Filmcap: The week of Feb 27-Mar 6

A lot of movies this week that also broke the two week absence of no A/A- movies but also includes some well deserved B+'s. Coming up we've got two film noirs, two intimate European dramas, two surprisingly similar "black" movies, and one 2011 movie. 

Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944): The great thing about this is that you know what will happen and how the "perfect crime" the characters have come up with will not work out, and while the movie focuses a large part on the coming together of that crime it still is very compelling. It seems that was all done very much on purpose, because the opening of the movie is the main character distraught and narrating the whole story in a dictaphone thing. He says in the beginning, that he killed the person, and why he did it. The movie doesn't even pretend to be a mystery and that's why it works so well. The crime itself, which is an insurance scam, is pretty interesting and believable. but the main mystery in the movie is why the characters are committing this crime. At first you think it's because of lust, but we find out more and the movie becomes all the more interesting. The only complaint with the plot and characters is that it's a film noir and so obviously the woman is not going to be exactly who she says she is, but that's more of a problem with all noir films of this era. Probably the best part of the movie is the superb dialogue, which was mostly written by Raymond Chandler, the famed crime novelist. The characters are interesting on their own, but the dialogue makes the movie not only more entertaining, but they also add substance to the movie. This is a top notch drama, and easily one of the best early film noir's made.
Grade: B+

The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1948): This film is not a masterpiece, but it really shows great Orson Welles was. It shows you that he was one of the first true auteurs of Hollywood cinema, he was experimenting with his directing like no other director in Hollywood was at the time. The reason the movie is not a masterpiece is the script, and botched job the studio did cutting down Welles' film from 2 hours to around 90 minutes. For that reason the plot is extremely difficult to figure out, the reasons for who is killing who are all mysterious. But Welles gives the movie substance, and that gets you through the movie. He talks about sharks eating sharks, and then later there's a conversation in an aquarium right in front of a bunch of sharks. The settings and mise-en-scene in the film are all really creative, including the single most unforgettable scene from this movie, the funhouse scene. The climax of the film is set in these funhouse with glass everywhere and it's classic Orson Welles and will be shown at all of his retrospectives. All the problems with this film are with the plot and the movie structure, but what the movie does so well is show you that you don't need those things to make a good movie. A great director can always make you think in a way you never thought you would.
Grade: B+

The Son (Le Fils) (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002): [Note: If you've heard of this movie and plan on watching it, then I suggest you don't read this blurb and just watch it. Technically there will be no spoilers in this review and reading it won't ruin your enjoyment, but I do give away something that happens a half hour into it.] This is one of those masterfully simple and subtle movies that says so much without saying anything. The direction by the Belgian Dardenne brothers (though the movie is in French) is claustrophobic and very personal. Almost the whole movie is either close up shots or close medium shots. There is no watching from afar in this movie, you're always going to be up close to the problems of this man. The issues of this man are where it gets interesting. The opening 30 minutes are you wondering what the heck is going on, there is very little dialogue in the movie and very little exposition. You see the man just observing this boy for the first half hour whose working an apprenticeship at his carpentry place, the control of the directors is incredible because of how they mislead you very subtly, but then mislead you in a completely different away. We only find out that the boy he is so interested in is the boy who killed his only son a while ago, which ended up doing much damage to his relationships. Olivier Gourmet plays the lead, and he plays the character with such interest and confusion, we don't know why he is taking an interest in the boy, and what he's going to do, and Gourmet shows that the man might not know either. The movie is very bare, there is no music, not much action or dialogue which makes it hard to watch for some people, but if you get into it, you'll really get into it. The Dardenne Brothers and Gourmet take a fairly simple plot and give it so much spirit and emotional depth with their direction and acting, it's quite remarkable.
Grade: A-

Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999): Here's a film that doesn't get talked about much but really deserves to. On the surface it's one of those miserabilist films (that's not a bad thing) that attempts to show the characters living a life of misery and hardship. This film does that through a kid living in Ireland in a poor neighborhood and it's set during the garbage strikes, so there's always garbage lying around the streets in the whole movie. Setting the film during that time was a brilliant move because it just adds to the visual subtext and gives it a unique quality. I loved how the movie started out. It starts with a scene showing a boy and his mom getting ready to leave somewhere, it's about 5-10 minutes and you believe that boy is the main character. Soon after though, that boy drowns while playing with a friend, and to our surprise the main character of the film ends up being the boy he was playing with. It's a great bait-and-switch and one that adds context to the guilt our main character feels throughout the whole movie. The boy certainly yearns for a better life and it shows in the film, but his guilt also shows subtly and that's what makes it more of a unique film than your average poor kid who wishes he was better off wishing. The film is really engaging on a character level, though not always on a thematic level. The screenplay could have been more concise if it wanted to get to masterpiece level, which it could have, but nonetheless this is a marvelously impressive debut film for Ramsay. At the moment she has one other film besides this, and another coming out this year.
Grade: B+

Black Dynamite (Scott Sanders, 2009): This is a extraordinarily fun homage of the blaxploitation movies of the 70's that is meticulously crafted to make sure they get it all right. Everything bad in the movie is done on purpose and it's all very hilarious. If you've seen the trailer then you know exactly what to expect. It's a 84 minute version of that trailer and for the most part just as hilarious. Coming in I was wary whether or not idea in the trailer warrants a feature length, but it didn't run out of steam as bad as I worried it would. It was pretty darn funny all the way though the last 20 minutes are definitely not as good as the rest of the movie. You definitely have to watch this with a friend or a group of friends, there is an endless stream of quotable lines. The writers and director definitely had a vast knowledge of blaxploitation when writing this and even though I haven't seen much of those films I can see a lot of details from this being in that type of film. Things like the black hero cleaning up the streets and taking out the white system is something that feels very real for this type of film and it's just real fun to watch.
Grade: B

The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2011): Here's my review of the first pretty good movie of 2011 that I have seen so far. My review does an adequate job of summing up my thoughts. The only thing I didn't have room for was examining its "Philip K. Dick-ness." I'm a huge fan of the writer and the movie is definitely not something that the man could have wrote, but Nolfi takes a smart PKD concept and writes in some heart and love, which is something I haven't seen PKD do too well.
Grade: B

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (Lee Daniels, 2009): There's a genre of miserabilist films that has emerged ("Ratcatcher" is one of them), many produced outside the United States. This movie tries to capture the misery of the characters of those movies and adds in some of the provocative European sensibilities of Von Trier and Haneke, but twists it all in a very populist way. While sometimes it feels cliche or melodramatic many of the sequences are still surprisingly effective. In the film Precious dreams of fantasy sequences of a better life, and they're not bad at all, they work very well though I wish Lee Daniels had used them less often. The title of the movie could have been Waiting for Superman, just like the documentary that got its title from a guy living in Harlem (where Precious lives) and found out Superman woudn't be there to save him. Better yet though, the title could be Waiting for Black Dynamite since Dynamite is the black equivalent of Superman in "Black Dynamite" anyway. In any case, this movie isn't the most effective it could have been if it had been more suggestive rather than melodramatic, but the characters are still for the most part well written and it's an ambitious screenplay that doesn't get quite everything it wanted, but gets all the important parts right.
Grade: B