I learned more from hearing director/actor/producer Shane Carruth comment after the movie than I did from watching it. As I watched larva being implanted, I felt I was in a Matthew Barney art-house special. Nor could I make much sense of what followed, although the characters were compelling in a way, if you like lost souls. The soundtrack was too loud and portentous, but there was an artistic vision at work. I suppose Hieronymous Bosch got some bad reviews, as well.
Very cool. I don’t know if what she does is “art” or “theater,” or maybe “performance art” is something in between, but what matters for this film is how well we get to know Marina Abramovic, how open she is to the filmmakers and how she works her way into our hearts. I was skeptical going in but cried at the end. As for the signature performance piece at MoMA, where she sits still in a chair facing a procession of audience members, I can best compare it to a living self-portrait. Think of sitting across from Durer or Rembrandt for ten minutes, staring into those eyes.
I can’t say I rate this highly as a film – there was way too much of one woman’s story, for instance, and too much of that was a side issue – but the overall thrust was compelling, so much so that it has already brought change and will, one hopes, bring more. The regularity of sexual assault on women in the armed forces is staggering, but not totally surprising. What is more gravely shocking is the abuse these women receive from the armed forces when they seek help or justice. Sexual predation is always with us, but the need to accept it need not be.
Perfectly pleasant if forgettable scrapbook of memories from the ’60s: Peter, Paul & Mary, Phil Ochs, Buffy Ste-Marie, Judy Collins, Don McLean, John Sebastian and many more. If you hadn’t been there, however, I’m not sure what, if anything, the movie would have meant to you. Plus, it featured annoying cartoon flashes between scenes and introducing the players, wholly at odds with the seriousness of the times.
The title and the opening scene give away all suspense, so what we are left with is a Danish Lincoln, which undoubtedly means more to the Danes than us Yanks. The costumes are nice, but can’t compare to recent dramas from the French court. It’s fun to meet actors we’ve never seen, although Queen Caroline could’ve been prettier or more interesting for my taste. According to Wikipedia, this is a quite accurate recounting of a pivot in Denmark’s history, which is probably all I will take from the experience.
There is not a single scene in this film from Taiwan that is either original or credible. The acting is amateurish and the story has the sophistication of a yak. One complaint of many: time after time our hero is thrown into a treacherous situation – wild dogs attacking, crashing off a hillside, wrecking his bike – and not once are we shown how he escapes. Or what he eats. Or why he doesn’t freeze. Or, really, why he has taken on this absurd challenge in the first place.
There is a story, but mainly this is a feature-length indictment of Muslim culture and, indirectly, the peril of non-assimilation, in this case into Canadian society. Wives are abused, treated as chattel, and sons are in thrall to hard-line parents. The “spiritual leader” ruins everyone around him and is finally arrested, symbolically, for sending money to the Taliban. I wonder if director Babek Aliassar is complaining, or warning fellow Muslims. In either case, the message seems clear.
A small-scale Indian Ikiru, in which a dotty old man brushes his teeth, gets his flip-flops mended and dogs the local bureaucracy until he gets the streetlights near his house turned off when the sun comes up. It is what is known in painting as a genre scene. I can’t imagine what an Indian would think of this portrayal of his country: it looks so backward and dirty and inefficient to us, but maybe that’s the point. One quickly falls into the rhythm, and we enjoy our time with Shyamal babu.
The movie’s title and opening suggest a one-joke plot, but it turns out that the film is not really about sex, or kids, but about intimate relationships and the difficulty thereof. Conspicuously covering the waterfront, we are given a straight couple, a gay couple, an interracial couple, an older couple, a single mom, a single dad, a hooker-mom and siblings. The sex is largely played for cheap laughs and there is nothing profound, but writer-director Jeremy LaLonde does a nice, low-budget job of tying the stories together and wrapping things up in a satisfying way that lets you leave the theater in a cheerful mood, if none the wiser.
Another psychological thriller from the bad old days of East Germany. Maybe it’s easier to make a compelling movie about times, like World War II, when things are so black-and-white. Here, everyone is under constant strain, not just to be a good person, but to live up to your own principles while suffering under the unfair demands of the state. Maybe we can fault the film for presenting Dr. Reisen as impossibly good – smart, selfless, attentive to his patients, a reader, a cook and a hunk – but maybe that’s just the way Barbara sees him. Barbara is the interesting one, and the personal choices she has to make are excruciating but ultimately convincing and heartwarming. The fact that Nina Hoss is descended from a Cranach painting adds to the cool Germanity of this tightly plotted, nicely faceted period piece.
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