Review of the film Louder Than A Bomb

            Disclosure: I was there during the years prior to the filming of this documentary. I remember these kids and I even remember parts of their amazing spoken word poems after years. This movie touched me in a way that people who were not present there would never understand. But I’m sure it does wonders for those individuals as well. You can’t help but be affected by the sincerity, verve and talent.

            The film is called Louder Than A Bomb, named for the explosive annual teen poetry slam that takes place in Chicago. The competition was co-founded by an amazing non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors, which teaches and promotes creative writing and literature throughout the city and surrounding areas. High school aged youths recite personally written poems to audiences of their peers as well as judges. The judges give them scores, and teams and individuals win, yes, but it’s the poem not the points that stay with you long after the slam is finished.

            Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel document the months, weeks and days leading up to the annual competition by focusing on a few enigmatic and diverse handful of participants in 2008. This angle doesn’t lessen one’s understanding of the beauty of the slam; it serves to deepen that understanding. Nova, Nate, Adam and the Steinmenauts slam team are not rosily lit, tentative, one-dimensional young adults. This is a documentary. Most of the television shows and films that feature teen life are written by those with a heavy nostalgia for that period of their lives. They don’t see with the eyes of those who are living it at this moment. These teens are living it; they are living it and shouting about it to audiences who clap and cheer for the realism of their language and expressions. Part of the wonder of the Louder Than A Bomb slam is the audience, full of other teens who appreciate the cadence of a phrase, the unexpected rhyme of a line, the brave effort to speak exactly what you know exactly how it feels to you.

            I recall snatches and pieces of verse all these years later. I volunteered with Young Chicago Authors for a few years after I moved to Chicago in late 2004. I’ve lived here since that year, and this film is the most distinctly Chicago film that I’ve ever seen. It’s because of the words and faces and love of creativity that spills from the projector onto the screen and beyond. It’s true diversity I see there. And the true acceptance that flows from the young people who fill the audience at the competition, listening and responding to the poems being performed. It’s because those poems take me places I’ve never been with a clarity that I could never get anywhere else. Louder Than A Bomb reflects the best that society has to offer. It’s in the stringing together of thoughts and words and gestures into something that has the power to move and inspire. Listen to the poem.

Review of the film Melancholia

Where will you go when the world ends? Who will you be with? And will you look away? Or will you face the end, open your arms and embrace it?

The film Melancholia begins with long, gorgeous strains of the theme from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde and long, drawn out and beautiful shots of scenes that may have never happened. These scenes lead us to understand that another, larger planet is spinning it's way through the darkness towards Earth. Will the two enormous objects collide? In the reality of Director Lars Von Trier, it seems apparent what the answer is to this question.

There is a wedding party inside a sumptuous mansion, lavish and exorbitant, something beyond what the majority of us will ever experience.  The party seems to go on for hours as Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the bride, attempts to smile and bow to her guests and family. But there is a heaviness to her movements and expressions; they come a step too slowly and are a bit stilted. It becomes evident that, despite the beautiful and sympathetic husband, the sudden grand promotion from her boss, the perfection of the festivities and those attending, Justine is not well. And it all comes from within. Her mind is not well.

There are sensations of feeling that cannot be fully understood by those who have ever experienced them. It's to move as if underwater, attempting to walk through the depths of the ocean, fighting the weightlessness, parting the wall of liquid with your hands and shoving, ripping through. Or perhaps, it is like earthy vines wrapping around your wrists, ankles and waist as you attempt to move forward, their grip and gravity pulling you back and down like the heaviest burdens. The world does exist to those under this spell. But it is so overwhelmingly tiresome living in it. Food holds no comfort, companions do not speak an understandable language, rituals offer no easing of tension. Sleep is the only welcome respite.

 Justine lives for these moments, where unconsciousness and dreams offer something beyond everyday existence. It’s a wonder that, with the patterns of her behavior, that she is as tolerated as she is. Those around her quickly come to their boiling points as she languishes in her depression.

But then that new planet draws nearer, so that its coming can be seen in the daylight sky. And Justine suddenly feels lighter, freer, with the end of life closing in on every one of Earth’s inhabitants. Her dark view of the world is becoming true right above her head. And she is soothed that she was always right.

Melancholia is deeply autobiographical for its director. Von Trier has suffered from sometimes crippling depression and anxiety all his life. The film is beautifully executed and the actors, particularly Dunst, inhabit their characters well. She is utterly convincing as someone weighted with a deeply ill mind. But I wonder what Justine’s story would be if she were not of such privileged stuff. How different would she be if she inhabited a lower rung of society? I see Justine in these elements and I do find her tale believable. However, as I watched this film, I speculated about those other 7 billion stories that Von Trier did not tell in his film. In the end, though, they all came to the same fate, it seems.

Will you realize that the end of the world is what you have been waiting for your whole life?

Review of the film Drive

Moments of violence happen everywhere, all the time, and there seems no explanation for most of them. But there are always actions, decisions leading to those seconds and minutes. We just may never know them; their reasons will remain un-divulged by the universe. Be sure they’re there, though, and that a past always proceeds a present.

Ryan Gosling plays the lead character in the new film Drive, unnamed and quiet—a stunt driver for the movies and a car mechanic. He also moonlights as a getaway driver for criminal heists. He has a mantra that he follows for these night-lit jobs: You go in. I start the clock. You have 5 minutes, and I’m yours during that time. A minute on either side of that 5, and I’m gone. He meets a beautiful and kind neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, and her young, quick to smile son, and that mantra slips from him in a following moment. This moment, laced heavily with his newfound vulnerability, leads to all that comes afterwards—the weighty actions that bring us through the story.

It will come as a surprise to no one that this movie is extremely violent. Nearly every reviewer who has analyzed the film has discussed this. There’s a slow burn to the violence that pervades the end of the story. And it is so shocking because it has taken so long to appear. Gosling’s Driver has been so quiet and coiled throughout the proceedings, but now he is unleashed, brutal and efficient. He is very good at being the kind of violent that the story shows; he is so good at it that one begins to wonder about how he came to be so effective and severe. What in his past lead him to his skill? It certainly isn’t just the part time occupation of a stunt car driver. There has to be more that happened before this. But it’s never divulged in the film. The plot is laser-focused. There are no extraneous details or subplots here to get lost in. The only thing is this story.

            The director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), has crafted a film that seems deeply felt but also deeply illusive. We feel for these characters, however little we know about them through the pieces the story gives us. It's in the glances, the tone of a single word, the lean of a spine. How does one glean such emotion from so little? I’ve done more with less, believe me. This movie pulls viewers into it like simply opening a passenger side door and slipping inside. It’s just that good.

Review of the film Another Earth

In the film Another Earth scientists discover a new planet in the sky identical to our own right down to the people inhabiting it. Instead of perplexing over the science behind such a surprising anomaly—tides, gravitational forces, physics—the population is thrown into questioning what this means to each of them individually and as a whole. There is the possibility that those duplicates inhabiting Earth Two have made better choices than us, or perhaps, different mistakes. There is the possibility that they are as curious about us as we are about them, that they have some of the same questions.

On the same night of the sudden appearance of Earth Two in space orbiting our sun, Rhoda, a gifted teenager, is celebrating her admittance to MIT. But the planet's distracting presence in the night sky leads to a deadly car crash with Rhoda at the wheel of one of the vehicles involved. She survives, but her life is thrown off its course by the tragedy. Some years later, Rhoda lives an existence of dangerously self-absorbed guilt and regret. She is yoked with these feelings and spends more and more time gazing at the looming specter of Earth Two, visible even in daylight now, wondering about fate and mistakes.

Depressed to the point of self-harm, unable to find forgiveness from herself, she approaches the only other survivor of the car crash. John is a former music professor and composer whose existence is also in disarray ever since that tragic night. Under false pretenses, Rhoda insinuates herself into his life, and they begin a strange and timid romance greatly hindered by loss and the weight and size of Rhoda's secret.

By this time, space travel to Earth Two has become a reality, and there is a contest for a free seat aboard one of the first flights. Individuals must write a 500-word essay describing why he or she is the most qualified candidate to visit the mirror planet. Rhoda sends a submission and wins the spot. You can begin to guess where this development leads.

Director Mike Cahill worked on nature documentaries for the National Geographic Society before making this film his first fictional foray. There is a raw feeling to the proceedings that seems sincerely organic and truthful. This is despite the often overly precocious score or the overtly significant slow-motion tracking shots. Cahill melds the threads of story about loss and regret and those of the science fiction well. This feels like something that could happen, if only because the questions raised seem so organic, as if ones that each of us would ask upon the sudden appearance of a mirror planet in the sky. An occurrence beyond comprehension. Something that could only lead to the deepest soul-searching for each of us.

Review of the film Cowboys & Aliens

 

The synopsis of the film Cowboys & Aliens is in the title. There isn't much more to say. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford star in this Jon Favreau (Iron Man) directed summer action extravaganza as cowboys in the Old West who encounter and are terrorized by said aliens. These demonic creatures from outer space are out for them and the cast of townspeople inhabiting this world with them. The two starring growlers must band together in order to save the population from certain destruction, and what comes after that offers few surprises.  That is not to say that I was not somewhat entertained; there are enough characters, talking and movement to bolster a viewer along. Plus, I'm a horse girl. And men in chaps do not bother me in the least, especially Daniel Craig.

But again, don't go into this film expecting anything more than advertised. This is a mash-up of genres, sure, but it serves to add nothing to either one. It's too bad, because  the cast could do more with even less. If there were a consistent market for movie Westerns, then Walter Goggins, Keith Carradine and Adam Beach would be appearing in many. Sam Rockwell, a character actor unafraid of chewing some scenery, certainly isn't given much to work with. And I'm sure that Director Favreau could add more flavor to the alien genre as he did with the superhero genre in Iron Man. I guarantee that after the summer is over, this film will be little more than a fuzzy blip on our summer movie memories.

Review of the film Down To The Bone

Snakes are interesting creatures gifted with bone structures most alien compared to that of the human skeletal system. Their skulls consist of complete and solid brain cases but are hinged loosely to the bones of the jaw, allowing for the ingesting of prey larger than the reptiles doing the ingesting. The vertebral column of snakes are composed of 200 to 400 vertebrae and allow them to bend and undulate, unimpeded by their lack of limbs. Most snakes, when killing their victims, use a combination of sharp bite and constriction to subdue before swallowing their prey whole.

The outstanding film Winter's Bone by Director Debra Granik chilled me with its stark realism and the dignity and intelligence of the female lead. The movie garnered great attention for the director and it's then unknown star, Jennifer Lawrence. Before this, Director Granik had quietly but definitively broken onto the scene with another powerful and realistic depiction of a troubled but strong woman confronted with the worst life has to offer. The film is called Down To The Bone based on her award-winning short Snake's Feed and left me quite astounded with its gravity.

Vera Farmiga plays Irene, a grocery cashier, wife and mother of two in upstate New York who goes to great pains to believe her cocaine addiction does not lead her life. She skims along the surface of her life, sometimes wildly happy with coke in her system, and other times desperately crying because her dealer will not accept her son's birthday check from his grandmother in exchange for a fix. This last episode snaps her into entering drug rehab. There she meets a male nurse named Bob who seems to understand her desire to live her life drug free and may also feel something for her. But when she returns to the real world again after only a week of being clean it is obvious that this will be a battle Irene was not expecting.

Every day, every moment, is dictated by addiction and it's hunger within Irene. She may have gone a week without using, but she will forever be an addict. This is a film where you see the inner workings of a person; her life is happening right before us. There are no flashy time lapses by Director Granik, and we are not sparred the discomforts of Irene's journey by smart camera angles or wild storytelling. She takes up a romance with the rehab nurse Bob. The fevered nature of their relationship challenges both their sobrieties, and, with the coming of winter, there is a downbeat playing out of events that seems as close to reality as anything currently on celluloid.

The film does not end tidily as these things never truly do. Irene reminds us that it is difficult to ever forget that which troubles us--that our minds find every reason not to forget. And, in fact, their natures are not to let go until we are swallowed whole. 

Review of the film Monsters

In the low-budget, independent film Monsters, it is quickly explained that in the near future a space probe is sent to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Upon returning, it crash-lands in Mexico with some sort of alien life-form aboard that escapes into the open and begins infecting the jungles. The results of this infection are giant alien monsters that roam through the forests, responding aggressively only when first attacked and propagating throughout the countryside. This infected area is quickly quarantined, and the United States builds a massive wall to block the monsters from invading the country and begins assaulting them with missiles and explosives from aircraft above.

Andrew is a photojournalist working in the Central American area bordering this infected zone. He chronicles the effects of the monsters and the collateral damage from the battle against them. His wealthy boss orders him to escort his daughter, Samantha, through the infected zone back to the United States where her fiancé is waiting for her return. They fail to board a boat sailing across the Gulf to the coast of the U.S. and are forced to navigate through the very dangerous and wild terrain with hired guns to protect them.

It seems like a standard alien monster movie from the setup, but the creators seem to be attempting something a bit different. Viewers rarely see the giant creatures, but their threat and that of the wild landscape are always present in the tension of a scene, looming about in cast shadows and the lines in the characters' visages.  We do see the aftermath of the carnage wrecked by the war against the alien infection. A young girl's body lies on the dirt road that the small group uses nears a pickup truck that has been destroyed by a missile or a monster; it is difficult to say which one. Andrew has the opportunity to snap several photos of the scene. Journals back in the States would pay a high price for shots of a poor child killed in this conflict. But he hesitates, gazing at the worn shoe that hangs off her toes. Eventually the group moves on, and the creatures' moans are audible all around them as they call to one another, communing across the distance.

Traveling closer to the U.S. border, we see the huge wall that has been built to keep the monsters and infection out. It is an awesome sight, rendered even more impressive by how low the film’s budget was. In the story, however, this wall may not be as effective as it looks and the authorities had hoped. The final scenes take place just across that border as Andrew and Samantha attempt to find someone to point them in the direction of help. This new landscape appears as devastated and abandoned as that they have just come through. The alien monsters are nearby, and as night descends on them, they witness the creatures and begin, perhaps, to understand what their true desires on our planet are. Monsters is an interesting film, certainly not perfect and, at times, quite silly. But the visuals, tone, and ideas are worth the time.

   

Review of the film The King's Speech

    If you'd like to feel warm, fuzzy and entertained at the conclusion of a film, see The King's Speech. If you don't all ready know what it's about yet, then prepare to be mildly, but not very, surprised. But I think most of you know what it's about--it's been talked about and praised enough in the media that it would have been hard to miss a synopsis at this point.
   I have to say this, it wasn't boring. In fact, it was engaging and extremely well done. The reason I seem so blase during this review is that I feel I have seen this before--the grouchy but lovable underdog rises to the occasion with the help of his sharp-witted, patient girl who gets him in with a unorthodox but successful coach that challenges and pushes him to greatness. And of course, the acting was amazing, but it seems the actors had been through the paces of the story before and the producers and the director and everyone involved in the film. It was, of course, a Merchant Ivory Film, right?
    Not much to say besides that; it seems to have been all ready pontificated from the highest points of the show business mountain. Be sure, it was a lovely film and worth the time. That is all.

Review of the film Hanna

            In the forest, a hunter pursues her prey. She stalks and tracks movements using the bare trees and brush to hide her presence expertly. The male reindeer does not sense her until it is too late. An arrow slams into his chest and he is off, sprinting through the snowdrifts, but death is certain. The hunter follows, her stride assured and quick. The animal breaks out of the trees onto an ice field and eventually collapses. Drawing near, the hunter pulls her pistol and takes aim. We are somewhere near the Artic Circle where ice and snow prevail and silence is only broken by the shot entering the heart of the downed, wounded beast. “I just missed your heart.”

The problem with Hanna is not the journey the new film by Director Joe Wright (Atonement) takes its audience on, it is the fogginess of its destination. The action moves at a frenetic pace and when there is a lull in the action, which isn’t often, the story pops with beautiful scenery, people and dialogue. It leaves us gasping for more, except, there linger questions—why the rush and where are we being taken?

            These questions come, but the velocity at which the conflicts of the film are happening leave little time for ruminations. The frenzied camerawork of the cinematographer and thumping score by The Chemical Brothers make it hard to concentrate on anything other than the action occurring right before our eyes.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is 16 and has lived in the forest close to the Artic Circle for as long as memory serves her. She has been raised solely by her father (Eric Bana) with survival skills unusual to most—Hanna is an expert in martial arts and shooting, multilingual, and has a memory of general knowledge that would make an encyclopedia blush. Her father used to be an agent for the CIA but deserted his position long ago. He and Hanna are major persons of interest to many international organizations and especially to agent Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett) who has a bloody past with Hanna’s father and Hanna herself. There is a button that her father unearths connected to a tracking beacon that will allow Marissa to locate their position instantly. Hanna stares at the device for a long time, but we know she will eventually press the button—she is ready, dying, to see what will happen. So begins Hanna’s journey out into the world beyond the forest.

There are elements of fairytales here, Grimm’s to be precise—dark and bloody but also whimsical and beautiful. Hanna is a heroine in peril, not helpless pointedly, who must face many trials and obstacles both within and external. She is a young woman without a true sense of self, but through these tests outside of the forest she begins to realize what she is. The boundaries of her being are pushed and prodded, bringing with this knowledge both heartbreaking and events brutally final. However, we are left wondering about Hanna and her cast of characters long after the credits roll—for what purpose did the film go to so much trouble? What really did Hanna realize beyond the simple facts of her own origins and propensity for violence? Why does Hanna create such a character and the very beginnings of her true life only to snuff it out with a black screen?

Review of the film A Serious Man

I have dreamt of approaching tornadoes quite often throughout my life. Suddenly, the sky is darkening, and the funnel begins to descend, swirling and snaking towards the ground. The color of this cloud changes nearly every time, and I often wonder if these altering hues have anything to do with my conscious life as much as I am sure that the tornado’s appearance does. At its nearing, there is fear and an overwhelming sense of inevitability. This force of nature declares that shit is going down.

In A Serious Man, Larry Gopnik’s troubles look something like a fast drawing near force of nature. The funnel is dropping towards earth and taking aim. It starts off kind. He is a professor at a small college in suburban Minnesota during the 60s. He has a wife and two children, a nice one-level home, and he is up for tenure at work. But the Coen brothers, being themselves in the fullest, have other plans for Larry, plans that only they can understand. The film leads with a darkly comic preface in Yiddish set in a time long before Larry Gopnik; it leaves us scratching our heads, but wonderment is the space that the Coens want us in.

The main story and the dirt begin when Larry’s wife says she is leaving him for his best friend. Then a student attempts to bribe and blackmail him simultaneously. His lecherous brother is living on the couch in his home, getting into trouble at seedy bars and casinos. A bully continuously chases his young son home from school. The tenure committee at school is receiving defamatory unsigned letters about him. His daughter is stealing money from his wallet. The doctor’s office is desperately trying to get a hold of him. It seems that God suddenly doesn’t like Larry. But why, when he has always tried to be a good, serious man? The Coens may know, however, they aren’t letting us in on it too easily. This film could have a message, but it’s intentionally unclear.

A Serious Man shares that with the last film they made, No Country For Old Men for which the brothers won the Oscar for Best Picture. This film is quieter, though, less of a crowd pleaser, at least in terms of violence and action, and it leaves more loose ends than it ties. Larry’s best friend Sy Ableman, the man his wife is leaving him for, attempts to counsel with sincere words of sympathy and understanding. There is a sexy neighbor who has taken to sunbathing naked in just the right place for Larry to spy on her. His son is studying for his Bar Mitzvah. There are good things in Larry’s life, but how does he see through all the bad to the good? How do any of us do this? Are we all like Job in the Bible, put through many arduous trails by God on the basis that it forces us to still believe?

Larry goes to several different rabbis to see if he can glean some answers from those who are said to know much more than him. Each gives him more convoluted responses than the last. The Coens show that they can laugh at the mystery they have developed in a way both thoughtful and with appreciation for that which is beyond understanding. I value this in a film, bolstered by wonderful performances, excellent production and exceptional writing. Even the very ending of the film leaves us in a state of awed puzzlement that is both goading and satisfying.

Review of the film Greenberg

             It takes so much energy to be angry all the time. Exhausting and painful. But it is also invigorating; it can give purpose. Director Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg is about two people on separate sides of that emotion, at different stages in their lives, who somehow still seem to want to understand each other.

Greta Gerwig excels in her performance of Florence, a 25-year-old living nearly rudderless in Los Angeles, working as a personal assistant for a wealthy family and barely pursuing a singing and songwriting career. Vulnerable and expressive to a fault, she falls into bed with men because it is easier to just go along than say no. She desperately wants to have a purpose and, since she cannot find her own, it seems that other people’s purposes for her are fine right now. When the Greenberg family offers to write her a check before they go on a long trip to Vietnam, she brushes the urgency of her bad financial situation to the side and insists she will come by the next day to pick it up after they have left.

            This brings her into contact with Roger, the brother of Mr. Greenberg, who has come to live at the house while the family is gone. They have a strange first interaction, awkward and uncomfortable. But Florence insists that Roger call her for anything he may need.

Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg as a caustic, unlikable human being heading into what is definitely a wasteland of middle age (of his own making). He recently was released from an institution and has returned to Los Angeles from New York City to “do nothing,” as he says. He certainly embraces the situation. His brother and family have gone away for six weeks and left him with the house and dog. He spends his time composing letters to various organizations he feels have wronged him in some way, one being United Airlines for having a seat reclining button that did not work to his liking. He calls an old band mate (Rhys Ifans) and has the kind Brit drive him around and listen somewhat patiently to his constant criticism of every detail the world has decided (in his mind) to assault him with.

Roger does call Florence and suggests they go out for a drink, more out of boredom than any attraction. They end up instead at her apartment, sharing the single Corona in the fridge. Roger makes a strange pass at her that she, at first, does not deter. Then, as he lifts up her skirt, she becomes skittish. She reveals that she has just come out of a long-term relationship and is afraid of simply going from “having sex to sex to sex.” “Who’s the third sex?” asks Roger Greenberg. Florence blinks. “You.”

It seems that Roger isn’t just having trouble getting laid. The story reveals that his old band had been offered a big record deal back in their heyday that Roger flatly refused, much to the sorrow of the other band members. This bad decision colors his interactions with all his old acquaintances. Everyone is still mad at him for abandoning what should have been instant success simply because he didn’t buy into big labels. They’re right to keep up the anger. Roger doesn’t appear to have any idea what he did to the people who had been around him.

But Florence is different. She is younger and impressionable. She thinks Roger is a sensitive and thoughtful human being. He easily pulls her back into some sort of weird semblance of a relationship. They keep ending up pulling each other’s clothes off. But every time it seems like things are going somewhere good, Roger keeps pushing her away. Roger Greenberg makes it almost impossible to like him, even for someone, like Florence, who wants to like everyone.

It isn’t an easy task to watch Roger’s interactions without hating him. He has so closed himself off from sentiment that all he can emote is anger at a world that has (somewhat rightly) rejected him. An easier film than Greenberg would shove in some sort of epiphany for Roger to realize and give him time to apologize fully for his many transgressions, begin to heal. He and Florence would certainly end up together. However, Baumbach does not have redemption for his lead character in mind. It is something more realistic, humane and also touching. This is a man who, despite every effort to the contrary, can be loved. Unfortunately, he cannot find it within himself to return that love.

Review of the film Primer

            Primer is for nerds, computer programmers, philosophers, Mensa members and dorks. The film was directed and filmed mostly in a garage by Shaun Carruth for $7,000 and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004. It has gained a cult status in the film world, among film dorks and nerds for the ideas and conundrums that it lays out for its audience. It looks great and certainly leaves one with many questions.

The film begins with four young men hashing out complex ideas of programming that are well beyond my understanding. It’s unclear whether any of them fully understand what they are discussing either, but they are comfortable pushing their minds and knowledge. They work out of a garage and use the dining room table as their meeting place. Two of the men, Abe and Aaron begin a new project, one that has implications that are unknown but huge. They increasingly push the other two away from their work. They steal a catalytic converter for platinum and rip a part an old refrigerator for its Freon. The machine they create seems to produce an exorbitant amount of protein, more protein that it has time to secrete. Maybe time inside the machine is occurring at a different rate than that outside of it. So they build two similar machines that can each house a person.

Perhaps the two leads know on some level what they are doing, but it’s obvious that they are in over their heads. It’s always as if we’re eaves-dropping on their conversations—things are hazy and said quickly, excitedly and softly, important science and principles of physics are left out.  It is obvious why someone would want to be able to travel forward and back in time, but what of the dangerous implications?

There certainly is danger lurking in their experiments. After a few times in the machine, one of the two men has blood coming out of his ear. Why and how did this happen? What period of time did this happen in? A future they have not encountered yet? Then there is a moment where they look through a pair of binoculars, watching what appears to be their doubles leaving the storage facility where the machine is stored. Are the Abe and Aaron being watched the two living in real time and the Abe and Aaron doing the watching those who traveled back in time? It’s unclear to me, and it will at least be somewhat difficult to figure out for those smarter than I.

This could be a fun undertaking—perhaps watching the film multiple times, taking notes, etc. But I’ve got to tell you that seems like a lot of time and effort to waste for a movie that doesn’t love, or even hate, its characters. They are merely there to advance the puzzle and, though their persons are put into danger by their undertaking, it doesn’t seem all that important if they are hurt or not. The other characters that litter the film are fully marginalized. They are simply there to populate the situations in which the two leads find and put themselves in. I had the opposite reaction to this movie that I had with Ben Affleck’s The Town—the ideas and narrative put forth by Primer are endlessly inventive and interesting, but putting concern behind the leads is something that the film does not allow. Sure, there are wonderful loopholes and loose ends to ponder, but there is nothing that makes me truly care enough to take the time.

Review of the film The Town

            The Town, directed by Ben Affleck, is ultimately an overblown Bostonian affair that left me slightly sleepy. I guess the tiredness came from the amount of energy the film requires a viewer to put into caring about the characters that it takes such thoughtfulness to draw and then almost predictably puts through action movie trope paces and ends. It’s kind of exhausting to watch, not least of all because the lone Boston native, the director and lead, has the worst accent in the entire cast.

The film begins with a quote explaining to viewers that the mostly blue collar Charleston neighborhood of Boston is home to more bank robbers per square inch than most American penitentiaries. This immediately leads to a robbery scene involving four men masked as nuns with melting faces doing a job on a large, profitable bank branch. Things get hairy. They take a hostage—the pretty and new assistant manager—whom they do let free. But this becomes a loose end that must be taken care of, in the form of the team leader, Doug (Ben Affleck), following the scared beauty to ensure that she does not give up anything to the sniffing Federals. It seems silly that Claire (Rebecca Hall) is so naïve to think that this man suddenly snooping around her life does not have a hidden agenda, but she is emotionally devastated by the robbery situation. She is out of his league, obviously so, and there is some interesting class tension that plays out. Inevitably, Doug and Claire fall for each other, and the tension shifts to Doug’s relationship with his team and lifestyle. He no longer wants to rob banks for a living. Claire shows him what he does want and that is a life beyond circumnavigating the law and the bad associations that it brings. We all know where this will lead—the last and ultimate heist.

Doug is level headed and smart, too profitable an investment to allow to walk away. There are elements that, of course, want him to continue his thieving ways. The wonderful character actor Pete Postlethwaite enters the picture as an insidious florist slash money launderer who pushes the issue to a scary point. There is also Doug’s best friend and partner, Jem (Jeremy Renner), who cannot imagine a life outside of thieving. He violently wants to hold onto the status quo that he and Doug possessed before that previous fateful robbery. And the Federals are onto their schemes at this point. All this propels the action towards that final job where it is all too easy to realize what is coming about.

It’s to the director, actors and writers’ credit that viewers care about these people as much as they do upon the unfolding of that final act. To put these carefully drawn characters through this weightless melodrama is insensitive. It seems that Affleck is a good wrangler of actors’ performances but is poor at picking a complex and challenging story to put them, and us, through. The Town is never boring, but it is a bit sad and tiresome.

Review of the film The Hurt Locker

            The ongoing conflict in Iraq is beyond my understanding here in the U.S. It takes place half a world away in an environment and culture unlike anything to which I have been close. The whirlwind of issues surrounding the events past and present there are things I will probably, hopefully, never experience. My life can be complicated, frightening, strange. But I have to remind myself not to forget those true stories that leak around the curve of the world to the United States, that people as real as me experience a day to day life much more harrowing than my own.

            It may be a fictional narrative, but the film The Hurt Locker attempts to place before our eyes some of the true harrowing nature of the Iraqi conflict. The story by journalist Mark Boal tells of the day-to-day affairs of a three-person bomb squad in Baghdad. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it plays like a series of adventures, albeit life-threatening adventures, as the soldiers go about disarming IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) throughout the war and sanction-ravaged city.

The unit is newly lead by Staff Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner), a man who is brilliant at his work, who is teetering on the brink of death and sanity every day as he goes about doing what the Army has charged him with and what he loves doing. We can see the adrenaline junkie that he has become; he throws caution away in order to do that which he is the very best at, defusing bombs. The other two men in the squad, Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are not as enthralled with their task of supporting James. They are both scared by what they do, understandably. The days until they can go home are mental ticks they mark off in their heads; it’s an almost visible occurrence. They want to survive, but James seems to only want to get to the next fix of his obsession, damn the consequences.

            Those consequences are starkly evident throughout this film. Director Bigelow never allows the audience to forget what the stakes are as the team goes from one deadly situation to the next. The story centers on these three men, but it also is about those who live and die on the margins of their tale. This is, most specifically, the Iraqi people who must survive in this landscape of constant war and continue, or not, to do so even after these soldiers have gone home to their families across the world. I looked at those individuals the hardest, the population the Army is supposed to be protecting, supporting—those whose dignity and lives are forever on the line.

This is a nerve-jangling film, suspenseful and hypnotic. There are so many levels to why this is, but I think it has a lot to do with the focus Bigelow shows. She does not stray from these men’s story, but those incidents and individuals that ultimately invade that tale and those lives are not simply scenery. They truly change these characters that we watch, and they truly fester in our memories. And there is no doubt that their impact will linger beyond the credits.

Review of the film An Education

It’s raining heavily as Jenny carries her cello to the bus stop and waits. The 16 year old English girl is drenched, as is the case holding her instrument. A handsome man in his 30s stops his beautiful red sports car to ask if, as a true music lover, he can at least give her cello a lift so the downpour doesn’t ruin the wood. The movie is called An Education, and it is set in the early 60s in the London suburbs. Jenny is bored with her life. The young woman, precocious and inquisitive, bound for Oxford, walks alongside the car for a while and they chat. Soon she is in the passenger seat smiling and laughing as the rain stops just before they reach her house. Jenny is obsessed with pop culture and yearns for a more sophisticated existence. David offers this to her. So begins a seemingly idyllic relationship in which he takes her out to hear classical music, dance at nightclubs, see and talk about beautiful art and spend weekends in the country or Paris. He charms her father, a man obsessed with status and wealth. He brings her mother gifts and flatters her. Both seem unsuspecting of an older man’s motives towards an under-aged girl. He seems like the perfect older gentleman, but his ingratiating demeanor does little to belie his true nature, which becomes more apparent the more time Jenny spends with him and the more curious and strange many of his actions become.

            It ends badly, as these things are always likely to do. It is not at all surprising, but that does not make the story any less sincere, and we watch as Jenny copes. Despite the tears she sheds, the experience has been good for her. “We feel old after we’ve lived through a charade.” But it wasn’t as if she didn’t welcome David’s deceptions and the goods that they allowed him to offer her. Jenny may have been naïve, but she is still smart and strong; what she has been through she will use to better her life. Her relationship with David has been a catalyst for her to figure out what it is she truly wants. She is lucky for the chance. Perhaps this is why I so wanted to and did identify with Jenny: She did not let a seemingly devastating experience slow her down. She cried, took stock and moved on, chalking it up to an education.

We have all had those moments where our lives may have been drastically different based on one piece of knowledge. This film finds that moment in one young woman’s story and shows us how she comes to a life-altering decision. An Education is based on a memoir by the British journalist Lynn Barber. It became well known that in her youth she had an affair with a much older man during the 1960s. The movie is beautifully produced and directed and the performances are all wonderful, especially Carey Mulligan as Jenny, who became a star upon its release. She makes us root for Jenny. And in the end, we know, as an intelligent and thoughtful young woman, that she will be all right.

Review of the film The Social Network

It’s sounds like pure bad friction, but the partnership of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing) and director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) pulls quite the weight when it comes to their most recently released film, The Social Network. Telling the story of the founding of Facebook, it uses Sorkin’s breathless, smart dialogue and Fincher’s subtle image making in such a way that one is engrossed without pushing. It’s the friction between the two that balances this tale.

Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is attending Harvard. He follows a nasty breakup with a vicious blog post about his ex. Then, after a few more beers, he starts a cruel interactive program called Facesmash, which allows users to rate the attractiveness of female students in the Harvard online network. He receives some disciplinary action for this, but its popularity and structure lead him to create Facebook which we all know was also instantly a huge success. It also garners him the attention of Napster founder, Sean Parker, and allows him to expand the reach of Facebook and his own power. This story is interlaced with several lawsuits that Zuckerberg later faced from those who felt they were screwed out of the huge profits the network eventually began pulling in. One of these lawsuits was by Eduardo Severin, who is arguably the co-founder of Facebook and was the one time best friend of Zuckerberg.

It isn’t a movie that allows one to get close nor does its ending promote good feelings. It’s a confounding film in that it deals with such weighty issues as isolation, friendship, and loyalty with a lead and cast of characters that know little of these things beyond how to turn them to commodity for personal gain and power. The characters here are not having meaningful, deep relationships; they are using each other. Their connections are fodder for whatever that they can get them in upward mobility. It does make a Facebook user wonder about his or her personal friend count and what those people the number signifies mean. Don’t be fooled by the short review of this film you see here: This is one has themes that fester and continue to puzzle long after the credits roll.

Review of the film Inception

“You’re waiting on a train. A train that will take you far away. You don’t know where it will take you, but it doesn’t matter where or why…”     (dialogue from film)

Inception is a dream maze. It’s never beyond grasping if one is keen to its twists and turns. However, this is not to say that its themes and symbolisms are as easily understood. One has to be prepared to be a bit mystified by this film. The visuals play with the architecture of our world and the unexpected turns of the story play with the architecture of plot that we have come to expect in films.

It starts with a very different type of corporate espionage. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb is a master thief who has made a business of extracting important secrets from reticent minds while they are in vulnerable dream states. His latest job has him not extracting precious information but, rather, placing an idea in the head of an adverse target.  His employer wishes for the heir of a monopolistic corporation to dissolve his father’s assets upon his impending death. However, it is explained that the mind is incredibly resistant to invasion. This means that Cobb and his team of specialists must fool the target’s sleeping brain into thinking that this idea originated and was cultivated within its own folds. There is one more ultimately important piece to the story: This is Cobb’s final job if it is successful and, because his employer promises to expunge his criminal record, he will be able to see his children for the first time in years. We have all the components for a great heist movie, but this particular heist movie has an infinite number more layers than usual. We dive into the maze along with Cobb and his team.

The experience is truly engrossing, but it is not a film without issues. I guess I’ve read a lot of chatter on feminist sites that Inception is a movie that marginalizes its female characters, romances them or leaves them as only carving points for the mold of the male lead, Cobb. These two characters are Cobb’s wife, lurking about in his subconscious like a true femme fatale and a young, brilliant architect, who is to build the dreamscapes for the job. But in my opinion, it’s not only the female characters that are marginalized but also every character in the movie besides Cobb, including his associates and his enemies. This makes sense in terms of the themes of the movie. There are suspicions by critics that this is all Cobb’s dream. Of course, then it is going to be built to feature his desires and the obsessions of his sub-conscious. It is his memory that builds this dream, what he remembers and how he remembers—the colors, the sounds, the people, the beauty of it, the angle of a glance, the pitch of a laugh or sigh.

Inception is not necessarily the most thoughtful or meaningful film one will see this year. However, it certainly is a well-crafted vehicle of its own with ideas both confounding and lucid. Nolan made me feel as if I was on a runaway train during the story; it had a destination, that much is certain, but where exactly is never clear. Nor is the why or the how. There is an ending, but it happens to be ambiguous and very quick. It also depends upon how one interprets the story and the place that story may have taken one’s thoughts. We each bring some much of ourselves to a film that a single critique is never possible and it’s also quite unreasonable to expect. One thing I can say about Inception, it does take you far from your own reality and where it places you upon arrival is completely up to your own mind.

Review of the film No Country For Old Men

The novelist Cormac McCarthy is famous for being a spare writer. He doesn’t use words upon words to get across a sense of a space or the look of a moment. In the novel No Country For Old Men, this leaning towards spareness is especially true. In making their film adaptation of the novel, the Coen brothers did not use every word of dialogue or every scene that McCarthy penned. However, the ones they did use were and are crucial to the narrative and tone that the author set up. The Coens had to decide how to portray everything around those spare sequences—the physical look of the space, the lighting, the blocking of the actors, the angles seen by the viewer. McCarthy may have left these things out, but the Coens are said by most critics to have remained faithful to the novel. It is my opinion, having read the book several times, that they did remain faithful. This is the ultimate compliment I can give to the filmmakers. Even the actors playing the book’s characters, where no physical attributes were given, seem to look exactly as they should.  It’s a simple story about money and drugs and the way that the two seem to envelop all those within a hair’s breadth and beyond, moving outwards like ripples in a pond. 

It begins when Moss, a middle-aged, lower middle-class white man, is out hunting antelope in the dusty plains of southern Texas. He happens upon a vaguely circular array of vehicles. He moves closer and finds the circle littered with bodies full of bullets of many different calibers and shapes. Flies cling to the blood that has seeped from the deadly wounds. In the flatbed of one of the vehicles are big blocks of heroin and in the cab of another is a dying man asking for water and speaking of wolves. Moss follows a trail of blood from the scene to the base of a lonely tree and finds another dead man riddled with bullets in its shade. Next to him is a suitcase with over 2 million dollars stacked inside. Moss makes the decision to leave with the suitcase with seemingly no remorse, but he later makes another decision, which is the catalyst for the rest of the action in the film: He returns that night to the scene of the fateful drug deal with a jug of water. Soon, Moss is being chased by a killer for hire with a Paige-boy haircut and an implacable sense of what lies before him.

            The events that transpire from that late night decision Moss makes are violent and quick. They roll one onto the next like bloody waves, spreading across a great swath of the state and covering even those who had never dreamed of being touched by such a mess. Through it all is small town Sheriff Bell, played with easy earnestness and hard-gotten wisdom by Tommy Lee Jones, trying to put together the bloody and random pieces. His craggy visage and knowing voice put to words those questions which no one else seems able to express at the carnage that is transpiring: What is the meaning of this? Why do these evil things happen?

The threat of violence looms in nearly every scene writ by McCarthy and filmed by the Coens. They both seem to be saying that it is merciless injustice, but this is the natural state of things. The precepts of civilization can be so easily peeled back and then we find out how poorly fit for survival most of us are without them.

Review of the film Drag Me To Hell

Drag Me To Hell, created by Sam Raimi, is a return to the demonic camp of the Evil Dead trilogy for the director. It’s mischievous and full of gross-out and “Gotcha!” gags. Like in Teeth, another camp-tastic horror film, the lead is a young, pretty, blonde-haired woman who seems to do everything right. Her name is Christine, and Allison Lohman plays her with believable sincerity. Christine is a simple farm girl who has left her roots to move to the big city and try her luck. The film opens on her as a nice, sympathizing loan officer at a small company bank. She is competing to become the assistant manager of the branch. Her boss explains to her that sometimes leaders have to make tough, unsympathetic calls for the good of the bank. Christine takes this to heart; she knows that her competition, the other ambitious young loan officer, is making all the right moves—denying extensions, bringing in new customers and kissing the boss’ ass with finesse. Deciding to make the tough choice on the very next loan extension that comes across her desk, she is resolute no matter who may stand before her. The problem is that the person is a creepy old woman with a foggy eye and dirty claws for fingernails who looks suspiciously like she might know a few spells and curses. It’s her third mortgage extension and Christine denies it, leading to a lengthy physical confrontation at the end of which the old woman snaps a button off of Christine’s coat. Button in gnarled hand, the old woman casts an ancient curse upon Christine. For three days, the young woman will be tormented by evil spirits before eventually being dragged to hell by demons.

What ensues is diabolic fun in the manner that only Raimi could pull off. After the first outrageous haunting that Christine experiences, there is little doubt that the old woman’s curse is real. And as the encounters become more wicked and physically thrashing, there is little Christine will not resort to in order to save herself from certain eternal damnation. Soon, there are dead kittens, creepy and bodily-invasive flies, sly hints at eating disorders, a demonic horned spirit, a possessed goat, and an extremely shocking and comical séance scene. There is little that Raimi holds sacred, including the burial of the dead. Christine is made to endure and stride through it all to get back the button that will save her from the hell fires. There are some tired tropes that Raimi touches upon—gypsy curses, socially ambitious women, fears of aging, “native” mystics—but he does it with such gleeful abandon and quickness that we are left falling over ourselves to keep up.

It seems likes Raimi’s intent to pick the nicest, prettiest and most moral possible victim for his special brand of mayhem. This could happen to anyone in his universe, including those who appear like the most undeserving of being dragged off to the netherworld by demons. As the inevitable nears, we find out that Christine abandoned her drunk and sickly mother along with her rural past. She has even used tapes to aid her in dropping her country accent. The fateful decision to deny that old woman her loan extension was not the first time Christine had made a sketchy moral choice; perhaps there are other instances of this mentality that Raimi only hints at. Maybe she isn’t the most undeserving of this curse. Each of us has a few troubled choices in our lives, some worse than others. Raimi is winking at us and our assumption that Christine could be all good. Near the end of the film, she is resolute that any one be saddled with this curse as long as it isn’t herself. She will go to any length to get that button back; she will not bear the  blame for her bad decision. Raimi finds this struggle delightful. It’s kind of a cosmic joke to the director, but a well-done and shockingly horrific joke.

Review of the film Teeth

            The phrase “vagina dentata” makes the boys and girls squirm. Understandably. Translating from the Latin as “toothed vagina,” this multi-cultural myth can be said to articulate the male fear of castration. Bloody, surprising and painful castration. One could also say that it expresses the dread of female sexuality in general. This goes not only for the males who seek sexual intercourse with multiple female partners but for the women who might possess such a fearful abnormality as well. He who encounters such a woman will be labeled as less than a man, and she who has the “dentata” will be labeled a monster.

Not much to be surprised about in our culture, but there is a film that imagines this scenario taking place in Middle American suburbia. It’s called Teeth, and it’s quite the little nasty horror piece directed by Michael Lichtenstein. The main character, Dawn, a pretty and proper blonde haired, blue-eyed teenager, has always had suspicions that something is a bit “off” down there. It all started when she was a little girl and her stepbrother cut his finger when he attempted to touch her between the legs in the kiddy pool. Though the true specifics of this encounter are hazy and curious. She doesn’t like to remember that.

            Nor has Dawn done any exploring of her own in the region. With a shining chastity ring on her finger, she gives rousing addresses on the importance of remaining “pure” until marriage. The other young people in the Promise Ring group look to up to Dawn, and she is enraptured with her choice and the attention it gives her. But refraining from sexual intercourse is a bit more complicated than simply wearing a ring. The cute, nice-seeming male group member who Dawn has a huge crush on takes her swimming in a beautiful natural pool with a cascading waterfall. It’s idyllic and sweet. Soon, their obvious desire for each other leads the young man to believe that this is the moment when he will have sex whether Dawn is a willing participant or not. But he’s in for a bloody surprise when he attempts to force himself on her body. There’s a loud snap and, when he pulls back, not all of him comes away in its proper place.

            It’s a shocking scene for both male and female viewers. The act of castration in such an unexpected way is definitely gruesome, and the image of it will cause nearly everyone to gag in horror. But for me, I was more horrified by the near rape of Dawn when she’d been so happy and infatuated with this seeming-perfect boy a moment before. After that snap, however, he certainly is shown to be less of a perfect male specimen than previously believed.

            The film plays with us in its swift oscillations from intense earnestness to facetious cheekiness throughout. At first terrified by the knowledge of her “condition,” Dawn fears she will never be able to function as a normal young woman. But then, after a few more unwanted encounters, she begins to realize the power she has to take revenge on those men who believe, in some conscious way or not, that “No” is not the right answer. Dawn embraces this gift and goes from naïve “Promise Keeper” to someone with quite the sense of personal agency. It’s at once a fun and frightening transformation to watch happen on screen. And it’s easy to feel sorry for every one involved in the mayhem that ensues, no matter how much he might deserve it.

Review of the film Black Swan

           Bloody, grisly repetition. Turn, leap, spin, lift, again and again and again. Go to bed, wake up early, go to practice, return home, eat dinner, wash, go back to bed. The daily recurrence of rehearsal until toes are bleeding, until arms shake uncontrollably, until one vomits with fatigue and queasiness. What one will do for art. Constant practice in order to gain perfection. Pushing oneself to the brink of exhaustion with the process. Burn the memory of each movement into one’s body and mind. All for that one performance, one moment when everyone is watching and waiting. The pressure of this moment lives within one’s chest, growing, weighing against the ribs as breath is brought in and pushed out. Will the moment be breakdown or breakthrough?

            Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan tells the story of a young prima ballerina’s rise to this moment from an intensely close angle. Nina, played by Natalie Portman, has just been given the role of her life, the Swan Queen, in the New York ballet season opener, Swan Lake. The problem is that the Swan Queen is a dual role—there is the virginal and refined White Swan, for which Nina’s  obsessive perfectionism is well suited—then there is the Black Swan, seductive and fevered. The lecherous company manager, played by Vincent Cassel, has doubts that Nina can find the passionate abandonment and dark sexuality required for the part.

            There is little uncertainty that Nina is sheltered. Frigid is a word that falls from the mouths of others in the company. She lives with her mother who has put everything into Nina’s ballet career and is always there to fret over any sign of problem with her daughter’s being. So little space exists between them that one can safely assume that Nina has never been out with a boy, let alone had any sexual encounters before now. She watches the newest company member, Lily, as she dances the Black Swan effortlessly. She covets Lily’s easy sexuality and lack of inhibition.

            Nina is neurotic with inhibition. She dreams vividly about the production. The intense process of practice and the pressure of the starring role begin to wear on her psyche. There are paranoid and strange visions, heightened experiences, instances of self-afflicted harm that turn out to be suspect, people speaking things that may have never been said. Is Nina hallucinating? This mystery is vital to the story’s unfolding. It goes back to that moment of performance; is it breakdown or breakthrough? There is something beyond perfection in art, where one reaches a place or moment of transcendence—muscle memory, echoes of training, take over and we are lost in what is occurring at our hands and minds. It gives one the power to create something that pulsates within others, leave them breathless for however long. Nina finds this space of transcendence, where she is more than perfect and her performance guides the throbbing of the audience’s collective heart. But is it to the demise of her sanity?

            Aronofsky wants to say something profound about the process of art, and he goes about it with a nightmarish and lurid style that is sure to leave the audience disarmed. It is a fascinating film, at times darkly and passionately absurd as well as beautiful and viscerally affecting. But is it wrong that the director does it using such sexist tropes? Black Swan’s story centers on feminine breakdown, but it seems like such a man’s view. This throws off my notion of the film as saying something true. It’s certainly sincere and well done. However, the dated use of the virgin/whore dichotomy is far from groundbreaking. There is also the overbearing and emotionally stifling mother, the lecherous father figure, and the abundance of neuroses overly-attributed to women throughout history.

Perhaps I am simply overanalyzing that which is just supposed to be fiction. I tend to do that a lot. But I do believe it’s important to view pieces of popular entertainment with some degree of healthy scrutiny. Movies are vehicles of our collective culture, and they say something about the way in which our society thinks about certain subjects. Perhaps this is simply and only Aronofsky’s angle on femininity, but, considering he is a much-lauded filmmaker, I find Black Swan curious and engagingly problematic. That is not to say that I don’t admire its audacity.