Rope (1948)

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I hadn’t seen Rope in nearly a decade and a half, and I’ve always held it in relatively low esteem. Hitchcock filmed it in a series of long takes, often with edits disguised to make them look even longer than they were, and accordingly the movie has a reputation as something of a technical gimmick. I believe even Hitchcock himself dismissed it along those lines. But watching it again, I was surprised to find it more enjoyable than I remembered. It’s a story about two college classmates who murder an acquaintance, and then hold a dinner party with friends with the corpse hidden in the room, all as a sort of intellectual game. Hitch’s experiment with long takes doesn’t really pay off, but it doesn’t hold the movie back much, either. Occasionally it feels like the camera isn’t really where it should be, especially when it’s moving (such as when it follows characters down a hallway), but I doubt many casual viewers will notice or care; for the most part I didn’t. Otherwise, the movie is pretty strong with its characters, who are not aware of the circumstances but are given mostly sympathetic treatment, all things considered. James Stewart’s character is even pretty interesting, at least until a final act speech that just about unravels the movie. It’s a major flaw, but story-wise the movie is fairly strong up to that point. I still think the movie’s worth watching as a curiosity, in terms of both the technical aspects and an interesting story that almost works. 7/10

Strangers on a Train (1951)

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Glenn Erickson, who writes the excellent DVD Savant online column, says in his writeup that “Strangers on a Train is like a textbook on how to ‘read’ a film on a visual-literary level.” I think that’s a fair assessment, but I also think that it’s a weakness of the film. This is one of Hitchcock’s classic films, but it feels a little too ready-made for the director. The film’s premise is well-known; two strangers meet on a train and discuss, over lunch, the idea of each committing a murder for the other, with the idea that the lack of connections between the two will make it difficult for the police to track them. This is obvious Hitchcock material, but the movie has several elements and themes that were treated more artfully in other Hitchcock movies. The movie also is a good example of Hitch’s frequent laziness when it came to certain details, whether they have to do with performance (star Farley Granger is extremely dull) or the creakier story elements (a major suspense scene centered around a tennis match, of all things, is completely nonsensical and one of the worst sequences Hitch ever directed). It had been 15 years or so since I had seen the film before watching it again recently, and I have to confess major disappointment. There’s an interesting story buried in this film, but it’s treated ham-handedly enough that this is a lower-tier Hitchcock for me. 5/10

Pierrot le fou (1965)

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To date, Pierrot le fou is the last Godard film that I’ve seen and actually liked. It’s definitely a testament to Godard’s interest in mixing and subverting genres, and in some ways this film feels like a remake of his own Breathless, only with a wider scope and more overtly political edge (there are also moments, especially in the use of music, that reminded me of Contempt). As in that film, Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as a man on the run from the law with his girlfriend, here played by Anna Karina, as the two engage in random criminal mischief (stealing cars, robbing tourists, etc.). The difference between this movie and some of the later ones that I dislike is that the story is still cohesive and not as subject to Godard’s scorn for narrative and character as, say, his Week End, which came two years later. Plus, it’s simply difficult for me to dislike anything too strongly when it stars Belmondo and Karina, two performers that both keep the film grounded and provide it with incredible charm despite Godard’s occasional efforts to irritate; I especially love Karina’s two musical numbers. The film feels like a bridge between two different movements in Godard’s career, between the playful cinematic mischief of his earlier works and the more strident, antagonistic films that would follow. 8/10

Le Havre (2011)

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From Finnish director Kaurismäki comes a film set in northern France, in a port city where a young African boy, illegally stowed on a cargo ship, escapes from the authorities and sets off a manhunt. He’s taken in by a poor shoe shiner who, with the help of other members of the community, helps him elude the police. I’ve seen the movie described in most reviews as a comedy, and I suppose that’s true in a way, although it’s certainly not “funny” in any way. It does have a mordant sort of whimsy about it, like a more downbeat version of Tati or even a less grotesque version of David Lynch, especially in the emphasis put on peoples’ faces. Yet, despite the world-weary and even cynical tone, the movie turns out to have an impossibly sunny view of its characters, showing the impoverished residents of Le Havre as united in their desire to help the boy even at a seemingly urgent legal risk. This is a very strange film, and I liked it, but I confess that I also found it a little off-putting in its mix of tones and contradictions. 7/10

Young Adult (2011)

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I don’t really see the value in a movie like this, which basically presents an unlikable character and then asks the audience to delight in her humiliation. In this case, that character is Mavis (played by Charlize Theron), a writer of teen novels who travels back to her hometown to try to win back her high-school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson), who has just had a kid. The condescension and spite flow freely here, from the way that Mavis is conceived of as a character and treated as an object of ridicule by the filmmakers, to the way that her “big-city” life in Minneapolis is portrayed as empty and unfulfilling … just like all the dead-eyed morons in Smalltown, USA. One wonders what kind of life could be lived that meets the filmmakers’ approval. It’s not a very good movie anyway, getting details wrong (what kind of small town has a Macy’s?) and being structured in a way that supporting characters only seem to exist either to tell Mavis what she needs to hear or engage in finger-waving for the audience’s benefit. In fact, one of the characters, played by Patton Oswalt, manages to spend the movie doing both, while being saddled with a grotesque backstory that is further evidence of the filmmakers’ overriding condescension and bile. This is a really ugly, nasty piece of work. 2/10

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

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I knew this movie wouldn’t amount to much from the opening shot, of a young man named Colin (played by Eddie Redmayne) gazing longingly at a movie screen showing Marilyn Monroe. It’s such an obvious opening to a movie about Monroe (played here by Michelle Williams), and it signaled that this would be yet another rumination about the appeal of Monroe instead of a movie about Monroe herself. My initial judgment turned out to be all too accurate, and the movie’s insights about its subject amount to little other than the cliched notion that Monroe was, like, a real person under her public persona. Duh. There are all sorts of problems with the movie, such as the way it’s structured around the least interesting character in the movie (Colin, hired as a production assistant on Monroe’s new movie), to the not-very-compelling clash between Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), hired to direct Monroe’s new movie, and his top star. I also think that Williams, who is one of the most talented actresses in the world, is nonetheless dead wrong for the role. Williams is a very down-to-earth, sensitive performer, which stands in stark contrast to Monroe’s persona, and the result is unconvincing. Still, she couldn’t have saved the movie anyway. There’s just nothing to see here except hollow iconography. 4/10

Silent Souls (2010)

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This is a very elegant Russian film about a man who helps his boss prepare for his (boss’s) wife’s funeral. It’s very short, at only 75 minutes, and steeped in local folklore about funeral rites and other customs. I had mixed reactions to the film. I found its focus on customs and folklore to be quite intriguing; it’s not often that we see films like this, that show a relatively remote part of the world in such detail. I also enjoyed the flawless photography, often of natural locations in the Russian wilderness or of small towns that dot the remote Russian landscape. But I’m tempted to say that, as helpful as it was to my understanding, the movie is almost too accessible to foreign audiences. It relies on voiceover narrative that simultaneously enlightens audiences about what’s happening and why, while simultaneously keeping audiences at arm’s length emotionally, by stripping away any of the mysticism and meaning that these ancient customs have for the characters. In short, it gives the film a documentary feel that I don’t think is entirely successful. It also spells out many of the movie’s themes in ways that feel unnecessary, such as the erosion of distinct cultural practices over generations and the resulting loss of cultural identity. Still, it’s an unusual, very beautiful, and occasionally fascinating movie that I’m glad I managed to see. 8/10

The Science of Sleep (2006)

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I saw this again recently for the first time since its initial release, and was surprised by how much more I liked it than I did then. It’s the story of Stephane (Gael García Bernal) and his extremely tenuous romance with Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), his next-door neighbor. Stephane has what might be described as an overactive imagination, to the extent that he’s frequently unable to tell whether he’s dreaming or awake, and though Stephanie finds his creative impulses endearing she’s a little bewildered by his frequent delusions. Gondry brings the same freewheeling visual style that he lent to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only even more so; this is as visually creative film as I can remember seeing. Visuals aside, though, I still find the emotional tenor of the film to be somewhat uneven, perhaps an unavoidable side effect of Stephane’s manic swings. Despite the seemingly unlimited access to Stephane’s emotions, it’s hard to measure the depth of his feelings for Stephanie, and in turn Stephanie as played by Gainsbourg is even tougher to read. Furthermore, the movie ends on a sour note that feels honest on the one hand but also arbitrary on the other; it feels like these two characters are near a breakthrough, and a resolution to their emotional impasse, but the movie doesn’t quite get there. Still, the movie has enough going for it that it’s a real treat to watch, and like I say, its flaws were less meaningful to me during this most recent viewing than my original one years ago. 8/10

Shame (2011)

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Michael Fassbender boldly takes on the role of Brandon, a well-off thirtysomething Manhattanite who appears to be struggling with a sex addiction. When his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) unexpectedly moves in with him, he seems to feel his privacy compromised and his vulnerabilities exposed. I use the terms “appears” and “seems” because it’s hard to know exactly what Brandon is thinking and feeling, since the movie is so vague about its subjects, perhaps to a fault. Perhaps the title is a clue as to his emotional inner workings, but that being the case, I’m not sure exactly what the significance of Brandon’s shame might be. The movie hardly seems like a puritanical judgment of Brandon’s sexual proclivities to me, and I must say that, as played by Fassbender, Brandon seems not to have a problem with his activities for the most part, despite the occasional emotional outburst forced on him by the script. His relationship with Sissy is equally enigmatic; there’s a sense of shared trauma in their histories but very little of their back stories are given to us. The movie actually reminds me a great deal of Kubrick, with its remote, often impersonal approach, but unlike Kubrick I’m not sure that director Steve McQueen has a very clear-eyed view of his subjects. 6/10

Raging Bull (1980)

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Based on the career of boxing legend Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull is justifiably one of the most acclaimed of all American films and perhaps the high-water mark of Robert De Niro’s career. Scorsese and his writers dispense with a lot of the usual sports cliches – I suppose it would have been tough to focus on LaMotta’s training regimens and exalt in his rise from underdog status just three years after Rocky – and instead focuses on the personality traits that drove him. The film depicts LaMotta as violently ill-tempered, fiercely individualistic, and insanely jealous of his wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). As for the latter, the film links Jake’s paranoia regarding Vickie’s imagined extramarital transgressions and his drive to destroy his opponents in the ring, and even suggests that it served as fuel for his distrust of the New York mafia, who pulled the strings in the boxing world at the time. As a result of this focus, the film can fell clautrophobic at times; despite the celebrated, gorgeous choreography of the fight scenes, even more of the movie seems to take place in the small city apartments that Jake and Vickie shared. Still, I think that the film is brilliantly structured, not just showing the life of a champion or showing us the times and institutions around him, but linking such disparate elements together thematically in a logical and organic way. 10/10

Tyrannosaur (2011)

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Actor Paddy Considine’s directorial debut is a dreary, occasionally brutal film about Joseph (Peter Mullan), a violently ill-tempered alcoholic. At a particularly low moment, he meets Hannah (Olivia Colman), a devoutly religious shopkeeper who … I don’t know, might redeem him or something. That sounds flippant, but the movie doesn’t have a very convincing view of her effect on him, other than the notion that she’s a vaguely positive influence on his life. This kind of movie is easy for me to resent, because it doesn’t do much other than introduce some characters and then wallow in their misery, without doing much to break with the clichés typical for this kind of story. Would it surprise you if I told you that Joseph, despite his terrible temper, also has kindness in him? Or that Olivia, despite her cheery exterior, has demons of her own? I doubt it. Considine seems to think that those facile ironies are profound enough to propel the film, and doesn’t have much more to add than that. We’re introduced to few characters and the film uses few locations, so I can’t say he captures a sense of place or time with any effectiveness, and there’s no insight into these characters’ conditions deeper than “sure sucks to be them.” Perhaps in an effort to distract audiences from this, he sure does load up on the misery, but to what end? 4/10

Q & A (1990)

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Director Sidney Lumet returns to NYPD corruption with this film, starring Nick Nolte as Michael Brennan, a murderous detective being investigated after a shooting. Timothy Hutton plays the Assistant DA leading the investigation, but the movie really belongs to Nolte and Armand Assante, who plays a mid-level Puerto Rican gangster named Bobby Tex. Both actors give big, flamboyant performances, and one of the movie’s most interesting facets is the way the two men are compared. Brennan is every bit as dangerous as he appears, but Nolte gives him an interesting twist in that he seems to sincerely believe in himself as one of “New York’s finest”, a motif that’s repeated throughout the film, and gives him just a hint of sympathy in his portrayal that undermines the audience’s (presumed) disgust with him. He seems confused that his methods, which he’s used with impunity for so long, are now under attack; he’s been working outside the law for so long that he’s forgotten there ever was a line. Bobby Tex, meanwhile, is full of bluster and intimidation but Assante plays him as more than a little weary with the games he has to play, and shrinks from violence despite his bravado. More combantantly, Lumet uses the film to explore the racism endemic in the NYPD and the DA’s office as well. He listens in as racial epithets and racist assumptions are aired by cops and lawyers, seemingly during every conversation held, and the conclusion that this affects the work of law enforcement is inescapable. This leads to some of the film’s weakest scenes, including a melodramatic subplot involving Hutton’s ADA and his ex-girlfriend, and in general I feel like the social commentary meshes unevenly with the sensationalized cops-and-crooks narrative. 7/10

The Descendants (2011)

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I’ve never considered myself a big fan of Alexander Payne, and I think this film puts a lot of his weaknesses on display. It’s a movie about Matt King (played by George Clooney), whose wife is in a coma after a recent boating accident, and who now is faced with being a single parent of his two daughters. Clooney is good for the most part, but overall I thought this was a poorly written movie in many respects. To begin with, the first half of the film relies on really terrible voiceover narration, which neatly explains the movie’s main themes and tells us things that would have been perfectly apparent without it. Secondly, there aren’t any characters in the movie that I would describe as fully developed or finely observed. Even Matt is an empty vessel, relying on what Clooney brings to the role; a very different actor, like Payne’s Sideways star Paul Giamatti, could have played him without requiring any changes to the script whatsoever. Matt’s daughter, played by Shailene Woodley, is especially egregious in this regard, as Payne makes her little more than a reflection of whichever of Matt’s qualities Payne wanted to emphasize at any given moment. It’s a crude but typical handling of female characters in movie’s preoccupied with men’s problems, and to her credit, Woodley is clearly talented and makes her role seem much less superficial than it really is. A few supporting characters could have been cut altogether, and one (a teenager played by Nick Krause) seems to be in the story just so that Payne can make fun of him, an issue that has plagued much of Payne’s work. As of now, the movie appears to be heading for multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. But surely the Academy can do better than this? 5/10

Goodfellas (1990)

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Scorsese’s New York mob epic is fundamentally a standard rise-and-fall story about gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who made a career with the mafia before getting busted and turning informant. What the movie does differently than other stories with a similar trajectory, though, is work through its story in intricate detail and with some of the most dynamic filmmaking I’ve ever seen. Scorsese and his screenwriter, Nicolas Pileggi, show the inner workings of the mob from high-level activities like robbing airports and dealing with police down to minutiae like prison meals and nightclub etiquette. It’s a fascinating look at a world that has been the subject of cinema since early days, but has never been given the meticulous treatment it receives here. Furthermore, Scorsese’s sense of direction has never been more focused and lively. There are several scenes here of breathtakingly accomplished filmmaking, as the material is a perfect match for the director’s style; he’s so skilled at juggling parallel story strands and the shifting allegiances within the mob. It’s a true classic, and my favorite of all the Scorsese films I’ve seen. 10/10

Hugo (2011)

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This comes disguised as a children’s film and marketed accordingly, but in actuality it’s an intensely personal film by Scorsese. It’s about Hugo Cabret (played by Asa Butterfield), an orphan who lives in the clock tower of a 1930s Paris train station, trying to fix the mechanical man that his father left behind when he died. I knew little of the film’s plot going in, and I was amazed at the unexpected directions that the story takes, eventually encompassing the very origins of cinema itself. There are a number of performances here that I admired, such as those by Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Stuhlbarg, and even Sacha Baron Cohen in a broadly comic and slightly menacing role as the station’s police inspector. Some of the more standard children’s movie elements, such as the chase scenes through the train station, feel uninspired, but even still the movie is beautifully shot and of course Scorsese’s typical technical mastery is on display. What stays with me more than anything, though, is how terrifically warm-hearted the movie is for a film that is in a lot of ways about disappointment and grief. It’s not one of the great movies of Scorsese’s career, but it’s one of the most lovingly made and one of the most purely enjoyable. 9/10

The Muppets (2011)

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I’ve always had a take-’em-or-leave-’em attitude towards the Muppets. I remember them from my childhood, of course, but I don’t remember them all that well, and I’m not sure I’ve seen any of their movies start-to-finish except the first one. So, I acknowledge up front that I’m not the target audience here, but I still think it’s a disappointing film. Star Jason Segal also wrote the script (with Nicholas Stoller), and they’ve written a movie that feels a lot like a fan tribute. They go out of their way – again and again – to point out that the Muppets haven’t been popular for decades, and it’s clear that they’re aching in their souls to reintoduce the gang to today’s audiences. But they settle on a story structure that’s poorly suited to do this, because this isn’t a movie about the Muppets at all. Instead it’s about Segal’s character, his girlfriend (Amy Adams), and his Muppet brother, and how these three fit in with the world of Muppets. As a result, the Muppets themselves get short shrift, with only Kermit, Fozzie, and to some degree Miss Piggy factoring into the story except as glorified extras, and even then only passively. It’s a good-natured and sincere effort, and I find it hard to have any actual hard feelings toward it. But too many of the comedy bits fall flat, and the human characters are awfully dull for having so much of the movie’s attention devoted to them. 6/10