Men in Black II (2002)

“Men in Black II” (2002)

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no roots

Well, some things were fixed here. The filmmakers understood the huge wholes of the first one. Despite that one was celebrated (right now it’s more highly rated in IMDb than this one).

Among other things, what improved here was the attachment we feel to the alien world. There are more situations that makes us mildly care for what the mib are after. The aliens enter the action, and sometimes that’s funny, the talking dog has moments, and so do the worms.

Also, the partnership Smith-Jones is much more effective here. That’s because here they create the gags together, whereas in the first one the production relied totally on Will Smith to deliver it while Tommy Lee was in the back to state how Smith is funny even in the world of the film.

But above all, one thing takes this one to other dimension: Lara Flynn Boyle’s character, efficiently supported by her. That’s bringing sex to the equation. The first one depicted a totally undeveloped and uninteresting bad guy (the one performed by d’Onofrio). Here that totally supporting part is really supporting, and made by Knoxville two-headed character. The center is occupied by Boyle, and her presence affects everything, she spreads roots as the ones her character master. She was a good cast, and makes it mildly work; she has screen presence and knows how to pose to make it work.

Is this enough for a film to be good? Has the word ‘entertainment’ narrowed in the cinema industry that it’s possible for the mentors of projects like this to get away with it? Think that despite being ‘classics’ today, films like ‘City Lights’ were actually entertainment upon their release. No film could match that one in its specific corner, but see how attitudes towards cinematic creation changed?

My opinion: 3/5

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Charade (1963)

“Charade” (1963)

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Honesty

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This film is so effective, probably more effective now than it was when it was released. Oh it was celebrated in its time, but the years highlighted the charm (and the legend) of the actors in it, and we can look at it with a sense of lost world, past things.

Stanley Donen, here already away from the Hollywood system, though depending on it, is one of the best directors coming from America.He was deeply original in his more prolific years as a musical director, and he was never less than competent in what he did after that. That includes this enjoyable film. To me, one of his strongest points as a director, was the ability to mix opposite forces and talents, and create an unified vision out of it, by motivating genuine cooperation. Isn’t that the best we can expect a director to be? And what a good mixture he makes here.

The idea was, i suppose, to create a plot which keeps grabbing the audience by constant twists. We don’t know more than Audrey’s character, and we try to guess the true character of Grant’s. It’s tremendously effective, because the twists are subtle and clever, and the dramatic effect that they might have is always brought down by the comedy feel of the whole thing.

Grant spent a good part of his career doing comedy, and in fact he probably set most of the standards for comedy acting that were still in use at the time of this film. What public believes is ‘funny’ becomes easily dated but what he does here still works today, and that is absolutely remarkable. Audrey/Givenchy are in this ride, and being the character she invented for herself on-screen suits this one perfectly.

The supporting cast also allows this to work, specially Walter Matthau whom, because of how his lines are placed in the film, and how he distracts us with his great skills as a comedian, fools us as much as he fools Hepburn’s character all the way.

Henri Mancini is one of my favourite film composers. The music has less presence here than in other films he scored, by i think that’s in the mood of the thing.

I don’t know any recent film that works so easily with this comedy/suspense environment and looks so natural and unforced. I praise the people involved here.

My opinion: 4/5 watch it and keep it with you

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Men in Black (1997)

“Men in Black” (1997)

IMDb

Forgettable style

This is an empty film. 11 years is not that much time, but it seems ages on this film. Looking at it now, makes me understand it has nothing inside.

This is yet another film that develops around a certain idea of style. If you start counting them, it’s incredible the amount of films made on that basis. Well, it’s huge but understandable: style is something appealing for the crowds in the moment the film is released (though it gets easily dated) and something that doesn’t require much skill to bring out. Just the right guy, in this case Will Smith who represents the top of coolness for a certain percentage of the population.

The Guggenheim Museum was apparently a good choice, but misused. I wanted to see what they’d make of it, but in after all they just wanted to use the long ramp to show how Will Smith was able to run fast to the top of the building.

If you see the extras on the DVD, check how Barry Sonnenfeld sounds like a nitwit. Completely clueless about what his job is about. He just remarks technical curiosity, he has nothing to say.

My opinion: 1/5

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Batman Begins (2005)

“Batman Begins” (2005)

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Getting into the film

Nolan and Bale are two of the director – actor whom i follow with more interest nowadays. Right now they make a good pair, and besides the two renewed Batman films (of which i’v only seen this one), they made the very good Prestige. This, on its own, makes me interested in this project.

It was ambitious, serious, and not totally flawed what was made here. Apparently Nolan really wanted to be part of this, and approached Warner Bro. to get the job. He knew he could bring something to the the superhero film, and probably Batman suited best what he likes to do. It’s a self-made superhero, he’s not created by accident, and in the process of the creation of his mask (which is Batman or Wayne?) there is a quest for an inner self, unlike say, IronMan, who plays science with his body. So, in Nolan’s vision, we need an actor that can act, and we need several cinematic and design devices that work. We have all of them sketched here, though not totally successful. Taking IMDb top 250 films, which as i write puts Dark Knight in 4th place, he probably solved the problems there. But than again, Shawshank Redemption is in number 1.

city: The conception of this has a lot to do with the city itself. There is clearly the intention to create something detached from previous films – “realistic”, in Nolan’s words. So this is modeled after Chicago, something we can recognize, and has a dark cloth falling over it, of decadence, social bankruptcy, corruption. The places are well explored, and used for the cinematic trick i’ll talk about.

A complaint: Gotham City used to be The world, in Batman. We didn’t even feel that there was a world outside it, it was self sufficient, and balanced, as a closed world where all is born. I’m sorry it couldn’t be kept like that.

cinema: Besides the Hollywoodian sequences of Wayne training, Wayne learning, Wayne building costumes, and finding places, there is something great, on the cinematic side. The main plot is played around fighting a “league of Shadows” which tries to spread an hallucinogenic gas for the city. That poison makes people see everything become their worst fears. They loose sense of reality, and start to fraction they’re own vision, and misunderstand/exaggerate what they see. The editing and pace of the film are built in accordance, so in the more active bits, we feel the film as the people of Gotham probably feel what they see. We become active viewers, and that’s great. It was only felt in some pieces, and that’s the flaw. Most of the time is spent on building the Bat’s world, and Wayne’s inner self. I wish we could have more, but i’d choose some of the sequences of this film to watch many more times. Christian Bale is in this ride, he knows what’s happening, and allows it to happen. Great work. This is what cinema is bringing new now and for a while. Making us part of the game.

My opinion: 4/5

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Beetle Juice (1988)

“Beetle Juice” (1988)

IMDb

Damaged world

I’ve been spending some time with Burton. I like him, i feel strangely attracted to what he purposes, though i can’t help recognizing the highly recognizable flaws.

In summary: he creates worlds, sometimes he is thrilling on that alone, others not so much. But everyone of his films is a true vision of its creator, and that’s something i value a lot. But he is not a good director. Planely as a director, he can’t be more than just competent, because he doesn’t work on the specific issues of direction (editing, camera-work, actor-direction…) with the same passion and special angle as he does with molding the world he gives us.

So look at this. He was still a relatively young director (this was, i believe, his second long form). He didn’t craft the world of this film as exquisitely as he did with later works. And the film is a relative failure to me because, once that rich notion of being side a quirky mind is gone, the rest doesn’t hold.

Oh, one thing that saves it: Michael Keaton’s performance. I’ve never seen him act like he did here. He holds this as his best performance ever and i support it. It’s a great physical and verbal acting, that engages the audience as well as the characters of the film, so the plot develops around the idea of one trying (and failing) to resist paying attention to him. Great.

The animations are tender in some points, it has the flavor of old animations, that look artificial, but which we are willing to believe. I recently watched a crap film, Monster X, made by someone who should take some lessons here about honesty on film making.

My opinion: 3/5

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Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

“Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” (1999)

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Darth Lucas

I must say i was much more satisfied with this now than when i first saw it, at the time of its release. That’s probably because i was then still enough naive to believe there could be something as thrilling as the original films that coloured part of my childhood dreams. Also because the gap between the old ones and this i was seeing was so huge that the disappointment wouldn’t allow me to put this in its place.

About Star Wars: it’s impossible for me to look at the old films as coldly as i would look at a film without that charge of nostalgia. Thinking about it, i think this is a complement to the old series. Looking back, seeing this and thinking about the old features, i think George Lucas is not a good director, he is quite ordinary and he understood that when he chose not to direct episodes 5 and 6. He doesn’t have any special angle, he does everything like anyone else would do; he watched the masters but couldn’t extract what they were really aiming that. But he is a great storyteller, and was absolutely masterful in the way he created this franchising.

He created a new cosmology and fed the dry minds of a mythless society with stories that placed superior forces (Force) beyond the control of ordinary beings, something that ’surrounds’ them (here he killed the mystique with the useless midclorian explanation). The way audiences evolved to appreciate such stories based on supernatural and the idea of finding forces and events that exceed us proved Lucas right, and at the same time underline the role the original Star Wars had in molding pop thinking for the last 30 years. Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings (refished for cinema), Harry Potter, and a number of equivalent series. People have a tendency to look for religion, and wanting to rely on it. That’s what positive ’cause effect’ thinking wouldn’t consider, and the extreme marxist societies would help hide. To me that’s the key to the success of all this.

A decade ago Lucas felt it was the time to come back. He had a lot of story blanks to fill, a lot of promises from the old movies, a whole galaxy of untold events. That’s rich, he created the universe, and he wanted to explore it. But the problem is, he wasn’t competent to do that. Here he doesn’t have the angle and the innovation quality he ha in 1977, when his effects were breathtaking, they would still amaze me when i first saw the films, in the late 80′. Here the special effects are just of medium quality in the middle of what’s been done lately (to which his exploration post Star Wars contributed a lot). So, because we don’t have that innovative side, and the story is already known (who knows the old films knows what to expect from this one), the magic is partially gone, and the flaws of Lucas-director show up, vivid as never. Of course there are the hard-core fans who won’t abandon the boat and will blindly vote negative on this comment because it ‘insults’ their beliefs, but even those penalized these new films (6.4 rating in IMDb as i write).

It’s a beautiful story, that of Star Wars, but Lucas, either burnt out and with no new approaches to use, or influenced by money fetchers around him (or both previous), messed up with this. It’s as if Lucas had become Anakin: he was a curious intelligent brilliant little boy, protected by the Force and who was supposed to bring peace and prosperity to the Republic, but in the end turned to the dark side.

My opinion: 3/5

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Kaubôi bibappu: Tengoku no tobira (2001)

“Kaubôi bibappu: Tengoku no tobira” (2001)

IMDb

Japanese western

This is yet another Japanese animation rooted on western cinematic conventions, and Japanese visual construction. It’s one of the three threads Japanese animation is following for the last ten or more years.

This one is specially well crafted. Notice that every recognizable narrative element, and the majority of the visual ones, are attached to western cultures. The city might be Japanese, Tokyo, but all the rest is not (including the music). We have an ordinary plot about a terrorist with intentions of global extermination. Bounty hunters, mainly one, tries first to get the prize, and later he makes it a personal matter, also because he falls in love.

Being handicapped by not having seen the TV series, i recognized very interesting aspects here: I was able to follow the whole thing, and follow the characters, their own dynamic bows of evolution throughout the narrative without having seen them before. They made a film which, i guess, can be inserted in the series, for whom has seen it, but at the same time is an independent piece, worth on its own.

The production is good, the Japanese ability to use colours in a sober way, creating images where the balance of the perception of the image in our eye is a priority in front of playing with perspective deepness (perspective has always been a more western concern).

This is not intelligent and en richening as some Japanese contemporary animations – like the outstanding Paprika – but it’s worth peaking and living a little bit with it. I’ll try to find the series.

My opinion: 3/5

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La Science des rêves (2006)

“La Science des rêves” (2006)

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awake

It’s probably hard to find a film which is as much a vision of its creator as this one.

Gondry is doing a great work, exploring the limits of storytelling in cinema. His greatest achievement so far was, “eternal sunshine…” but there he was associated with the even more brilliant Charlie Kaufman, probably the best screenwriter working today. Now we have this ’science of dreams’ and the very recent ‘Be kind rewind’ (which i haven’t seen) and we have Kaufman’s own ‘Synecdoche, New York’. The interesting of taking ’sunshine’ and watch it before and after this group of films is to see Kaufman and Gondry working separated, and understand where they are taking, individually, what they started in ’sunshine’. I think they’re working on one of the most exciting threads in development in cinema today.

In a way, i think this is a kind of expressionism, in the way that all these films are deeply rooted on lives, real and interesting lives, no matter how fantastic they look, and how unreal everything shows. This is all an attempt to dive in the ocean of human soul, that iceberg of which we can only see a superficial tiny tip. It’s great that cinema is doing this. Probably it’s one of the most suited medium for that.

In this case, we have a mildly complex visual construction, out of a very simple idea: the mix between dreams and reality and the more interesting concept that, if dreams are a reflex of our daily life mixed with our more dark concerns, life can also be contaminated by dreams. So, life invades dreams, and the other way around as well. Than, we have the device he had already used in sunshine, shading the differences between dream and reality and many times letting the ambiguity on that subject, here diminished in a great degree by the dolls that show in the dreams (objects, phones, cars) and which build the dream environment.

Here we have an extra thing, visits to the interior (literally) of the mind of the main character, making us watch things through his eyes, and think through his mind (he plays the drums, like the director did). Other games include a time machine, which goes forward and backwards 1 second, and a boat with a forest inside it.

Check the clues, check where this leads you. I like it.

My opinion: 4/5

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The Argentine (2008 )

“The Argentine” (2008 )

IMDb

a Container for Your Own thoughts

This struck me as a documentary or, more fairly as a personal yet direct meditation on the own words of a man, embedded in context, which may also be a definition for documentary I was deeply impressed by the honesty of this film. I understood where Soderbergh, the artist, was, as i felt the space he left for me to think. How he uses Che’s own expression of the part of his life depicted in the film, with the least possible manipulation (editing the book is already manipulating) and still, it’s up to the viewer to place his own opinions over what he saw – more or less distanced according to where we come from and where and how long we lived. Of course this is made considering that who goes to the film has a previous knowledge of what context and moment, and what character he is about to watch.

I’ll put this film together with Medem’s ‘La pelota vasca’ (an assumed documentary) for they both show an extreme sensitivity working with such delicate themes as like they choose to work. Both originated some contesting, More with Medem’s because the director was more rooted in the problem that was shown, and because the story is far from being closed, but to me they were both opened films which, as any contemporary film should be, leave a lot of the thinking to the public, and work as brain starter for discussion.

The narrative structure is effective, the artwork and editing are of great competence. Che in the woods of Sierra Maestra, on the verge taking the power in Cuba inter cut with his visit to the USA, in 1964. This second line is shot in black and white, the other has beautiful colors. The absence of music was a mildly risky choice i appreciated. The rest, you can think of it yourself. I thought Del Toro was very good, internally concentrated, resisted totally to being what we expected Che to be, and that’s something, to be able to interpret a character with such an charismatic aura behind him, which we can still feel when his own words are spoken. From this film on, i admire Del Toro; before this i didn’t look at him as i do now. I’ll review his previews performances, i have to check if i didn’t notice how good he is. Quite on the contrary, Bichir, as Fidel, was a total disaster, frankly one of the worst performances i’ve ever seen. How could he think Fidel was all about imitating a voice, some gestures, and handling a cigar. What a mess.

Of course this man’s story is controversial, which means one can make radically opposed opinions out of the same known and accepted facts. The fair amount of arguments i’ve had since i saw it with someone who saw it with me prove me right here. I think Guevara was a lucid man, who read perfectly well the mechanics of the world of oppression where he stood. He chose to stand there and live like them, though he wasn’t like them, and that’s worth admiration. The ideas he made of the injustice he saw was a product of a genuine mind. But though the diagnosis was right, the whole process of making it in practical terms was a mess, to my eyes. He was at the root of a regime, inserted in a bigger regime, that grew on arrogance, on hypocrisies, and at a certain point became at least so unfair to the same oppressed people as those oppressed had before. And that’s because, though wanting to do different, this revolution used the same weapons of strenght and physical superiority others had used. And that killed the whole idea. And Guevara was there, with it, being oppressive when he thought he was being better, out of, i think, ingenuity. What i say is, read the man, his observations are probably equally (or even more) correct today as they were when he made them, but don’t follow his steps, i wouldn’t, not knowing what i know today.

Also, notice how Che, the icon, grew to incredible proportions, 3 reasons i give it:

-He died young, and fighting for ideals, at least shooting for ideas;

-He was picked up by the very capitalism he rejected and was sold like an icon the population (mainly youth) desperate to get out of the contradictions in this regime, check the contradiction of this;

-He had an image standing for him, literally an image, the photograph Korda took. It’s amazing, and it’s probably an unique case, how a single image can move millions, how the right moment, with the right publicity can be so powerful. If you think about that, among the capitalists who sell tshirts and the liberals who believe Guevara, this is image is the center of the most successful publicity campaign ever. Once more, i admire Soderbergh’s intelligence to leave that image out of this film. It’s more than avoiding a cliché. It’s avoiding the viewers to go recall clichés they’ve made (me included) over that image.

My opinion: 4/5

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Kagemusha (1980)

“Kagemusha” (1980)

IMDb

film as canvas

I watched my first Kurosawa 7 years ago. I’m 24 so that’s a relevant amount of time. Still, i feel i’m a beginner, also because i only have a couple years of seriously watching films, learning them and from them. So i’ll comment more like an approach, for sure naive, but to fix some ideas i got from this first watching of Kagemusha.

24.10.2008

-Kurosawa works like a painter. It is well known that he painted most of what he shot, and that helped him create in the mind what he would bring to the eye. The paintings are in themselves worth seeing; an extra in the DVD had an editing with dialogs in the film over posing the storyboard, in the order they show in the film. It’s a good experience just by itself. So we have shots perfectly and exquisitely taken care. The composition is great, balanced as only a good artist would make;

-in a way, this is the first Kurosawa film in colour, because it is the first one in which he truly works with it and makes it part of the composition. The previous experiences in color could work as well in b&w. Not here. I noticed how the colours carry the actions, how the perfectly balanced frames get alive because of the colours. The skies are amazing, of course, and the dream in the clouds as well. The artificial environment of it makes the film look sketchy, as it was in fact, for it is known that Kurosawa was preparing the big project (Ran)

-The editing was great; The framing he gives is mostly still, his eye works like that of a painter, but the editing sequences all shots perfectly and it makes us believe that after one certain shot, the only possible shot that makes the thing work is the next one. It’s a sublime structure, solid as a rock, and if you work mentally you’ll see you wouldn’t take anything or put anything. Kurosawa might. I guess that the editing was a mental process for him, he would beautifully paint the storyboard, but in his mind he would also build the editing scheme. That’s why he could edit by night what he’d shot during the day

-the story is, as many, about actors acting. The role of a leader has in itself lots to do with acting. That need to seat in battle, not moving, not showing fear, is showing something to the surrogates, and to the enemies, which may not correspond to the truth. Here we have a double pretending to be that leader.

-Coppola and Lucas deserve being thanked for allowing this to happen. However, when they speak it’s clear that Coppola is much more aware of what the film and the work of Kurosawa is about, while Lucas is bedazzled but the visible effects. This is meaningful. I never made a film, i which i could, but i don’t think creating one has so much to do with what lenses you use, or how you manage multiple cameras shots as much as it has to do with what you want to say (and how). The first issue is technical. The second moves with your soul. That’s why, of the both, Coppola was the one who recognized the global flaws of this good film – breathtaking if you think of it as a table of experiences, the canvas of a painter.

My opinion: 4/5

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