|
The Savages is writer/director Tamara Jenkins’ long awaited follow-up to her debut film, the Slums of Beverly Hills. And in the nine years since her first feature, she has honed her writing skills considerably, releasing a touching and subtle comedy/drama about two middle-aged siblings dealing with an elderly father approaching death. The two siblings are brilliantly played by two of the most talented character actors working today, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.
The story follows a fairly minimalist plotline, but the pacing and character development are top notch. The film never condescends or resorts to shameful heart-string-tugging pretension to get its point across. Instead, Jenkins weaves a narrative that paints emotion with the empty and quiet spaces of life, employing hyper realism in an understated but deeply effective fashion.
And as in real life, the film depicts the absurd along with the tragic, finding genuine occasions of humor in those most painful tribulations we must all undergo. This speaks to the overall theme of the film: the gloomy, lonely moments of suffering, whether as life withers away literally in death or figuratively in middle age, are the instances when real inspiration may be found.
This is not an easy movie to watch. It all feels a bit too raw and real for the casual viewing. But if the appropriate resolve and disposition can be mustered, the film offers unadulterated life.
Grade: A- |
|
Sometimes a documentary does not have to spend its time excoriating the Bush Administration’s Iraq disaster or bemoan drearily upon the famine plight in Africa in order to be entertaining. Sometimes a documentary does not have to be filled with Armani-suited men in darkly lit rooms spilling the beans about political corruption in order to be important. Sometimes a documentary can be immensely absorbing and meaningful and just be about, well… Donkey Kong. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters manages just that feat.
The documentary takes place among the bizarre world of competitive classic video-gaming, that cutthroat, forsaken blood sport where players still mash away at buttons trying to beat the high scores of bygone arcade games from the 80’s. At the center of the film is one the most amusing and compelling real-life hero vs. villain pairings of all time: the protagonist is a modest down-on-his-luck middle-school science teacher and family man, Steve Weibe, and the antagonist is an arrogant, mullet-sporting restaurateur, hot sauce peddler and classic arcade game ruling champion, Billy Mitchell.
The film follows Weibe’s attempt at beating Mitchell’s longstanding high score at Donkey Kong, largely considered the most difficult of the classics by those within the competitive gaming community.
Along the way, the film also explores the strange domain of those who maintain the records of the high scores, mainly a controversial group called Twin Galaxies (of which Billy Mitchell is a member), and the struggles Weibe must endure to get his talents and scores recognized.
Featuring excellent editing and flawless pacing, this documentary tells a gripping and hilarious true story no to be missed.
Grade: A- |
|
The third and final animated feature and the first of two French language films on our list, Persepolis is the film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name.
The film follows Marjane growing up in Iran as the country transitions from rule under the Shah Pahlavi into the Islamists’ revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Though the film is animated in a beautiful, if not simplistic, black-and-white comic book style, it is very heavy in its portrayal of politics, being perhaps the most complex and politically astute film from 2007. It helps to know a little about Iran’s history going in, because early on the viewer is bombarded in rapid-fire fashion with many different narratives from Iran’s tumultuous past.
But the real focus of the film is on the life and personal struggles of Marjane, as she confronts the difficulty of becoming a woman, the heartbreak of love lost, the horrors of war, and the complexity of what it means to be Iranian at home and abroad.
The only real flaw of the film, as is the trappings of so many biographical films which attempt to depict a myriad of events throughout someone’s life, is the structure feels a bit scattershot at times which inevitably leads to slight pacing issues. This leaves segments of the film’s 90-minute runtime to feel overlong. However, this gripe is small and easily forgivable considering how powerfully and movingly the bulk of the film resonates, and how artfully the personal is balanced with the political.
Grade: A- |
|
While Julian Scnabel's designation as a genius, neo-expressionist wunderkind artist had more to do with marketing savvy and the overoptimistic art market of the early 80's, he is, if anything, underappreciated as a filmmaker. In a series of biopics, Schnabel has explored the lives of a painter in Basquiat (in which Gary Oldman plays Schnabel himself) and a politically and socially repressed gay Cuban poet in Before Night Falls. And now with the mind-blowing the Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillion), Schabel tells the true story of a French libertine womanizer, Jean Do Bauby, who is suddenly paralyzed. The film is adapted from Bauby’s memoir, which he wrote from memory using only the ability to move his eyelid to communicate the text.
Grade: A |
|
As always, Daniel Day-Lewis can make a bad film good and a good film great. The latter is the case with Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film There Will Be Blood, where Day-Lewis chews up the scenery like a glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Set against the landscape of early twentieth century oil prospecting, the film skillfully paints a rather stark portrait of ambition, greed and some other basic (and base) human struggles… like murder (hence the title). Loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil, the film follows Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), who is, in his own words, an oil man. We see his meager professional beginnings at the bottom of a hole in the desert and watch as he becomes rich, powerful and increasingly disturbed. During this time, we see him raise a child while moving from spot to spot to exploit the natural resources of the land and communities that inhabit it. Rich with symbolism and metaphor, the story manages to remain ambiguous, while much of the tension simmers beneath but uncomfortably close to the surface. It would seem that Anderson's goal with the film wasn't to send a message, but rather to present a picture. The film enraptures the audience with its driving momentum (which, granted, takes about the first third of the movie to build). The main themes throughout the story are two-fold, both personified almost perfectly by Day-Lewis. The first theme is simple enough– a basic impulse for power and domination. The second theme, and really the heart of the story, is a bizarre sense of alienation and loss that grows more intense as the story progresses and Plainview's professional successes mount. Don't expect to take away a moral from this film, but do expect to be thoroughly enthralled by this powerful story, deftly constructed by a sensational cast and crew. Anderson has proved once again that he is perhaps the most talented filmmaker of his generation. Grade: A |
