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