Archive for the ‘Film Reviews’ Category

Older Entries »
h1

Zombies, Goethe, peen. Also, Moscow.

February 24, 2012

I have reviewed Alexander Sokurov’s “Faust” for The Moscow News, as promised.

For a person who mostly stumbles around groggily in between caffeine sessions, I’ve had a very productive week. Hell, I even saw Putin. Though perhaps the best sight wasn’t Putin: it was journalist and author Anna Arutunyan, being lifted by a huge, factory worker-type in the air, all to get a better glimpse of the aforementioned prime minister at Luzhniki stadium.

Later, Anna and I went in search of food and my husband, and had a long conversation about physics, primal energy and politics, some which we even taped. It referenced everything from frescoes in the historic Kirillovskaya church in Kiev to Vladislav Surkov. Snow flurries drifted to the ground. The air in Moscow was rapidly warming. We must have sounded like two idiots to anyone who caught even the briefest snatch of our rambling discussion.

On our way home to the baby that night, my husband and I dropped into the Gogol night club, our Kilometer Zero. Maybe. The bouncers were still polite, the crowd was still refreshingly human. Outside the dressing room, a lantern styled like an old street lamp still burned.

In the summer’s, Moscow’s swanky Stoleshnikov pereulok attracts rent-boys who discreetly advertise themselves to passing ladies and gentlemen. But when we came out of Gogol, it was cold and dark and the wind had changed directions, hinting, also discreetly, at spring.

Posted in Dork-Out, Film Reviews, Literature, Work | 2 Comments »

h1

I love Alexander Sokurov

February 19, 2012

For his radicalism.

In case you were wondering.

Should have a review of “Faust” coming out in the The Moscow News this Friday. Oh man. I am going to town.

Posted in fandom, Film Reviews, Good News, Russia, Work | Leave a Comment »

h1

Let’s talk about “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

October 19, 2011

So I finally saw this movie as part of the opening of the 2morrow festival here in Moscow. You might say that as the parents of a little boy, Alexey and I probably should not have seen something like this, particularly on the day that Lyovka turned 3 months old (3 months! Amazing! An entire season of Lyovka!). Yet I’m one of those people who believes in fighting fire with fire – namely, I try to confront my worst parenthood-related nightmares via books and movies. No point in trying to run away from stories such as the one told in “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Well, inasmuch as this film actually tells a story.

I haven’t read the book, so I can’t tell if this is a faithful adaptation. And I’m not sure if I want to read the book now, because there is a great hollowness at the center of the film adaptation, and it’s got nothing to do with all of that nietzschean “the abyss looking into you” crap. Quite frankly, I just wasn’t that taken with the characters. I ultimately decided that I couldn’t care less as to why Kevin, the title character, is such an utter sociopath – in most scenes, he was just too smooth and polished, I suppose, to come off as real. The soundtrack was a little too ironic – all of those cheerful oldies songs worked for about 20 minutes or so before they became redundant. The great and glorious Tilda Swinton spent entirely too much time washing red paint from various parts of her body and house – I got the visual metaphor the 100th time around, thanks, the 101th time it was shoved in my face made me wonder if director Lynne Ramsay thinks the audience is full of idiots.

By contrast, the real-life sociopath Eric Harris, as described in Dave Cullen’s “Columbine,” struck me as pretty interesting. I suppose this is an unfair comparison, considering that Cullen wrote a nonfiction account of a real-life school massacre – but there was also something gratifying about the way in which Cullen treated his subject matter. He didn’t beat the reader over the head with all of this “ooooh, let’s explore the depraved world of a sociopathic mass murderer” stuff. When you’re dealing with something as horrifying as the events that took place at Columbine High on April 20, 1999, the facts on the ground will speak for themselves.

This isn’t to say that Ramsay isn’t masterful – she is. When she pulls off a scene, she doesn’t merely pull it off – she scores a freaking home run. Who needs to show a school massacre, for example, when a single shot of a blond cheerleader type screaming for help from behind a locked door is chilling enough? When Ezra Miller verbally eviscerates his mother in the middle of a restaurant, you immediately realize what a great director had to have been involved here – to get Miller to totally hold his own in a tense scene with Tilda fucking Swinton (do I hero-worship her too much? Probably). “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is ultimately a movie that’s been overcooked, but it’s also the kind of movie that makes you want to watch more of Lynne Ramsay’s work. And that says a lot – because I’m not one of those epic film junkies who has to know what’s going on in the industry 24/7 (which, considering my present career trajectory, is a bad thing… hm…), and my days of trying to write actual film criticism are pretty much behind me.

All the way in Moscow, it was just nice to get a glimpse of the doors of an American high school, really. Those doors I am nostalgic about… the ones that the evil Kevin locks with yellow bike lockers. Is it bad that I was just looking at them and going, “I want to hear the click and hiss of those doors one more time”?

Posted in America, Film Reviews | 9 Comments »

h1

Another still from “Katya, Vitya, Dima”

September 19, 2011

Graduation in a rural village, Voronezh region, Russia

This is one of those movies that has seriously reminded me of my age. Not necessarily in a bad way.

I suppose it’s natural for Alexey to shoot a film that’s mostly about kids – now that we have our own kid. And I’m glad I’ve been involved in this project from the start. Being his wife, it was inevitable, but some people don’t realize just *to what extent* I’ve had to be involved: whether it’s giving editing suggestions at 4 a.m. when I’m pumping breast milk, or sacrificing the family budget when we suddenly need a new computer monitor.

In our household this month, we’re dealing with a little baby boy, a hysterical director trying to finish a documentary he single-handedly shot and edited, and a cranky new mother who’s just gone back to work and who’s just had to deal with her new play premiering at the Lyubimovka festival. You can imagine what it’s been like. Or don’t, actually – if you don’t want the nightmares to haunt you.

I’m proud of us for not having gone completely insane, though. The other day, with the nanny spending the night at our place, Alexey and I sat in a kitchen of a hostel on Moscow’s busy Garden Ring, listening to the legendary playwright and screenwriter Slava Durnenkov desribe the equally legendary Hagia Sophia like only Slava Durnenkov can. A part of me wanted desperately to be home with Lev, but another part recognized the fact that I needed my walkies. I wound up ejecting Dima Bogoslavsky from the bedroom so that I could pump. Bogoslavsky is probably the biggest success of this year’s Lyubimovka – his play will soon premiere at the Mayakovsky Theater. Now that Mindaugas Karabauskis is in charge of that place, living playwrights can actually, you know, have their premiere there and stuff.

Speaking of the Mayakovsky – thanks to the nanny, again, we actually went to the Mayak restaurant next door after a night of readings at the festival. I like the Mayak – I just don’t like it on the weekends. On the weekends, some of the guests try extra hard to remind everyone that they’re freewheeling artist-types, and bang on the piano extra hard as well. It was good to sort of have a social life again, though, wreathed in smoke or otherwise.

The reading of my own new play, “The lives of living people,” went fine. Not great – but fine, considering the pressure on Alexey to edit the movie and hold rehearsals, and considering the fact that I was re-writing the new draft in the heat of the summer, with an enormous belly weighing me down. The best part was realizing that the main heroine, as interpreted by glamorous Alexandra Rebenok, is kinda a bad person.

That night on the Garden Ring, Slava asked us – “Who financed the film project? Who are the other crew members?” We had to explain that there was no funding, it was just Alexey and me, and our money. We had to explain that there was no crew. I haven’t realized before how fantastical that might seem from the outside – that this movie got done, and that it looks the way it does, and that it happens to tell a pretty profound story straight from the margins of Russian society.

I suppose we’re allowed to feel tired.

Posted in Film Reviews, Good News, Kultur, Personal Essays, Russia | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

h1

A still from Alexey Zhiryakov’s “Katya, Vitya, Dima”

September 9, 2011

katya vitya dima by alexey zhiryakov

“Katya, Vitya, Dima” is the English title. The working title in Russian is “Дом у дороги.”

A good wife must promote her husband’s work at every opportunity – which is working against me at the moment, because anything I might say may be suspect. “Oh, of course she would say that.”

It’s a shame, because I watched the rought cut version last night, wiped away the tears, and said something like, “Well, hell, darling. It was certainly worth it to have you gone so much in the last trimester of the pregnancy.”

The movie was shot in the spring and summer of 2011, in the village of Shestakovo, Voronezh region, Russian Federation. It focuses on a married couple and their three kids. It’s a documentary whose style personally reminds me of Sofia Coppola.

I’ll write more about it when I have the chance to gather my thoughts.

Posted in Film Reviews, Good News, Personal Essays, Russia | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

h1

My own best movies of the 00′s

December 6, 2009

In honour of Mark’s “10 best movies of the fearsome decade.”

Just keep in mind that I was not that great of a moviegoer this decade before you start pelting me with rotten food items. For what it’s worth, I tried to be somewhat objective, and did not include merely a clutch of my favourite movies. Well, somewhat. Hold the grapefruit and go with the tomatoes. Tomatoes are softer.

10. The 40 Year Old Virgin

… Is the sort of movie you have to put on when a part of you wants to end it all in a tiresomely melodramatic fashion (bottle of champagne, tall building, no pre-”sugar tits” Mel Gibson to save your stupid ass). Paul Rudd alone is a celebration of existence.

9. 28 Days Later

Sing this to the tune of “Tubthumping”: Oh, Danny Boyle, Danny Boyle, Danny Boyle. I know that “Slumdog Millionaire” won a bunch of Oscars, but still, this is the best Danny Boyle film of all time. OF ALL TIME. The images of a fantastically devastated London can never quite be erased from memory. Plus, Cillian Murphy gets naked. Plus, it’s brilliant, and horrifyingly believable.

8. A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles)

“Whaaaat,” you’re saying. “You’re picking this Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie over Amelie?” Yes, yes, I am. Amelie was beautiful, but Engagement is more beautiful. Amelie was profound, but Engagement is more profound. Amelie was darling, but Engagement is practically mythical. I think it was must have been really hard for Jeunet to have people really get this movie in a post-Amelie world. But now that the dust has settled, I come back to it and see how fucking epic it is all the more clearly.

"May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out."

"May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out"

7. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

This is the best film in the Peter Jackson trilogy. I am damn proud to say that I saw it 7 times in the theater – I don’t care if you give me a wedgie and stuff me back into my locker for admitting as much.

Legolas rocks the blond wig, Viggo Mortensen is pitch-perfect as Strider, Ian McKellen very nearly kicks Christopher Lee’s ass, Sean Bean and Liv Tyler give the best performances of their respective careers (do NOT whine to me about how they expanded Arwen’s character and blah blah blah antiquated notions of femininity blah blah) and and nobody has yet gotten tired of Frodo’s adorable deer-eyes. And the soundtrack is only the best soundtrack of all time.

Sure, there’s no Helm’s Deep or anything, but the fighting is not the point. FotR goes deeper than that. It is a great illustration of the long defeat that Tolkien explored in his work, completely understandable plot changes be damned.

Le Pacte, baby

Le pacte, baby

6. The Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le pacte des loups)

This movie is the most beautiful mess of all beautiful messes ever created by humanity. My friend, movie critic Larry Toppman, wrote that Brotherhood is “as much at home in caves or bordellos as it is a starchy drawing room,” and he was correct. It’s magical and violent, and both an elegant hat-tip to movies like “Jaws” and, at the same time, its own beast. Brotherhood celebrates the love of the preposterous. It reminds us that every once in a while, you have to be a goddamn libertine and just go with it.

5. Lost In Translation

I guess nobody really needed any more reasons to love Bill Murray, or Scarlett Johansson, or Sofia Coppola when this movie came out. But the alchemy in this one was so excellent, and so precise, that you had to bow before its glory anyway. In many ways, its an alienating movie about alienation (most of my Japanese friends hated it, and I don’t blame them), but then it cracks open your heart, and that’s what makes all the difference. That moment when Johansson’s character is observing a wedding ceremony still gives me goosebumps.

4. Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair’s best film, I think. It’s Bollywood mixed with Jane Austen, except it’s not some sort of cutesy remake or rip-off. It’s its own thing. And it’s gorgeous and hopeful.

Still from "Russian Ark"

Still from "Russian Ark"

3. Russian Ark (Russkiy Kovcheg)

The entirety of this film is composed of one long, uninterrupted shot, and that alone should win director Alexander Sokurov respect and admiration for decades to come. But “Russian Ark” is more than a gimmick. It’s a haunting and tender rumination on centuries of Russian history, and its final moments had me blubbering like a little bitch. Sokurov has an uncanny ability to resurrect ghosts, and, to paraphrase Craig Raine, to make them see, to make them hear, to make them here.

2. The Return (Vozvrashenie)

Andrei Zvyagintsev channeled Jesus and Sophocles to work his strange hoodoo in a rural, stripped-down, dream-like Russia. “The Return” is one of the smartest movies I’ve ever seen, and it also manages to be one of the most sincere movies that I’ve ever seen. It’s mystical and frightening, and speaks to you about faith in way that, I think, makes people profoundly uncomfortable in this day and age. But it’s so much more than an arty provocation. Zvyagintsev may be an heir to Tarkovsky, but he is also his own person. And what he does is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

It’s my belief that the best films are the ones that tell the best stories. This movie tells several great stories, and does it in a way that resembles poetry. Fuck it – it is poetry. And that makes it the greatest film of the decade. For me. In the year 2000, the contest was pretty much over already. Life is funny that way.

Posted in Dork-Out, fandom, Film Reviews, Kultur, Work | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments »

h1

Zachary Quinto is as badass as ever

May 8, 2009

Or, in other words, the new Star Trek is pretty damn sweet.

Enjoy.

Posted in Dork-Out, fandom, Film Reviews, Good News, Harem, Work | Tagged | 3 Comments »

h1

MY List of the 25 Greatest Movie Characters Ever (So Far)

January 10, 2009

This one is purely subjective. If you agree with some of my choices, lovely! If not, that’s cool too. I have to say that I generally don’t approach movies in a progressive or affirming ways – I think that sometimes, what makes a great character isn’t necessarily something that’s progressive or affirming. I think that people should respond to characters on a variety of levels – for example, “300,” to me, was both very entertaining and extremely disturbing, much like a lot of Cold War-themed American movies are.

I don’t think that the disturbing factor should necessarily preclude enjoyment, but rather deepen your experience as a viewer (of course, this doesn’t apply to every situation, I’d be a fool if I insisted that it did. This is why I hate people who go – “You can’t watch ‘Munich’? For*snort* psychological issues? What the HELL is wrong with you?” – and wouldn’t do that to anyone else).

Having said that, I like comic roles most of all. Probably because they’re darker in more creative ways, sometimes. And also because laughter is way underrated, even vicious laughter.

And as Rachel pointed out, why were so little women included in the revised Yahoo list? Tsk.

Anyway, here we go:

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in Dork-Out, Film Reviews, Pop Culture Essays | Tagged , , | 19 Comments »

h1

So, Max Payne

October 16, 2008

I belong to the club known as the Give Mark Wahlberg More Worthwhile Roles Club, so I wandered into “Max Payne” with expectations set on medium.

I’ve never played the video game, and everyone that I went to has played the video game, so there was a lot of leaning over and going “I cannot BELIEVE they could f*ck this up” going on.

All in all, though, I had a decent time. I bet that most people seeing this movie will have a decent time, if they just sit back, relax, and watch shit blow up.

The tragic family montages appear to be spliced in from some old Vin Diesel debacle (not that I actually saw that debacle, but I imagine that it was a bit like this), but I enjoyed the occasional weirdness of this picture. I just wish there had been more of it. You know, enough to fill a film.

The beginning is great, fabulous, even; it made me think of Neil Gaiman and “American Gods.” The perpetual gloom hanging over the picture never quite lifts, it’s all wet snow and dark rooms, and I rather liked that.

Overall, it felt like there was a darker, stranger picture underneath the layers piled on top. It really came alive during the tattoo parlour, a quiet scene where nothing much happens, but which also happens to be my favourite one.

The villain isn’t particularly convincing and he gets lost amid all of the special effects fireworks and you never think much of him. His requisite villian speech isn’t bad, it simply should have been delivered by a different actor altogether. The idea of a man finally taking charge of his life by basically turning into a monster is an intriguing one – too bad that in “Max Payne” this idea is executed with all the grace and splendour of babboons during mating season.

Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg just doesn’t get to do much. And the sad thing is, I’m sure this role wasn’t particularly easy. There’s lots of work involved in such a role, regardless of whether or not it translates the way you want it to on the screen.

Wahlberg’s a great actor. I don’t care what the haters say. He can do more with a whisper than others do with a full-fledged fit.

Olga Kurylenko is pretty sweet too. She takes a role that’s as old as the movies – the doomed “slut” figure – and brightens it up through mischief. Maybe I’m just a sucker for satin slip-dresses and f*ck-me boots, but I liked her.

Mila Kunis fared much worse, but she had no material to work with. She might as well have been T-X in “Rise of the Machines.” Her eyeliner had more presence than she did, but, once again, I blame the script.

I have a dozen more complaints, but once again must go back to the fact that I had fun watching this movie. I settled into a rhythm and just went with it. It reminded me of being a kid again, and of being righteous, and wanting to fix the world, or, at least, a life.

I know it’s juvenile sensibilities are going to get slammed, and perhaps rightly so, but I damn near reveled in them.

Posted in Film Reviews | Tagged | 4 Comments »

h1

On the Glorious Alex Garland

March 8, 2008

Like many readers of a certain disposition, I love Alex Garland. The fact that he is responsible for a stunningly high percentage of my nightmares does not make me love him less, but more.

I have just re-read The Beach. I vividly remember the first time I read it, as a skinny teenager who hung out in strip malls. I couldn’t relate to the book at all, not then, not now. I am neither a traveller nor an adventurer. I am, on most days of the year, a tourist.

It is this inability to relate that allowed me to initially keep the narrative at an arm’s length. I marveled at Richard’s fucked-up antics from a safe distance (Richard being the protagonist, of course). But the story nipped at my subconscious. Richard nipped at me. I wouldn’t say I came to the point of hallucinating him, but I did find myself carrying on conversations with him in my head.

Set in Thailand, The Beach has been criticized by painting a flat, one-dimensional portrait of Thais. However, what people seem to have missed is the fact that this was a very deliberate move on Garland’s part. Many backpackers, even some folks whose intentions are basically pure, do not view “the natives” as fully human. This fundamental disconnect is one of the main reasons why the “paradise” discovered by Richard and his fellow traveling companions is, at its core, a rotten sham. Though then again, Garland is not preachy. The happy times spent times on the beach are as genuine as the horror that follows.

There are many parallels to be drawn between The Beach and Lord of the Flies, or The Beach and “Apocalypse Now.” But what this book makes me think about is actually Milton and “Paradise Lost.” I think about Adam and Eve getting chucked out on their asses from Eden, and I see The Beach as documenting that desperate, sweaty, human elbow-jostling to get back in.

I like the references that Garland makes in his work. People have slammed him for being “unoriginal,” but I rather see him as extremely perceptive, drawing on rich source material of cultural experience, tipping his hat to everyone from Graham Greene to George Romero, but doing it in such a way that a gesture is sublimated into a thing of startling beauty. There’s nothing sly or gimmicky about him when he does this.

“28 Days Later” wrecked me. Andrew O’Heir wrote something about how it was lame, and how “Day of the Dead” was so much better, and I could not have disagreed more. There are many similarities between the frenzied violence of that film and of Richard’s ruminations on danger and death. Richard is someone who craves horror, and “28 Days Later” says, “be careful what you wish for, Richard, my lad.”

I see that movie everywhere. There’s a particular shot of people running in the video clip for My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers,” and that’s a “28 Days Later” type of shot, and puts the song in a completely different perspective for me.

There was some guy who kicked my cab last night (I have no idea what that was about), and that strange outburst snapped me back to “28 Days Later,” and my palms began to sweat. If that’s not a testament to Garland’s creep-tastic genius, I don’t know what is.

Posted in Film Reviews, Literature, Writers | Tagged , , | 7 Comments »

Older Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 81 other followers