I Am

Deb 10 Me 10

Here’s a cool little movie whose topic has been in recent conversations around the house. It’s a film by Tom Shadyak, a guy famous for making movies I’d never see like the Nutty Professor and Bruce Almighty. He’s obviously good at what he does, it’s just something outside my range of interest. The film opens with a brief look at his career and the reason for deviating from his accepted genre and making this movie. He poses the question “What’s wrong with the world today and how do we fix it?” to a pretty distinguished panel including Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky and various writers and scientists.

Eventually the question finds a deeper root and the topic sort of shifts to the many ways we are connected to everything around us.

This is when it gets familiar and fun for me. The idea of everything being connected in deep but unseen ways is not new, but I find that people who take acid and alchemists seem to have the most conviction in its apparent truth. I didn’t know most of the experts in the film, but they were clearly identified and their credits given. And I’m not sure about some of the science they quoted, but it didn’t matter since I already agreed with their conclusions and didn’t need to have it clouded with facts.

I thought it was a pretty happening flick, the product of having a bijillion dollars so you can have guys like Tutu spout their smiling opinions and I’ll watch it again, might even get a (heaven forbid) DVD of it.

True Grit

Deb 7 Me 4

Here’s another piece of garbage. Maybe that’s a little harsh. The stars did a fine job, the beginning was more reminiscent of The Sting than True Grit, and that’s not all bad; at least it was a remake of something. I'll tell you what pissed me off, and its really not the fault of the movie, but it was rated PG. They hang people, shoot people, some point-blank after torturing and dismembering them, some from a distance. The King's Speech got rated R because they use the "F" word. What are we telling young people? I have a very low tolerance for this industry, probably the main reason I try to patronize films made outside the system. This is just pornography.

The Company Men

Deb 6 Me 2

So I went to see a mainstream movie. Good looking cast doing their job well in a predicable excuse for a story. Two hours I'll never get back.

Blue Valentine

Deb 9 Me 3 (+)

This is all my fault. I read the synopsis and it said skin, language, blah blah blah and a beating. So I love the skin part and hate the beating part. But I’m thinking a little skin might override the beating so I reluctantly go see the movie. The first twenty minutes or so I’m ready to leave. From the first scene I’m thinking is this person gonna get beat up, that person, will they be the beater or the beaten? I’m totally fixating on the pending pounding that someone is going to get or give and I’m not really watching the movie, just anticipating the thrashing. So the stuff that’s going on may or may not have been worth watching, I don’t know, I’m just waiting for the beating. Eventually there is a pugilistic exercise, but I’m thinking, “that’s pretty light, there must be a beating coming up soon”. So the rest of the film I’m still distracted thinking the real beating is yet to come. So I never really saw the movie. Sitting right there for 114 minutes and didn’t see much of anything. There was skin, but I gotta tell you, I’ve seldom seen such joyless skin in a movie.

I have a feeling this was a pretty good movie, not a light-hearted romp through these people’s relationship, but probably heartfelt. I’m not sure why they felt they had to have a beating in the movie. It wasn’t a huge plot point and didn’t really offer any more insight to the player’s motivations. I’m glad the synopsis mentioned there was a beating, it’s my fault that I couldn’t look past that one element and see the rest of the movie. So I think it sucked, but it probably didn’t.

Somewhere

Deb 2 Me 6

Okay, let’s look at Sophia’s track record. The Virgin Suicides was pretty good. I went to see Lost in Translation but ended up in the first row so the film got lost in the pixilation and I really didn’t see a thing. But Bill Murray was in it so I’ll say it was good. Then came the Marie Antionette film; the most boring coffee table book of a movie I have ever seen. So this one comes along and I figure it’s a shot at redemption… not sure she hit the target here.

The key to the movie was subtle. The main guy drives a Ferrari 360 with paddle shift. The paddle shift transmission is a very aggressive high-performance feature that most everyone sees as one of the car’s main virtues. It also has an automatic mode, for passively cruising around town. This guy drives the entire movie in the automatic mode. And that is an effective allegory for the entire movie.

She uses the old Jim Jarmusch technique of letting a scene play out for longer than what feels natural and it works well in the scenes with the Ferrari, but nowhere else. Where Jarmusch used this tool effectively, she only made film longer. As it is, it’s only a tick over an hour and a half, could easily fit in a half hour TV slot.

But one of the themes was drudgery, the inert time between glamorous assignments, and the viewer felt the boredom. It was driven home, not in a Ferrari, but in scene after scene of wealthy good looking people being drug from one place to another, then vacantly waiting for the next thing to happen to the star. Nice looking people who are about as deep as a birdbath with little shot at redemption. I kinda liked it.

The Illusionist

Deb 6 Me 9

We saw French movie The Triplets of Bellville whenever it came out and liked it, I don’t remember what I liked but it was fun. The same folks did The Illusionist so I was looking forward to it. While the previews were going on my mind wandered to Jacque Tati, the French funny man from the 50s & 60s. So the film begins and there in the screenplay credits is TATI! I mean the cat has been dead for thirty years and here he is cranking out an animated movie. Cool.

As a painter, I appreciate what goes into animation, classic animation; or what appears to be classic animation. This film has that classic look in spades. Man, it is a good-looking movie. There’s a watercolor/gouache and ink look to it that just jumps out at you. The big washes of color, the tiny inked details, wow, a real looker. Every scene had me staring, marveling at the draftsmanship, color and composition choices, I really liked that part of it.

Then there was the sound. The Foley crew was amazing! Every sound was perfectly rendered and distinct. Whatever it was, rain in the background or a relay theater lighting switch, everything was right on. Music was also right on the mark.

Not until after seeing the movie did I read the synopsis. I would have lost enthusiasm for going to see it based on that information. I saw a different movie than what they described and really enjoyed the version I saw.

In animation you can exaggerate characters, make them caricatures of themselves. Everybody in this movie was well defined and the people in the backgrounds were just as interesting, maybe more interesting than if they used real people as extras.

I was totally absorbed in the movie from beginning to end. But it was all sensory stimulation, the story had some confusing elements. But the story I got from it was a great story, not Hollywood, and I really had a good time with it.

Deb didn’t think as much of it as I did and the couple we were with didn’t remark on the movie at all (in a later conversation declared they liked it). So I’m the exception here, Deb’s 6 is probably a more realistic reflection of the movie going public, mine is biased by the fact that it sucked me in from the first scene and kept me wondering, amazed and amused all the way through.

The King’s Speech

Deb 9 Me 10

At the end of this one I said, “Why can’t all movies be like this?” It’s a movie about meeting challenges, friendship and personal growth. It’s good looking, well acted and very well written. Here's a movie that's set in England, made in England with English actors. I usually have a hard time understanding English speech, but here I acclimated quickly and only missed a few words or sentences. There is comedy, drama, highs and lows and all the stuff I want in a movie experience. There were three or four shots, totaling less than a minute, where I thought the cinematographer was nuts, but the other 110 minutes were beautifully crafted. Go see it.