Holy Motors

Surreal.  Absurd.  Nonsense.  Grotesque.  Just plain weird.  Any of these descriptions fit Léos Carax’ film Holy Motors.

Actually, the director describes this as a science fiction about people wanting to change their lives and have new experiences.  But, if you don’t know that or aren’t into the surreal, the absurd or nonsense and are expecting some sort of narrative thread, you will find yourself at a loss in trying to understand what is going on and waiting for a payoff that never comes.

However, if you are able to sit back and enjoy the images of a man named Oscar (Denis Lavant), who is driven around Paris in a white stretch limousine by a female chauffeur named Celine (Edith Scob) to “appointments,” for each of which he dons a different disguise and plays out a different role, you will often be amused.

Once I dropped looking for any semblance of sense, I realized the film reminded me of the nonsense plays of Ring Lardner (not his son of Woman of the Year or M*A*S*H* fame), one of which I turned into a play while in college.  A highlight was a wash tub filled with water that served as a boat on a dry sea.  Get the picture?

 
My issue with Holy Motors, is that, once I got into just seeing each of the appointment segments as a vignette all its own, there was a realistic scene, ending in a suicide, that was just ignored by Oscar as he hurried on to his last appointment where he was at “home” with a chimpanzee wife and baby chimp.  Oh, yes.

Then, I remembered the quote from Macbeth and felt this was just “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

 I’ll weirdly give it a 3 out of 5 for its attempt to be different.

 

 

 

 

Beyond the Hills

Though visually stunning, Beyond the Hills, the new film by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, whose previous film 4 Weeks, 3 Months and 2 Days I thoroughly enjoyed, left me as cold as the Moldova hills where the story takes place.

Young Alina (Cristina Flutur), who has been living in Germany, returns to Romania to visit her childhood friend and, likely, lover Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) in an effort to bring her back to Alina’s new life.  Unfortunately, Voichita is now living as a nun in a religious compound headed by a fundamentalist Orthodox priest known as Papa (Valeriu Andriuta) and is reluctant to leave a life where she does not have to think, only obey.

It’s a story about the conflict between emerging individuality in a society still competing with the dogmatic remnants of Communism, though here, ironically, religion stands in for the old economic system showing any form of fundamentalism can be an “opiate of the masses.”

 Flutur and Stratan shared the Best Actress prize in Cannes and both these newcomers were wonderful. 

Oleg Mutu’s cinematography was also wonderful in its starkness.

What left me cold was director Mungiu’s style of shooting.  He likes to show the uninteresting part of a scene/shot because not all of life is interesting.  I, however, would rather sit through 2 hours of this story and do without the extra half hour of uninteresting footage.

Moreover, there seems to be an epidemic of well-acted, well-photographed films like this, The Master and The Paperboy that are about stupid/cultist people about whom I have little or no interest.

I give Beyond the Hills a 2+ out of 5.

Amour

Amour (Love) was the winner of the grand prize Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon and The Piano Teacher) and photographed by the fabulous Darius Khondji (Midnight in Paris), Amour is a true masterpiece.

Be warned, however, that this is not an entertainment.  This is a film that makes you think while it touches your heart.

It’s the story of Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), who have been married over half a century and live together in a Paris apartment where they are enjoying each other in retirement.

But, as Anne’s health begins to decline and she suffers debilitating strokes, George takes care of her with tender love, compassion and patience. 

At a time when people are living longer and their care is often in the hands of the stronger one of a couple or their children, I often felt myself viewing Amour as a documentary as much as a drama, learning the how-to of George and wondering if I would do some things the same or differently. 

Thanks to the wonderful editing of Nadine Muse and Monika Willi, though the characters move slowly, the film does not.  It’s a sorrowful subject treated with truthful dignity and power.

A sad note was hearing the Cannes press perked up when Isabelle Huppert, who played the couple’s daughter, appeared, but basically ignored veterans Trintignant and Riva, both with over 50-year careers from the iconic A Man and a Woman and Hiroshima Mon Amour,  respectively. 
 
I’m delighted that the Palme d’Or proved winning is the best revenge.

 I remember that, barely out of my teens, I could not sit through Bryan Forbes’ film on old age, The Whisperers. I simply did not want to deal with this subject at that time in my life.  So, if you’re under 30, I can well understand it if you might not be attracted this film.  However, I would urge everyone over 30 to see it.

I give Amour an unquestionable 5 out of 5.

Passion

Passion is Brian De Palma’s delicious homage to himself with this remake of French director Alain Corneau’s 2010 film Love Crime. 

Backed by the exquisite cinematography of José Luis Alcaine, who is noted for filming beautiful women beautifully, and the throbbing musical composition of Pino Donaggio, the composer of De Palma’s films Carrie and Dressed to Kill, Passion pits two ambitious advertising executives, Rachel McAdams’ Christine and Noomi Rapace’s Isabelle against each other with Karoline Herfurth’s Dani thrown in to make for even more fun.

The film is driven by those hatefully dishonest words, “It’s only business.”

De Palma enjoys playing with the audience right up until the end, when we’re left wondering what was a dream and what was real.  He admits he threw in the unscripted final shot at the last moment as a tease.

As long as you don’t take Passion too seriously, you’ll enjoy this retro throwback to Hitchcock and earlier De Palma.

I give it a 3+ out of 5.

 

Taken 2

I must admit that, being a big fan of Taken in 2008, Taken 2 was one of my most highly anticipated films of the fall.  And, for the most part, the film lived up to my expectation. 

The story takes place the year following the original, when Bryan Mills’ (Liam Neeson) daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) has flunked her L.A. driver’s test for the second time.  This sets up a fabulous car chase later in the film, when Kim is forced to drive while she and her father flee the henchmen of Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija).  He is the father of Marko, who was responsible for Kim’s kidnapping in Taken and was killed by Mills.

In fact, Mills contributed generously to the depopulation of the small Albanian town of Tropojë where the sex traffickers came from.    

Murad has been searching for the man responsible for his son’s death over the past year and, having uncovered Mills’ identity, has ordered for him, his daughter and his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) to be taken while they are all in Istanbul.  That’s the setup.  Go and enjoy the ride.

 

The film's only “problem” is that, in the original, we did not know what a tough character Bryan Mills was.  So, as the action rolled forward, there was a high degree of tension as to if he was going to get out of deadly situations.  Here, viewers of Taken know who he is and only wonder how fast he will get out of the situation and how many bad guys he will take down as he does.  This is not a fault of the film, it’s just how it is.

James Bond and other sequel heroes get around this situation by varying the villains.  Here, the villains are essentially the same as in the original film…same look, same family, same lack of honor. 

As an action film, I’m giving Taken 2 a 4+ out of 5.

 

 

The Paperboy

Here I am at the New York Film Festival...

 

 

 

 

                

For the first time in its 50-year history, the Festival has done a Tribute to a cinema icon.  Nicole Kidman was given this honor.

                                                                                                 

At first, you might think this an odd choice, but when you see the body of her work from To Die For to Dogville to Eyes Wide Shut to The Hours to Moulin Rouge to The Paperboy, it begins to make sense.  She is incredibly diverse.  And, if not the obvious choice, she is certainly a well-deserved choice.

Nicole showed up in a beautiful red dress with golden glitter and answered smart questions from Program Director Richard Peña for nearly an hour before the screening of The Paperboy.

Unfortunately, this sophomore effort of director Lee Daniels, who created the exceptional film Precious, was not at all precious, nor was it the highlight of the evening. 

Due to his initial success, Daniels was able to attract excellent talent like Nicole Kidman to The Paperboy.  And, she is excellent.  John Cusack is excellent.  Macy Gray is excellent. Matthew McConaughey, who is not usually, in my opinion, excellent, is on a roll since Killer Joe, this summer, and is excellent.  In trying to keep up with the others, Zac Efron, who is too novice to have yet been excellent, turns in his best effort to date.

The problem is like that of The Master.  They’re in a story about low-life, stupid and/or unlikable characters that is poorly written with erratic direction and editing. 

The only likable character is Macy Gray’s Anita, who is the narrator of the film, speaking we know not to whom for a reason we know not why because it seems to be some years after the fact.  And, Anita, who later endears us, looks like she’s stoned, so, in reflection, her arc is not so endearing. 

Nicole Kidman’s Charlotte, who wants to marry a mean-spirited convicted murderer she’s never met, supposedly, because she believes he’s innocent brings out, in a scene after she’s slept with Zac Efron’s Jack, a street-smart wisdom that elevates her above anyone else in this lurid story.  But, then, she goes off to live in a swamp with Cusack’s wife-beater Hillary, who, ultimately, kills her. 

It doesn’t make sense; nor does a confusing editing style where shots stutter, seeming to leave out frames of, for instance, walking to a door.  The character starts and then, without a cut to a new shot, is at the door without the intervening steps.  Perhaps this was a way to shorten the film, but it could have been more easily done by not making it in the first place.

I have to, at least, give it a 2 out of 5 because of some great performances, the guts of shooting in the swampland and in the hopes everyone involved in this film learned what not to do in the future.

Fat Kid Rules the World

Actor Matthew Lillard (The Descendants, Trouble With the Curve) succeeds with his first directing effort, Fat Kid Rules the World.

 

Made for $750,000 and with an advertising budget of slightly over $150,000 derived from the Internet site Kickstarter, Fat Kid Rules the World is the quintessential independently produced movie, a project that took over 10 years to bring to the screen. The young actors in this coming-of-age story are unknowns, smartly anchored by veteran Billy Campbell (The Killing, The Rocketeer) and backed with an original score by Pearl Jam’s lead guitarist Mike McCready.

The story, taken from a novel by KL Going, concerns high school student Troy Billing (Jacob Wysocki), who has doubled in size since his mother’s death a few years prior.  Living with his former Marine father, who now works in security, and his younger, more sportive brother Dayle (Dylan Arnold), Troy has become a self-created outcast.

 

At opening, Troy attempts to walk in front of a bus, only to be saved by an expelled stoner named Marcus Macrae (Matt O’Leary). Marcus is a homeless punk rocker, who befriends Troy for the money and food he is able to mooch off of him.  He manipulates the inept young man into learning to become the drummer for a new band he is creating, since his former band members have kicked him out of the group.

Troy goes along with the scam because Marcus is the key to a community of outsiders, including the attractive Isabel (Lili Simmons).

 

Winner of the Audience Award at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, the film is only flawed by trying to fit in too much of the book.  Or, perhaps, it was just my own cringe factor resulting from a few too many visits to the refrigerator, which is the first thing Troy does every time he enters his home.

 Fat Kid Rules the World opens in New York this weekend and Los Angeles the week after.  I hope 

it gets around more of the Country.  Anyone who feels like a misfit or outsider, their parents and 

those who enjoy good movies will be delighted with this one.

 

I give it a 4 out of 5.