April 6, 2010

• Movie Review Update 4/6/10

  previous reviews here.

  Precious (2009) – a poor, inner-city obese girl struggles to educate herself while dealing with a second pregnancy by her father and a mother who resents her and treats her like crap.  i imagine there’s a certain expectation when dealing with this theme of overcoming adversity, mainly that characters and situations are one-dimensional, predictable and unoriginal and it all leads to a hug yourself, stand-up-and-cheer type shmaltzy ending.  i thought this movie would be at least a little bit like that, and it is to a very small degree, but the fact that the main character is pregnant with her second child by her fucking father should have been some indication that this isn’t the typical pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of film.  it’s a brutal film, to a gratuitous degree.  and, yes, it is a film about overcoming adversity, but it separates itself from lesser iterations of the form in three ways.  1.  the main character Precious has a real personality.  2.  this film creeps into all sorts of dark and unhappy places.  3.  it sets itself up to avoid any icky fairy tale feel.  i’ll spoil this one bit for you:  she doesn’t marry Richard Gere at the end.  i wasn’t really expecting to like this film very much, but i actually did for those reasons.  (and it’s easy to forget now that their names are always quoted with any mention of this film, but before Oprah and Tyler Perry picked this up, it was just a no name, ghetto, indie film doing the festival rounds.  kind of hard to believe how far it’s come.)  4 stars. 

  Zombieland (2009) – woodey harrelson, jesse eisenberg, emma stone, abigail breslin.  strangers find common cause and good company with each other during the zombie apocalypse.  eisenberg seems to be relishing his status as the poor man’s Michael Cera.  woodey plays a fun wack job cuckoo for killing zombies.  this movie’s totally silly and not without a few surprise giggles.  i don’t think it’s going to burn itself into my library of quotable pop culture, but it ably served its entertainment purpose.  3.5 stars.

  Ponyo (2009) – miyazaki.  typical deceptively intricate drawings of life in motion that is the standard of this living legend animator.  Ponyo is a fish in the sea who wants to become human after she falls in love with a human boy.  it’s all very Little Mermaid.  saccharine cute, and not quite into the emotional depths that miyazaki is capable of but Ponyo is still a very easily watchable addition to the Studio Ghibli library.  seriously Miyazaki can do no wrong.  3.5 stars. 

  Bronson (2008) – based on the true story of Britain’s “most violent prisoner.”  this movie reminded me of A Clockwork Orange the way it completely embraced its protagonist’s psychotic nuttiness.  told from a first person point of view, it’s meant to draw a picture of someone so outrageously sociopathic he’s oddball funny, kind of like Alex in Clockwork Orange but without the nihilism.  what this film actually IS to me though is kind of tired.  there was no hook, for lack of a better explanation.  i didn’t like the character; i didn’t like the style; there was nothing to engage me.  i dozed off a few times while viewing.  1.5 stars. 

  The Hangover (2009) – really?  this is what all that hype was about?  this is one of those examples of a film that ruined all its best parts by front-loading them into the trailer.  tiger in the bathroom, mike tyson, etc.  it’s a good enough example of a buddy flick though and wasn’t completely without merit.  on the contrary i thought it was entertainingly silly all the way through, if not hilarious.  3 stars. 

  The Cove (2009) – there’s a secret cove in Japan apparently that’s closed off to all outsiders and is the scene of the slaughter of a gazillion dolphins per hour.  this film is an expose of that cove and the gruesome, bloody, dolphin carnage.  whether you agree with the film’s shrieking pro-animal rights stance and the cult-like reverence these people have for dolphins or not, the film has added dimensions that are definitely worth watching.  for starters, it’s part spy film.  these filmmakers (with a seemingly endless supply of cash from their billionaire producer) mount a spy surveillance operation worthy of Berlin circa Cold War and it’s all documented and presented thriller-style here.   that alone is fun enough to watch.  and if you’re into the politics, that’s just a bonus.  i will say one thing though, as someone who kind of disagrees with the politics here, it’s hard not to feel bad for the dolphins after watching this.  the filmmakers have gathered together a fairly powerful reel of footage and made the issue accessible to just about anyone willing to watch, so as a film i give it 4 stars.

  Departures (2008) – japanese film about an out-of-work cellist who begins a new and secret life as a preparer of the recently departed.  this won the best foreign language film last year, and i have to wonder… WTF?!  this is a completely hyper-sentimentalized movie that takes itself way too seriously and doesn’t live up to its tear-jerky, heart-swelling aspirations.  it’s not an outright piece of garbage, as there were definitely some moments that i enjoyed and didn’t mind watching, but taking a step back and looking at it overall, the pieces don’t fit.  it had this annoying tendency to insert scenes that were so clearly designed to evoke some emotional response (sentimentality) without building them up properly leaving me with the uncomfortable feeling of barging in on someone sitting on the can.  2 stars. 

  Mother (2009) – Bong Joon Ho’s latest film (The Host, Memories of Murder, Barking Dogs Never Bite) about a small town man who is mentally disabled — but not cripplingly so — and his relationship with his mother, all in the frame of a murder mystery.  as a mystery, this film flops, imo.  there are moments of suspense and revelation, but ultimately the mystery elements are weak, especially compared to the strength of the film, Bong Joon Ho’s strength, the sympathetic and detailed sketches of a nucleus of related people and the environment they live in.  he did this really well with the rural small town he created in Memories of Murder, just like he did with the small family he depicted in The Host.  watch it for the people.  screw the disappointing mystery.  3 stars.

  A Prophet (2009) – french film about a young arab serving a six year prison sentence and how he handles his new life as a minority inmate in a violent prison.  it’s a frenchified film not made by Luc Besson so it lacks flair and sensational pizazz for the most part, but what it lacks in shininess it makes up for with visceral punch.  there were scenes where i felt claustrophobic just like those prisoners might feel in their cells.  the real gem in this memorable film though is the fascinating protagonist and his evolutions over his six year sentence.  a strong, engaging central character.  that’s all it takes, man.  4 stars.  in theaters now and well worth the effort. 

  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) – swedish film based on the best-selling book.  a magazine publisher is asked by a rich magnate to solve a forty year old murder mystery.  with the help of a young hard-around-the-edges computer hacking girl, the girl with the dragon tattoo, he dives deep into the murky and morally suspect world of the magnate’s family.  the whole is definitely not greater than the sum of its parts here.  there were individual pieces to like, but the film, as a construction of smaller pieces, fails to gel.  it takes way too long upfront (the total film is a long 2.5 hours.) to explain the premise and it left me at several points not following the characters’ emotions through this mystery.  there were moments when they were slack-jawed in horror/amazement, and i was feeling out in the cold wondering wtf the big deal was.  in this swedish film’s defense, there could have been a lot lost in translation.  what was fun and interesting though was the girl with the dragon tattoo herself.  moral, misunderstood, intelligent, bristling with violent energy and a total psycho.  i’d watch the sequels just to see where she ends up.  2.5 stars. 

  • 6:17 pm
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