Enter the Void (2009)

IMDb Listing
When a young American drug dealer is killed in Tokyo, his spirit travels around the city looking after family, friends, and other acquaintances. This is as formally audacious a film as I’m likely to see this year, with extended sections of first-person perspective (complete with blinks) and a camera that floats above Tokyo in a manner best described as resembling a drunken bird. It’s at times an enthralling film, but over its long running time – there are different cuts of the movie out there, but best I can tell the version I saw was about 140 minutes – the novelty of it all wears awful thin. For all the stylistic thrills, the film’s ideas are pretty thin, with surprisingly little thought given to the subjects of death, mourning, or the afterlife. I found my thoughts occasionally drifting towards Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, another movie that deals explicitly with death but in a much more intriguing and provocative way. Noé, of course, wants nothing more than to be provocative, as the film is filled with sex and drugs, and at varying points features a graphic abortion, a violent car accident, and enough strobe effects to kill a fleet of epileptics. His provocations are too superficial to have much of a lasting impact, though, and are repetitive besides, and by the end I was frankly happy it was over. Still, the movie has an undeniable joie de vivre (or joie de mort, as the case may be), and while I can’t say I loved it, I would have no doubt been worse off had I not seen it. 7/10

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

IMDb Listing
I’ve never considered Wall Street to be one of my favorite Oliver Stone films, but this sequel, for the first hour or so of its running time, is one of the best movies of the year. Stone’s obviously working in an area that he knows something about – the original film was dedicated to his father, who was a stockbroker – and his critique of today’s financial system is harsh and effective. Surprisingly, during these sections of the film, Gordon Gekko (the iconic character from the first film, played again by Michael Douglas) is mostly relegated to the sidelines, surfacing mostly to serve as a sort of Greek chorus, filling the audience in on how things work and why they’re so corrupt. Unfortunately, the movie flatlines over the second half, as Gekko returns to the forefront, and it becomes clear that the filmmakers can’t make sense of their ambivalence towards the Gekko character. Hence, he becomes both ruthlessly villainous while at the same time, just a flawed old guy who wants to be a better dad to his grown daughter (Carey Mulligan, giving some dimension to the kind of underdeveloped female character common in Stone’s films) and future son-in-law (Shia LeBeouf). My lasting impression was that of disappointment, since Stone had half of a great movie here, with a career-best performance from LeBeouf and terrific supporting turns by Josh Brolin and Frank Langella. 6/10