Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread II

[kihei]

Link to Volume I:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1110923

Guidelines for joining and playing (arrgh)

1) See the current "movie of the week"
2) Post a review of that film on this thread
3) Choose your pick for movie of the week which will go at the bottom of the "coming attractions" list below (you can just mention it in your post, and I'll add it to the list--so this post will always provide current informatiion)
4) Continue to contribute reviews at your own discretion

No timelines for reviews, but try to post your review of the "movie of the week" as soon as is reasonably convenient

When the movie that you have picked finally comes up for discussion:

1) Write a review of your movie
2) Choose another movie for the "coming attractions" list
3) Continue to contribute reviews at your own discretion

Previous Movies of the Week

Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger)
World on a Wire (Fassbinder)
Women in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
Lacombe, Lucien (Malle)
The Conformist (Bertolucci)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)--all of above on "Last Movie You Watched" threads
Blow Up (Antonioni)
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi)
The Strait of Hunger (Uchida)
Nosferatu the Vampire (Herzog)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
Suicide Club (Sion)
The Celebration (Vinterberg)
The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier)
Red Desert (Antonioni)
Cafe de Flore (Vallee)
The Right Stuff (P. Kaufman)
Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (Powell/Pressburger)
Children of Paradise (Carne)
Hoop Dreams (James)
Ordet (Dreyer)
Still Life (Zhang-Ke)
Funny Games (Haneke)
Touch of Evil (Welles)
The Music Room (S. Ray)
Our Hospitality (Keaton)
The Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai)
Nashville (Altman)
The Mirror (Panahi)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
Secrets and Lies (Leigh)
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
Z (Costa-Gavras)
Walkabout (Roeg)
La Ronde (Max Ophuls)
Winter Light (Bergman)
Vivre Sa Vie (Godard)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)
Pather Panchali (S. Ray)
The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella)
Volver (Almodovar)
Survive Style 5+ (Sekiguchi)
The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz)
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
Army of Shadows (Melville)
Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
Fat City (Huston)
13 Tzameti (Babluani)
The Five Obstructions (Leth/Von Trier)
Das Boot (Petersen)
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)
Babette's Feast (Axel)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
The Virgin Suicides (S. Coppola)
L'Atalante (Vigo)
The Killer (Woo)
Alexandra (Sokurov)
Purple Noon (Clement)
Chungking Express (Kar-Wai)
Synecdoche, New York (C. Kaufman)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci)
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Soderbergh)
Providence (Resnais)
Amores Perros (Inarritu)
Revanche (Spielmann)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
The Wild Child (Truffaut)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
The Third Man (Reed)
Take Shelter (Nichols)
Before the Rain (Mančevski)
Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul)
The Art of Crying (Fog)
The Human Condition Trilogy (Kobayashi)
Dillinger Is Dead (Ferreri)
Once Upon a Time in Anatollia (Ceylan)
Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Beyond the Mat (Blaustein)
A Man and a Woman (Lelouch)
Grand Illusion (Renoir)
Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach)
Persona (Bergman)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
My Dinner with Andre (Malle)
After Life (Koreeda)
Departures (Takita)
Like Father, Like Son (Koreeda)
Contempt (Jean Luc Godard)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan)
The Great Escape (Sturges)
A Simple Life (Hui)
The King of Comedy (Scorsese)
Mon Oncle Antoine (Jutra)
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Puiu)
People on Sunday (Siodmak brothers, et al)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut)
PTU (To)
Norwegian Wood (Tran)
The Great Dictator (Chaplin)
The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel)
M (Lang)
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
In the Mood for Love (Kar-Wai)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Somewhere (S. Coppola)
Cafe Lumiere (Hsiao-Hsien)
Aquirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
Le Samourai (Melville)
Les Diaboliques (Clouzot)
Alice in the Cities (Wenders)
Rome, Open City (Rossellini)
Mother (Bong)
Lilya 4-Ever (Moodysson)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Upstream Color (Carruth)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard)
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Mungiu)
Infernal Affairs (Lau and Mak)
Amour (Haneke)
All about Eve (Mankiewicz)
Before Sunrise (Linklater)
The Consequences of Love (Sorrentino)
Charulata (S. Ray)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
Jaws (Spielberg)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr)

Click to read more...

 

[kihei]

Volume II Movie List

Now Playing

November (kihei)


Coming Attractions

Unforgiven (Jevo)
The Innocents (KallioWeHardlyKnewYe)
Harlan County USA (Ralph Spoilsport)
The Day of the Jackal (kihei)


Previous Movies of the Week, part two

Casablanca (Curtiz)
Days of Being Wild (Kar-wai)
Tokyo Godfathers (Kon/Furuya)
L'enfant (Dardenne brothers)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down (Almodovar)
Cache (Haneke)
The Official Story (Puenzo)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
L'eclisse (Antonioni)
Vampyr (Dreyer)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang)
Je t'aime, je t'aime (Resnais)
Star Wars (Lucas)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri)
Missing (Costa-Gavras)
Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein)
All That Jazz (Fosse)
Chinatown (Polanski)
Love Exposure (Sion)
Rebel without a Cause (N. Ray)
The General (Keaton/Bruckman)
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming)
Harakiri (Kobayashi)
Shame (Bergman)
Mad Max (Miller)
Man of Flowers (Cox)
Hunger (McQueen)
Breathless (Godard)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
Kes (Loach)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Eden (Hansen-Love)
Mona LIsa (Jordan)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda)
Wings of Desire (Wenders)
The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatozov)
The Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
You, the Living (Andersson)
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Resnais)
Mystery Train (Jarmusch)
Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang)
The Fireman's Ball (Forman)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
Fireworks (Takeshi)
Certified Copy (Kiarostami)
The Draughtsman's Contract (Greenaway)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki)
The Wild Bunch (Peckenpah)
Chinese Take-Out (Borensztein)
The Gospel according to St. Mathew (Pasolini)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Don't Look Now (Roeg)
Devil (Zulawski)
Memories of Murder (Bong)
Close-Up (Kiarostami)
L. A. Confidential (Hansen)
Divorce, Italian Style (Germi)
Touki Bouki (Mambety)
The Big Snit (Condie)
Mean Streets (Scorsese)
If....(Anderson)
Blood of the Beasts (Franju)
A Child's Christmas in Wales (McBrearty)
What's Opera, Doc? (Jones)
The Return of Martin Guerre (Vigne)
Police, Adjective (Porumboiu)
Menilmontant (Kirsanoff)
Haider (Bardwaj)
Armadillo (Pedersen)
Elephant (Clarke)
The Chaser (Na)
A Man Escaped (Bresson)
Pinky (Kazan)
Fantasia (various)
MASH (Altman)
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Haynes)
Nosferatu (Murneau)
Talk to Her (Almodovar)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
Letters from Iwo Jima (Eastwood)
Sorcerer (Friedkin)
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci)
The Big City (S. Ray)
Farewell My Concubine (Chen)
This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner)
Les Ordres (Brault)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Suspiria (Argento)
The Earrings of Madam de.... (Max Ophuls)
Beau Travail (Denis)
Ivan, the Terrible, parts I and II (Eisenstein)
Fargo (Coen brothers)
Charade (Donen)
Silence and Cry (Jancso)
Love Me or Leave Me (Vidor)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
Battles without Honor and Humanity (Fukasaku)
Roger and Me (Moore)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Schnabel)
In Bruges (McDonagh}
Cronos (del Toro)
Hausu (Obayashi)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls)
The Man without a Past (Kaurismaki)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg)
Salvador (Stone)
Orpheus (Cocteau)
Daisies (Chytilova)
Night in the City (Dassin)
The Lion in Winter (Harvey)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
Vive le Tour (Malle)
Ed Wood (Burton)
Cameraperson (Johnson)
Repulsion (Polanski)
Holy Motors (Carax)
Punch Drunk Love (Anderson)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdonavich)
Truly, Madly, Deeply (Minghella)
Limelight (Chaplin)
Amadeus (Forman)
The Killers (Siegel)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch)
Floating Clouds (Naruse)
Tokyo Olympiad (Ichikawa)
The Gleaners and I (Varda)
Four Lions (Morris)
A Sunday in Hell (Leth)
Network (Lumet)
The Saga of Anatahan (von Sternberg)
Last Men in Aleppo (Fayad)
The Story of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
Empire of the Sun (Kubrick)
The Apartment (Wilder)
Seven Beauties (Wertmuller)
Haxan (Christensen)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt)
Death in Venice (Visconti)
Scarface (Hawks)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes)
Gregory's Girl (Forsyth)
The Night Porter (Cavani)
Hero (Zhang)
The Nun's Story (Zinnemann)
Band of Outsiders (Godard)
On the Beach Alone at Night (Hong)
Las Hurdes (Bunuel)
The Vanishing (1988) (Sluizer)
Gun Crazy (Lewis)

 

[GB]

I really want to, finally, make the time to join in with this. Casablanca is a movie I'm ashamed to have not watched yet, this seems like a good time to fix that particular blind spot.

 

[kihei]

Days of Being Wild (1990) Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) is young, handsome, callous, and ultimately lost. He has ongoing relationships with three women, all of whom he treats badly in one way or another. Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), who works in a soccer stadium kiosk, is shy and pretty, and Yuddy patiently worms his way into her heart. They have a brief very intense fling, but at the first sign of conflict, Yuddy does nothing to keep her in his life. Mimi (Carina Lau), who sometimes calls herself Lulu, is his next flame. She is hot and volatile, and she has no intention of suffering the same fate that befell Su Li-zhen. Although the sex is, if anything, even more exciting in this relationship, Yuddy is no more committed to Mimi than he was to Su Li-zhen. His third female relationship is with his aunt, who has important information about his mother that she has withheld from Yuddy. Though the relationship is stormy and filled with recrimination, it is with his aunt that Yuddy feels the closest bond.

Two other male characters play important roles in the movie, though in an almost casual way. Zeb unwisely sees Yuddy as something of a role model. Unfortunately Zeb just doesn’t have the cool necessary to pull off emulating his friend. The other key male figure is Tide (Andy Lau), a cop turned sailor, who provides the movie with the nearest approximation it has to a moral centre. Director Wong Kar-wai shakes these characters up like so many dice in a cup and then he plays them where they lay, meaning there isn’t anything resembling a conventional narrative to be found in the movie. Scenes meander and jump around with Wong masterfully extending time or condensing it almost on a whim. On paper, Yuddy is very close to a despicable character, an updated version of a cad. However, Cheung somehow manages to allow him to remain just sympathetic enough that the audience never quite abandons him. In lieu of dramatic thrust and clear rooting interests, Days of Being Wild gives us thematic sophistication and oceans of moody atmosphere.

The whole film is immersed in sultry discontent. No movie that I have ever seen comes even close to capturing post-coital languor better than this one; key sequences are imbued with a sense of satiation and lazy sensuality. Yet the movie is much more about frustration than it is satisfaction—even great sex can only take Yuddy and his partners so far. A subtle theme emerges: all these lives suffer in some ways from missed connections; from wanting things they can’t have; from longing for what is just beyond their reach. Underneath their assorted vulnerabilities, these characters collectively continue to struggle to find their way. Somehow the final out-of-the-blue cameo with Tony Leung, while making no literal sense, is perfect for a movie whose inhabitants ultimately seem little more than ships that pass each other in the night. Days of Being Wild is one of my favourite movies, currently #8 on my all-time list.

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[kihei]

My next pick is the Dardenne brothers L'enfant.

 

[Jevo]

Days of Being Wild (1990) dir. Wong Kar-Wai

The playboy York (Leslie Cheung) spends his time seducing young women. Many of them end up falling for him, but he has no intention of a relationship of any kind, except for a sexual one. The movie follows York and the women in his life, and how his presence affects them, including his relationship with his adoptive mother and his search for his real mother.

This is just Wong Kar-Wais second movie, but his personal style is already evident. It is not often you have a young director who is so confident in his vision, and at the same time has the skill to execute it. The result is a movie that has beautiful visuals, and that is a treat to just sit and experience. Some of the things that he tries, maybe doesn't work out as well as he had hoped, but I have to give him credit for trying.

I wanted to like Days of Being Wild a lot more than I do. I liked the visuals and the mood a lot. But even though I tried, I couldn't get interested in the narrative, and I couldn't get interested in the characters. I think the movie tries to juggle too many characters and narratives for its own good. There are parts of the movie that I think has the potential to be really interesting, but the movie doesn't explore them enough. Sadly that brings the movie down a notch of two for me. Normally this would be the kind of movie that I would like a lot, but for some reason this just wasn't it. In this movie I can see the things that makes me like the other films of Won Kar-Wai that I have seen, and his next movie, Chungking Express, is a downright masterpiece in my opinion. So to me this movie feels a bit like the dress rehearsal, where a few things go wrong, but once we hit opening night i.e. Chungking Express, everything is just right.

 

[kihei]

Off to New York for a few days and a couple of plays, so I will likely be a little late next week with my review of Tokyo Godfathers.

 

[Jevo]

Off to New York for a few days and a couple of plays, so I will likely be a little late next week with my review of Tokyo Godfathers.

No problem. My laptop, which also functions as my dvd player, just died on me last night. And it's unlikely that I get a new one until next week. So my review will also be a little late this week. Have a nice trip.

 

[Jevo]

Tokyo Godfathers (2003) dir. Satoshi Kon

On Christmas Eve in Tokyo, three homeless persons stumble upon an abandoned new born baby. The three area Gin a middle aged drunkard with a past he doesn't care to face, Hana a male transsexual with a dream about being a mother, and Miyuki a teenage girl who has runaway from home after stabbing her father, and who dares not seek out her parents again. After some bickering about what to do with the baby, the three decide to find its mother on their own. Through a series of coincidences, they slowly stumble closer and closer to the mother as the day passes.

Throughout the movie I think Kon raises a lot of questions about what exactly constitutes family, and what it means to love and be loved as family. Gin, Hana and Miyuki are almost like a family, but even though none of them care to show it much, they all long for their real family. Gin lies about his wife and daughter being dead, a lie he might have started to believe himself, as it's easier to live with than the reality that he abandoned them due to gambling debt. Miyuki doesn't want to admit that she misses her parents, but it is evident at several points in the movie that she does miss them, and wish that she had the courage to go to them. Hana is the one we know the least about, and we don't really know anything about her past until we get to the club where she used to work as a drag queen, and we hear about how the death of her husband led to a life on the street. Here we also meet Hanas 'mother', the manager of the night club. Even though we learn the least about Hanas past, I feel she had the harshest due to her sexuality and lifestyle, which has led to her having to find family where she could, such as the night club, or in the company of Gin and Miyuki. Kon shows that the best family is not always the one that you are blood related to, but losing the family you are blood related to can be one of the most devastating things to happen in your life.

In all his movies, including Tokyo Godfathers, Kon uses the animation for visual gags, and I really like his sense of humour. His movies are often very serious in its theme and contents, but he is intelligent about when and where he uses gags to lighten up the mood of the film, and it feels very natural and fitting. One of Kons big interests seems to be blurring the line between reality and dreams or imagination. In that regard Tokyo Godfathers is probably his most conventional, and deals with in a more subtle way, such as when Sachiko really seems to believe that the baby is hers. There are also Miyukis flashback when shes at the Spanish assassins house, which show the more imaginative approach Kon usually takes to this subject.

I only discovered Satoshi Kon and his movies earlier this year, and I have since watched all of them, and I am a big fan. Not many directors have the wild imagination he had, and he has created some truly memorable movies because of that. Tokyo Godfathers can be regarded as his most conventional in terms of story telling, but that doesn't mean it is a weaker movie. I still like it a lot, and I think it has one of the best chase scenes I have seen. I think that chase scene is a great example of how animation allows a filmmaker to stretch reality in a way that you can't do in live-action. If that same chase had been made in live-action, I think I would have found it silly but fun, while as animation I find it serious, tension filled, but also fun. I think Kon uses this ability to stretch reality, and he's crazy enough to get great results from it. It is not much different from what other successful animators do, such as Miyazaki. Miyazakis movies would also feel very silly as live action, but as animation they are magical. It is not a coincidence I chose Miyazaki as a comparison here. While I am not an expert on Japanese animation in any way, but I have long regarded Miyazaki as one of the great directors of all time. While Kon didn't have time to make as many movies as Miyazaki before his death, I think his movies rival Miyazakis in quality and imagination, even if their movies are quite different in tone and style.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick will be Terence Malicks The Thin Red Line.

 

[kihei]

Tokyo Godfathers (2003) Directed by Satoshi Kon and Shôgo Furuya

Though it is not exactly a Christmas movie, Tokyo Godfathers, an unconventional example of Japanese anime, retells the Nativity story, only with the three Wise Men transformed into a down-and-out bum, a transvestite who is as much a drama queen as a drag queen and a teenage runaway with a large chip on her shoulder. Gin, Hana and Miyuki, all homeless, have at least managed to find one another, and they function together like a parody of a dysfunctional family. When they find an abandoned infant in a garbage pile, they face some tough decisions about what to do about their discovery. Miyuki wants to keep the baby, but eventually they decide to look for the infant girl’s parents, even if it does mean eventually “returning stolen goods to a thief.” The drama and action is laced with a serious social commentary about both the pitfalls and the saving graces inherent in being part of a family. Though the animation of the film is detailed, drab colours are emphasized. The art work is well done, but the reliance on grays, browns, tans, and murky yellows bothered me a little. I suppose this is an appropriate colors scheme for people living in desperate, dingy circumstances, but the overall effect is a trifle overbearing. I wasn’t expecting bright candy colours and blue skies, but do destitute people actually see the world this way? It seemed an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach to communicating a visual interpretation of their condition.

As for the story, while it moves right along, it careens between the sentimental and the tough-minded. Despite some unnecessary stereotyping, the characters did eventually grow on me. Directors Satoshi Kon and Shogo Furuya create an almost neo-realist animated world, though one occasionally punctuated by bursts of well-executed action. I guess the litmus test for me is this: if this story had been told conventionally, with actors and actresses rather than with animated characters, would I have liked it? I’m not sure I would have. As anime it works because the approach taken here is such a different way to treat this kind of material. But, for me, there is an uneasy mix of melodrama and realism that compromised my pleasure to some degree. However, while I wouldn’t return to this particular work, I’d certainly check out the director’s other films.

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[kihei]

L'enfant (2005) Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Sonia, an adolescent girl, has a baby. Her 20-year-old boyfriend Bruno decides to sell the baby. He doesn’t bother to tell Sonia of his plan until the deed is done. Initially Bruno, a petty thief who has always done whatever it takes to survive on the street, has not the slightest clue of the emotional devastation that he has wrought (“We can have another one,†he tells Sonia). He has no clue because he possesses no moral conscience whatsoever. That he somehow manages to acquire one on his own is the movie’s tiny perfect act of grace. The Dardenne brothers always make movies with social implications, and L’enfant is no exception. Bruno has just barely reached adulthood himself, but he already appears lost, a small-time street hustler bound for a bad end. Yet, he is not merely that. He ultimately finds the capacity to change, to do the right thing, to even feel intense remorse about the hurt that he has caused and the damage that he has done. The Dardenne brothers, without any hint of sentimentality, create an incredibly positive, hopeful movie about human beings and their capacity for good.

I’m not sure I would have bought it, though, without Jeremie Renier’s superb, naturalistic performance as Bruno. It is a genuinely difficult role because Bruno could be such an easy character for the audience to turn on. Part of Renier's achievement is that he never lets the audience quite give up on Bruno. Yet, Bruno's available ingratiating moments (walking forlornly on the sidewalk with his empty stroller, for instance) are few and far between, and Renier never overplays them. Bruno isn’t really that bright, so Renier doesn’t even have the luxury of allowing self awareness to come to his character's rescue. Yet we accept his eventual heartfelt change as wholly genuine, and his transformation gives the movie’s powerful final scene immense emotional impact.

I think that L’enfant is an excellent movie, the Dardenne brothers’ best. But, in a small way anyway, it has one thing in common with, to use an extreme example, The Usual Suspects or with any good heist movie: L'enfant will never be better than the first time that you see it. On first screening, the Dardenne brothers and Renier keep us guessing about Bruno. When I first saw the film, I had no idea how things were going to turn out. Bruno’s change of heart doesn’t come as a surprise exactly, but it is by no means a sure thing. It is not certain that he will bail out his young protégé, nor is it certain that he will be gripped by the remorse that he feels by the end of the movie. We are kept in limbo about Bruno throughout most of the film, and that is partly a testimony to Renier's skill. However, the genuine uncertainty and suspense about how things will turn out are subsequently lacking on repeated viewings. Yet, L’enfant is still worth watching again and again. How many works of art these days put forward in any effective or believable way the notion that humans can transcend their immediate self-interest, that they are capable of finding their own moral compass? The very idea seems radical in the extreme.

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[kihei]

My next choice will be Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped.

 

[nameless1]

L'enfant was my first introduction to the Dardenes. From then on, I just love the small, yet richly textured stories that they bring to life on screen. I also like La Promesse, the first prominent work they have ever done.

By the way, does the last scene of L'enfant remind you guys of the last scene in Robert Bresson's Pickpocket? Every time there is an emotional confrontation at the end of a film, I always feel that the filmmakers have ripped off Bresson.

 

[kihei]

By the way, does the last scene of L'enfant remind you guys of Robert Bresson's pickpocket? Every time there is an emotional confrontation at the end of a film, I always feel that the filmmakers has ripped off Bresson.

Good god, no.

If L'enfant reminds me of anything, and it's just a little, it's Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands in which Mads Mikkelsen plays a brutal and really exceptionally stupid thug whose life is changed by a baby. It's not as good a movie as L'enfant, which sets the bar far too high for almost any film, but Mikkelsen is just jaw-dropping brilliant.

Later edit: Just thought that I would throw this is in and hope that you don't want to kill me as a result. When, for some strange, unfathomable reason, I decided to watch the final scene of Pickpocket with the sound down, it reminded me of nothing so much as Lady and the Tramp. There must be something wrong with me. Anyway, that's not a comparison you are going to hear very often.

 

[Jevo]

L'Enfant (2005) dir. Dardenne brothers

Sonia leaves the hospital with her newborn, to find her boyfriend Bruno, the boys father. They are young, and neither have a job. They survive on benefits and whatever money Bruno can make from petty theft. They live day-to-day, hour-to-hour. Money in hand means money to spend. When Sonia finds Bruno, he has just made a good haul, and they almost immediately spend the money on renting a fancy car for a day. When Bruno sells his wares from the theft, his buyer mentions that some people will pay good money to adopt a child. Bruno dismisses the offer, but it plants a seed in him. Later when he's out walking with child alone, he gets the bright idea to sell it, and does without talking to Sonia first. Sonias reaction is not exactly what Bruno imagined, and she reports it to the police. Now Bruno has to get the child back, but he might have gotten in too deep to dig himself out of it all again.

There's a saying that goes 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions', and I think it fits very well with Bruno. His actions are not out of malice, he's not a bad person. He is an incredibly stupid person however, he only acts the way he does because he has the best interests of him and Sonia in mind. That doesn't excuse his actions, merely explain them. All the caring in the world can't make up for the monumental idiocy that Bruno displays. I can't say I feel sorry for Bruno and what happens to him, but the way that the Dardennes and Jeremie Renier have crafted the character, I find it hard not to hope that thing will go well Bruno in the end. Even as he drags more people down with him.

The films style is very naturalistic, often filmed with a handheld camera very close to the actors faces, which gives the movie intimacy, and allows us to get under the skin of the characters. I don' believe there's any score either, which also helps gives the impression of being in the scene. The Dardennes grew up in a time when the industry that previously had made Wallonia a prosperous region, where declining, and the region suffered both economically and socially. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons that they have a big interest in the poor and unprivileged in society. A social group that isn't often depicted in film, and they do it with a lot of grace. In my experience with them, they don't make characters that serve to make a point. Instead they make characters that they take seriously as human beings, and I don't think there are many filmmakers who can make characters who are as convincing as human beings as the Dardennes. From my point of view, Bruno doesn't exist in order to be celebrated or condemned for his actions, at least not by the Dardennes, but instead he exists to be a person living in a specific environment, and to give us insight into that environment.

The Dardennes ability to craft such excellent characters, and they way that they treat their characters, is in my opinion a major reason why L'Enfant and their others work so well. L'Enfant is rightfully one of their most celebrated. There is not a scene in the movie that doesn't work well. Some scenes can be hard to watch, because you don't want Bruno to be so stupid. But the only reason they are hard to watch in the first place, is that I have started caring, which speaks to the films quality.

 

[kihei]

L'Enfant (2005) dir. Dardenne brothers

In my experience with them [the Dardenne brothers], they don't make characters that serve to make a point. Instead they make characters that they take seriously as human beings, and I don't think there are many filmmakers who can make characters who are as convincing as human beings as the Dardennes. From my point of view, Bruno doesn't exist in order to be celebrated or condemned for his actions, at least not by the Dardennes, but instead he exists to be a person living in a specific environment, and to give us insight into that environment.

The Dardennes ability to craft such excellent characters, and they way that they treat their characters, is in my opinion a major reason why L'Enfant and their others work so well. L'Enfant is rightfully one of their most celebrated. There is not a scene in the movie that doesn't work well. Some scenes can be hard to watch, because you don't want Bruno to be so stupid. But the only reason they are hard to watch in the first place, is that I have started caring, which speaks to the films quality.

I agree with you, but I do think that they have a bit of a modus operandi. They consistently put their lead characters in positions that are normally beyond their modest resources, financial and/or emotional, and, then, they observe (but never judge) how well these characters cope in these circumstances. I haven't seen the brothers' early work, but I think this holds true for everything that they have done since The Son, which includes L'enfant; Lorna's Silence; The Kid with a Bike; and Two Days, One Night. The characters usually do pretty well, but implicitly I think the brothers are posing a question to the audience: If you had to live like this, how well would you do? Not point making exactly, but a clear ethos perhaps.

 

[Jevo]

I agree with you, but I do think that they have a bit of a modus operandi. They consistently put their lead characters in positions that are normally beyond their modest resources, financial and/or emotional, and, then, they observe (but never judge) how well these characters cope in these circumstances. I haven't seen the brothers' early work, but I think this holds true for everything that they have done since The Son, which includes L'enfant; Lorna's Silence; The Kid with a Bike; and Two Days, One Night. The characters usually do pretty well, but implicitly I think the brothers are posing a question to the audience: If you had to live like this, how well would you do? Not point making exactly, but a clear ethos perhaps.

Saying they aren't trying to make a point, is probably not the best way of wording what I was trying to convey, but it sounds you got the point I was trying to make. Maybe saying that they aren't trying to push an agenda is better, but I'm not sure it grasps the subtlety that I think they do it with.

 

[Jevo]

The Thin Red Line (1998) dir. Terrence Malick

Taking place during the battle of Guadacanal, The Thin Red Line follows a company in the US army. They are tasked with taking Japanese positions upon the top of a group of ridges. With no clear main character, the film instead follows the company as a whole, although some characters gets more screen time than others of course. For many of the soldiers, this is the first time they'll see combat, and it affects all of them, but in various ways.

I am lucky enough to have never been to war, nor been in a war zone. So I can only imagine what it must be like. The Thin Red Line is pretty much exactly how I imagine it would be like. I am not able to convey this properly using words even if I tried, but Malick does it perfectly with his pictures. Of course war has changed a lot since World War II, but I don't think the impact it has on its participants has changed as much. The Thin Red Line shows the fear, the uncertainty and the confusion that the soldiers experience, before combat, during combat, and after combat, very well. The cast is full of good actors, and Terrence Malick puts them to good use. Many of them aren't allowed to express these feelings through dialogue in most scenes, instead they have to show it with their face. A picture says more than 1000 words goes the old cliché, in this movie I find to the truth. Even when the characters are allowed to express themselves through dialogue or voice-over, they are limited by having to use words, where as their faces tell so much more. To me that is great acting and powerful filmmaking. This is not to say that the dialogue and voice-overs in the film are for naught. They allow us to access the inner workings of the characters, in a way that would be almost impossible without words.

Not too long ago we reviewed Last Year in Marienbad, a movie that can be immensely frustrating if you try to make the movie fit into a neat narrative structure. The Thin Red Line at least seems to move pretty neatly from A to B in a straight line, but trying to pin down an overarching story or plot is not exactly easy. It is probably not meant to be easy either, or even possible. But as a sort of visual poem I think the movie is wonderful. I have already talked about how I feel about the 'literary' part of the movie, but as with any Malick movie, the visuals are not the lesser part of the equation. Aesthetically the movie is a pleasure, every shot is a beauty to look at. It is not only pleasing to look at, but it is also layered and full of meaning. Together with the acting and the dialogue, it makes the movie an experience.

War movies have been made in many different styles, with many different outlooks, that can make it hard to determine a best. The Thin Red Line is what I would call my favourite war movie, because it is the only one that captures how I feel it would be like to be fighting in a war. Personally I have a hard time finding any weak spots in the movie. Some might want a more coherent story, with a more defined idea about what the movie is trying to achieve or say. I find that the way the story is told, fits the movie perfectly, the movie is as confused and uncertain as its characters, and I like that.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick will be The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

 

[kihei]

The Thin Red Line (1992) Directed by Terrence Malick

I keep trying to think of a war movie that I can compare to The Thin Red Line, and I keep coming up dry.

One critic whose name now escapes me once stated that every war movie, even anti-war movies, inevitably in some way romanticize or glamourize war. Whoever that person was I don’t think he or she had seen The Thin Red Line. How accurate it is in comparison with the real thing, I don't know, but as a work of fiction the movie creates a convincing inner landscape about how soldiers experience war. If this movie doesn’t sicken a viewer to the notion of war, I don’t know what movie could. The Thin Red Line seems to go beyond the surface of battle to get at the churning turmoil and corrosive ambivalence that afflicts officers and foot soldiers alike. Even acts of bravery and heroism in the name of a worthy cause are not allowed to disguise the disfiguring effects that war can have on an individual soldier's life.

Nick Nolte’s Colonel Tall is the cornerstone of the work for me. How complex a commanding officer's psyche must be. Tall wants desperately to succeed for reasons that are both good (it’s a necessary war and the ridge must be taken) and bad (he has his own feelings of inferiority and inadequacy to contend with). He firmly believes, and understandably so, that he has a job to do that must be done. He wants to take that hill, and he pushes his reluctant troops to do so, willing to sacrifice their lives as part of the evil necessary to accomplish the important task that he has been given. He even lies to the men about the availability of water, though he feels bad about doing that. Still he can’t coddle them or they will not have the desire to fight, to risk the only lives that they have to give.

However, he is capable of surprisingly sophisticated judgements, too. When he transfers Captain Staros off the field to where ironically he really is best suited, Tall assures him that his valor will be recognized with the appropriate accolades that he deserves. Colonel Tall's decision is right on all counts. From his perspective as a commanding officer, Staros’ flaw as a leader of soldiers is his humanity, his reluctance to send his men to their deaths recklessly. That makes him a good man, but not the ideal man for this particular situation. Tall shows himself ultimately a good officer, the kind of officer that any army needs to get the job done. But a good officer comes at a high price sometimes. In peacetime, Staros not Tall will be the role model.

However, there is so much to the movie besides this one particular relationship—we come to know a slew of other men whose voices and fears and hopes and eventual destinies are interspersed throughout the movie in an almost chaotic fashion. When the film came out, one critic complained that it was hard to tell some of the men apart. The first time I saw the movie, I felt that, too. On subsequent viewings, that seems much less of a problem. Malick may actually have intended that such blurring from soldier to soldier should occur. For in some ways their lives and deaths are supposed to be seen as both very personal, yet somehow anonymous as well. Yes, they are individuals but collectively they are mere cannon fodder, eventually just names on a distant tombstone, if even that.

 

[kihei]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) Directed by Jacques Audiard

Tom (Romain Duris) is little more than a mid-level thug involved in playing the heavy in some shady real estate transactions. Early on, the movie makes the point that Tom is not a nice man. When he isn’t busy harassing the homeless, he is doing the odd piece of dirty work for his deadbeat dad (the wonderful Niels Arestrup), proving in the process that the acorn doesn’t fall very far from the tree. In his spare time, he helps a friend cheat on his wife by always providing him with the convenient alibi. Then Tom bumps into someone whom he used to know, his late mother’s agent. She was a classical pianist, and, surprisingly, it turns out Tom has a great deal of promise as a pianist as well. When the agent suggests that Tom should get in touch for an audition, his life slowly begins to change. He hires a good teacher, a Chinese woman just arrived in France. Even the fact that they don’t speak the same language is not a drawback as she is very skilled and he is very dedicated. Unfortunately his shady business colleagues and his dad are not too happy with this alteration in Tom’s career path. Nonetheless Tom plows on, grasping the chance that fate offers him. When the audition goes badly, the question is will Tom’s new sense of equilibrium see him through or is his self-discovery a shallow one and he will return to the dissolute life that he has not yet fully abandoned.

For quite some time I had The Beat That My Heart Skipped among my top ten films for the 21st century. It’s a damn good movie, but I slowly realized that it wasn’t that good. Rather, it contained one of the ten best performances that I had seen this century. I think this sort of thing happens to me a lot. I confuse the quality of a movie with the quality of a performance in the movie. In other words, a great performance can convince me that a movie is actually better than it is. Usually, if only gradually, I come to my senses, but this conundrum happens not infrequently with me: Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher; Irrfan Khan in The Warrior; Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy, and so on. Those are terrific movies, and many have found a place in one or more of my “best of” lists. I just had a tendency to overrate them initially on the strength of one performance.

Without question, Roman Duris’ performance in The Beat That My Heart Skipped is one of my favourite demonstrations of acting ever. Tom is practically a feral character when we first meet him. Duris brings such nervous energy to the role that Tom actually seems more potentially violent than he actually is in reality—he seems capable of lashing out at any moment. (One of the great moments in the movie is when he lashes out at his piano teacher in French and she lashes out right back in Mandarin). But Duris astutely throws in one part charm for every four parts snarl, providing just the right amount of balance for his character to keep the audience from totally rejecting him. Then, very slowly, Duris allows Tom’s insecurity and vulnerability to surface. It took me a dangerously long time, but I began to root for him. And the film’s brilliant ending is the perfect culmination of his character's transformation. Despite his failure to realize his dream, despite the murder of his father, despite the opportunity to destroy his father’s killer, Tom has made the right choices and stays with them. He has become the manager of his far more gifted teacher who now possesses the career that he once dreamed of having himself, and he is now her lover and trusted friend as well. The way the movie sort of springs this information on us near its conclusion is sheer brilliance in my book and very satisfying. And Duris made me believe Tom's metamorphosis every step of the way. Now I actively seek out his movies and always enjoy him--while keeping in mind, of course, that he can make a movie seem better than it really is just by his skill as an actor.

subtitles

 

[kihei]

My next pick is Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

I'm off to Scotland for ten days later in the week, so I will require a slight break in the action. I will post my comments on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari soon after returning home.

 

[Jevo]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) dir. Jacques Audiard

Thomas (Romain Duris) is a real estate broker working on the edge of the law together with his two partners. Thomas father Robert is in the same line of business, and occasionally calls upon Thomas to be his thug. When Robert is scammed out of 300.000 euro by a Russian gangster, he tells Thomas to do something about it. Thomas investigates and tells Robert it's too dangerous, and he should just accept his losses. Meanwhile Thomas accidentally meets his mothers, concert pianist before her death, former manager. He encourages Thomas to audition for him. Thomas acquires training from a Chinese pianist, Miao Lin who just moved to Paris. The piano starts to take over more and more of Thomas time, and he starts to believe he might actually be good enough.

Thomas apparently stopped playing the piano once his mother died, and then followed his fathers way of life. Probably because it was the only option presented to him. His father appear to resentful of the mother and her social circle, and likely discourage any kind of interaction with that world. When Thomas actually starts playing piano again, it's quite clear his regular job is something he does because he's good at it. But playing the piano is something he does because he loves to do it. This gives the movie its best scenes. The scenes with Thomas and Miao Lin practising are in my mind clearly the best part of the movie. The frustration that Thomas shows towards himself for not being as good as he wants to be. The frustration they both show when they are unable to communicate properly with each other. The way they work out some kind of functioning communication between them, that operates without a common language. And lastly the affection that slowly builds between them amidst all the frustration. In his everyday life, I feel that Thomas sets up a facade, but when practising the piano he has to drop all the pretense, and just be himself. Those are the scenes where I feel we learn the most about Thomas. Romain Duris and Linh Dan Pham are great in these scenes, and without them they wouldn't have been as powerful.

Romain Duris gives a very powerful performance as Thomas. Most of the movie Thomas is filled with internal conflict between his father, his friends, his whole life basically, and his re-found passion for the piano. Thomas and his father aren't close, but there is love between them for sure, and his father means a lot to Thomas. Even though he pisses him off at times, but whose parents doesn't piss them off from time to time? Duris embodies this conflict perfectly, even when I try, I can't picture anyone else as Thomas, he is Thomas.

 

[Jevo]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dir. Robert Wiene

The story begins with Francis sitting on a bench with an old, and a young girl walking close by. Francis tells the man that the girl is his fiancée Jane, and that they have suffered a lot to get to where they are. Francis proceeds to tell their story to the man. It started when a fair came by their town, and strange murders started happening. One of the exhibitors were Dr. Caligari with his somnambulist Cesare. Cesare can supposedly tell the future, and when Alan, Francis best friend, asks when he'll die Cesare says tonight. That same night Alan gets killed in bed. Francis wows to find the killer, and tries to get the polices attention to Dr. Caligari.

A horror movie that might not be as frightening as it was to audiences almost 100 years ago, or maybe it's just that I've seen it before, and know what to expect. Even if the movie isn't as frightening as it once was, the best horrors made today, almost all take some kind of inspiration from Caligari and its fellow German horrors from the same time period. Dr. Caligari gives an eerie air to the scene whenever he is one screen, from the first time he is shown. We don't even know if he's bad or not yet, but his mere presence gives a sense of unease. Werner Krauss performance as Caligari is great, and the movie would be lesser without it. I also quite liked Conrad Veidt as Cesare, the way he moves seems almost not entirely human, and also makes Cesare seem if not scary, then at least eerie. What I like the most about this movie, is definitely the set design. The expressionistic style is fantastic and beautiful in my opinion, it looks like a nightmare and that fits the story. At no time is there a set that looks boring or pedestrian, there is thought and care behind everyone of them, and it shows. Maybe it's partially because we don't see this style anymore in contemporary film, that I find it exciting to watch, but stylistically German movies from the 20's are some of my favourites. Even the expressionist derivatives found in film-noir seemed to die out with the rise of colour film.

At the time of release, the use of flashbacks and a twist ending were quite revolutionary. Today these aren't anything out of the ordinary, and at times it can feel like twist endings are the ordinary. But that doesn't mean that the story has lost its punch. The twist ending is fun the first time you watch the movie, but it's a small part of the whole movie, and the rest of the story is still very enjoyable to me. The style is the main reason why I like this movie, but the story is also entertaining to follow.

Last year the movie was released on Blu-Ray, based on a 4K restoration of an original print of the movie. Having only seen the movie on DVDs of various qualities, this was almost like a revelation to watch the movie again. The restoration is incredibly good, and the movie looks like it was almost brand new. It only made the experience better to watch it like this. If anyone hasn't had the chance to see the movie on blu-ray, I'd suggest checking out the trailer to get an idea about how good it looks.