400 Screens, 400 Blows »
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Doc Flock
Filed under: Documentary, Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Lately I have been looking at some of my year-end awards screeners, mainly the documentaries. My critics' group votes for the year's best documentary; we each vote for our top five and then vote again from the top five finalists. It's not easy to figure out this year's front-runner as of yet, and most of the contenders have been huge yawners. For several years in a row, the big award-winners have always been about war in some form, either WWII or the more recent wars in the Middle East. But this year I have detected grumblings of ennui from the other critics, an ennui that i started developing years ago. This year the favorites appear to be a bit more lighthearted in tone, as well as more local in theme. Rowdy movies like Anvil: The Story of Anvil, Capitalism: A Love Story (52 screens) and Food, Inc. (5 screens) for example have captured the hearts of my colleagues.
The Academy threw a monkey wrench in the works when they announced their shortlist of 15 films that they would be considering for Oscar nominations. Following their bizarre rules, it was an odd list; it included many titles that no one has seen, and it eliminated many of the favorites, including Tyson (prompting an interesting response from director James Toback), Good Hair (38 screens), The September Issue (13 screens), It Might Get Loud (11 screens), Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg (10 screens) and More Than a Game (46 screens). The list also eliminated a couple of my favorites, both lively and spirited: Kirby Dick's Outrage and Not Quite Hollywood, about the history of Australian exploitation cinema.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - What's Up with Whip It?
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Drew Barrymore's Whip It (260 screens) opened seven weeks ago and still hasn't broken even on its initial cost. What's going on? When I walked out of the press screening, the critics were all buzzing about how much fun they'd had. The reviews were stellar: it has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. But somehow this critical enthusiasm just didn't translate for viewers. Something about tough chicks beating each other up during roller derby games just didn't appeal to the masses. Maybe it's because the movie is supposed to be set in Texas and was actually shot in Michigan. Maybe it's because our hero Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) was supposed to fall in love with a cute boy (Landon Pigg) who really wasn't very interesting, and you actually root for them to break up.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Sandy's Beaches
Filed under: 400 Screens, 400 Blows
This week I caught up with Anges Varda's The Beaches of Agnes (2 screens), which -- if nothing else -- is a strong contender for the year's best documentary. Of course, it helps if you know who Agnes Varda is, or at least have a passing interest in her work. She was associated with the French New Wave, and made her movie directing debut, La pointe-courte (1954), years before Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard. However, she was not a member of the guy's movie club and was not a critic; in fact, she claims that she had seen less than a dozen movies when she first picked up her camera. She came from a background of photography and mingled with a group of other artists. Over her long, impressive career, she has made many films, including such notables as Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000). In recent years, she has become the keeper of her husband Jacques Demy's legacy, overseeing restorations of some of Demy's films (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, etc.) and making various films about him.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - 'Rum' Diary
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Director Claire Denis -- who was born in France but raised in colonial Africa -- enjoyed a measure of art-house buzz when she leapt onto the scene in 1989 with her film Chocolat (not to be confused with the awful 2000 Johnny Depp/Juliette Binoche movie of the same name). Siskel & Ebert praised it and Denis on their show at the time. In 2000, her film Beau Travail topped the Film Comment critics' poll of the best films of the year. But in-between, she couldn't catch a break. She has a tendency to make "mood pieces" rather than plot-driven films; these tend to cause people to think, thus making them very uncomfortable. Some of her movies couldn't get distribution and remain difficult to see. Others received only the tiniest distribution and even most critics didn't notice them. Such is the case with her wonderful new 35 Shots of Rum (2 screens), which is one of the year's best films.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Fear of the Unknown
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Just take a look at that weekend box office. Sure, the critically panned Couples Retreat came in at #1, earning over $32 million on 3000 screens. But scan down the list and look at #4, which was Paranormal Activity. It earned $7.9 million on 160 screens. That's not a typo. One hundred and sixty screens. If we take the average, Paranormal Activity earned $49,375 per screen, and Couples Retreat took in a paltry $10,666 per screen. That's five times as many butts in the seats for the horror film than for the unfunny comedy (which means that there must have been a lot of empty seats at the latter). There's a simple reason for this: Paranormal Activity is a genuinely scary movie.
The same goes for any of the "body genres," i.e. comedies, steamy films, weepies, etc. If they genuinely work, and genuinely elicit the response that they promise, they will be a hit every time. Horror buffs -- myself included -- probably see more than a dozen new "scary" movies in the theater each year, but it's only once every few years that we actually get scared at one of them. Paranormal Activity achieves this by doing something very simple and not at all new: it doesn't show anything (or, rather, it shows very little). It knows that nothing that can be shown onscreen can equal the fears and nightmares of the people in the audience, and that the fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Docs on the Rocks
Filed under: Documentary, Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
I just saw Gerald Peary's new documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism -- which incidentally features Cinematical's fearless managing editor Scott Weinberg as well as Cinematical alum Karina Longworth -- and I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite some lumps here and there. I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not non-critics will like it, but it celebrates many of my heroes (James Agee, Manny Farber, etc.) and even included one or two historical tidbits I did not know. One thing it talked about was the immense power wielded by Bosley Crowther at the New York Times from 1940 to 1967 -- he alone could make or break a movie -- until a new generation led by Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael began to directly challenge him. Crowther was mainly interested in social responsibility in films, films that managed to "say a little something," rather than sheer artistic exercises or works of personality. The new documentary treats Crowther kindly, but dismisses him as a relic.
400 Screens 400 Blows - Hello Ponyo, Hello
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
This has been one amazing year for animated films. At least four of them are contenders for my list of the year's best films, and a few others are good enough to warrant a second viewing. But despite that, the majority of them are in 3D, and rated PG, neither of which appeals much to my 3-1/2 year old son who is beginning to ask to come to the movies with me. There's one exception, still in theaters, that stands apart from all the rest of the competition: Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo (163 screens). Ponyo is hand-drawn (rather than computer-animated), not in 3D, and so far is the only G-rated movie of the year. (I'm not counting two others: Hannah Montana: The Movie, or Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, about which the less said, the better.)
Yet Ponyo hasn't exactly been lighting its United States audience on fire. Or maybe it just feels like we have already forgotten about it, despite some good voice work by Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson and others. It doesn't seem to be on the cinematic radar anymore, even though it did well in its home of Japan. Perhaps audiences were turned off by the fact that Disney-sanctioned Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas were cast to perform the two lead children, or that they recorded a truly insufferable song for the closing credits. Or perhaps the movie is too simple and too gentle. When Miyazaki's gorgeous, dark Spirited Away opened here in 2002, the time seemed right, and enthusiasm for his work ran high; the movie was ushered in as a major event in the history of animation.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - The Best of the Best
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Recently, my uncle -- a film buff to put most other film buffs to shame -- sent me a clipping from the Seattle Times, in which critic John Hartl celebrated the greatest movie year of all time. Not 1939, as is generally accepted, but 1959. And I have to agree with him. It was an amazing time when the old Hollywood guard was winding down and creating their final masterpieces, new upstarts were coming in with fresh new films and the most outrageously artistic of European cinema was getting released (and being watched) in America. Not taking into account any weird release patterns -- such as the fact that Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) was released here in 1959 -- and based on the IMDB's list of 1959 movies, here's my top ten list for that great year.
1. Rio Bravo. On most days, this is my favorite Western, with its combination of breathless suspense sequences and easy camaraderie among its bizarre, almost deliberately mismatched cast (and especially for Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson's duet). Howard Hawks directs with fluid grace, but best of all is that exchange of dialogue between Ward Bond and John Wayne. Bond: "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" Wayne: "That's what I got."
2. Good Morning. This is Yasujiro Ozu's lightest, warmest and funniest film, about two boys who -- fed up with the polite, meaningless conversation of adults -- take a vow of silence until their father buys them a television set. Their father refuses, having heard that television will produce "100 million idiots." (He may have been right.) Even if you don't like this one, Ozu also delivered the equally great Floating Weeds the same year.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Asian Melodramas
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
When the average American film fan thinks of Japanese movies, they'll probably picture one of three things: either a samurai or a gangster -- Toshiro Mifune and his sword, or Takeshi Kitano and his gun -- or a stringy-haired ghost girl. Die-hard fans will know that Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima and Mikio Naruse also made contemporary dramas about modern-day citizens, often trying to figure out their lives in the post-WWII turmoil. But those dramas were hindered by the times, or by the censors; the characters were polite and functional and hid their own true emotions in an attempt to do what they were supposed to be doing. But there's something in the air over in Japan right now; they're making melodramas, big, roiling, red-blooded ones filled with anguish and torment and heartbreak.
Earlier this year, Kiyoshi Kurosawa -- who is thus far best known for his truly terrifying films like Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) -- came out with Tokyo Sonata, a devastating (but defiantly odd) look at a crumbling family. The father loses his job, the eldest son contemplates joining the U.S. military and the youngest son sneaks off for secret piano lessons, while the mother finds herself kidnapped by a charismatic burglar. Kurosawa somehow ties together these plot threads with a few scenes at the family home, in which little of the stuff that we can see happening actually gets discussed. It's a brilliant portrait of disconnect and lack of communication.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Disease of the Week
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
One of my absolute least favorite genres is the "disease of the week" movie. There are lots of genres I prefer less than others, but in the case of this one, I can't understand why people like it. Why would anyone want to go see a movie about people getting sick and probably dying? The nearest I can figure is that, for viewers who like to cry, this is an almost certain tearjerker. Otherwise, perhaps it makes viewers feel good about not being sick. Who knows? But this week, fate has handed me an almost perfect example of what I hate about this genre, as well as an alternate example of just how it can work.
My Sister's Keeper (262 screens) is the bad one, though it does begin with a good idea. Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) was created in a test tube essentially to provide "spare parts" for her older sister, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who is stricken with leukemia. When Anna reaches the age of ten, she approaches a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue for the rights to her own body. But rather than following that lead, the movie then spends the bulk of its running time in the hospital with Kate, watching her get sick and throw up while others weep and study test results. She gets a little brief romance, but it ends tragically. The worst thing of all is that, despite all this focus on Kate, she never emerges as a character. She's always good-natured, strong and loving. (We see her dark side only once, in a flashback.) Essentially, she is defined by her disease. She is "cancer girl" and nothing more.
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