Documentary: Pearl Jam 20

A love letter.

(Get out the old flannel shirt you now use as a dust rag and the purple doc marten's you were never too sure about but now you're sure. You're sure.)

Trailer

See it.
****

Film: Alamar (2009)

It will make you want to go to Cabo, or Cancun. Hopefully not in that indolent BMW-driving, acrylic nail wearing please carry my bags way...but in the way of the intrinsically hermetical, orphic and recondite.
Purists may argue who needs an arc? This isn't Lethal Weapon 5. However this was billed as a film, not a doc. Perhaps if  it would have gathered together in a tighter way to have some kind of resolution...however slight, it would have been one of the best films of that year...maybe top 25 of the decade. Hyperbole? Who knows? Who cares.

See it.
***1/2

The Princess of Montpensier (2010)

Oh for the love of all that is brocade. I couldn't wait to rip the bodice off this film and reveal it's plunging neckline of a story. I'd read all about it; Le grande passion, betrayal, revenge, the French religious wars and the background of the alps! Oh sad disappointment when it was barely enough plot and character development to hold together a 30 minute tele-novella.

Puffy lips and gilded sleeves alone couldn't save it from it's own expository dialogue and eye-rolling fluffiness.I'm still not even sure it wasn't a comedy. I think the director was attempting to say...women don't know what they want or you don't know what you got till it's gone....or Fool For Young Lovin. Oh womenz. Always driving a man to distraction and then getting blamed for it and then falling for the bad boy and then cutting up his letterman jacket. Basically it was this. Just set in 1570.

Skip it. (unless you get a little excited by heavy quilted felts and golden flecked velvets.)

Film: Meeks Cutoff (2010)

Where isn't Michelle Williams? Well she's certainly here, gun toting and ass kicking and setting everyone on their ear by being a human being. The sensible one. But is it a little too familiar? Isn't Michelle Williams always kinda of being the sensible one?  We start to smell the formulaic char in the air at about the last of act two. Where the pace slows to a crawl...or rather snails from what was already a crawl, and we sink deeper into the dry papery character landscape that is the middle of nowhere. Successes? Shirley Henderson's hysterics. Misses? the dude who played Meek's, the man who ostensibly is leading the Oregon trail to being lost. Also the ending. Who isn't for a bleak, cliff-hanging drop off to the middle of nowhere but upheld by possible moral redemption ending? I am - fo sho. However this one may have fallen two clicks past even my love for bare bones minimalism. People need closure.

Still, see it!
***3/4

Film: Distant (Uzak) 2002

No one likes your cousin. Especially you. Especially when they invade your precious precious space and damask oriental rugs and books and perfunctory shelving arrangements. Because space is all you have when you are an older divorcee....perfidiously building walls around your emotional frailty and inherent curmudgeonness. The prostitutes don't really help anymore. Your ex-wife is leaving the continent with her new husband, and again, your cousin forgot to flush the toilet.

Director Nuri Ceylan creeps into your space with 2 minute long shots of a man walking towards you in snow, of the environmental drudge that is the harbor of Istanbul, of the turgid Turkish state of affairs economically and personally. Phobically averse to preachiness, Ceylan minimalistically displays everything wrong with his characters without saying a word, without them saying a word. Why the heck would you want to watch a depressing kaleidescope of various shades of grey and snow? I haven't figured that one out either. It found a rhythm to be both beautiful and austere, somber and hysterical, pedantic and emotional. I even forgive him his shout-outs to Tarkovsky.

See it!
****

Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978)

Note to self; do not watch this followed by three hours of The Wire and then try to make nice at a Barbeque when you have a cold.  Other than that, I can see the thin glimmer of brilliance through the cigarette smoke and zombie act. Director Chantal Ackerman cloyingly clones herself after her mentor Godard. Therefore you are given lots of speeches and one act soliloquy's on the pointless nature of existence, European train station isolation and the unnecessary act of smiling. I really wanted to like this film due to it's 10 minute meandering shot of the back of a woman walking down the platform to catch a train, but in order to do that one has to sympathize with SOMEONE, anyone and usually a human. These seemed to be card board cut-outs.

See it if you are in the mood for some eastern bloc renaissance that has nothing to do with the eastern bloc. 

**

Film: Badlands (1973)

Oh for the love of Terrence Malick. You can tell he really just wanted to cut together a montage of egrets, cormorants, doves and pheasants. Just doing nothing. Just sitting in the sun. And then a red-tailed hawk might swoop down and carry one off the burning plain into the setting sun. This film is all about sunsets and idle aggression. Kit doesn’t really much WANT to kill anyone, it’s just these folks keep getting in the way of him absconding with his child bride. He’s on a knights quest! In his eyes. In everyone else’s eyes he’s just a fancy boot wearing psychopath on a killing spree. Fooling around in South Dakota on the working end of dusted fields and busted Cadillac’s. A genius script. The only time when I’ve felt comfortable saying that with Malick.

Film: Kes (1969)

Oh, how tough is the northern England life for a young put upon boy and his little pet bird! If you've wept for animal unjustice such as Ol' Yeller or Where The Red Fern Grows... you'll be folded into a bow of emotion as you watch the systematic hardcore bullying of a sweet boy who's only future is down some mine shaft.

Ken Loach, British director extraordinaire creates something higher than a mushy melodramma involving boys and birds and other things filed under vulnerable. He creates an almost hysterical portrait of crazed soccer coaches, bullying older brothers, Headmasters on the borderline, and mothers unable to cope.

If you can understand a word of it, you will find an outstanding film. I mistakenly watched this streaming on Netflix instead of renting the Blu-ray Criterion release and deciphered maybe 60% of the dialogue. I figured out they were speaking English around 30 minutes in. 

Flip on the subtitles and get down to blustery business in the most working class of working classes Yorkshire.

See it. ****

Film: Trouble Every Day (2004)

There's trouble every day in France for these batch of hot vampire-cannibals. They'll eat your face looking sexy in this seasons Versace, talking about lovers, as they look for the next victim to munch.

Vincent Gallo, played with intense emotionalism learned straight from the Vincent Gallo school of intense emotionalism, is a doctor with a shady past and a new bride. Gallo is looking for a way to stop what he feels is an infection, which turns into the dreaded hot vampirism. His ex-lady love is already highly infected and when he arrives in France, blood lust is on his mind, his new bride innocently unaware. What does he do? What any newlywed in France does, runs the streets moping, in a fitted leather jacket, looking for random lovers, of course.

Claire Denis actually creates a highly provocative atmosphere here, that unfortunately was ruined by Gallo's .....'acting'. At any moment you expect Billy Brown to start talking about his automatic shifting...Things are a little hazy, a little fuzzy.  As usual the dialogue is scarce and instead an ambiance of depressive decadence ensues. Had she gone all the way, pulled the ending tighter ...it may have been one of the most unique take on horror films created.

***See it.

Film: Circumstance (2011)

Girl meets girl, society pulls them apart – it’s a story we’ve seen before in numerous LGBT-themed films, but never quite like this. The most interesting part of this film, besides the beautiful leads, is the setting: Tehran, Iran (though the film was shot mostly in Lebanon). The center of the film should have been this budding romance between the two leads, but the peripheral characters, like the conservative brother of one of them, detracted from the story and confused me. In the end, it was worth the two hours, if at least for a different take on a well-used conceit. This won an Audience Award at Sundance this year, and perhaps because of that I expected more.

(undecided) **

Review by Jonathan Banda

Film: The Future (2011)

Lovers of Miranda July’s last film outing Me You and Everyone We Know (which I also loved) have been waiting 6 years for her next film, The Future. I would have waited much longer if it meant she’d have made a better film. The story begins with a 30-something couple preparing to adopt a cat in one month – they decide to take that month and quit their jobs and being more “aware” to see where life takes them. This is a quirky film (as expected) with an unfocused story. There are some really interesting scenes that, taken on their own, deserve some credit. I could even appreciate some of the surreal elements (a cat narrator, superhuman powers involving time, and a crawling t-shirt), but what I couldn’t handle was that the two main characters were so annoying.

Skip it *

Review by Jonathan Banda

Documentary: Nostalgia de la luz/Nostalgia for the Light (2011)

Patricio Guzman has spent most of his career documenting the trials of his country, Chile. This documentary was like a long, beautiful poem about our origins, our future, and collective memory. The film focuses on Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth, where the conditions are ideal for studying the stars - numerous astronomers and giant telescopes are stationed here. In the same region, archaeologists comb the earth for prehistoric artifacts while a small group of women also look for remains - remains of family members killed during the Pinochet regime. The three groups of searchers are seamlessly integrated into the film as we listen to their musings on the past and the future. It's all devastatingly beautiful.

See it ***

Review by Jonathan Banda

Film: Meek's Cutoff (2011)

Life was hard out West in the 1800’s. This slow, calculated character study by Kelly Reichardt follows a group of settlers as they travel through the Oregon Territory hoping to reach their promised land near the Pacific coast. Mr. Meek is leading them, and they are at his mercy. We don’t really know Meek’s true intentions, but the group suspicions are at the center of this film. The barren frontier is nicely captured, and resources, as well as words, are sparse. There is a measured, deliberate sense of dread throughout this journey, something that stays with the viewer long after the closing credits.

See it ***

Review by Jonathan Banda

Film: White Material (2009)

Oh the syncopated web we weave. And while that phrase has nothing to do with this film, it was fun and pretty to write. Kind of like the whim that these white, French aristocrats have when deciding to go down to Africa to start a coffee plantation. Fun! Pretty! We'll be one with the natives! Except when we hire them to be our slaves!

Oh those silly Africans. Always messing up white colonials dreams with their inconvenient coup d'éta's, mass genocide and child soldiers. Ugly. Unsightly. Lets sweep it under the rug, while our coffee plantation goes up in flames and we are left holding onto the tufts of blond fuzz that was our child's hair. The mindset of Isabelle Huppert's character, Maria, is thusly set into ribbons and rows of control, denial and dependence.

Huppert is mesmerizing as always in this role, and single-handedly saves this film from being a condescending portrayal of something already revisited a million times. Claire Denis's script and story line unfurl in a non-linear haze filled manner and honestly by the time the ending comes around you are a little annoyed by something missing. Something. Possibly lack of cohessive character build-up. Instead of shock the ending stumbles and you keep trying to figure out what was lost in the fire.

Worth a see, but overrated as a whole.
***

APRIL=ANIMATION!

All month we featured animated films normally overlooked and stuffed into dusty, unopened bins of film study.
Anime, American animation, Korean anime...and stuff from Europe that currently has no name.

Enjoy!

Top 10 Lists: Top 10 Badass Anime Chicks

Please. These women won’t be calling you back. They already forgot your name. If you do happen to catch their attention, you’ll be lucky enough to escape with your life. Let’s take a look at the baddest and the brightest, the shining stars and shooting moons of this extremely graphic top 10 list: Ass-Kicking Anime Females. Grab a can of Blast, your illuminated wireless keyboard, some rations and your pet mecha as you lock yourself in your gaming dungeon of delight. Feel free to mercilessly add these titles to your download or Netflix queue. Or not.  Don't be scared homie.

Click for full list and review....holla!

Anime: Golgo 13: The Professional (1992)

Get out your silencer, rifle and distant stare as you get ready to freeze ice with one glance. Not ready? Duke Togo is. He was born ready, with a bullet in his hand and a rattlesnake in his mouth as is often the case with the #1 assassin of the world. Duke is ready for anything. Even during sex.  Never smiling, never moving. Just staring, staring, staring. He’ll continue to have the drop on you at all times, even if you’re in the womb. He waits, waiting for you to slip up and be human. Because he may not be.

Created in 1992 circa 1982,  this visionary, dark, disturbing feast is an ode to all things spaghetti western. Duke rarely speaks, always wins, and is only bested by a genetically altered assassin monster named Snake and a pair of double mint twins psychotic enough to dress like circus harlequins full time. Great animation, good storyline and an epic pungent violence that leaves you a bit uneasy in the end. You’ll know the part(s) when you get to it. Here's the trailer.


See it ***1/2

Anime: Neo Tokyo (1989)

Anime can be taken seriously as a high art form once every decade or so. Yeah I said it.The Running Man is part of a trilogy of short films called Neo Tokyo, created by none other than Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust...so..kind of a genius...) and originally aired in the early 90's on MTV's Liquid Television.

 This segment deals with a race car driver on the verge. Highly recommend. Would be one of the greatest Blu-ray recover processes ever!!!

***** 

See it.

Animation: The Plague Dogs (1982)

The Plague Dogs is part film propaganda, part animal adventure. The story (based on a novel of the same name) is centered on two dogs named Rowf and Snitter, who escape from a research laboratory and try to survive the wild and the subsequent dog-hunt. This movie is quite a downer. The animation is simple, but so is the story. The voices (including Christopher Benjamin and John Hurt) are fine. The characters are pretty one-dimensional, but they are animals, not people.

The movie does not put humans in a good light. The human-animal interactions are a series of misunderstandings, and we never get to know exactly what the scientists in the laboratory were researching – perhaps it was something worthwhile. Hug your pets closely. The moral of the story: all a dog wants is a good master.

See it if you're an animal rights activist or sympathizer.

**

Review by Jonathan Banda

American Animation: Wizards (1977)

Ralph Bakshi's post-apocalyptic sibling rivalry epic. Wizards, fairies, dinosaurs, monsters, ogres....nazi's? This thing is all over the place. You get all excited because who doesn't want to see a two hour animated epic dealing with magic(!) but as you soldier on and the script continually fails you as well as the voice-over talents hailing from Brooklyn or Yonkers....you begin to question ...why?

Surely Bakshi was blazed the entire time he wrote this and that may explain the grossly disconcerting use of over-sexualized young cherub fairy children as well as his misguided attempts to make this a comedy. And did I mention all the actors sounded like they were from Hoboken?

Here's the trailer.

See it.
**

European Animation: Fantastic Planet (1973)

We'll make great pets. 

Draags ("lol" get it?) are superior beings on the planet Ygam and control everything including their super adorable mini-pet humans, Oms.

Writer/Director René Laloux easily nabbed the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973 with this tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.  One civilization enslaving another, putting dog collars round their necks, dressing them, torturing them, discarding them (but not before they work the fields!).

Fantastically whimsical and irreverently hip, Fantistic Planet is very of-the-moment. Completely immersed in inter-spaced 60's zeitgeist humor, replete with floating meditative guru's and against-the-man accoutrement. But most of the time it just wants to gaze placidly out into the fields, eyes drooping in wonderment at the terrifically curious creatures Laloux has created. Creatures eerily familiar.

A must see.
****

Animation: Fire and Ice (1983)

 Oh Ralph Bakshi. You almost had me at hello. Readers should acquaint themselves with his (arguably) fine rotoscopped meshed animated work for Lord of the Rings(1978),  and with his other experiments with various hybridized, off color adult animation such as the borderline inappropriate Wizards and the fantasy epic Fire and Ice.There is also that movie with Brad Pitt he did entitled Cool World, but really no one should acquaint themselves with that.

First of all were we to go by the poster alone, it would be understood that this was an animated fantasy film focusing on midgets as warriors. A tongue-in-cheek expose on American prejudices and class disparity! But no. It is really just a badly drawn poster. Partly to accompany an equally dull script and use of stock characters. It took me no less than 4 viewings to get through this entire film without falling asleep. 

Fire and Ice does get a little more interesting in the 2nd act when we finally get over the fact that no, The Princess is never going to put on more clothes than her ice blue thong g-string and yes she is going to continue borrowing poses from Hustler magazine circa 1982. After like the fourth kidnapping attempt on her life, and every wrote character saying the most wrote of things, it finally summoned enough action and innovation to warrant two and half whole stars. I'm bumping it to three stars because Easter is near and I'm feeling charitable.

*** See it - but feel free to multi-task.

Anime: Aeon Flux - The Complete Animated Collection (1995)

A preternatural love for science fiction, leather straps, guns, sex, violence and a hot, kick-ass female lead will only get you so far (cough*Zach Snyder*) in understanding the darkly bombastic science fiction animated series known as Aeon Flux. Click for my full review at JapanCinema.......

Film: Army of Shadows (1969)

In my continual onslaught through the muted pallet that is the collection of Criterion Blu-ray's I once again am more than slightly dissapointed. Why spend so much money on excruciatingly dense and glorious looking transfers if some of the films themselves are so dry? Frustration. 

Case in point, Army of Shadows [Blu-ray, special edition] a film about the French Resistance.  Melville's "masterpiece" is indeed resplendent in muted blue tones and taupe's, everyone is smoking and wearing fitted trench coats. Protagonist Gerbier, an engineer, seems to relish his position as someone more than a bit above it all, detached, and unemotional - very Lives of Others. I'm down with that. Who doesn't like the broody scientist? However as the film lingers on and you fight countless urges for naps, you realize that in order to care about what happens to these characters, you need to start actually caring about the characters.   Mellville created each character to be his own philosophical question and answer - all archetypes and the stiltedness of that decision is felt, the removal of availability from the audience is palpable.

The resistance don't really seem to be doing much resisting and perhaps his commentary was on this exact thing. This occurs only in the last act and by then it's almost too late. 2 hours for an exciting last 15 minutes is simply not worth it. The trailer looked thrilling! Certainly not what it turned out to be. However if you are a fan of the genre and of Melville in particular I still recommend it. Not every WWII resistance movement film can be The Night Porter.

See it. *** 

Film: Still Walking (2008)

Ah parents. Passive aggressively harassing you on different continents even. Always cooking and feeding you things, then telling you how your life sucks while you stuff your face. Still Walking, the critically acclaimed film by Hirokazu Kore-Eda feels your pain and rolls its eyes for you...click for the full review at JapanCinema...