Crip Camp – 5
Not my cup of tea. There was a transition from home-video clips of a summer camp for handicapped teens to the fight for civil rights of the disabled leading to the ADA, but I was asleep and missed it.
Not my cup of tea. There was a transition from home-video clips of a summer camp for handicapped teens to the fight for civil rights of the disabled leading to the ADA, but I was asleep and missed it.
A true story about the Serbs’ 1995 massacre of Bosnians in Srebenica is told in sidelong fashion by focusing, instead, on the motherly desperation of Aida, a Bosnian translator working for the UN in its “safe haven,” to protect her husband and two sons. Jasna Duricic is sensational as the competent and fiercely determined translator, giving the film its documentary look of real people, by the thousands, including other leads who look just like their characters’ pictures on Wikipedia. What I didn’t learn about the Balkan War in this 1:45 I picked up in Internet research I felt I needed immediately following, which is the true compliment to the power of this film. My only quibble: director Jasmila Zbanic put in one or two too many vain entreaties by Aida to the feckless Dutch forces. We had gotten the point, and it was devastating.
It’s hard to “rate” a beautifully made film on the end of the world as we know it, just as it is hard to watch it. I don’t need to be reminded what humans have done to climate, habitat and the cause of biodiversity in the last 70 years, but Attenborough’s personal testimony, measured and even understated, bears witnessing. By drawing on the films he has made in Africa, in the Arctic, in the oceans, he reminds us of the treasures we took for granted and are rapidly losing. To end on a message of hope he lists in simple terms the steps we can take to reverse disaster, but their apparent, to me, impossibility is further cause for depression. All we need do is 1. stop population growth; 2. stop all deforestation; 3. change our diet to plant-based proteins; 4. create fishing-free zones in the oceans; 5. reduce agricultural lands while increasing output (a la the Dutch); 6. change energy production from fossil fuels to renewable sources; 7. and other items I’ve forgotten. And who will do this, I ask one night. Then the next I watch Quo Vadis, Aida?
A workmanlike talkumentary about the Knoedler Gallery’s sale of 60 forged AbEx paintings, in which all sides are presented but only one is credible. There was nothing here I hadn’t read in ArtNews, but it was interesting to see the characters in person, especially gallerist Ann Freedman, whose icy but unconvincing resolve that she wasn’t to blame left much for the viewer to ponder. Michael Hammer’s role was barely touched on–a hole in the film–but what was there was pretty bad. I could have used more about the art itself, the lack of technical scrutiny of the works, and the role of the consulting experts. In short, this was more a once-over introduction to the subject than a probing investigation.
This is either (1) a biting critique of sex-hungry men (i.e., all men) who take advantage of defenseless women and the women who enable them; and/or (2) a horror film about a psychopath who seeks revenge on all around her through a series of impossible actions. The climax is so implausible that you realize you’d better not think too much about what has come before. On the plus side, the film is a showcase for Carey Mulligan and her ten-megawatt smile, which makes her unlikely character relatable in a way that Rosamund Pike’s in I Care A Lot never approaches.
Undoubtedly a worthy film deserving its accolades, but it just didn’t connect. I thought the child actors were lame, the burning barn a melodramatic plot device, and Mr. Yi’s ability to build a working farm almost singlehandedly while holding down another full-time job too unlikely. But what most bothered me was the way every scene and situation was cut short. This was true for the film as a whole. The filmmakers gave us a series of impressions, and because they involved Koreans, perhaps the novelty was enough. It was interesting to mentally compare the Yi family saga with the scores of movies about American pioneer families in the 19th century. But interesting was not engaging. Maybe I was tired.
This New York Times “Critics Pick” allegedly ” seesaws between comedy and horror,” but being neither funny nor scary, what is left? A cartoonish battle between an icy abuser of senior citizens and a Russian mafioso who exploits mules to traffic drugs. Do we care who wins or survives? Not really. There could be a bigger point of how the elderly are exploited by a corrupt, greed-driven system of nursing homes, conservatorships and oblivious courts, but that’s not the point here. In fact, the system survives, and all that stops the villainy is our lax gun control laws. We tried this movie to take a break from our TV series, but all it did was make us realize how much more we appreciated the real people of Spiral and Call My Agent.
Another Round
Being the Ricardos
Belfast
Bergman Island
Better Days
Black Bear
C’mon C’mon
CODA
Cry Macho
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
The Dig
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
The Electrical World of Louis Wain
The Forty-Year-Old Version
The French Dispatch
Hand of God
A Hero
Herself
I Care A Lot
I’m Your Man
In the Heights
In the Same Breath
Judas and the Black Messiah
Julia
King Richard
Lansky
The Last Duel
Licorice Pizza
The Lost Daughter
The Lost Leonardo
Made You Look
Minari
MLK/FBI
The Mole Agent
One Night in Miami
News of the World
Passing
The Power of the Dog
Promising Young Woman
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Red, White and Blue
The Rescue
Sound of Metal
Spencer
Summer of Soul
Tick, Tick…Boom!
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Undine
West Side Story
The White Tiger
I feel awkward calling this a “top ten,” with the implication that these are the “best” films of 2005 when, with the exception of Crash, none of these is a “great” film or would necessarily have been considered for listing in some other year. Instead, these are the ten films I most enjoyed, for whatever peculiar, often personal, reason. A number of them I saw at 4 o’clock, so to speak, in an empty theater. Which is another way of saying that un-hyped films I “discover” for myself have an easier time satisfying me than the heavily promoted blockbuster I instinctively, reactively, try to find fault with. (I find I said the same thing last year, but this year, unlike 2004, the films I’ve chosen more clearly justify this disclaimer.) That said, the runaway winner for best picture perhaps deserves even more credit for coming to me in a full, first-run theater.
Honorable Mentions to Good Night and Good Luck, Saraband, The Squid and the Whale, Layer Cake, Hustle and Flow and, left over from 2004, In Good Company.
Biggest Disappointments: Broken Flowers, Kung Fu Hustle, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Syriana, Brokeback Mountain, Walk the Line.
The Oscar nominations this year confirmed what a dismal year the movies had in 2008. Benjamin Button was a horrible bore. Milk and Frost/Nixon were decent films, but nothing to get overly excited about, or want to see a second time. Everybody’s favorite, Slumdog Millionaire, was overbrimming with energy, and the concept was brilliant, but my implausibility detector kept me from ever fully engaging, until the encore, which was a whole different thing. When I saw part of Juno on TV, I said to myself, Now there was a movie!, a movie you wanted to talk to your friends about, a movie with moments you recalled days and months afterward. And that was just my 4th best film of 2007! Nothing this year hit me over the head like No Country for Old Men, or I’m Not There, or Once, or even Gone Baby Gone. So, I’m tempted to skip a Top Ten for this year; but tradition being what it is, I was able to come up with ten films, and ten films only, that I felt comfortable recommending to others. I’ve put them in order, but don’t take that too seriously. None of these are “award-winners,” but all are movies I’m glad I saw.
1.Amal. So far as I know, this was never commercially released, but it was my favorite film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Set in a very real India (not the heightened India of Slumdog), it recounted an O’Henry-like short story about a rickshaw driver who was happier living his simple life than those around him who were chasing a fortune. “Sweet” is a dangerous word to apply to a film, but, unlike some Amy Adams vehicle, there was so much poverty, greed, dishonesty and honest emotion surrounding the driver that his good-spiritedness was both thought-provoking and heartwarming.
2.Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The Screenwriters Panel at this year’s SBIFF said that creating characters was more important than plot, and there is no better proof than this Woody Allen movie. Not much happens – certainly nothing important – but the four main characters are all fascinating and beautifully acted. What happens is the evolving relationships among them, and you have to ask the moviegoers with you, Which one did you relate to, or like, or understand? I’m not much on cinematography, but when I think back to all the films on this list, the vivid colors of Barcelona jump out. Bravo Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall!
P.S. As usual, movies released in Minnesota (or Santa Barbara) during the year do not coincide with the NY/LA releases that qualify for a given year’s Oscars. The Kite Runner would have further strengthened my Top Ten list for 2007 had I seen it in time. At this point I still have not gotten around to viewing The Reader, Gran Torino, Waltz with Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, Doubt, Revolutionary Road or The Class, to name films receiving 2008 awards that are still current in Minneapolis in mid-February. Maybe they won’t affect the above discussion, but in any case I don’t want their exclusion to imply rejection.
Oscar Selections Limiting myself to the Academy’s nominees, I would vote as follows:
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Actor: Sean Penn
Best Actress: Anne Hathaway
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger
Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz
Best Director: Danny Boyle
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