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Reviews
The Zero Theorem (2013)
Watch this movie.
In Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem", the character of Management (Matt Damon) states that his company aims to bring order to disorder through "crunching entities". In keeping with Damon's role as a 'villain' of sorts, the film itself gives the chaotic events of its narrative no such similarly bureaucratic treatment. My first, and final, criticism of this movie is that it is, like much of Gilliam's work, chaotic. The pacing is all over the place, the camera spends most of its time bobbing around and tilted, the music slides between weeping and pulsing, the light varies from natural to... also pulsing, actually; however, these things are expected from Gilliam, and "The Zero Theorem" benefits from this chaos, as it stylistically matches the substance of the movie. I won't bother to describe the plot - it's much more fun to just watch unfold - but it may be important to note that the movie operates as a mixture of a mood piece and character study that is designed to leave its audience asking profound questions without making profound statements. This is what I like in a movie, and if you do too then this is definitely for you. There's much more to like: The visuals are stunning, especially for an extremely low-budget film. It really does look incredible. Gilliam's future has echoes of Brazil, but for the first time he has done away with retro to give something a little more accurate, though certainly if the present evolved into the future using Gilliam's warped imagination as a catalyst. The performances are incredible all around. Christoph Waltz gives an Oscar-worthy (yes, that tired phrase, and furthermore for a movie too weird for the Academy - a double cliché) performance as Qohen Leth. What's so incredible is that Leth comes off as an alien - I kept imagining him as a two-headed bug trapped within a Waltz-shaped mountain of putty - but despite this retains some incredible aspect of humanity, stapling down our most pitiable hope, though some viewers may not see this humanity as Leth does lens it through apparently logical (though quite pessimistic) thought. The supporting cast, nearly everyone involved, give great performances, with perhaps my highest praise going to Lucas Hedges for Bob, providing a charismatic intellectual counterweight to Qohen. The two actors have admirable chemistry; however, the same cannot be said for the interactions between Walt's Leth and Tilda Swinton's Dr Shrink-ROM. This is perhaps an intentional, or at least advantageous, depiction of the inability of machines to fully understand humans, so I won't criticise the movie for it.
Ultimately, this movie is worth your time - it's thoughtful, sad, funny, human and beautiful. It will leave you wondering.
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Spike Lee has made an incredible film which MUST be seen.
My first impression of "BlacKkKlansman" was my reaction to seeing its name listed among the films selected to premiere in competition at the Cannes film festival. I remember thinking, "Did the filmmakers really need to put the "k" between the two words? Isn't the "K" in "Klansman" enough?"
The answer to the first is yes; the answer to the second is no. This is a film which makes no attempt to explain its behaviour, which is original and relentless. The script wastes no time in packing in as many racist slurs as it possibly can, with no careful exposition clarifying that the people saying the words are bad. It goes without saying - the Klansmen are utterly detestable and the actors playing them seem in competition to be the most unpleasant. It says a lot about the careful, purposeful direction of Mr. Lee that the greatest merit the Klan characters have is that they aren't quite as socially unacceptable as Jasper Pääkkönen's Felix. Certainly Mr. Lee wishes to show that the well-spoken David Duke (Topher Grace) is deluded in believing that he is any better, by amping up the classical expressionism of the camera in Duke's scenes.
Speaking of the camera, it always seems to be in the right place. It works as an onlooker, never quite embracing a wholly "modern" style. Much has already been written about the "creamy" cinematography, designed to emulate the look of 70s exploitation cinema. This is a success, and the film's atmosphere bleeds through the screen similarly to "Fargo" Season 2 and Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice".
The soundtrack, by Terence Blanchard, whose fantastic work in Mr. Lee's "25th Hour" should not soon be forgotten, is in a league of its own, fading out through most of the dialogue and popping up in force to punctuate the previous scene and lead into the next. I'm a fan of this style: it allows for a much more energetic soundtrack. Certainly parallels must be drawn between the lone guitar and the character of Ron Stallworth, as played by John David Washington.
Mr. Washington's performance, as well as Adam Driver's, will not be acclaimed enough, as "BlacKkKlansman" is not the type of film that allows for its performers to be the stars. Clearly Mr. Lee's focus is on the story (a compelling one, producer Jordan Peele has said that he successfully it to Mr. Lee in a mere six words) and the parallels found between the story and the world of today. That is, in part, what makes this such an interesting film. Like Mr. Peele's "Get Out", the film functions on the surface as an entertainment piece - a buddy-cop story with an ironic premise. That it's based on a true story elevates it to incredible. That said, this film does not have the subtlety of "Get Out" - not that it has to; that film would've been a mess if it had been too direct. In "BlacKkKlansman", we can appreciate that this is an attack on anybody that could dare to have a mindset ranging from Felix's to Duke's. It is a successful one. The film is profoundly moving and strongly independent. That's why the title has the "k". This is a Spike Lee joint.
Only God Forgives (2013)
Refn's "Ryan's Daughter" - a film hated for its constraints that blossoms with time
Let me start out in a generic enough way: This film IS NOT "Drive". I saw this film the day after I saw "Drive", having been compelled to find it based on the former effort's successful weave, and went in knowing that the film has, for the most part, received some awful reviews.
I was surprised to find the film not just good, but happily quite powerful. One would think that, this being a continuation of the style that Refn and Gosling explored in "Drive", it could lead to a rather dry affair, however this is rarely the case and, on the occasion that it comes off this way, it feels intentional and the film makes the experience smooth. Those with patience may love this film.
Complaints of the film's pacing are well-enough-founded, however the argument that this stylistic choice suffocates the narrative simply isn't true. Think back to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" (one of my favourite films and a film that, I might remind you, holds an 8,6/10 on this site). Refn called the film a western set in Bangkok and I can certainly agree with him.
Gosling's acting may seem to be a problem for some. It is true that his character is quieter than Edward Scissorhands (a reported 17 lines only), but it would be helpful to go into the film with his mentality on the character of Julian in mind (he compares Julian to a video-game avatar which I find appropriate and was able to use to channel my emotions into the story).
The film is dedicated to Alejandro Jodorowsky, but has heavy lineage in the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick ("Eyes Wide Shut" in particular: Kubrick had a similar mentality towards making his lead someone that the audience should imprint their emotions on, and "Only God Forgives" shares cinematographer Larry Smith; but there is also at times a bit of "Barry Lyndon" and "A Clockwork Orange").
The film may be beautiful to some, while others will find it excessively dark and the colours radical and fake-looking (a speciality, it seems, of Larry Smith). And while the film is drenched in metaphor the story is not without merit: Harking back to silent films where characters with the motive of surviving in their strange worlds is much more prevalent. The character of Chang was, in a negative review, complained about for lacking menace; however I found in my experience that Chang was attempting to survive the consequences of his literal form of justice, just as Julian attempts to find himself free of his mother.
A section of note is the soundtrack: a fantastic thing. Those who claim it to be the film's only strength may however need to be reminded that Hitchcock would not release "Psycho" until he saw it with Bernard Herrmann's iconic soundtrack. It works the same magic here.
Ultimately, this film is not easy to watch. Though possibly less graphic than "Drive", an air of violence hangs in the air, the characters are not easily likable and need to be 'found' by the viewer and the pacing may put some off. All I can say is that it worked for me and maybe it deserves another look.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
There's only one adjective to describe it: Kubrickian
Since I saw Blade Runner 2049 (in the IMAX format) a day ago, thoughts of the film gave been unable to leave my head.
The larger the denominator of a rating, the more room there is to discuss error, so let's keep it to a simple four-star rating.
Out of ****, I give it ****.
Blade Runner 2049 is certainly not the same as the original, and fans looking for secure familiarity may find themselves lost in the future. This is a film that is harrowing, dark and emotional; however, it is also beautiful, true and pure. The film tells questions what sentience (or perhaps "having a soul" is more appropriate) really means. It does this over 163 minutes of unparalleled beauty, thanks to the striking, yet pensive work of director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins. In contrast to the heavily stylized look of the first film (legendarily done by Jordan Croneneweth, and which I consider to be one of the most beautiful films of all time), the team behind 2049 have found something new, but equally powerful. Blade Runner 2049 is filled with imagery that finds natural beauty in the oppressive world in which its characters live. It is a film full of rain, fog, snow and dust, all visually striking.
The characters are wonderfully fleshed out and the story starts slow as we are guided around future Los Angeles by Officer K (Ryan Gosling, in arguably his best performance - one which never stops developing over the course of the film). The pace may seem strange to some, but this is not an action-packed thrill ride. It's a noir, or neo-noir if you're a purist. These characters live lives, and that is shown at a realistic pace. One other performance deserves mention and that is the fantastic work of Harrison Ford, who has perfectly created a character that has aged thirty years, in body and mind.
The sound design and score is reminiscent of Morricone's accompaniments to Serio Leone's westerns or Carlos's work on A Clockwork Orange, in that it compliments and completes the world of the story perfectly.
The editing is quiet, and I didn't mention it on first draft of this review, but I feel that it must be noted, for bringing together the events of a whole world onto the screen.
The audience that I saw this film with behaved in a way that convinced me that they felt as I did upon the final frame of the film. Some left, in complete silence; others stayed, lost in thought. Few films' endings are quite as emotionally complete as this ending. It's difficult to review this film in parts, because each emotion we feel is justified by the end, so that what we feel is fulfillment. The story has ended, but the world lives on and we are filled with wonder.
My final notes refer back to the title. This film does indeed remind me of the work of Stanley Kubrick. It's a compliment that I have never given before, but I feel that here it is appropriate. It is not my place to say whether Kubrick would have liked this film, but I can assure the reader that this film is one of the decade's (if not the century's) finest and that its very existence is the kind of miracle that makes me love cinema.
The Meaning of Life (1983)
There's a joke for everyone.
Some films, if not most, are greater as a whole than as their individual parts. Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" is not one of those films.
In fact, it scarcely is a film.
"The Meaning of Life" is a large-budget response to the next generation of comedy in the classic Python sketch-show format. The film, as a whole, does not work, but the individual parts may. For the most part, WHICH parts depends on your sense of humour.
The show is admittedly meaner and more surreal than ever before. The imagery is audacious and powerful. The jokes are zany, often gross and brilliantly timed. The musical numbers are quite exceptional.
Despite this being Python's last feature, it is anything from dull. The troupe is gleefully aware of their audience and will go to unbelievable lengths to generate laughter, or offend.
Warning: You may never be able to eat vegetable soup again.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Surreal, scary, heartbreaking, thrilling, funny and most of all, Lynchian
After seeing Mulholland Drive, I found myself going through the reviews on IMDb, hoping (as many of you will) to find not a theory to latch onto but stimulating discussion of the movie. What I instead found, for the most part, were tons of hate-filled reviews which said nothing much other than that all those who liked the movie and did indeed find it intellectually enjoyable and found that it did not underestimate its audience were lying to "save face", as one reviewer kindly put it, or "seem smart" as another did more brashly.
Right now, I can assure you that this is not the case. Mulholland Drive is a powerful piece of cinema, boiled down to (much like Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO) the very simplest form. Both movies were made with a smaller, TV crew (in Mulholland's case that is not surprising) and both are regarded as hallmarks of film today.
Mulholland Drive boasts a very good lead performance by Naomi Watts. As with much in this movie, to reveal any details regarding the use her talent is put to would be spoiling it. Unlike most movies, which aim to create a world that one feels is real and inhabited by real people, Mulholland Drive goes the opposite way. The majority of the movie happens within an apartment, and it feels as if Watts' character and those who she stumbles across are the only people in the world.
The remainder of the movie (up until the unexpected and quite devastating finale) is punctuated with glimpses of the great beast of Hollywood. We follow director Adam (Justin Theroux) as he stumbles into strange and darkly comic situations. The tone of Adam's scenes -foreign and funny- contrasts very strongly with those of Betty's -heavy and emotional. Despite the strong-sounding adjectives used to describe Betty's scenes, they are strangely lacking in deep emotion in comparison to Adam, who feels very real.
The movie shifts wildly in tone, but manages to keep the audience involved and guessing right up to and long past its final note. It makes the audience a character in the film, witnessing the tragedy and illusion that plays out before us like the works of Club Silencio. Having finished this movie, I sat for am hour past the end credits, both trying to shuffle my own interpretations on it into order and attempting to communicate to my body that I was Jo longer watching the illusion. It really is a dream: First a happy one, then an erotic one and finally, a nightmare that leaves us crying in our beds, unable to tell real and Lynch apart. Maybe they aren't.
10/10