In The Valley of Elah

I'd forgotten I'd watched this on the plane over here, which I suppose is not a good start for a film review. As it is, the film isn't entirely forgettable and it raises interesting questions, as much about modern technology as about the war in Iraq.

Whilst Tommy Lee Jones is good in this - so good the Oscar committee decided to nominate him - I think he's better in No Country For Old Men. There isn't much to this film for him to get sunk into. His character - Hank - is rather undemonstrative, a quietly honorable, quietly religious man who wants to honour his son's memory by discovering the truth behind his death. That it turns out to have nothing to do with the war in Iraq and far more with the type of people that go into the army somewhat tarnishes the success of the film. Perhaps the director Paul Haggis was trying to draw a line of connection between the violent stabbing of Hank's son with the desensitising nature of combat in Iraq, but it either wasn't shown forcefully enough or it wasn't there in the first place.

There have been a lot of films about the Iraq conflict over the last year or so, and whenever a new one comes out people (including, obviously, myself) feel the need to mention this fact. Perhaps that is because these films don't work on their own, don't stand alone but work as part of a tapestry of responses to the war. I suppose they are films whose authorial opinions are still being formed: I find my thoughts about the war changing weekly if not daily and I imagine Paul Haggis and his fellow directors and actors find the same. It's not an easily quantifiable war, especially as it's still ongoing and doesn't look like nearing a resolution. I imagine that when it's all over - if it ever is - we'll look back at this collection of films and find things in all of them. It's just a shame we have to wait until their true merit can be deduced.

I'm Not There

Saw Todd Haynes' I'm Not There at the wonderfully rickety Red Vic Movie House on San Francisco's Haight St. Somehow an apt location for this film.

I think I agree with general views on it, that it doesn't quite work but very nearly, and it's as close as you're gonna get to the "real" Bob Dylan.

I didn't like Richard Gere's segment, but I liked Cate Blanchett (obviously!, she was fantastic). My favourite sections were the Heath Ledger/Charlotte Gainsbourg ones. Their parts were the only ones that drew you into a story and took it beyond gauging how well each actor could "be" Bob, more than just a sort of caricature. Their's was a real story I suppose, with a proper connection with the viewer. It was a more universal story of fame and family life as opposed to the specific details of a specific person's life.

As a big Dylan fan, it was fun to match up the actors to the "periods" of Dylan's life, and to connect people with the actors, like Michelle Williams with Edie Sedgwick or Charlotte Gainsbourg with Sara Dylan. There was no bit of the film I thought really inaccurate, but some of it sat easier than the rest.

Juno

Possibly the best film I've seen so far this year. So perfect in every way. Ellen Page gives an absolutely fantastic performance and the lines are so sharp, so hilarious and so common that the whole film is a joy from start to finish. It is so, so, so funny!

And for everyone that's like "yeah, dunno if I want to see that" based on the stupid, sickly-sweet studio trailer, GO AND SEE IT!!! Ignore the trailer, it's the wisest, funniest film you'll see this year.

Margot At The Wedding

This was the one film at the festival I really, really wanted to see, and it didn't disappoint.

Here are some notes I made at work the other day. I'm slipping behind in my reviews cause I'm seeing so many films!

- abrupt start/end - I liked how the film seemed just an excerpt from some lives, nothing showy about it

- the path of emotional destruction wreaked by Nicole Kidman's Margot - this is a fantastic performance by the way, Kidman is really, really good

- one of Baumbach's tropes - kids just discovering sexuality

- sisterhood's underlying and underhanded rivalries

- darkly funny script

- autumnal colours throughout - muted lighting

- reminiscent of Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives

Glasgow Film Festival

I'm basically listing these as these were films I saw ushering and they kinda don't count:

Michou D'Auber

Bridge Over The Wadi

Brokeback Mountain

I've only just seen this film. I never got round to seeing it when it came out and whilst it was always on my list to see, there was always something I wanted to see more. Plus everyone else had seen it so no-one wanted to watch it with me. But my unexpectedly emotional reaction to Heath Ledger's death made me want to watch it, to see the performance that he'll be remembered for.

And it is as wonderful as all the eulogies said. It's so understated, tortured, so full of sorrow and guilt. From his voice to his body language to his eyes, all the pain in Ennis Del Mar's life is there.

It's actually quite hard to write about because it's such a consuming film, it catches you and draws you in and you can't escape. You know those films that when you come out of the cinema make you feel like the "real" world is stranger and less real than the "fake" one you saw on screen? This is one of those films. It's so, so perfect a film, and so, so sad, made doubly so now. But somehow wonderful too, like the saddest things are I suppose.

Mean Girls

Just watched this. Loved it. Great one-liners and a good biting cynicism. Weird to see pre-tabloid cover girl Lindsay Lohan as an ingenue.

In a healthy state

An interesting article in the Guardian today. It looks at the Quigley annual list of bankable stars and finds that for once, it is populated not just by star names but by great actors making great and challenging films:

"If every generation gets the film stars it deserves, the latest list of the most bankable performers in Hollywood reflects favourably on early-21st-century cinemagoers. There's a highly eccentric character actor at the number one spot (Johnny Depp), various independently minded and/or political personalities (George Clooney, Matt Damon) in the mix, as well as two stars (Will Smith, Denzel Washington) who have disproved the received wisdom about African-American celebrities failing to connect with international audiences. We have at least earned the right to scoff at the Eighties, when such cinematic luminaries as Paul Hogan, Tom Selleck, Prince and Bo Derek made the grade." (The article continues here.)

Quite an apt article on the day when three 5-star films are released (Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood). Not that these films have bankable stars in, but when was the last time we got so many good films at one time? Remember we've already had No Country For Old Men and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead this year and all these films with Philip Seymour Hoffman in. We're lucky, lucky, lucky!

Vengeance Is Mine & Geoffrey Jones

Tonight on Al's all new projector, we watched Shohei Imamura's 1979 film Vengeance Is Mine, which is a sort of 70s-Scorsese-type-police-procedural-serial-killer-psychological-father-son-
family drama, which is out on the Masters of Cinema DVD series, and a couple of films from the BFI's release Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film.

Here are a couple of teasers for Vengeance Is Mine. Sorry there's no subtitles!:





Here's my favourite Geoffrey Jones film, no prizes for guessing why!:

Control

Finally saw Anton Corbijn's Control today. Absolutely fantastic! Just going to the pub but will write later.

The Manchurian Candidate

I've just finished watching John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. I think I will need to watch it again to really comprehend it. Right now, it feels hugely important, massively prophetic and incredibly mysterious.

For those of you that don't know the story, it is that of Raymond Shaw (played by a manic/catatonic Laurence Harvey), a US soldier who is given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Korea, for rescuing his troop and leading them to safety through enemy lines. But something's not right. Frank Sinatra's Major Ben Marco keeps having these recurring dreams where he has been captured along with his unit (including Shaw) by the Russians and Chinese, who are experimenting on them with hypnosis. They want to create the perfect assassin...

I shan't spoil the story because it unfolds so unremittingly, so quietly suspensefully, and because it's such a good film. It was released in 1962, a year before Kennedy was shot, and it seems to map out the road of American politics for the next 40 odd years. It certainly has similarities with today's climate, with its talk of civil liberties and patriotism.

It really is hard to write about it without giving away the story or the plot. It's an incredibly unsettling film, unfolding almost entirely through dialogue, and is all the more gripping for it. You follow all the moral arguments, the mental anguish and it puts you right in their heads and you can't get out. Thinking now, there is always more to what seems to be happening, far more under the radar, subconscious I suppose. Which is apt, considering the story.

Murder My Sweet

At the current temporary home of the Cinematheque in Brussels we saw Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet, which was incidentally renamed from the original (Raymond Chandler) book title of Farewell My Lovely for fear it sounded too much like a musical!

It's a perfect noir, as you'd expect given its sources. Dick Powell's version of the iconic Philip Marlowe apparently (ie: according to IMDB) met with Chandler's approval, and it is the wonderful delivery of the one-liners that made the greatest impact on me.

Like these:

Lindsay Marriott: I'm afraid I don't like your manner.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, I've had complaints about it, but it keeps getting worse.

Helen Grayle: I hadn't supposed there were enough murders these days to make detecting very attractive to a young man.
Philip Marlowe: I stir up trouble on the side.

Helen Grayle: I find men *very* attractive.
Philip Marlowe: I imagine they meet you halfway.

Philip Marlowe: What were you saying?
Dr. Sonderborg: I made no remark.
Philip Marlowe: Remarks want you to make them. They got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.

PERFECT!