I wish that the star, Thierry Guetta, had been more attractive and that he had been a better videographer, because the story of street art was inherently fascinating; I would have loved a movie all about Banksy, the nominal producer of this film (I have my doubts). As it was, Exit provided an inside, introductory look at one small niche of contemporary art, an agreeable way to pass a couple of rainy afternoon hours.
If Martin Scorsese is such a great director, why does he cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the psychologically complicated role of Teddy Daniels? Or Mark Ruffalo as his sidekick, for that matter? Perhaps this was an unfilmable story, relying as it does on a shocking twist at the end that works far better on the page. In any case, having read the book and knowing what we did, we both found the plot just too absurd to hold together.
A very fine movie with beautiful stars, humor and pathos, engaging plot and a wonderful feel for the exotic Argentine culture. By telling the story through the prosecutor-turned-novelist’s eyes, director Campanella could mix fact, imagination and speculation in a way that kept us guessing, and a little enchanted, too. The “secret” in their eyes was a love story that was never very secret but provided a satisfying, albeit complicated, ending to a movie so much truer than the Streep-Baldwin-Martin tangle.
It was fun to watch Woody Harrelson for awhile, but his characterization couldn’t sustain the whole movie, and there really wasn’t much else. The story of two Army men assigned to inform next-of-kin of a death in Iraq, the film thought it was deeper than it was: Sgt. Will’s struggle to regain his humanity after his combat experience was the attempted narrative arc, but neither he nor his story moved me. The number of deaths they got to report in a short time and a small area, each with a dramatic response, was a poetic stretch that added to the hollowness of this story compared to Hurt Locker, Valley of Elah, and even StopLoss.
I think something didn’t make it across the cultural divide here. From my Western perspective, this movie socred low on cinematography, acting, characters, plot, credibility and score (there wasn’t any). So far as I could tell, this was merely a love story without any romance.
[MSPFF] A Renaissance jewel of a film from French director Catherine Breillat. Almost every shot could be a museum still, and every character had a charming face that, Clouet-like, filled the screen. The dialogue and pacing were perfect for the fairy tale portrayed and the postmodern addition of two young girls from the 1950s added humor, intrigue, tragedy and puzzlement. I am still trying to understand how their story related to that of their counterparts in the time of Bluebeard. To me (see Essay), this is much greater “video art” than anything by Matthew Barney or Doug Aitken.
[MSPFF] Perfectly lovely Mexican portrait of a grandfather-father-and-son living off and learning about the sea – a gentle sea over a coral reef in the Gulf of Mexico. The ruggedly handsome looks of the father and the way they caught fish and lobster made the movie fun to watch. The characters’ hermetic existence – “At night, I drink coffee and watch the stars” – made it seem more fiction than documentary; and the film’s renunciation of drama and plot surprised the audience but, once we caught on, gradually won us over.
[MSPIFF] A repetitive and poorly edited documentary about a movie director in Nazi Germany, the anti-Semitic film he made and the current views of his descendants. There was no coherent point and we didn’t even get a very good sense of the underlying film. Just the same talking heads over and over, with nothing surprising to say.
[MSPIFF] I have yet to see a film about Tibetan (or Mongolian) nomads that wasn’t overwhelmingly beautiful, and this was no exception. Unfortunately, there was no story or drama, except for two minutes when the yaks went missing. When committing to film a summer in the life of a nomad family, the documentary filmmakers need some luck to have something interesting happen. This time there wasn’t any.
Far and away the most beautiful movie I have seen, or probably will see, this year, Shirin Neshat’s study of Iran in 1953 packed a social and political wallop as well. The liner notes and the director’s dialogue explained much that I would have missed, notably America’s role in overthrowing democracy in Iran 50 years before we purport to be demanding it there, and the analogy between the man’s role in the family and the dictator’s role in the country. Of the women without men, two existed in the real world, two in a world of magic realism, but their experiences were similar and taken together they encompassed a large swath of Iranian society, from the prostitute to the aristocrat, from traditional to cosmopolitan. This was a movie to think about, and talk about, after the screening, and Neshat’s images, especially the woman Musin on the rooftop, are indelible.
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