of his scenes. For instance, he voices the message that while the survival of the environment necessitates alien intervention, human death on the contrary has to be accepted as not that big a deal, even if it's your dad and you're just a kid. However, his statement of that philosophy is so broad that it makes one wonder why he cares about the plants and the animals in the first place: "Nothing ever truly dies. The universe wastes nothing. Everything is simply transformed." If this is so, why care about the death of the environment itself? And if "the universe" is so wise in its management of its parts (a clearly pantheistic view), why the need for giant robots to restore order? Third, it seems bizarre that a few hours of interaction with a single mum should change Klaatu's whole judgment of the human race, when the civilisations he represents have been monitoring the planet for years, and other aliens have even been under cover among us for decades, interacting with us in the most intimate ways. It is not clear why the Chinese guy ("Big Trouble in Little China"'s David Lo Pan himself) has not reached the same conclusions as Klaatu, and why he can't affect the ultimate decision the way Klaatu can. Is he just some lower-rank alien? Or are the Chinese not as nice as the Americans? By the way: if the aliens can infiltrate us so easily, why didn't they just try to get into key positions in the media, industry and government, affecting public opinion and getting the nations of the Earth to act in favour of the environment the way Zionists sway US and European policy? Or why, with their superior technology, didn't they pretend to discover cold fusion and assorted marvels, enabling us to get rid of our dependence on oil? Fourth, Gort's place in the scheme of things is a bit confusing. The original at least explained how the robots had originated and what their purpose was. The remake has retained the idea that Gort will punish any act of aggression, but since his new main role is to protect the Earth, shouldn't he be triggered by acts of environmental exploitation, rather than acts of aggression? And why are some of his actions automatic, while others seem to depend on what the aliens decide? In the original, the robots were deliberately made independent of the aliens themselves, so that they could enforce universal peace. What is the case in this movie? Fifth, if the problem is the way we treat the environment, why is Klaatu swayed by the way Jennifer Connelly's character treats her adoptive son or by the way the latter treats him? Shouldn't he be more concerned about whether they drive an electric car, recycle and eat vegan? And since the destruction of the environment is the outcome of the way the mass of human beings behave, how could a could of decent human beings really matter? And sixth, I was disappointed that the film did not have the courage to assert its environmental message more forcefully. Like "Wall-E", it ends with naive, feel-good optimism: we haven't reached the tipping point yet, and humans will change because this is what they tend to do when they are "on the brink". Transposed to the spiritual plane, this makes me think of the people who think they will have the chance to save their soul at the moment of death, and therefore need not worry about "religious stuff" just yet. This film could have been written by Gene Roddenberry decades ago. He was very fond of having humanity tried by "superior" alien species, and ultimately found innocent. "Star Trek IV" also had a very similar kind of alien intervention. Remember Spock's words? "Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man." The influence of "Starman" is also clearly visible (Carpenter's film also had one memorable scene in which Karen Allen felt sorry for a poor deer shot by evil hunters... while eating a hamburger in her leather jacket.) The film could also be analysed from a theological point of view. Religions are clearly shown as irrelevant to the crisis, as they go into apocalyptic mode with the arrival of the spheres, and their leaders are not deemed worthy of dialogue. Klaatu himself is like the First and Second Coming of Christ rolled into one: the Second turning into the First, more or less. In one scene he even resembles Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmatas, though he is actually focusing laser beams in the palms of his hands to destroy two helicopters, which slightly changes the interpretation... I did not dislike the movie, and I was pleased that it did not bore me to death like much of what I see. But I found it muddled and halfhearted- just shallow entertainment trying to pass for something profound in order to justify itself. |
August 28, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky - Unrated | Centered on a London bar in the 1930s, this is a trilogy of films that tells stories of unrequited love through the perspective, first of the barman, second of the prostitute he is in love with, and third of the bartender who is in love with him. The period reconstruction and the acting are excellent. | August 25, 2009 | N/A | |||
| A Harlot's Progress - Unrated | I am rating this months after watching it so I can't say it is very fresh in my memory. The film is a dramatisation of the Hogarth's series of woodcuts "A Harlot's Progress", describing a girl's fateful descent into vice and disease. I found the use of anachronistic city sounds in some of the shots rather effective. | August 25, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Soultaker - R |
When you're dead, your soul separates from your body until some heavenly civil servant, who works on the seventh floor of a six-floor hospital, comes to take it. Your "soul" is actually a kind of invulnerable body that is invisible to the living but visible to other souls. It can also interact with the physical world in rather unfathomable ways. For instance, it is still solid enough for your feet to rest on the ground and your hands to open doors (so the "souls" in the film do a lot of running and door opening), but your vocal cords have lost their ability to affect the air around you, which means nobody can hear you. So you can pick up the phone, and hear what the other person is saying (i.e. your ear drums are still solid enough for air vibrations to act on them), but you won't be able to talk back (I don't remember whether the money you had in your pockets - for you get to keep your clothes - works in public phone booths. But you can always call a free number.)
Such is the premise of this Mary-Sue version of "Ghost", whose screenwriter (Vivian Schilling, now a published author) wrote for herself as the female star a role in which two males (another "soul" and a "soul"taker) find her irresistibly beautiful and seem to have no other motivation than to be loved in return by her. It should be enough to say that "Soultaker" was chosen as the opening episode for the tenth season of MST3K, and that it is currently listed as 63rd in IMDb's bottom 100 movies. But I'm very tempted to jot down what I have gathered about the personality of its author and star. Schilling is a lapsed Catholic who had a near death experiment and became a kind of New Age guru (her latest "script" is for a "Teen Yoga" tape in which a young athlete "awakens her kundalini.") She also seems to be a spoiled rich girl with a very good opinion of herself and a genius for self-promotion. Examples of this can be found on her IMDb page, her website, and the Amazon reviews for her novel "Sacred Prey": of the nine five-star reviews, two are written by "A customer" and no less than six by people who only review her novels, which makes me suspect no less than eight of the nine are by her. This aspect of Schilling's personality feeds much of the humour of the MST3K commentary (cf. the "me on the bed" scene), which has a lot of fine moments: "She's gratuitously postponing the nudity!", "No messy soul residue!"; "Don't tongue the Reaper!" |
August 22, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Mother Teresa:In the Name of God's Poor - PG-13 |
This is not a film about a saint, unless you count canonisation by the media a true mark of sainthood, in which case most biopics about the "architects of the culture of death" would count as saints' lives. This is a film about a philanthropist who won the Nobel peace prize, and who happened to be a nun. What kind of nun is difficult to tell from the film, since she seems to have owed about as much to Gandhi (that other saint of the media) as to Jesus, and believed all religions worshiped the same God (another bromide of our religiously illiterate culture.) When she turns a former Hindu temple into a hospital, she considers it "already blessed for God's work", whereas an orthodox Catholic would probably have viewed it as in need of exorcism because of its association with idolatry. Films about saints are extremely rare, and when they do get produced, they are usually released directly to DVD, and those DVDs are not distributed properly: try to do a search for "Clare and Francis" on dvdpricesearch for instance. And when you find one that is widely available and features stars like Geraldine Chaplin, you have the right to be suspicious. In this case, what you get is the standard Hallmark treatment. I have a personal hatred of Hallmark movies. Whatever they are about, they are trite, bland, politically correct, "consensual", Americanised, watered down products, filled with feel-good cliches and prefabricated kleenex moments and merely contribute to the media fog that prevents us from getting at the truth of things. In this case, Mother Teresa becomes a mere apostle of religious tolerationism and a one-woman welfare state, a kind of grandmotherly liberal icon whose more Catholic traits are edited out. Her orthodox stand on abortion, for instance, is never referred to, which is all the more blameworthy as she spoke on the subject in her Nobel prize speech, with which the film ends. I will not go into the debate of whether Mother Teresa was actually a saint or not. A rather informative article can be found at the following url: http://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_025br_MotherTeresa_Zima.htm |
August 21, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Clare and Francis - Unrated | August 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| JCVD (Van Dammage) - R |
I'm not ashamed to say it, I like Van Damme (my "first script" - the TMNT one - even had a role for him), though I have only seen about a dozen of the forty movies or so he has been in, which means I'm not a hardcore fan. Apart from "Timecop", none of those films were real favorites of mine, but I have a lot of respect for his accomplishments, and I'm not Belgian but French, so that's not a question of nationalistic pride. I am also aware of his public persona, and the goofy things he's been saying over the years. YouTube anthologies and even books have been made out of them. Some of them have made me laugh hysterically, the way some student papers have made me laugh, but I can't say I ever laughed at the man, nor lost my respect for him.
So I was glad to see Van Damme playing more or less "himself", in a film that acknowledges both the action hero (in an impressive opening long shot where he kicks out or shoots virtually all the film's stuntmen) and the actor as he is perceived by the general public here in Europe, and weaves a really good story out of it. The premise is quite simple: Van Damme is in the midst of a custody trial, he is losing his daughter, he has attorney fees to pay before noon, he hasn't slept for two days, his credit cards have been blocked, so he goes to a post office to solve the problem, and a robbery ensues (saying more or being more explicit would be spoiling the film.) This is not quite the real Van Damme we are being shown here. His daughter and parents are not interpreted by themselves, and some of the details of his personal life are just part of the fictional drama. But the man really bares himself, and goes where no Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren or Bruce Willis has gone before. For this is not the kind of gentle self-deprecatory Hollywood humour Willis is famous for. This is not a film about a pseudo-"anti-hero" a la John McClane pitted against larger-than-life villains and performing all sorts of superhuman stunts. It's a film about an ageing forty-seven year old Belgian actor who has become an object of rather disrespectful adulation tinged with mockery, and is involved in a very messy real life situation where he doesn't really get to save the day. Contrary to Roger Ebert, I loved Van Damme's monologue. Its authenticity even made me cry, which is probably a first for this particular actor. I'm not sure the ending is very realistic (with so many witnesses?) but the film really worked as a whole. I hope it marks a new start for Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg. |
August 21, 2009 | N/A |
2112 ratings
328 reviews
