F.I.L.M. of the Week (April 26, 2013)

26 04 2013

I’ve now (finally) caught up with David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Dr.”  Those films have given me an idea of what the term Lynchian really means.  Yet while both of those movies have their merits, the director made an entirely different movie called ”The Straight Story” that’s virtually unrecognizable in his ouvre.

I saw this simple, straightforward film at the age of 7 upon its release in 1999.  Even then, its beauty was not lost on me.  I recently watched it again only to find that my critical instincts from a very young age were completely vindicated, so I figured it would make an excellent pick for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”

Though it’s easy enough for a child to understand, this is a film that works for everyone ages 7 to 77.  ”The Straight Story” is about family, love, and dedication at its purest.  The late Richard Farnsworth, nearing the end of his life as the movie was shot, pours his heart and soul into the role of Alvin Straight.  He’s a simple country man in deteriorating health unable to drive a car to visit his ailing and estranged brother, Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton).

But that doesn’t stop the iron-willed Alvin.  He decides to buy a tractor and drive it from his home in Iowa all the way up to Lyle in Wisconsin.  At a speed of never more than 6 miles per hour, Alvin and his trailer chug through America’s heartland.  Along the way, he meets fascinating people that give the journey a powerful emotional component.

Lynch has called “The Straight Story” his most experimental film, a strange distinction given some of the bizarre things that have happened in some of his other movies.  However, the film isn’t merely worth remembering due to the fact that the raw, unadulterated compassion is emanating from David Lynch.  It’s one of  the sweetest, most heartfelt films I’ve ever seen from any filmmaker, period.  This is the ultimate family movie, so gather everyone around the television and watch it with the whole crew.


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Random Factoid #568

25 04 2013

les-miserables-dvd-blu-ray1Been a while since you’ve seen one of these, hasn’t it?

I discontinued daily random factoids back in 2011 because, well, they were becoming a lot more of a stretch.  Usually they weren’t really factoids, they were just random cultural tidbits with a little bit of Marshall commentary.  I definitely enjoyed doing that, but it became a lot more of a hassle than it should have been.  So I stopped.

But now, I have a real factoid to share with you all, so it felt like a good time to resurrect the series for the first time in two years.

I actually watched a movie with the commentary track on.  For the first time ever.

Aren’t you proud of me?  I sat for 2 1/2 hours and listened to Tom Hooper talk all over “Les Misérables.”  He had some fascinating insights into the film, and I learned a lot from it.  But I didn’t really get to watch the movie, per se.  Is that how they all are, or is Hooper just incredibly long-winded?

By the way, a big ol’ whoppin’ defense of the film’s close-ups is coming your way soon.  Get ready, blogosphere.


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REVIEW: See Girl Run

24 04 2013

See Girl RunI am literally one of the biggest and most devoted “Parks and Recreation” fans out there. So when I say that I could not even remotely enjoy a movie starring the show’s unsung hero, Adam Scott, you know that the movie is a dud.

I really did want to like “See Girl Run,” a rom-com by sophomore director Nate Meyer.  I had the privilege of hearing him do a Q&A after the screening of the film at the RiverRun International Film Festival last year, and it did make me appreciate what the film was trying to do a little bit more.  But ultimately, I don’t grade a film based on concept; I evaluate it based on execution.

And in the end, “See Girl Run” fails to do anything interesting.  It’s not formulaic, per se, but I felt like I had seen the concept or story played out before.  I don’t even think the movie is worth the effort for me to go look up the plot summary, so needless to say, it’s a forgettable flick…

I do remember there being no chemistry between leads Robin Tunney and Adam Scott, largely because they share only one scene together!  That’s right, the film’s romantic leads, and they don’t talk to each other until the climax.  I suppose it’s bold, but Meyer builds up so much to this scene, and it can’t help but disappoint.

Scott is a bright presence, I suppose, but watch “Parks and Recreation” if you really want to see him in action.  Tunney, on the other hand, plays a brutal character who can’t decide which man or life she wants.  It works when Reese Witherspoon does this because she brings a charm and levity to the bind.  Tunney is just a lot of angst and whining.  If there was supposed to be a “realist” aspect to this, I found it shallow at best, unconvincing and uninteresting at worst.  C- / 1halfstars


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REVIEW: The Kings of Summer

23 04 2013

The Kings of SummerRiverRun International Film Festival

More and more, I’ve come to appreciate movies that can use montage to great effect.  Scenes have their own power, sure.  We remember those scenes from our own life; they constitute reality.  But that’s not always how we remember our lives.  We see them in glimpses and flashes, which add up to make truth.

Even though it might not connect at every moment, sometimes a well-edited montage can capture the ephemera of life with such raw power that they tap into and connect with something deep within ourselves.  The most obvious example in recent memory is Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” whose camera floats through life itself and reaches you with evocative imagery (even if its story leaves you unmoved or just plain confounded).  More subtly, films like “Up in the Air” and “The Artist” have caught these moments of fleeting joy in well-cut dance scenes.

“The Kings of Summer,” though it features a compelling narrative that plays like “Superbad” meets ”Moonrise Kingdom,” is at its best when it captures these brief snapshots of unfettered adolescence.  Though I’m still in the process of moving into full independence, I can look back on the days of yearning for escape from my parents’ house with the slightest bit of nostalgia.  And while the majority of the film is silliness and shenanigans, every once in a while an image would flash on the screen that really got at something subconscious within me.

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REVIEW: Before Midnight

22 04 2013

Before MidnightSome movies I just really don’t expect to fully comprehend at the ripe old age of 20.  For example, I don’t really expect to understand the intricacies of love and marriage as portrayed by “This is 40” and “Amour.”

Though both are extremely realistic and vivid, I almost feel like I’m watching a fantasy film because I cannot locate them anywhere within my own personal experiences. The same is true for “Before Midnight,” Richard Linklater’s third entry into what I suppose can be called the “Before” series (comprising of 1995′s “Before Sunset” and 2004′s “Before Sunrise”).  I just kind of have to take the word of others that the film once again captures something true about the place of love in the human condition.  I get a feeling that in twenty years, something about Linklater’s film will resonate more strongly with me.  But for now, I’m left most impacted by the saga’s first entry that explored idealistic notions of love and compatibility.

Though this is the now the third time that they’ve done it, I’m still left reeling by the fact that Linklater, along with co-writers and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, can make long, drawn-out conversations about broad topics into compelling cinema.  It’s a bold and daring conceit to expect an audience to sit for nearly two hours and listen to fictional characters broach subjects that they themselves are often too scared to touch.  The concept seems like one bound to the stage, but it works yet again on screen.

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REVIEW: Houston

21 04 2013

RiverRun International Film Festival

As many of you reading this review may know, I am a proud Houstonian.  I could not be more grateful to grow up in such a great town, full of culture and vitality.  In my lifetime, I have seen it grow to become the third-largest city in the country (and also its most diverse, apparently).  A lot of great things are happening there, in case you haven’t clued into it.  In fact, it’s the setting for a new movie made by … a German.

That’s right, of all cities in America, Bastian Günther chose my hometown of Houston.  Granted, it’s the natural city to set a drama about energy trading in, but it could easily have been another New York or Los Angeles film.  His “Houston” is something decidedly different than one of those travelogues, although I can’t say it’s anything extraordinary.  Had I not had that native pull, I don’t even know if I would have been even remotely interested in the film at all.

Houston

The movie is essentially a tale of corporate espionage, although with none of the excitement a film like “Duplicity” gives it.  Günther is cold, chilly, and removed.  He prefers a darker, subdued character study of Clemens Trunschka (Ulrich Tukur), an unlikable schlub sent to Houston to steal a CEO for his own German energy company.  He winds up getting befriended by an overly gregarious traveler sculpted from the Ryan Bingham mold, Garrett Dillahunt’s Wagner, in a clichéd subplot that adds nothing to the film save a few laughs.

Thankfully, it avoids being as miserably boring as Sofia Coppola’s dreadful (and to de-bracket my subjectivity, overrated) “Lost in Translation.”  But how much of that is true for non-Houstonians i cannot say.  I was able to find some middling satisfaction in spotting Houston iconography, which also might have blinded me to some of the imagery being subversive.  But to be honest, I don’t really care to reexamine to find out for certain.  And I don’t want you, the unsuspecting viewer reading this review, to throw away nearly two hours of your life to find out for me.  C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: The Iceman

20 04 2013

RiverRun International Film Festival

“The Iceman” is everything you would expect from a period gangster film like  ”GoodFellas,” only with none of the rush of excitement and energy you get from Scorsese’s classic.  Director Ariel Vromen’s color-by-numbers genre pic is the epitome of middling, average entertainment.  Its full-fledged adoption of tropes led me to think less about “The Iceman” itself and more about where I might have seen that scene play out before.

Usually gangster movies are propelled by strong characterization, particularly the protagonist.  ”The Iceman” settles for lazy caricaturization where everyone just plays out the stereotypes, including Michael Shannon as the titular assassin Richard Kuklinski.  Over three decades in organized crime, he takes over 100 lives … all while his beautiful wife Deborah, played by Winona Ryder, doesn’t age a day!

Shannon is a magnetic performer, particularly playing troubled and unstable characters like John Givings in “Revolutionary Road” or Curtis LaForche in “Take Shelter.”  His work in “The Iceman” can’t hold a candle to these prior tour de forces, largely because Kuklinski is so poorly written that I doubt Jack Nicholson could make it work.

And Kuklinski is the best written character of the bunch, I might add.  It could also be bad casting, but cameo appearances by James Franco as a pornographer and Stephen Dorff as Kuklinski’s brother were truly bizarre and out of place.  Roy Demeo, Ray Liotta’s character, proves the actor is more than willing to become his own worst imitator.  And I can’t even go there with Chris Evans, Captain America himself, as Robert Pronge, the shaggy-haired and cold-blooded ice cream man, or David Schwimmer as moustache-laden hitman Josh Rosenthal.

Without a compelling character at its center, why even bother watching a movie?  Particularly one that is so largely based around relationships?  I’d recommend not watching “The Iceman” and instead popping in “GoodFellas” or “Pulp Fiction” again.  Moreover, the film’s ability to delude itself into believing its own importance made me yearn for another gangster movie, “Analyze This,” where the same types of characters mix and mingle.  Only instead of being played for drama as in “The Iceman,” it’s played for laughs.  C / 2stars


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