Justified: Season One (2010)

Creator: Graham Yost

 The initial concept of this show, beyond adapting an Elmore Leonard short story, seems to have been to create a western set in modern America. That concept has a lot of potential, but I am not so sure it reached that potential in the first season. The first episode is great in setting up our main character of Raylan Givens, a lawman who does not have as much respect for the law as you would think. But the next six or so episodes did not advance that character or the plot very much. They were mostly standalone episodes that did not give a strong desire to watch the next one, though I will say that even the worst of those standalone stories was entertaining.

The last few episodes though get into more serialized storytelling, and it pays off very well in the final episode. Those last few episodes solidified the show as more than just a few entertaining characters who frequently say clever lines. The juxtaposition of two son's who ended up in different places, Raylan and Boyd, was fascinating and it culminated in a great final episode that fully took on the daddy issues theme of the season. I'm not sure if the final couple episodes truly make up for the wandering in the rest of the season, but I cannot deny that the show is always fun to watch even when there's nothing particularly important going on. If the show continues the serialization then it can definitely turn into something great.

Grade: B-

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Director: Walter Salles

 For most of this movie you would never guess that it is about Che Guevara, the famous Central American revolutionary. Guevara is a young guy who has not formed his political views yet and is about to become a doctor. But on this road trip all across South America, Guevara experiences a sort of political epiphany. The movie is almost like a political coming-of-age story. Much of the movie is like your typical road trip movie. We see Guevara and his friend struggle through the weather, mechanical breakdowns, and all sorts of shenanigans.

But there are also times when Guevara is talking to the economically-depressed people in the rural areas of South America, when the movie is shot documentary style as if Guevara were really listening to the stories of the oppressed poor. But those scenes are a small part of the movie. The Motorcycle Diaries doesn't really feel like a Guevara origin story, instead it feels more like the beginning of his origins, and because of that it does feel a bit unsatisfying. The movie feels a bit slight when you consider at the implications the events of the movie will have on the history of Central and South America, but then again that may be the point. Big things can have small beginnings.

Grade: B

Interiors (1979)

Director: Woody Allen

This one of the few films Woody Allen has made that has absolutely no comedy in it. I've also seen Allen's Match Point, which also has no comedy, but if I had not seen that I'm not sure I would have a whole lot of confidence in Allen's dramatic chops. The movie is good, but there is not a lot that stands out in it. The movie centers on one family that has three mature daughters, and we see that everyone has a wide range of problems, from a fear of death, guilt for not caring about parents, loneliness, etc. All of this makes the individual characters fascinating to an extent, but the film as a whole lacks focus.

One of the more impressive things is that the film is directed with a lot of control by Allen. Every shot is blocked perfectly and the compositions are framed with precision. The characters get to stand out and become real people. Allen definitely tries to get all Ingmar Bergman in its serious examination of the issues above. While I was fascinated by the characters, their dialogue, and certain individual scenes while I was watching, the movie lacks memorability because of the aimless story.

Grade: B-

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Director: Jean Renoir

 Satires of the upper class have been done in film time and time again, but The Rules of the Game is one of the first, and maybe the most scathing of them all. It is technically a light satire (this film likely influenced Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, which I reviewed recently), but that satire is not afraid to be extremely harsh and critical. The film consists of a large number of French bourgeoisie who are in a estate together for a vacation, and in this "vacation" we see how their fake rules force them to do things that are sometimes nonsensical, and sometimes completely inhumane.

Renoir does not criticize them to the point of dehumanizing them though, the humanity of the characters is intact but, like in Renoir's Grand Illusion, the artificial constructs of society are what make these people act so idiotic. Renoir does a masterful job with a story with so many characters and still keeping it coherent and flowing. The film moves seamlessly from scene to scene, from character to character showing everyone and in all their messed up glory. This is all just surface level analysis, because there is so much more underneath that can be taken away from this film with multiple viewings. This is one I will definitely revisit.

Grade: A

Breathless (1983)

Director: Jim McBride

This is a remake of the landmark French film by Jean-Luc Godard of the same title, so expectations were quite low coming into this one. But to my surprise it was not horrible, it actually is an interesting translation of the French original to an American context. It captures much of the depth of the love story in the original and does includes its own pop cultural references like Silver Surfer and Jerry Lee Lewis. Richard Gere's performance is also quite good, though I cannot say the same for the female lead, who is frankly horrible.

It's in no way a great movie, and there are some laughable moments that are the epitome of 1980's cheese, but by the end this relationship at the center of the movie becomes fairly real and the love between the two characters feels as complicated as it should. It's not a subtle film in the slightest, everything about it is direct, and unlike the original there is nothing all that experimental or rebellious in the filmmaking to reflect the main character. While it's not the most wonderful film, it is one that takes you by surprise in its intertextuality and its genuine emotion.

Grade: B-

Distant (2002)

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

The thing about showing isolation, boredom, and alienation in movies is that you can't make it too exciting without risking the authenticity of the whole idea. Sometimes it can be difficult to watch those kind of movies, even though the themes and ideas of the movie are conveyed very effectively by the end. This Turkish art house film is an example of that. The film is very slow and revels in showing boredom and urban alienation for all it is, but it still leaves a lasting impact.

We see two men from very different places try to live together, one is going through a very urban existential crisis instigated by the separation from his wife, while the other is going through a different crisis in that he is trying to find a job after moving to the city from a very rural area. These two men must try to live together and try to find a way to reconcile their lives even though, as the title suggests, there is much distance between them. Sometimes the movie feels like it is going nowhere, but it has a depth that feels extremely real and pronounced that reveals the inherent alienation of urban life.

Grade: B+

Afterschool (2008)

Director: Antonio Campos

Internet videos have enabled us to see and experience so much more of the world than we had been able before, and Afterschool captures this phenomenon by focusing on one particular event caught on tape that deeply affects a prep school. This is a film that captures the Youtube generation unlike any film I've ever seen. We have a main character who continuously watches videos on the internet, from videos of animals making music to videos of school fights to hardcore porn. But when he accidentally captures a death on camera and experiences it in real life, he is unable to process the reality of the situation.

This is a film with a formalist style worthy of Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke. It's cold and clinically shot by a 24-year-old filmmaker who displays an amazing amount of control in his feature film debut. The camera itself serves as a voyeuristic eye similar to the videos at the center of the film. Frames are blocked in a very precise manner, but it seems like there is no sense of blocking because people are always oddly cutoff by the edge of the frame and it makes the movie seem like something captured and not staged. The camera does not move much, but when it does it avoids mobile framing, instead it does not anticipate the movements of the actors, again acting as a voyeuristic eye. All of those visual decisions actually lead up to the final shot, a shot that makes you question the most important person in the room, yourself.

Grade: A-

The Insider (1999)

Director: Michael Mann

 What could easily have been a conventional story about a contemporary social issue, is instead a genuinely powerful drama that looks both at the world we live in and also how the ills of the world affect individuals. The best part about this film is that it starts as a story about the ills of big tobacco, a subject that frankly is not so risky anymore, but it then turns into a story about the far-reaching influence of corporate power and their influence in the media, which is a subject that is far more risky and maybe more important today. The Insider is not a movie that focuses on the story that the whisteblower is revealing, but the whisteblower himself and the issues he must go through to do the whistleblowing.

It's a very relevant film to today in terms of the difficulties of revealing secrets (i.e. Wikileaks and Bradley Manning), but also the reaches of corporate power in the media and how that can affect journalistic ethics. It may not be the most accurate film when it comes to the details of the story, but it is very true in its message. Once again, Michael Mann uses some great filmmaking techniques, like music, great handheld camerawork, and an innate ability to thrill through his camera, to rise above what is largely a fairly conventional structure and story. It's hard to get affected by stories we see everyday, but Mann has this ability to infuse conventional stories with a real and powerful emotion.

Grade: A-

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

Director: Ingmar Bergman

 Nowadays we've got fairly low expectations of our romantic comedies. It's incredibly rare to see one that actually is funny and has something interesting to say about romance and love. But this film is a romantic comedy more in the sense of Woody Allen's movies (more accurately, Allen's movies have a Bergman-esque sensibility). This is a film about the never-ending game between the sexes, specifically the upper class. They treat marriage like a game, and respect fidelity only on the surface. The only reason the individuals in this film don't like being cheated on is because they have agreed not to cheat, and they believe that both "lovers" in a relationship should merely hold up their end of the bargain.

The film has a surprisingly modern sensibility towards marriage, especially concerning the lack of seriousness when it comes to marriage. The movie seems like it was written by a person who knows how it feels and has been in similar situations, and from what I know about Bergman, this seems to be the case. The movie is simple, but the characters are real, and Bergman treats the subject matter with class and responsibility. It might sound like a downer, but by the end it's a film about finding love and faith in the midst of the chaos of infidelity.

Grade: A-

M. Hulot's Holiday (1953)

Director: Jacques Tati

 A very charming and amusing comedy that feels very much like a silent comedy of the 1920's. Tati uses pantomime and slapstick comedy in a movie that technically has sound, but actually has very little dialogue. The movie uses sound in its comedy, but almost none of the comedy comes from the dialogue. What's also impressive is that it succeeds in creating an evironment and setting that is individual, and seeing the same bunch of characters over again helps create that world.

Most of the vacationing guests are rich and continue to do what they like to do despite Tati's shenanigans, and that makes it a gentle satire on that upper class lifestyle. But that's not to say that it's some scathing satire, the film is very light. The movie is composed of gags after gag, instead of a narrative, and that makes for a very effective comedy but I'm not so sure I was prepared for that style. The film is enjoyable, but it is not something that is all that deep. It's one of those movies thats a must-watch for fans of the style, but not all that necessary for everyone else.

Grade: B

The Last Detail (1973)

Director: Hal Ashby

 Any discussion of this film would have to center on its historical context, specifically the context of American filmmaking in the 1970's. It was the American New Wave, a time when studios took a few more risks and a time when rebellion and protest was in full gear. This film is pure 1970's. It's about free spirited behavior and a subversion of the traditional Hollywood image of professionalism in the military. I'm not so sure if its a film that is timeless enough to have a lot of impact today, but if I had seen this film when it came out in 1974, I imagine I would have called it a truly great movie.

Nonetheless, as a piece of film history and a time capsule of the filmmaking and social thinking of a certain time, this movie is very worth watching. A young Jack Nicholson gives one of his best performances (which is saying a lot), and the direction by Hal Ashby is non-intrusive but still includes you in the action. It's not quite as touching as the other Ashby film I've seen, Harold and Maude, which is undeniably a great movie, but there is still a rebellious spirit in this film that makes it feel alive.

Grade: B

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)

Director: Stephen Daldry

Yes it is true that 9/11 was a very emotional experience for everyone, whether they were directly affected or indirectly affected. But Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close takes the emotion of that day and its affects and just shoves them down our throat. You may feel some emotion while watching, but trust me, any emotion you feel is due to 9/11 as an event rather than genuine emotion that the movie gives off. The biggest mistake is that the plot itself is completely contrived and never keeps your interest. The plot just seems like a way to meet a bunch of people in New York City and see how dedicated this kid is.

Another thing that was quite odd about this movie was its caution in using 9/11 as a way to get emotion. The image of a man falling from the WTC is deeply disturbing no doubt, but that image is repeated over and over in the film and it once again makes you emotional only because of what we remember that day. There is one scene towards the end that uses that image of a falling man in a happy context, and honestly, it was pretty cringe-inducing. There is absolutely nothing this film offers to us about either human emotion or 9/11.

Grade: D

Heat (1995)

Director: Michael Mann

Auteur cinema in Hollywood is incredibly rare, especially today when Hollywood is just focused on movies with $200 million budgets. With budgets that size, the studio will be very involved, and film becomes nothing but a business. But there are a couple of directors I can think of that succeed in retaining their artistic integrity and still operating within the major studios of Hollywood. One of them is Martin Scorsese, and the other is Michael Mann (Steven Spielberg might be one too but I'm not so sure). Arguably Mann's most famous film, Heat, is a great example of just that.

Mann created an epic crime film that takes the conventional tropes of the police-crime drama and adds real meaning and emotions into it. He's not only great at taking those conventions and making them really effective (like the shootout), but he addresses them by having the characters realize the inevitability of their situations, both professional and most of all personal. Both Al Pacino's police character and Robert De Niro's criminal character know who they are in this game and what role they play, it's nothing new to them. Both are completely aware of the consequences of their work on their own lives. Mann also maintains a brilliant control of tone and direction that uses the music, the lighting, the sound, and the editing to emphasize the highly personal and fairly existential nature of this epic city-spanning movie. When it comes Hollywood genre filmmaking, nothing comes close.

Grade: A-

Incendies (2011)

Director: Denis Villanueve

This is a thriller-drama that consists of an investigation of a family history, a history that takes place during war and travesty. The investigation by the daughter and son of a departed mother is compelling and fun to watch, but for some reason the investigation ends up stopping right at the end when the final answers are not figured out, but given to them by a guy who found out off screen. Unfortunately, while those answers are not bad on their own, they are much more melodramatic than the tone of the rest of the movie would have you believe.

The film does craft a great journey through the history of a family that spans real-life wars in Lebanon and Palestine, but the end turns the movie into a family melodrama without much logic unfortunately. It's definitely a very memorable movie only for where the mystery actually ends up, but at the end, the larger questions of war, religion, and ethnicity seem to take a backseat to the questions of the plot. I definitely had a personal interest in the story because of its Middle Eastern setting which made the movie interesting to watch for almost the whole runtime. The movie is well-made and well-intentioned, but it proves to be just a bit too melodramatic for its themes.

Grade: C+

The Interrupters (2011)

Director: Steve James

I thought it would be pretty hard for a social issues documentary/long-form PSA to faze me in anyway, but then I saw The Interrupters. This documentary is an incredibly powerful movie that takes the giant issue of gang violence highlights it for what it is. The documentary focuses on a group of "violence interrupters" who go around preventing fights and violence. It is extremely telling that the head of this group used to be a doctor, because gang violence is an epidemic that affects an incredible amount of people living in urban areas around the country and it will continue to rise because of the growing urbanization of our country.

Director Steve James, who also directed maybe my favorite documentary of all time, Hoop Dreams, embeds himself within these people who are trying to make a difference, and in doing so not only see the problem, but also the problems that may come about in finding a solution. You don't always see movies that show us the problem, but also the ways people are trying to solve the problem and the reasons why those efforts are not entirely successful. Honestly, The Interrupters is a movie that can spur action in anyone, and it's something I felt a deep connection to. There's nothing flashy about it, but it doesn't keep it from being one of the most effective "take action" documentaries I've seen in years.

Grade: A-

Infernal Affairs (2002)

Directors: Andrew Lau and Alan Mak

I've already seen Martin Scorsese's The Departed, which is a remake of this film, so many of the surprises in the movie weren't all that surprising to me. But nonetheless the movie is wonderfully plotted and paced, and it does actually get into some of the psychological issues of the characters. The two main characters in the movie make sensible decisions, and that difficulty of living a double life for both of  them is well established and not entirely cliche.

While the plot is exciting and well done, some of the filmmaking is actually pretty cliche, and worse, lazy. The music is cringe-inducing at times, and the all-too-frequent flashbacks to scenes we've already seen assumes the viewers are not smart enough to figure the movie out. The movie has got some serious flaws in the way it tells the emotion of the story. But the relatively high level of actual character study in what is essentially a crime picture, is enough to make it worth it. It's not quite as great as The Departed, but it is a movie that can be enjoyed on its own merits.

Grade: B-

The Arbor (2011)

Director: Clio Barnard

The first thing to know about this documentary is the unique lip-synching style, in which actors lip-synch real dialogue from interviews of real people. It's a pretty unique documentary method and Clio Barnard does it well enough that it offers a new way of making documentaries. It seems to give more freedom to the director to take real testimonies but frame them in any way the director sees fit. More power to the artist is something I am always for. The style also makes for some great scenes that question the difference between documentary and "based on a true story" fiction film.

The story itself starts off as a documentary about the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar's. Parts of the film are filmed scenes from the eponymous famous play of hers, and those plays give us a very inside look at Dunbar's life. But the film eventually turns into a movie about her first daughter, Lorraine's. It's a long downward spiral that is sad, but not new or original and has many of the same lessons we're already used to. The subject doesn't seem completely worthy of the stylistic treatment that Barnard gives, but the style itself is unique and for documentary fans I'd recommend it just for the style.

Grade: B

Nostalgia for the Light (2011)

When it comes to movies, the year 2011 was defined by its examination of nostalgia. From Hugo to Midnight in Paris to Super 8 to The Artist (still haven't seen that one) we saw films that were either nostalgic or examined nostalgia in some way. The documentary Nostalgia for the Light most certainly fits this narrative by examining the Atacama desert in Chile as a place where the past comes to rest. It is the driest desert in the world, so it has virtually no cloud cover at all, which makes it a great place for astronomers to look into the stars and find the origins of the universe. But about 30 years ago it was also used as a dumping ground by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for bodies of those his regime killed.

We follow loved ones of those whose remains lie in the dirt of the desert and their search and reconciliation with the past. This juxtaposition between the astronomers looking for answers to the grandest of questions and the women looking for answers regarding their relatives makes Nostalgia for the Light the documentary equivalent to Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Similar to Malick's film, Guzman's documentary is also a form of poetic meditation on how things came to be and why what happened in the past happened.

The film is on one end an intellectual exercise, but it attains spirituality and poetry with its images of galaxies and the personal stories of the women looking for their brothers and fathers. The film shows that no matter who we are, we yearn to learn about our past. It doesn't matter if we are daughters looking for the remains of our fathers, or we are astronomers looking for the remains of the universe in the sky. Remembrance is one of the most human qualities there is, and if we lose that quality, we run the risk of losing our humanity.

Grade: B+

L'Enfant (2005)

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Modern culture has celebrated and encouraged arrested adolescence. This mantra of leaving adulthood till as later as possible. In this Dardenne brothers movie, the other side of that notion is shown. What happens when that type of person first encounters adult responsibilities. Our main character, Bruno, finds himself living in a part of town that is lacking in jobs, and so he usually spends his time doing petty crime trying to make some money. But he then has a child with his girlfriend, and while his girlfriend is similar to him, she seems to have a better sense of responsibility than him now that she's had a child.

The story is a coming-of-age tale for Bruno, but one that is more effective than most because Bruno actually faces real lasting consequences for his rash decisions. Purely as a descriptive term, the movie is bit like Truffaut's The 400 Blows meets Godard's Breathless. Bruno is similar to Michel in Breathless, but what happens to Bruno, and the tone of the movie, is more similar to The 400 Blows. The Dardenne's trademark documentary-like observational approach is used once again very effectively to help give the movie a completely natural feel. It is also important they capture the working-class milieu of Bruno's environment, because that gives us subtle hints as to why it may not be completely his fault as to why he is stuck in this arrested development.

Grade: A-

Tuesday, After Christmas (2011)

Director: Radu Muntean

This is what you call a movie with no gimmicks. The movie is composed of probably less than ten scenes altogether, that all go on for a while. The camera in the scenes is usually stationary and we get very cuts in the scenes. The plot is your basic affair, a married man with a daughter likes another woman. But the simplicity of the films basic plot and aesthetics only make the complexity of the characters and the simple situation more impressive.

The characters in the story feel extremely authentic. In a Hollywood version of this story, somebody would have to be the bad guy, most likely the husband. But in this Romanian film, there's no one really to blame. The husband fell in love with another girl and there's nothing he can do about it, no matter the consequences it might have on his wife, his child, and himself. The situation is just unfortunate and sometimes there's no one you can blame. The simple style with the real characters and situations gives you a feeling that you're just watching a real life. Sometimes real life is bland, so there isn't always something of note going on in Tuesday, After Christmas, but it is the rare movie that succeeds in reflecting reality completely accurately.

Grade: B+

Downton Abbey: Season One (2011)

Creator: Julian Fellowes

I was never a fan of stories of the period pieces about the British class system, so any enjoyment I get from this show is not because I adore the genre. The first season of Downton Abbey is a surprisingly intricate, nuanced, and well-written drama about love, inheritance, and class. The themes of the show are certainly not original, neither are the character types. It's not one of those shows that will sound all that appealing to most people who are not already fans of English literature. But the show has these characters that are so compelling, and they are all acted in such a way that transcends any and all the cliche's associated with those characters.

It is remarkable how the characters and their relationships with each other are so nuanced even though on paper the relationships would be so standard and conventional. The biggest reason the show stands out to me is the relationship between the upstairs royalty and the downstairs servants. Each have their own culture, but when those cultures meet is when the show does great work. All of it helps in telling a story that is also about the culture these characters live in, one that is changing in terms of family roles, gender relations, and also class relations. The show doesn't seem to criticize the class system, but it recognizes the changing perception and tries to capture the change in motion. It is a show that oddly respects the class system while not mourning it when it is clear that tradition is changing. The show is not at all as sophisticated and well-written as Mad Men, but it really is the British Mad Men of the 1910's.

Grade: B+