At the beginning of December I promised myself I'd actually write Proviews for all the films I see. Since I didn't, I'm doing it now...
The Shape of Things
Neil LaBute 2003, USA / France / UK[/color]
1st viewing- Compelling adaptation of LaBute's own stage production, concerning art's relationship with the humanity and morality that sustains it, and its place and purpose in society.[/size]
Where the Truth Lies
Atom Egoyan 2005, Canada / UK / USA[/color]
1st viewing- A brilliant, masterful exploration of truth and memory, taking the form of a lurid mystery thriller. Egoyan layers and twists narrative like
no other filmmaker I know of. One of the best films of the year.[/size]
Ararat
Atom Egoyan 2002, Canada / France[/color]
1st viewing- Fractured and woven in a similar manner to his masterful
Exotica (1994), Egoyan's continuing examination of memory, truth, time and cinema this time centers on the creation of a film about the Armenian holocaust, and denials that the atrocity ever took place at all. This is deeply intelligent filmmaking that simply
must be seen. Egoyan's best.[/size]
Andrey Rublyov Andrei Rublev
Andrei Tarkovsky 1966, Soviet Union[/color]
1st viewing- Innovative long-takes and episodic narrative paint an amazing portrait of medieval Russia in alternately broad and intimate strokes, the savage society and the artist as necessary dissident within it.[/size]
The Pillow Book
Peter Greenaway 1995, France / UK / Netherlands[/color]
1st viewing- A sarcastic, subversive celebration of cinema's centennial. More games: Image as illustrated text, text as image, flesh as image, flesh as text, etc. Not Greenaway's best, but accessible, timely and, as usual, extremely clever.[/size]
Felicia's Journey
Atom Egoyan 1999, Canada / UK[/color]
1st viewing- Deliberately paced and typically subtle Egoyan piece. It's another study of cinema as memory, and there's never been a serial killer film quite like this one.[/size]
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Andrew Adamson 2005, USA[/color]
1st viewing- Shaky casting and predominantly uninspired direction hurt this, but it's a faithful illustration of the first Narnia tale. It goes to show how powerfully informative popular cinema is of our visual imagination that the way in which I'd always envisioned this story when reading the,
very slight, novel (angles from which I 'viewed' the action, landscapes, space, architecture, etc.) is almost exactly the same way the filmmakers had. It's a pleasure to see memories of childhood imaginings projected on the screen. Though the film is generally straightforward, concerned with little more than the translation at hand, there are a few moments of cinematic innovation that, along with the tale itself, make this a worthwhile project. When the White Witch sends her royal guard out after the children, the wolves run in formation through the throne room, the camera lies on the floor facing the throne, two wolves run to each side, and the fifth jumps
over the camera. It's not something you see in Hollywood cinema, acknowledgement of the camera's physical existence, but what makes it more impressive is that the wolf that jumps over the camera and thereby grants it objective place is himself a CGI creation with
no objective place in the frame. A clever inversion. Other moments of ingenuity include a camera that cowers from falling rocks and another that investigates the space of the beaver's home as directed by the sound of the intruding wolves' digging.[/size]
Crash
David Cronenberg 1996, Canada / USA[/color]
2nd viewing- The movie that, more than any other, earned David Cronenberg his popular (unfair) reputation as a cold, detached filmmaker interested in humans only as organisms in flux. It's not an easy film to watch, it's not fun, but it is audacious, visionary and profound.[/size]
Dramolet (Stille Nacht I)
Stephen Quay / Timothy Quay 1988, UK[/color]
3rd viewing- I don't know where to begin describing the Quays' films. Here, a puppet at his breakfast table witnesses a small magnet in the adjacent room accumulating a sparkling coat of gossamer steel. One minute of pure visual joy.[/size]
Are We Still Married? (Stille Nacht II)
Stephen Quay / Timothy Quay 1992, UK[/color]
3rd viewing- A mere three minutes, and one of the most astonishingly beautiful things I've ever seen. Based around the
Alice in Wonderland mythology; this is the white rabbit chasing a bouncing ball, a gaunt finger rapping at the window, and Alice moving up and down on tip-toe. It's an amazing feeling, seeing brand new images - and a vivid reminder that almost all other cinema is, visually at least, poisonously banal.[/size]
Kárhozat Damnation
Béla Tarr 1987, Hungary[/color]
1st viewing- With this film and
Werckmeister Harmonies, Béla Tarr has become one of my favourite filmmakers. This is a slow, meditative, dumbfoundingly beautiful portrait of life as one sprawling, aimless non-sequitur, a philosophical dead-end, just hopeless, murky malaise. This film's images are haunting me. (Sidenote: Gus Van Sant cites Tarr as the main influence on his latest works, paying direct homage to him in
Gerry (2001), recreating shots from
Sátántangó (1994) and
Werckmeister (2000). I think Tarr's films are far superior, and I love Van Sant's, so check him out if you feel the same.)[/size]
Hra s kameny A Game with Stones
Jan Svankmajer 1965, Austria[/color]
1st viewing- Svankmajer's second film is hilarious. Animated prop comedy in which stones 'drip' out of a faucet and arrange themselves into various shapes; animals, people, sexual organs, etc. Can't be explained, has to be seen. [/size]
Rakvickarna Punch and Judy / The Coffin House
Jan Svankmajer 1966, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- Funny, crude sketch featuring two hand puppets fighting over a live guinea pig.[/size]
Et Cetera
Jan Svankmajer 1966, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- Like an elaborate flickbook. Three rather abstract animations repeat the same mistakes over and over. Minor Svankmajer.[/size]
Picknick mit Weissmann Picnic with Weissmann
Jan Svankmajer 1968, Austria[/color]
1st viewing- Inexplicably creepy short in which all the furniture, food and utensils come alive and picnic without the people.[/size]
Nothing
Vincenzo Natali 2003, Canada[/color]
1st viewing- Hilarious in the same original but exhausting way as
I Heart Huckabees, this semi-sequel to
Cube (1997) focuses on two lifelong friends whose extreme put-uponness grants them the power to 'hate away the world'. Agoraphobia replaces claustrophobia when they step outside their house to find... absolutely nothing.[/size]
King Kong
Peter Jackson 2005, New Zealand / USA[/color]
1st viewing- Despite some silly script contrivances here and there (I agree with Thug about the "S-K-U-L-L" moment), this is an immensely exhilerating film. I often envy others their ability to get swept away in a movie, as it's something I've sidelined in myself, but
Kong gave me no option, it's infallible, intoxicatingly perfect entertainment. As for the length; well, by the time we got to the part I'd seen in the 4-minute online preview, I checked my watch, and more than two hours had slipped by unnoticed. It's not a minute too long. There's a really cool, subtle reference to the original film near the beginning when Denham is rattling off the names of actresses who might fit the part, he mentions 'Fay', and he's told, 'No, she's shooting a movie over at RKO,' to which he replies, 'Cooper! I should've known...' Really sly, and pretty deep if you consider the actual implications of it, especially since Denham ends up filming recreated scenes from the original
Kong. I also have to mention a scene that made me realise what a good visual storyteller Jackson is. It's our introduction to Bruce Baxter, the star of Denham's film, he's in his room, mugging at all his own movie posters, when he notices someone has scribbled a moustache on one of them - he does a double take, then contemplatively picks up a black comb, holds it to his upper lip in the mirror, and raises a single 'derring-do' eyebrow. We learn so much about his character without a word spoken. Anyway, terrific film.[/size]
Hotel Room
David Lynch / James Signorelli 1992, USA[/color]
1st viewing- Why oh why couldn't Lynch have directed the whole thing? His first segment, "Tricks", in which two men intimidate and harass a prostitute, is strongly reminiscent of both
Twin Peaks and the final scenes of
Blue Velvet, and it's very, very good. Then comes Signorelli's segment, a dialogue-heavy, stylistically mute bit of fluff called "Getting Rid of Robby", which is only worth sitting through because what follows is one of the most troubling and accomplished films David Lynch has ever directed, "Blackout", an almost unbearably tense, ambiguous conversation between a young man (Crispin Glover) and his mentally disturbed wife (Alicia Witt) during a power outage. It is absolutely phenomenal and genuinely frightening.[/size]
Spiklenci slasti Conspirators of Pleasure
Jan Svankmajer 1996, Czech Republic / Switzerland / UK[/color]
1st viewing- Masturbation as art and art as masturbation and both as communication breakdown is the premise of Svankmajer's third feature, in which six people who interact in a superficial, civilised manner with eachother from day to day retreat to privacy and invent amusingly elaborate methods of self-gratification, which include rehearsing murders in a homemade chicken costume, funnelling tiny bread-balls into cranial orifices and making love to a
seriously tricked-out television, all without a single word of dialogue. Brilliant.[/size]
Byt The Flat
Jan Svankmajer 1968, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- An early example of Svankmajer's amazing ability to blend stop-motion animation and live-action photography, as well as his tendency toward surrealistic political allegory. A man moves into a flat where nothing obeys the laws of physics, and remains trapped there.[/size]
Tichý týden v dome A Quiet Week in the House
Jan Svankmajer 1969, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- A gorgeous, inspired film. A man spends one week in a country house, gazing through a different keyhole each day, and witnessing one stunning display of animated detritus and surreal juxtapositions after another.[/size]
Zánik domu Usheru The Fall of the House of Usher
Jan Svankmajer 1980, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- A reading of Poe's story accompanied by dark images of empty rooms and crumbling architecture, animated clay writhing and reforming, and inert matter 'decomposing'.[/size]
Moznosti dialogu Dimensions of Dialogue
Jan Svankmajer 1982, Czechoslovakia[/color]
1st viewing- Despite the name, there's no dialogue. This is one of Svankmajer's finest films, and is broken into three animated segments. In the first, "Exhaustive Discussion", three men, made of fruit and veg, kitchen utensils and office supplies, devour, chew up and regurgitate eachother until they are all rendered pulp. In the second, "Passionate Discourse", two clay figures lustfully assimilate oneanother, then each refuse custody of their little clay offspring. And in the third, "Factual Conversation", two 'talking heads', probably politicians, play an absurd game of rock-paper-scissors, or bread-shoe-toothbrush/butter-laces-toothpaste, and can't seem to reach an agreement, until they decide that butter may as well go with shoe, bread with toothpaste, it's all the same. Svankmajer is a genius and this is a masterpiece.[/size]
I'll post the rest of my December viewings tomorrow.