So I went to see X-Men: First Class yesterday, which I thought was mostly excellent. My only big problem was the way they tried to shoehorn in the nicknames. There's actually a scene where the "teen" mutants are sitting around figuring out what they're going to call themselves. "And you should be Professor X! And you should be Magneto!" I mean, really. And don't get me started on the coining of the term "X-Men." I mean, I'm sure the film accurately explains where the term came from, but to have someone actually say it was unbelievably corny.
The rest of it, though, is pretty spectacular. I love the 60s trappings and that Charles says "groovy." There are also two cameos from familiar franchise faces that should please fans (and certainly pleased the audience I saw it with). The most compelling parts of the film, as one might expect, are the scenes with Charles and Erik (later known as Prof. X and Magneto, respectively, of course, but those aren't their names yet). My movie husband, Michael Fassbender, is amazing as usual and he and James McAvoy have pretty great chemistry. I've never read the comics, so I don't know if this is true to the canon or not, but I love the idea that they were friends - and very likely are still quite fond of each other. They just stand on opposite sides of the mutant issue and have very different moral values. My favorite scene by far is the sequence where they are going around the world and contacting fellow mutants, especially when they're recruiting "Angel." I almost wanted one of them to ask "Do I make you horny, baby?"
There's some great action in this movie, too (I would expect no less from the director of Kick-Ass). And I loved the integration of historical events, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This brings me to one weird thing about my screening, though. About ten minutes before the show started, about 100 children came filing in (seriously). All schools are presumably out by now, so I'm thinking this was a summer camp or something. Some of the kids were 12/13, but many of them could not have been older than about 7, which is TOO YOUNG (in general) to see a movie like this. Seriously, there are Nazis and torture chambers and mothers getting shot in the FIRST TEN MINUTES. In the rest of the movie, there are also exotic dancers, a blue but otherwise quite naked Jennifer Lawrence, and a good deal of violence. And the f-word, though only once. Earth to adults who are responsible for other people's children - just because it's a comic book movie doesn't mean it's for kids. Just, wow.
Overall, I really loved it. I don't remember much about the first two X-Men movies (which are the only ones I've seen), but this one is just as good as those, as I remember them. Maybe my favorite of the lot (if you leave out the cheesy nicknaming scene, of course :P).
The target of perfection at which posing, period "Oscar bait" pictures shoot in vain.
Amadeus
I was 9 years old when this movie came out in 1984, and my parents went to see it without me (I would discover it on television soon after). I remember that they dressed up as if they were going to the theater and were appalled that people had shown up to the cinema in jeans and shorts. To see a movie about MOZART, forsooth! They talked rapturously about it with my piano teacher, and I listened jealously. This was a point in my life when I was completely unaware of the Oscars and the honors lavished on this film the next spring. But this has been a very important movie to me for most of my life, and it's a case of a great movie that has only gotten better with age (both the movie's age and my own).
My first vivid memory of the film was always the horror of the Salieri's suicide attempt, which for the longest time I could not watch - a fact that seems hilarious to me now. There are many moments in the film, though, that have lived in my memory for a long, long time. At the center of this fantastic movie are two phenomenal performances. F. Murray Abraham (Salieri) and Tom Hulce (Mozart) would each go on to be nominated for Academy Awards, and when Abraham won, he paid tribute to his co-star and on-screen rival by saying that the only thing missing from the experience was having Hulce standing at his side.
The first thing to note about this film, which was written by Peter Shaffer (who also wrote Equus), adapted from his own 1979 play, is that it is not a biography. It is a highly fictionalized story about real people. Mozart's (and Salieri's) music is heavily featured throughout and is an essential piece of the storytelling. Perhaps more than anything else, though, what it is "about" is the nature of genius and the appreciation of it. It may be a cliche to say that a true genius is never appreciated in his/her own time, but I have to say that seeing this film again in the context of an Oscar season puts a fascinating new spin on it. With all the arguments over what the "best" film of the year is and many people feeling (as if this is anything new) that the frontrunner is merely a sentimental favorite rather than a genuinely great work, I can't help thinking of Mozart and Salieri. One was perhaps the greatest composer who has ever lived but, at least as the film portrays him, he was not the most popular composer of his day because he was ahead of his time in so many ways and because he was not a toady of the Emperor's Court. The other man had musical talent - was quite good in fact - and received many honors and accolades while he lived but was all but forgotten by history (until Shaffer's play and the film brought him back to people's attention). Salieri receives medals and commendations by the Emperor who calls one of his works "the greatest opera yet written." Mozart, on the other hand, sees his own opera, La Nozze di Figaro (arguably his greatest work), pilloried and parodied on the vaudeville stage as if it were part of one of those awful pop culture pastiche movies like Not Another Teen Movie. Mozart obviously got the better deal in the long run, but we can only see that conclusion through the long lens of history.
I won't go through a play-by-play of the film, because there is far too much to say. I will just leave you with my two favorite moments from the film, both of which are key musical moments as well. In the first, we're watching the premiere of La Nozze di Figaro. Salieri, despite his resentment, cannot but marvel at the beauty of the piece. Abraham's narration is absolutely perfect here, putting each word in precisely the right place in the music so that he only adds and never takes away from it. This part of the opera, by the way, is probably my favorite piece of music ever, I'm sure in no small part due to the meaning Abraham gives to it in this scene.
Of course, before we can get too carried away, there is that yawn which changes the tone utterly and irrevocably, followed by another scene that spookily mirrors the film criticism world (to me, anyway). Salieri suggests that Mozart's opera was too long, and that he should have given the audience a big bang at the end of songs to let them know when to clap. I've seen loads of film critics say comparable things about films, to say nothing of snap judging a film because it doesn't have "X" or "Y" in it. Or, you know, snap judging at all (Incidentally, I think Twitter has been the worst thing to happen to film criticism in a great many years - how can you possibly judge something adequately before you've had a chance to think about it?).
And then there is this moment. I don't know how much you may know about sound mixing. I'm pretty ignorant about it myself, but it's really hard not to see how massively important it is to this scene (and the one embedded above, for that matter). Mozart, on his sickbed, is dictating part of his Requiem, specifically the "Confutatis," to Salieri. You hear each piece of the whole by itself, as Mozart dictates, and when he finally looks at the whole thing you hear it all together and can see what each little piece brings to the whole. I've heard this piece of music many, many times since first seeing this film, and I never fail to marvel at all those amazing little pieces.
There is a director's cut of this, which adds a great deal of character development, but which doesn't flow quite as well as the theatrical cut, in my opinion. This is a perfect film in every way. If you have not yet seen it, by all means do so. It is definitely not one of those "eat your spinach, it's good for you" period movies. It is bold and hilarious and moving and is a movie I could watch again and again and again. Even if you have resisted because you don't like classical music, this film could very well make you a newborn fan.
I feel woefully inadequate to be writing about Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, for two reasons:
1) I saw it after working a late shift and not sleeping the night before, so I dozed a bit.
2) Aside from a solitary mystery I read for a college class and which I barely remember, I have read zero percent of the Doyle canon. I'm also pretty sure I haven't seen any significant portions of any of the kajillion film and television portrayals.
However, I do know the caricature. Houndstooth hat, calabash, Baker Street, "elementary," and "the game's afoot." So I'm not entirely a blank slate. But close.
If you want a look at the film from someone who is immersed in the canon, check out this awesome review by Drew McWeeny (who used to go by the name Moriarty on Ain't It Cool News). There's something pleasing to me about the way he sort of punctures the popular portrayals of Holmes, which he claims are not really that close to Doyle's Holmes, but have stuck and people are attached to them.
What I can tell you about my impressions of the film are twofold, and both, err, folds involve two insanely popular franchises. First, this film does for Holmesology what Abrams's Star Trek did for Star Trek. It takes an established canon and beloved characters and repackages them in an appealing, contemporary way. This will naturally infuriate many purists, though not all (I've read many glowing comments from people calling themselves Sherlockians, which I have to assume is a more-than-averagely obsessed group of Sherlock fans). What it will also do, however, is take a bit of the "geek" off of the brand and make the franchise accessible, nay, delightful for people who were not heretofore dedicated fans. In that way, I'd say Sherlock Holmes is a great success.
Second, this movie is FUN. Bombastic and ludicrous at times, but never empty, and with characters that are so enjoyable to watch it should be outlawed. In this respect, Holmes reminds me quite a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean. Think the outlandish fun of Dead Man's Chest, without the mythmaking element and setup for a final installment. I'd compare it to Black Pearl, because it's closer in those respects, but that film exists perfectly without the sequels (though I think it exists just as well with them), and Holmes could not be more deliberate in setting up sequels if it tried (which, much as I enjoyed the references, is one of its flaws).
Is this a perfect film? By no means. But it does what movies (as opposed to "films") are supposed to do - provide us with escape and entertainment. Downey and Law are positively delicious as Holmes and his heterosexual life partner Watson (the slashfic will be strong with this one), and it makes logic and intelligence sexy again, which is enough by itself for me to heartily recommend this. If you weren't one of the millions of people who already saw it this past weekend, that is.
Harry had Tweeted that the films this year spanned 85 years, and on Saturday morning, most of us noticed a large, old organ sitting at the front of the theater. So it wasn't much of a guess to suppose that we'd be seeing something from the silent era and that someone was going to provide an organ score for it, just as audiences would have experienced a film at that time. It turned out that our score was to be provided by a guy named Graham Reynolds, who had written his own score for the film.
This was made in 1926, between the two films Murnau is best known for, Nosferatu and Sunrise. The story follows Goethe's version of the tale of Faust, as well as older versions. It begins with a deal between God and Satan. If Satan can win Faust's soul, he will will win dominion over the earth. We see Faust as an alchemist who is despondent because his prayers to stop the devastation of the plague have had seemingly no effect. He soon makes a deal with Satan - Mephisto will be his servant and grant him whatever he wishes for one day, a trial of sorts. When the day is over the pact is broken. Faust starts to heal people in Satan's name who have been ravaged by the plague, but when people notice that he fears the sign of the cross, they shun him. Faust then asks for his youth to return and Mephisto obliges, but when Faust is about to - how shall I say - score with a beautiful woman, the day comes to a close. Faust begs to be able to keep his youth, but Mephisto tells him that if he does then their deal will be forever. Faust agrees.
It's not long, of course, before Faust finds himself unable to be satisfied with anything. His deal with Satan has brought him everlasting youth, a kingdom, wealth, beautiful women, and everything else he has wanted, but now, like cursed Disney pirates, there is nothing that can slake his lust. Until he sees Gretchen. Mephisto procures her for him by means of a locket. (Lockets, by the way, made an appearance in all but the last two of our films this year at BNAT, and now I have an irresistible urge to have a BNAT locket made.) Mephisto sets Faust up so that Gretchen's brother walks in on them in bed together, and when the brother is killed, Faust is accused and flees. Gretchen, meanwhile, has a child by Faust and is shunned as a harlot. Unable to find shelter in the winter, Gretchen huddles in the snow trying to keep the baby warm, but when it eventually dies, Gretchen is accused of murdering it. In her cell, there's a wonderful fantasy sequence where she has delusions, including one where her child is still alive. She is taken to be burned at the stake, and Faust, overcome by grief, wishes he had never gotten his youth back. Mephisto again obliges and Faust becomes an old man again. Faust rushes to the pyre to be burned with her and she sees him as a young man again. They are engulfed by the flames, and Satan loses the bet because love has triumphed over all.
Besides being an incredible viewing experience - thanks in large part to Graham Reynolds' awesome score - Faust was just a knockout of a film. Murnau was a great artist of film anyway, but I was particularly struck by how imaginative he was with a medium that was so relatively new. I don't know that a story was ever so suited for black and white as this is, being a tale so consumed with the light and the dark, and I particularly loved Murnau's technical use of light and shadow.
Like all silent films, hammy acting abounds. I actually thought Camilla Horn was wonderful as Gretchen. But on the other end of the spectrum was Emil Jannings, who played Mephisto with such a snarly brio that if he had added a twirly mustache in the mix, he would have imploded into nothingness and created a black hole of cheesy villainousness from which we might never have escaped. Still, I can't say it wasn't entertaining.
When you watch a film by Joel and Ethan Coen, you know you're watching a work of art. Every frame of their films is beautiful and full of detail, even when you're only looking at an actor's face in front of a blank wall. Even their not-so-monumental films are worth seeing, if just for their fascinating experiments with style.
I'm not sure how this film will stack up against the rest of the year - there's still so much to come (and I'm literally counting down the days to Precious) - but A Serious Man feels like the sparse feel of No Country for Old Men paired with the absurdity of Fargo. With the quality of both of those films. Certainly one of the best of the year.
Larry Gopnick doesn't have too complicated a life, but he soon gets the trials of Job heaped on him. It starts with a student who requests that his grade be changed from an F to a passing grade and spirals into you wouldn't even believe what. And just when it seems that things are starting to look up again in the final scene, there are hints at even worse trials to come. Trials we never find out about because the movie fades out and the credits roll, leaving the new trials to our imagination because they could probably be a whole movie unto themselves.
There's a little vignette at the beginning of the film, entirely in Yiddish, that seems to have nothing to do with the rest of it. This is a matter of no small consequence to the many critics who have reviewed this film. For my part, I link it to the first scene with Larry, where he tells his failing student that you have to get the math in order to get the physics. The story about the Schrodinger's cat is anecdotal; if you don't understand the math, you can't understand the physics. I think the Yiddish-language vignette is the math to the rest of the movie's physics. Both seem to be meditations on how we (or more particularly, the Jewish characters of the film) deal with Fortune or the things that befall us.
Speaking of which, yes, this is a pretty heavily Jewish-centric film. But I don't think it's alienating to people who are not Jewish, and I feel that, as a non-Jew, I can state that with some authority. There seemed to be several Jewish people in the audience I saw the film with, and I could observe that they were amused by nuances and layers that people less familiar with that culture likely missed. I'm okay with that, and I think the movie works accepting that that will be the case. These characters, like the characters in most of the Coens' work, speak their own cultural language, but in this case, I think you can understand the "physics" without fully understanding the "math."
Took a couple days off of the vamps and decided to see a couple of current movies. It's getting to be that time of year where everything seems to be essential viewing.
I saw this out of a sense of duty, not wanting to skip it and then have it show up in all the awards races, but I wasn't excited about it. All the hype about the film and the performance of Carey Mulligan had sort of crashed in on itself by the time I had a chance to see it.
I am happy to say, though, that this is indeed a wonderful film. From the outstandig opening credits sequence - Floyd Cramer Jr's infectious "On the Rebound" sets the tone and period of the story exceedingly well - I was in love. And all the praise for Mulligan's performance was not undeserved. I hesitate to join the throng proclaiming her the new Audrey Hepburn - comparisons like that bother me - but it's almost irresistible, watching her in those 60s costumes. Mulligan is asked to do a lot here. She must sometimes be very adult, while at other times still a child (her character is 16). And she's the kind of clever, precocious teenager that I wish I'd been (love affairs aside - or maybe not).
There are loads of juicy supporting roles. Peter Sarsgaard as David (though there's some argument as to whether - for the sake of award campaigning - to call him a lead or supporting player; I'd call him co-lead with Mulligan) is really phenomenal, and a quite convincing Englishman. Alfred Molina is outstanding as the overbearing priority-challenged father of Mulligan's character Jenny. And perhaps my favorite of the bunch, Olivia Williams (who I fall harder and harder for each week on Dollhouse) as one of Jenny's teachers, Miss Stubbs. Seeing her through Jenny's eyes, first as the speccy schoolmarm that's the last kind of person Jenny wants to be, then as an admirable and educated woman of independence, was possibly my favorite part of the movie. And don't miss Emma Thompson, whose headmistress character is only in a few small scenes, but her presence is fully felt - and oh, what a cold-hearted bitch she can be.
I love how reserved this film is, never stooping to show us the lurid details of Jenny's affair with David. And I love the layered meaning of the title. The movie is not just about Jenny being educated in the ways of adulthood and the sometime cruelty of love (not to mention men). Ultimately, it's about the value of an actual education, in Jenny's case potential acceptance at Oxford, despite the limited career prospects for women English scholars at that time. Also, I have to give some love to Nick Hornby for a very well-written script - delicious characters, pithy dialogue, and a well-constructed story.
My one complaint about the film is the very last scene, which I won't say too much about for obvious reasons, but which felt jarring (at least to me). There had been no voice-over narration up to this point, not that I have any objection to voice-over narration at all, and it just felt weird to hear Jenny suddenly commenting on the proceedings when she hadn't done so before the last 30 seconds of the film. What she's telling us would have played, I think, much better if the movie had simply found a way to show us instead of Jenny telling us.
It is a fairly exquisite film, though. Definitely on my Best Picture shortlist for the year (and may perhaps find its way onto my Top 10, though don't hold me to that).
There's nothing really wrong with Bright Star, Jane Campion's new film about the ill-fated romance betwixt nineteenth century poet John Keats and a woman named Fanny Brawne. But I feel like I've seen it a million times. Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy can't afford to marry girl. Angst ensues. One of them dies. Lots of bonnets, corsets, and empire waisted frocks. This film is, of course, based on supposedly true events, and there's only so much you can do to liven things up without straining the bounds of artistic license, but most of the time it feels like "just another costume drama."
Thank goodness for Paul Schnieder, who plays Charles Armitage Brown, Keats's close friend and colleague. This is an element not often seen in films like this, and it's one that's perhaps borrowed from other formulas - the disapproving best friend. Brown has a deep love for Keats (portrayed in the film as surpassing normal friendship) and a great admiration for his talent. He thinks Fanny a flirt and an unnecessary distraction for Keats from his writing, not seeing Keats's perspective that she is the reason he has lately been inspired to write at all. His heartbreak at realizing how he has failed his friend is painful and wonderful to witness.
Ben Whishaw and Abby Cornish, as Keats and Fanny, both give tremendous performances and have a wonderful chemistry. And Campion is able to let them have a very passionate love affair, full of longing and desire, without crossing the threshold into a more literally sexual relationship.
While the movie as a whole feels a bit wanting, there are many other pieces that I loved. I'm very glad that the movie was able to include so much of Keats's poetry without letting it drag the pace. I also enjoyed how believably supportive Fanny's mother (eventually) was of her closeness with Keats, while still reminding her of the realities of her situation. Edie Martin defies the curse of roles for children and is quite an adorable little sister for Fanny. And perhaps my favorite scene in the film is the night before (if I recall correctly, that is) Keats leaves for Italy, in which he and Fanny lie next to each other, dreaming of finally being together in the marriage bed. Perfectly chaste, but brimming with sexual energy.
As I said, there's nothing wrong with Bright Star at all. In fact, it's pretty wonderful. But it strikes me as rather sad that after a few years this will very likely blur together with many other films of this ilk that I have seen in my lifetime, and that the only thing that will distinguish one from another is the historical figures involved.
