If you have read Stephen King’s “11/22/63”, you will feel compelled to see “Of Mice and Men” and “12 Angry Men” again. I did and I wanted, and how long has it been since I have seen Sydney Lumet’s masterpiece. I did not know before that it was his first feature. This is stunning, as he not only masters the actors and acting, creating thrilling interactions between these sometimes more, sometimes less angry men – he also uses the setting that is basically a stage to create space and dynamics. He uses camera movements and cuts to create a universe in which the characters can bring all of their histories, their rationality and irrationality, their rage, their traumas, their professions, their life experience, their fears. He locks them down into a jury room, turns on the Summer heat and brings on the thunderstorms. He boils them alive in their own sweat to see what will happen.
Looking at this today, the use of theatre limitations is pure genius, it allows to leave out the courtroom drama, make it a jury room drama instead. This could fall flat, but it does not: all the pieces of information are conveyed through argument, nothing feels convoluted. This could be easy work for the jury, as all the evidence has been presented, but matter-of-fact it is harder, because not only is there no way of going back to questioning witnesses, but the jurors also have to live with the deficiencies and neglects of attorney and court. There is no white knight superhero who comes in with superior intelligence and conjures up the arguments to rescue somebody whose innocence will be proven at some point, but there is only a regular guy at the outset (albeit played by an immensely intense Henry Fonda) who is not satisfied with the quick way a kid is sent to the electric chair. He does not have specific reasons, he does not provide clever insights, he just wants to force everybody to talk and argue about it. “I don’t have anything brilliant” is how Henry Fonda starts it.
The opposition, or rather the blood thirst / indifference to a person’s life crumbles over 90 minutes, and towards the end there are the two scenes that may still be among the most memorable in movie history: Juror 10’s hate speech against anybody and everybody is rewarded with his peers (literally) turning their backs on him, one by one. And Juror 3, the last man standing, played by an outstandingly energetic and powerful Lee. J. Cobb, finally explodes with rage about the others, himself, his failures in life, like a supernova burning away all his covers and defenses.
I steal this idea from 
I should not have watched that. As a kid, I never watched the tv show when it was on, and I did not watch it in particular because German title really put me off (“Smileys Leute”). I was an astheticist from early on, even though I still do not know whether to spell it like that. Anyway… I never heard the English title until this movie was announced, and immediately thought that this is an even worse title for a movie than the German one. I did not even understand 25% of the words in it! The third downer came when I read that it was based on a novel by John Le Carre, which means it is a spy novel, which means it would be the least likely of all novels ever to be read by me. I think I have never ever read a spy novel. I do not like James Bond movies. Cold War stories are fun only when they are about hiding the microfilm in a body cavity and smuggling it from Krakow through Bucharest to Vienna, where the dead body of the microfilm mule will be found decoratively spread on a very well-lit wet pavement. That means I am not interested in the film’s story, I do not understand the references to other books or films or tv shows. In the case of “Tinker Tailor…”, I do not even understand the story. Usually within the first 20 minutes of a film, you will know where this is going, the plot has been outlined. Then you can lay back and enjoy the execution of the story. Not here: I got a bit distracted after 20 minutes, and when I paid attention again I did not have a clue where all these people were going and what they were doing. Luckily most if the scenes are lined up like a game designed for the annoyance of the Gary Oldman Character: he needs to go from one possible source to the next one, and sometimes you can understand what he is trying to achieve even without having followed the previous bits. Gratefully, Le Carree and the script authors also used some flashbacks that were very helpful in creating more confined areas of amusement, where it did not matter whether I knew why this person was blindfolded and tortured or the other one shot in the head.
During the opening moments of “The Descendants”, I could not help to think “oh this is what an American version of ‘Beginners’ looks like”. After half an hour, I was worried that it would be an American, or Hawaiian, version that would not even be half as good as “Beginners”. In the end, I was happy to see that it had taken some interesting twists and turns and had found its own story.
There is no point in doing a film of the year 2011 list, because most of the 2011 films reach me way too late – I can do a list if the best films that I saw and that were originally released in 2011 maybe early 2013… but anyway, as I keep updating my “ranking” of the films that I have actually seen, why not praise those that were the best and were actually released AND seen by me in 2011.
There are films that I can watch almost any time, in any mood, and that surprise me with new perspectives and details. There are not many, maybe seven altogether? In any case, “Seven” is such a film. The gloomy atmosphere, the perennial rain, the brooding Detective played by Morgan Freeman, the clearly temper challenged young guy with a past that Brad Pitt makes come alive. To position Kevin Spacey such late in the film, give him only a couple of minutes screen time, but make him the intellectual opponent to Freeman’s Detective with a brain.
It is an appropriate reverence, to look back on Pina Bausch through her works. Wim Wenders knew and liked her work for many years, and they apparently wanted to collaborate for a long time. Because of Pina Bausch’s death, the form of the film had to change from something we do not really know, because it was never thoroughly developed, to what we now see: a revue of Bausch’s most famous choreographies, replicated to make for most beautiful camera capture. It looks gorgeous, even though I do not understand what the 3D would add to it. Being a technical layman, I can also only guess that the 3D is not done in the most professional way.
It is about a horse that goes to war. If you have seen any film in your life, you will know exactly what this film will look like, what the storyline is, and how it will end. The episodic nature of the film is almost the best aspect about it, because it promises to get away from the expected by cutting off the bonds established in each part. It cuts many of these bonds, and quite violently, actually, but when towards the end I realized that in one crucial way, the film will go soft on the audience and offer closure, I got even a little angry. A film about the war that left the world in shambles both morally and economically cannot end on such a light note, or nothing has been learned about the cruelty of war. Of course War Horse is a comic movie in the wider sense of the term, it does not allow to be judged by the standards of real life. But: then nothing is left that lifts this film above any Bollywood happy ending movie. Devastatingly unoriginal…
The wet dream of the Scottish Tourism association: Ever other decade, it is perfectly possible to watch Braveheart again. Of course Sophie Marceau and the clichés about giggling French Mademoiselles are still annoying. Of course Mel Gibson’s hair does not look more fashionable with increasing distance. Of course some of the Scottish accents are really more off than they should be. And what struck me this time: these Highlanders had a hell of a good dental plan, look at these armies of white straight teeth!
The film is slightly better than I feared it would be, big budget Chinese production that it is. Those have continued to let the audiences down during the last years, especially when they are about current themes. The least that will happen in the average production is that the heroic efforts of whoever is suitable to be heroic are highlighted with such inappropriate pathos that it is hard to watch and destroys whatever may be the good sides of a film. The Tangshan earthquake has some heroes and heroic stories to be told – but director Feng Xiaogang manages to keep the glorification of the army and the survivors and the government at a (probably necessary) minimum. His interest seems to be in a story of cruelty: a mother who decides the fate of her children in the middle of the earthquake aftermath – she has to make a terrible (albeit slightly contrived) choice. As a consequence, she will suffer for more than 30 years under a guilty conscience, while the child on the losing end of the choice will nurture hate against her and will punish her with indifference. That is quite an interesting moral fable, and it allows a strong final scene, where both mother and child reflect again on their respective choices – and it turns out that both have seriously punished and damaged themselves with the choices they made. The film indicates that the daughter was more wrong than the mother, which you may or may not accept, but the moral face-off is worth the 135 minutes wait. For a foreign audience unfamiliar with Chinese family life, obligations and commitments, I can imagine the characters are sometimes a bit hard to understand in their motives, but I found it mostly convincing, even surprising how the author dares showing the drama and the failures that comes with being stuck in this rigid form of family system.
It is a bit funny to see these films with a political message today, when that message is not allegorical or hinted at, but spoken right into your face. On the other hand, communication was different in the 1950s, and so was political logic and diplomacy. The whole film only works because the alien with the vastly superior technology, ability to fly from wherever in just five months, produce impregnable metal and indestructible robots – this alien is not able to just send out a radio broadcast or tv message all over the world’s channels, making sure that his message about love peace and happiness and the end of all violence is heard by all the world’s leaders at the same time? Why bother to bring them together? Because that gives you more time to contact the superbrain scientist who believes you and brings his fellow top scientists from all over the world to come and witness your statement. It is just such a good guy, that alien man that looks just like people on Earth do: when he makes the world stand still for half an hour by cutting off electricity, he makes sure nobody is harmed by leaving out the hospitals, airplanes in flight and other vital instruments. He is not beyond threat, actually he came to Earth in order to explain his threat.
Not a masterpiece, but a nice bit of entertaining with a great acting trio at the center. It has some very nice elements that make it terribly entertaining, at times even hilarious. One is Harrison Ford: a seasoned political journalist forced into the purgatory of moderating breakfast tv, disgruntled by this but unable to escape the allure of good tv money… that sounds a bit like Harrison Ford, seasoned actor of character drama, pushed into the pit of romantic comedy… and that has its moments. While he is predictably grumpy during most of the film, he has some glorious outbursts: a nice introductory speech where he gives his impressive CV: “I have cooled Mother Theresa’s feverish forehead with a wet tissue. I have been shot at in Bosnia. I have had dinner with Dick Cheney!” (or similar, could not find the quote right now). And in the grand finale, he brings down the house with a very awkward impro cooking show, and all is in tears… Rachel McAdams, who I did not know before, is cute as the overwhelmed but determined producer, and Diane Keaton is really great as Harrison Ford’s co-host, engaging in a match of the elderly about screen supremacy (“who gets to say ‘Good Bye’?”) .
Kristen Wiig. Enough said, she is the only reliable comedian in the Saturday Night system at the moment, and as this the only perspective for a Tina Fey follower. Is there any other fearless female comedian out there? I don’t know one, really, and it seems that unless you have gone through the SNL boot camp, you shrink away. She is here to stay, even though the number of facial expressions she has is still limited. Never mind, she is hilarious as the loser maid of honour who messes up every single element of wedding preparation for her best friend – by bringing down the plane that was supposed to take them to their Vegas bachelorette night, by making everybody crap their gowns, and street, and sink. By just not accepting that the bride is now grown up and enjoys fancy France trips more than hanging out with the girls in the backyard pub. Or does she? Nice additional note by her relationship to police officer Rhodes, who brings an English touch of sophistication and principles – which does not make both their lives easier of course.
I watch a lot of movies, but rarely has a film so surprised me, made me (metaphorically) bite my nails and make me bounce on the seat with cries of joy, outrage, disgust and verbal wonder (i.e.: “WTF?!”).
Despite the average American white male believing otherwise, baseball is an exotic niche sports to most of the world’s population. Easy enough to be understood, making a movie about it or before the background of it is bold, as sports movies have a hard time with the best of sports – even more so with a sports where 70 per cent of the time is spent on spitting and grabbing your own crotch.
This is a cool-hearted, slickly designed, constrained thriller that oozes peril while never spelling it out. Nobody runs around frantically, nobody chases an alpha monkey, nobody has any chance of reaching a breaking moment of curing the disease that breaks out and threatens to kill a considerable share of the world’s population. Hence no real showdown, no just-in-time delivery of the saving antibodies or serum or whatever it is these films usually deliver three seconds before viral apocalypse. Instead, people are doing their jobs, developing vaccines, trying them out, developing distribution plans, keeping people from killing each other, analyzing what happened and whether anybody is guilty, blaming it on the government, cheating their way into slightly better immunization than they are eligible. It is a perfectly plausible scenario, and more frightening than the gospel according to “Breakout”. With an odd combination of mostly really good, often really strange actors (Lawrence Fishburne, Jude Law…) , with real families attached to the key researchers in particular, with fear balancing determination to get that thing fixed, “Contagion”creates an atmosphere of high tension, and keeps it up without shouting at the audience. An arthouse disaster movie that has more in common with Michael Winterbottom’s science fiction ventures than with the genre of virus outbreak action thrillers, it is to me one of Soderbergh’s best movies of the decade. Excellent writing, too, e.g. upon stumbling across the virus lab talk: “Should I call someone?” – “Call everyone!” or somebody scoffing at Jude Law, the conspiracy theory blogger: “Blogging is not writing, it’s graffiti with punctuation”. Well spoken!
Almodovar has never been alien to sexual possessiveness and obsession. It seems a lot of his sexual motifs had to converge towards a crazy scientist movie – and here it is. Frankenstein rises, and after two hours I even realized he looks like an aged and slim Antonio Banderas, because it’s him – seems I have not seen him in a long time.
I have been frequently scolding myself for giving new Woody Allen movies yet another chance, despite knowing better. This peaked in outright self-hatred for exposing myself to the decrepit old man fantasy brain-turd about what cardboard cut-out young Europeans do with their spare time that was “The Lobotomy of Christina in Barcelona”. I promised to myself: never again! And yet here I am, falling victim to the critics’ community that claimed – again – that Allen is back to form and that “Midnight in Paris” was worth giving him another chance.
