Over the past few years I’ve come to appreciate Pedro Almodóvar. It helps to date someone who is obsessed with him, but it also helps to grow a little older and revisit his films from a different perspective. I can remember hearing about ‘Talk To Her’ everywhere for about 6 months when it was released. When I finally saw the film on DVD I couldn’t understand what the fuss had been about. I rented ‘All About My Mother’ and felt like I was missing something. I liked both films but didn’t understand why a cult had formed around either.
I saw a pre-release screening of ‘Bad Education’ and had a violent reaction against it, so it wasn’t until I was won over by the charms of ‘Volver’ that I began to appreciate him. I could now appreciate ‘Live Flesh’ or ‘Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ because something had clicked. (Embarrassing to admit, I had a similar reaction to David Lynch having completely opposite reactions to his work before and after watching “Twin Peaks”.) While I’m not sure that his films will ever be my favorite, I can understand his appeal. His style is unmistakable, vibrant characters, genre-blurring plotlines, always tweaking and refining his obsessions.
‘Broken Embraces’ is about a blind screenwriter, a millionaire and their obsessions, in the center of which is Penelope Cruz as Lena, an aspiring actress. The film, which jumps between present day and the early 1990’s, is unmistakably Almodóvar and even directly references ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’. Many familiar actors are present through a twisty narrative that has dashes of humor, questions of identity and scenes so gorgeous looking you will want to eat the film. A montage to Cat Power’s “Werewolf” is beautiful, unexpected highlight.
One of the films weak spots, unfortunately is it’s characters. Penelope Cruz is fantastic in the film but her character isn’t given enough to do. She’s the object of desire instead of a character who we journey through the film with. The blind director (perhaps by design) doesn’t build much sympathy either. The biggest misstep in the film, however is the final act where characters do too much confessional secret spilling that is more predictable than it should be and wraps things up too neatly. Almodóvar said before he introduced the film that it plays better on the second viewing so I’ll have to trust him on that. I think he’s earned it.
At film festivals sometimes you have to take a gamble. Especially when 90% of the films playing are not from the US you have to do your best at guessing what will be worthwhile. I don’t remember where but I had heard some good things about ‘Mother’, Bong Joon-Ho’s follow-up to ‘The Host’, Korea’s highest grossing film of all time. A genre-mashup of monster movie, environmental parable, and sci-fi family film(?), I liked ‘The Host’ but never felt like I completely understood it.
Watching ‘Mother’ I found myself similarly bewildered. The film opens with a loopy dance sequence, segues into a wacky comedy before turning left again into a dramatic murder mystery. Of the 3 films I saw at this years NYFF, (1 Austrian, 1 Korean, 1 Spanish), I felt the biggest cultural schism with this one. I didn’t hate the film but I never quite got a handle on the tone or whether characters sometimes inexplicable actions were because of the character or the culture.
The very definition of the sort of film you’d expect to find at the New York Film Festival, ‘The White Ribbon’ is a 2 1/2 hour, black and white, subtitled film set in pre-WWI Germany helmed by a World Cinema auteur. The auteur in this case is provocateur Michael Haneke, responsible for ‘Funny Games’, ‘Cache’ and other feel-good films*. While his films aren’t exactly my taste I respect him as a filmmaker more than I do Lars Von Trier who mines similar territory more self consciously and less enjoyably.
This film takes place in a small German village and takes a look at the fractured lives of the families that live there. Because most of the cast is blonde children it took me quite a while to distinguish which characters were which and I’m not sure I ever figured it out. The subject matter is dark: suicides, rape, incest, and beating the retarded(!) are all touched upon though many of these are left ambiguous. Those looking for the film to be tied up will be frustrated as I was at the end of the film.
*His films will not make you feel good.
A few weeks ago I had an impromptu triple feature with my friend Anna to catch up on all the (possibly) great films that were out.
First up was ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ the new Michael Moore film. I really loved ‘Bowling For Columbine’ but have found his subsequent films to have increasingly diminishing returns. A big problem I had with the film was Moore himself. Moore shows up outside a major bank with an empty sack for bailout money and can you believe they wont speak to him! ‘Sicko’ seemed to be a step in the right direction to take himself out of the film as much as possible but ‘Capitalism’ falls backwards as the movie wastes precious minutes on stunts that go absolutely nowhere. Not to say the film isn’t entertaining or interesting but you’ve seen this before and the effect is starting to wear off. The other problem I had with the film was that the subject: “capitalism” is too expansive to be covered in 2 hours. If Moore had focused in on the economy crashing, for example, he might’ve had a more focused and interesting film.
Next was ‘The Informant!’, Steven Soderbergh’s quasi-comedy about Mark Whitacre, real life VP turned FBI informant against his own corn manufacturing company. This could have been a terrible film handled by a more conventional director but with a 70’s cheese score, comedians in straight roles (Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins and Joel McHale all make appearances), and a tone you can’t quite pin down, Soderbergh makes this into something quite interesting. Matt Damon is great as Whitacre, playing him as a buffoon, genius and pathological liar. The story takes some twists that are pretty unbelievable, but the odd tone and unreliable narrator keep you from investing too much in what happens.
Lastly was ‘Bright Star’, Jane Campion’s romance about poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Generally I hate films set in this period, but recently I’ve seen a few that I’ve enjoyed including ‘Pride & Prejudice’, ‘Marie Antoinette’ and now ‘Bright Star’. The film moves at a measured pace (without the witty dialogue of Jane Austen), that can seem slow at times but ultimately creates a more romantic mood for the film. The film has many beautiful images and though a little long is rarely boring. Had the doomed romance not been historically accurate I would had been annoyed at how these two are torn apart but “it actually happened” is good enough to excuse why these two couldn’t have spent more time together. By a small bit this was my favorite film of the three.
I was lucky enough to see this film tonight and it’s one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up or dash them so I’ll say I didn’t love this movie totally but I did love parts of it. The opening of the film is especially fantastic. Everything that happens to Max in the beginning of the film feels so honest and true to what it’s like to be that age and feel that boredom, that mischeif, that hurt. The snowball fight is perfect. So perfect that I was a little disappointed when Max enters the world of the Wild Things.
There the film takes a steep departure both from the beginning of the film and from the book. In the book, Max leaves the real world after a fight and goes to this place where he can do whatever he wants, which seems great at first until he realizes this place too has problems and he misses his family and wants to return home. Instead the film misses these beats because when Max arrives the Wild Things world is already dangerous and Wild Things quite complicated with emotions. This lessens the impact of their good time falling apart because the contrast wasn’t there. While I loved the natural look to the real scenes I think had the Wild Things world been a bit more fantastic it might have helped further differentiate these two.
Putting those expectations aside I really did like the film. The lead Max Records is great in this. The special effects are good because you’re not thinking about them, you’re just reacting to the story. (Take notes, James Cameron!) The opening credits and title card are nice touches. The ending is unexpected. The soundtrack is also really good though I made the mistake of listening to it before I saw the film which made the music more noticeable throughout the film. Spike Jonze has said he wanted to make a movie that felt true to what it’s like to be a kid (rather than a kids movie) and he’s succeeded. It’s hard to say if kids will enjoy this but it’s really like no film I’ve ever seen, kids or otherwise.
I was originally going to call this “MoMA, You Suck” but thought it might be a big harsh. Still, lets get a few things straight: MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art, it is the year 2009 and I really want to see Where The Wild Things Are.
A little over a month ago MoMA announced it was doing a Spike Jonze retrospective, though nowhere in this program would be a screening of his new film. The highlight instead was a program called “In Cahoots: Maurice Sendak and Spike Jonze” which was a 40 min documentary by Jonze about Where The Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak which would be punctuated with a Q&A with Jonze.
There was no announcement for when this would go onsale so I emailed MoMA but heard no response for weeks. I spent those weeks checking their site daily for updates knowing this event would surely sellout when they went onsale. Eventually the exhibition was listed on their site but no ticketing information. After much searching through their labyrinthine site I found that their policy for screenings is tickets would go onsale ONLY 1 week prior to the event and could ONLY be bought in person.
I marked my calendar, still checking occasionally for updates (in case they decided to ticket the event differently from a standard showing) and waited for today. When I arrived in person to MoMA around 2pm I was told the event was already sold out. They had only released 80 tickets and my only remaining option was I could go to the standby line that I would probably want to get there “really early” to have a chance.
But I don’t want to get there really early. I can’t take half a day off work for the chance to see a Q&A, (that’s why I’m not going to the Apple Store!) I just want to buy a ticket for a reasonable price (less than $75 preferrably?) in a way that makes sense (the internet?) and go to the event.
If MoMA anticipated this would be a popular event they could have alloted more tickets, or specified on their website that only small number of tickets would be available. They could have emailed me back right away instead of weeks later and they could have actually sold tickets online. I guess I could have tried going this morning before work instead of at lunch but that doesn’t change the fact that I wasted a lot of energy looking into this event because it was nearly impossible to find out any information on it. Had I been better informed I might’ve been able to get tickets. Oh well.
