This week I review a recent HBO miniseries, a quirky but great movie, two thrillers from different eras, one character study, and another Iranian film in my continuing research for a paper on Iranian cinema I'm going to write soon for my Art & Society class.
Here's something cool: Steven Soderbergh (director of the Oceans trilogy among others) just released a list of everything he watched or read over the past year. I don't know why he did it, but of all people I should be able to understand. Here's a link.
Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011): This is not a movie, this is an ambitious HBO miniseries based on the novel by James M. Cain (Double Indemnity) which was made into a film back in the 40's directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca). This 5+ hour long miniseries basically is a novel put on the screen with all the detail and plot points you can dream of. The period setting of the 30's and 40's is detailed to the point that the series also serves as a documentary on how life was back then. But it's the epic mother and daughter class struggle in this that makes it an amazing piece of work. Kate Winslet, maybe the best and definitely one of the best actresses in the world, plays the the mother part in an epic performance trying to live as a single mother raising a daughter during the Great Depression. Not only that, but the daughter she is raising has these elitist notions, and so satisfying her is even more difficult to the point of impossibility because of the economic conditions. Two actresses play Vida, the daughter, a younger and an older version (Evan Rachel Wood plays the older one), and both have a continuity in their performances. Todd Haynes makes us root for this relationship, even though we know it's doomed. Much of the series melodramatic, but it's all so well handled by Haynes that it feels operatic. He somehow makes a very personal and intimate story of a mother daughter relationship into an operatic epic. Even when the series puts its focus on something else besides the relationship sometimes in the first half, it's still very enjoyable and adds to Mildred's character and also the setting. If there's any flaw with this series is that there are some scenes in the middle of the series that maybe could have been condensed or cut out, and that it's not completely necessary to need 5 and a half hours to tell the story. But even the moments that were not necessary were well crafted and written and thus enjoyable. This is an epic miniseries that once again proves television, HBO, and the miniseries format are at the top of their game.
Grade: A-
Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005): It's hard for me to write about this film after one viewing. I know the movie is really good, but is it amazing? I kind of go back and forth between the two. Is this an intimate and minor masterpiece, or is it an unorganized film with great scenes? After watching the movie I leaned towards more toward the latter but now I lean more towards the former. The film is simple, take a bunch of weird characters and have their lives interact and intertwine. It's kind of like Pulp Fiction, but with really quirky characters and situations. It's the debut film for Miranda July who acted in , wrote, and directed the movie. Her characters are filled with life and are so very individual, and that's really what the film is about. Individuality and the difficulty, or ease for some, in connecting with people who are also very much individuals. That's kind of why it's a minor masterpiece, it examines these seemingly small quirks about these characters and subtly and very enjoyably makes them real people trying to find happiness. I don't know if everyone will get this from the movie though, because the quirks displayed in the movie are not the same quirks everyone will relate with, but it doesn't make it less true. There are scenes in this movie that have such a poetic and enjoyable quality to them, they're individual masterpieces themselves. It's as if every scene has its own quirk, and all of them try to fit together with other quirky scenes to make a whole. The reason why I didn't think the movie was an amazing piece of work in the beginning was because the story was not all that impressive and the movie as a whole didn't represent what was in those individual masterful scenes, but as times goes on it's the scenes and the people in the scenes that stay with me and I think that's how it comes together. It's a memory of a bunch of people trying to do get through life while still being themselves.
Grade: A
Bashu, The Little Stranger (Bahram Beizai, 1989): This is a beautiful Iranian film that opens with a kids parents being killed as a result of the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's but it turns into a very sweet film about motherhood, and setting aside differences. Bashu is the orphaned kid who finds his way into a village with a mother and two kids who start taking care of him. Bashu though is not Persian, he speaks Arabic, while the mother speaks a dialect of Persian. That language barrier between the mother and the war-torn Bashu, who possibly has a form of PTSD, sets up this conflict between a mother who is not really a mother, but feels she has a duty to take care of him. The film is really honest in its depictions of life in the village, and it's very honest about how this boy feels after his family dies. One of the things that bothered me was that the mother's own kids aren't given much attention, and while they're not that old yet, I still would have liked to see more attention on them. Another flaw would be that all the dramatic developments are pretty predictable, but that's just a minor flaw, because the emotion mostly comes from the smaller details of the movie and not the bigger plot developments. I'd love to see a better DVD transfer of this film because the film really is beautiful, both visually and thematically.
Grade: B+
Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999): I wish people would watch this movie without knowing its reputation. If you plan on watching this movie and don't already know a lot about it then don't read this, just go watch it. Now that's settled let me mention why you presuppositions of the movie are so imperative. The film is great at changing the tone of the film from the first half to the second half. It's almost a normal family drama in the first half but it moves into a more heightened mystery bizarre tone in the second. I'm not really a fan of excessively violent films, but the violence is really only like 15 minutes of the film, but more importantly it's the first 60-75% of drama that sets up the violence that really got me. The film sets up all the crazy stuff so well that the crazy stuff makes some sense and is not exploitation at all. The set up is something many horror films seem to forget, and this film is almost all set up. The psychological implications of the events of the film are incredibly interesting, and so is the commentary on the objectification of women. I don't find the movie as anything like a masterpiece, but it is without many flaws. I don't want to say too much if you've seen the movie, but know you're in for a truly thought provoking film that doesn't care much about scaring you, but instead it cares about making you think.
Grade: B+
Bronson (Nicolas Wending Refn, 2008): Really this film is completely a two man show. Tom Hardy and Nicolas Wending Refn. Hardy is absolutely insane in this film, his work here shows the immense dedication he must have had to the role. He plays Charles Bronson, Britain's most violent prisoner, and those violent outbursts he has feel so real because of Hardy's performance. If this movie had gotten wider recognition his performance would have surely been nominated for an Oscar. Refn's direction and writing compliments that performance and creates a film around it that is uniquely structured and revealing. Many times Hardy performs monologues to a fake audience explaining his actions and we expect this to get us inside his head, but really we still don't know much about his motivations. The film displays a person similar to the Joker, a man solely in it for the fame, at least that's what he says. He wants to be famous and this is the best way he can see fit. One of the weaknesses of the film though is that doing bad things for the sake of being famous is not really a good reason anymore. There's always more to it, and while I appreciate a bit of mystery, I would have liked to see a bit more on his psyche. The film kind of does the same thing the whole film, and it's just all rage. But most of it works, we get to see his rage over and over again and it never fails to shock the viewers. In that sense it's similar to Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," in that it shows violence as a human condition. The movie is extremely well shot and crafted, the structure is unique, and Hardy's performance is remarkable. If you've ever wanted to see 90 minutes of a mad man, this is your chance.
Grade: B+
Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973): This is basically the Hitchcock movie Alfred Hitchcock never made. Brian De Palma riffs on Hitchcock classics, especially Rear Window, to make this really well made film. There's not a lot of thought provoking in the movie, but the pacing, the style, and acting are all very well done. I really enjoyed it all the way through. One of the more unique aspects of the movie is the split screen that's used in the middle of the film for a while. Some of it is used to show two scenes at the same time, some of it to show the same scene from two perspectives. I thought it was one of the best uses of split screen I've ever seen. Another thing that makes it unique from Hitchcock movies is the ending. That's where De Palma comes into his own and makes it much more darker and experimental than Hitchcock would have done. There are some parts of the film that are more dull than others, and when thinking back about it many scenes were kind of silly. But nonetheless I enjoyed it and it was very fun. As De Palma's first thriller and one of this first movies overall, I thought it was really well-executed. Most of it is a copy of Hitchcock, but there are sequences, like the split screen, that are very much his own.
Grade: B
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