Review: The Tree of Life

For an art so young, it is not surprising that vast regions of cinema have yet to be mapped. Terrence Malick is one of only a few bold enough to venture into the untamed wilderness in search of something new; with The Tree of Life, he's gone deeper than before, and what he found is glorious.

If there is such a genre as the memory film, The Tree of Life is of that category. Framed by the premature death of a beloved family member, the story concerns Jack O'Brian as he relives extreme, ethereal, and sublime moments from his Texas childhood.

The film does well to express this restless, endlessly, violently curious boyhood. When you are a child, what surrounds you is your whole universe. And so it follows that the story of young Jack O'Brian should be placed so solidly on par with the frightening, magnificent creation of the universe and the ancient evolution of life on Earth. To a child's fresh mind, nothing has come before, and nothing can be imagined to someday be a memory but this electric moment. Such a vivid, immersive depiction of boyhood has never, I think, been shown to us.

And why not show the birth of everything? It is rendered gorgeously, and to behold such a thing strikes a cosmic chord in all of us, as we are all, of course, citizens of this universe. With such authenticity and grace, The Tree of Life shows us parts of the cinematic language rarely spoken. This film comes at life from both sides; the innocent, unformed, frustrated sponge of ever-changing youth, and the dusty, gray, frozen, existential nostalgia of stagnant adulthood. 

Light and Music: Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction is a film about wrestling your own destiny from forces seemingly beyond your control. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a bland taxman whose meticulous life comes unraveled when he starts hearing a voice narrating his actions.

At this point in the film, Harold has fallen for Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker he was sent to audit. He has also recently started teaching himself the guitar, a lifelong dream. These threads reach their apex in this glorious scene. It's a great use of a simple song, first played quietly and unassumingly by our earnest hero, then cranked on the soundtrack as we get our sparkling screen kiss. It is another example of music being utilized as a dialect of the cinematic language.

Review: My Perestroika

There are two important themes in Robin Hessman's documentary, My Perestroika - Nostalgia is relentless and grows on every memory; and patriotism is far more deeply rooted than simple military parades and flag-waving, and infinitely varied.

Concerning the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the film tells us Russia's recent history through candid interviews with 5 Muscovites who came of age in the late 80s and early 90s as part of the last generation to grow up behind the so-called Iron Curtain, along with frenetic contemporary footage of the transformative time in question.

One brilliant sequence comes as the subjects recall the wave of political upheaval that swept the Soviet Socialist Republics. It begins with a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, but soon intercuts dramatic black and white footage of tanks rolling through the streets Moscow. The ballet's impassioned refrain swirls around the urban-bound artillery to form the emotional apex of the film.

For an American, particularly one brought up since the events discussed, the film is an immersive if sometimes bewildering history lesson, related by those who lived it. Like any patriot, they each have a complicate and ever evolving relationship with their homeland. Some insist that life was better in the Soviet Union, and indeed all share at least some degree of wistful, inevitable nostalgia for that bygone era. Others are glad of the USSR's evaporation, while some are just as disaffected and dissatisfied now as they were then. Running through every interview is the sense that life goes on, that this too shall pass. Each person's complacency was shaken by the fall of the Iron Curtain; it taught them that the future is never certain.

SIFF Review: Without

For reasons we are left to guess at, 19-year-old Joslyn takes a job on Whidbey Island as a live-in caretaker for Frank, an elderly, vegetative man.
Written and directed by Seattle native Mark Jackson, Without is an expertly crafted film that deftly blurs the line between Joslyn's inner, psychological turmoil and the outer, real world chaos that forms as her passive-aggressive relationship with catatonic Frank devolves.

Jackson elegantly stacks the banal minutiae of Joslyn's new job to build a dark, vibrating tower of isolation and tedium that steadily drives our heroine mad. This is a director that understands and can harness the power of moments. Locking all the sliding glass doors, crushing some pills, buying coffee; collectively and on their own, these drops of everyday life have power.

Without taps into a recurring narrative motif in Western storytelling - that of the island as both physical and metaphorical location. From Shakespeare's The Tempest to television's Lost, the island reflects and comments on the protagonist's inner life. We find Joslyn in such a place; she washes up on the cold, gray shores of grief and does her time thrashing about in a borrowed house for a mute, motionless audience who offers no comment but the occasional wordless moan.

Jackson and his cinematographers, Jessica Dimmock and Diego Garcia, show an aptitude with the unique Northwest color palette, and brush the screen with deep, soggy greens and blues. Taking brilliant advantage of cinema-capable DSLR cameras, the filmmakers get us physically and psychologically closer to Joslyn than film could have. It's exhilarating to see the future of filmmaking unfolding before you so starkly.

Light and Music: The Man Who Knew Too Much

There is relatively untapped power in using music, specifically source music (that which is heard or played or sung by characters in a non-musical), as a cinematic storytelling tool.

I came upon this notion last night after watching Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Day being, at the time, more famous as a singer than an actress, I suppose it seemed only natural to try and incorporate her hit "Que Sera Sera" into the film some how. When it first appears early in the film, sung playfully by Day and her onscreen son, it reads as just a little forced and corny. But later, once the film has built to it's suspenseful climax, Day's character desperately recapitulates the song in an attempt to find her kidnapped child. Plunking percussively at a grand piano, she raggedly belts the tune until her son whistles back an answer.

Review: TRON: Legacy

Any fans of 1982's TRON who complain that its recent sequel, TRON: Legacy, is badly written, lacks depth, and only exists to showcase the latest advancements in movie-making technology have clearly not watched the original film in some time. TRON was a silly, written-by-committee corporate product that had nothing but then-state-of-the-art visual effects to justify its existence. It was a spectacle, and so is TRON: Legacy, but even more so.

Ignore the first 15 minutes or so. The film is actually pretty lame until Sam Flynn (son of Kevin, hero of the first movie) is sucked into the computer world of "The Grid", a virtual city created by his father. He's come in search of his forebear, who's been missing for the past 20 years. 

Once we're in The Grid, the film finally starts in earnest and things hit the ground running. The digital environment is rendered with skill, sophistication, and imagination, and far surpasses the modest, blocky canyons of the first film. The Grid really has a bustling, believable life to it. It's almost as if this virtual world has been growing and flourishing on its own all this time.

Practically the minute he materializes in The Grid, Sam is captured and forced into gladiatorial combat against ferocious "programs", digital humanoids who exist only in this virtual reality. This battle sequence is exquisitely and excitingly pulled off. It follows a video game logic, as does the whole film from this point, that just didn't exist yet in 1982. The use of 3D space in particular is pretty clever.

After a sequence where the famous "lightcycles" make a  magnificent return, Sam is suddenly rescued by the mysterious and beguiling Quorra, played with aplomb by Olivia Wilde, who's origin goes unexplained for some time. Quorra is the film's biggest surprise; Wilde renders her with such honesty, curiosity, and depth that its hard to believe she is only a computer program (or is she?). I won't say she belongs in a better movie, because she gives this dark, thinly written film some much needed heart. She is by far the most satisfying and fun character to watch.

Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn is really nothing special, just a more comatose version of Chris Pine's Kirk in  Star Trek. Bruce Boxleitner is surprisingly effective. Reprising his role as both Alan, Kevin Flynn's best friend, and his digital alter ego, Tron, he has a kind of wistful, old soldier quality to him; the pain of Kevin's long absence is far more present in his eyes than in Sam's. 

Jeff Bridges, who helped make the original TRON so much fun, has duel roles here, both as Clu, our villain who turns out to be something of a digital Hitler; and as Kevin Flynn himself, now grizzled, shamanistic, and somewhat bemused. In the latter role, Bridges is definitely in post-Dude mode; he even walks around in a bathrobe the whole time.

TRON: Legacy is unfailingly entertaining and unendingly gorgeous. Instead of relying entirely on blue screen, first-time director Joseph Kosinski opted to have physical sets built, and to clothe the actors in working lightsuits; these decisions help to give the look of the film some substance. Credit is also due to cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who manages to light faces in a unique and grounded way. Kosiniski and his team have finally done justice to Steven Lisberger's original vision of virtual reality, which was so far ahead of its time back in 1982.

Review: Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is a suspenseful masterpiece of body horror and paranoia set in the rigorous world of the New York Ballet as the company rehearses a new, "stripped down, visceral" rendition of Swan Lake. 

We follow Nina, a technically brilliant but emotionally timid ballerina with the company. She lives with her mother (herself a retired dancer), does no socializing, and thinks only of dancing. Nina has built and perfected her ballet technique over the years while letting all other parts of her life atrophy and slough away. She is ballet.

Two things fall into Nina's world to challenge her. One is the prospect of being cast as both the white and black swans in the company's upcoming show. The other is Lily, an imperfect but free-spirited newcomer. Thomas, the director of the ballet, subtly casts envy in Nina's mind for Lily's apparent effortlessness and ease of expression, which Nina has yet to attain. So begins a psychological character study that skillfully descends into the most terrifying depths of Nina's fragile, beleaguered psyche.

As Nina, Natalie Portman just might be giving the performance of her life. Her voice is a brittle leaf in the wind. When confronted with embarrassment or ridicule (which happens often), her face struggles to mask the crippling blow to her self esteem; the heartbreaking way Portman renders Nina in the first act of film is impressive on its own, but not until our consummate ballerina begins her slide into madness does the portrayal become truly masterful. Oh, and not to mention that the actress does 95% of her own dancing, and believably at that. 

As opening night draws closer, the pressure mounts and the terror builds. Nina has nowhere to turn for comfort, not to her director, not to her mother, and certainly not to her fellow dancers, who belittle each other at every opportunity. This is rare in cinema story-telling - a protagonist with no safe place to land, no port in the storm. We feel that same hopelessness, that same despair. It gets under the skin.

Black Swan feels like a culmination of everything Aronofsky has made thus far; there is the paranoid psycho-drama of Pi and Requiem for a Dream, the elegance of The Fountain, and quite a bit of the deep character study that The Wrestler did so well. The film also evolves into a very loose adaptation of Swan Lake, with it's story of seduction, rivalry, and chaste beauty vs. lustful passion. Long-time Aronofsky composer Clint Mansell even lets Tchaikovsky's opus seep into the score. And the cinematography by Matthew Libatique (also an Aronofsky veteran) dances with the actors, at times caressing them and at others mercilessly cornering them. The film and the 19th century ballet feed off each other; there are no islands in the arts. Aronosfky knows this, and it show. 

Review: Agora

Agora, Spanish-made but filled with the king's English, tells the mostly forgotten story of the female astronomer Hypatia, a proto-feminist and secular aristocrat who teaches the fledgling science of the heavens to classes full of men in ancient Alexandria, a city boiling over with religious strife. Brought heroically to life by Rachel Weisz, Hypatia is an intellectual and political force to be reckoned with. She wades headlong into the male-dominated seas of philosophy and religion in the face of radical Christian leaders who loudly declare the dominion men must have over women. This creates tension right from the start, and you get the sense that at any minute the fanatical masses will rise up to put Hypatia in her place.

One thing I did not expect was all the stoning; there is a lot of stoning. Christians stoning Pagans, Pagans stoning Christians, Christian's stoning Jews, Jews stoning Christians. Apparently it was the mass murder weapon of choice in those days. The sound of the stones is so strange and benign, like fat raindrops, as they cast death. 

Lensed by cinematographer Xavi Gimenez, the film is unfailingly gorgeous. Director Alejandro Amenabar, however, shows his greatest aptitude with actors, especially in the quieter, subtler scenes. Moments between Hypatia and her slave, Davus (Max Minghella), who falls hopelessly in love with her, are particular tense and riveting. 

For a swords-and-sandals picture, Agora is admirably fresh and accessible; the acting and much of the dialogue is natural, the production design is robust and lived-in, but what stands out most is the cinematography. The lighting and shot-making really give the action room to breathe. It's rare to see a film set circa B.C. that is not stuffy or overly ponderous.

The film's major flaw is its overall pacing; most individual scenes have a good flow to them, but the picture as a whole feels uneven, at times too slow and at others jarringly rapid. There must be a steadier director's cut tucked away somewhere, and indeed the cut that screened at Cannes last year was longer by 20 minutes, but given its lukewarm critical and box office reception (in this country, at least), I fear this or any better version may never see the light of day. 

There is an excellent film lurking just beneath the surface. Agora should have risen to Gladiator-type levels of praise and cultural relevance; alas, it is largely lost in the sands of time, much like Hypatia herself.

Review: Boxing Gym

Each great film creates a world, which the audience marinates in for the length of the picture. Documentary director Frederick Wiseman's Boxing Gym meticulously and beautifully constructs the rhythmic world of Lord's Gym in Austin, Texas. As is his style, Wiseman uses no interviews, voice overs, or title cards to explain the action; he simply captures it, then cuts together a narrative from what he gathers. 

There is no musical score, but then there doesn't need to be, for the soundtrack pulsates with the human beats of fists on punching bags, sparring boxers' shifting feet, and exhausted grunting breathes. The images cut clearly and obviously, but the sound melts together to form a delicious aural collage which swaddles the whole film like a sonic blanket. 

The star of Boxing Gym is Richard Lord, the wise and crusty old proprietor of the gym that shares his name. When he's not talking to perspective and longtime members in his charmingly cluttered office, Lord floats around training kids, giving advice, and overseeing the place from which he is inseparable; he is the gym. 

The gym's patrons represent a microcosm of Austin, and indeed America. There are new moms, aspiring Army Rangers, high school kids, veteran boxers and people of all colors who simply want to better themselves. There is such harmony in this place, such a sublime come and go, peppered with idle and profound talk between strangers and old friends. I wanted to live in this world forever.

The Passion of the Silent Era

Last week I had the chance to watch the silent, 1928 French film The Passion of Joan of Arc, starring the talented and awesomely named Maria Falconetti as Joan. The print we saw had been rescued from a janitor's closet of some Norwegian mental asylum in 1981, a bizarre piece of trivia that helped to set the mood for what turned out to be a gloriously strange cinematic experience. The film depicts Joan's trial and execution at the hand of the English, and it is told almost exclusively in close ups on the actors' faces. If you are a filmmaker, and you want to know what a close up should look like, see this film. Apparently, the director, Carl Theodor Dreyer, insisted that his actors not wear make up, a subtraction which simply was not done during that eon of cinema. Add to this the use of then-newly developed panchromatic film stock, and you get 82 minutes of the most emotionally resonate and harrowing close ups the art form has thus mustered.

On the rare occasion that Dreyer does cut to wider shots, in part because of their infrequency, they have a breathtaking impact. This director's sense of movement, both with the camera and people inside the frame, is so modern and ahead of its time that one can hardly accept it was achieved so early as 1928. The cinematic bravura on display in The Passion of Joan of Arc is so complete and intense, it dives so deep, that it gives us a small window into where film might have gone had sound not crashed the party a year earlier. I was talking to my friend after the movie about what a shame it is that the silent era had not lasted longer. Once we could hear the actor's talking, filmmakers got lazy, cameras grew immense and far less versatile, and the art died a little. Imagine the innovations that could have been made; think of all the vocabulary that could have been written into the cinematic language had the crutch of sound not crippled us. We may be just now doing things with movies that might have come about in 1940 or so were it not for evil, easy sound.

Another thing I realized while watching this masterpiece is that silent film is not given nearly the respect and appreciation it deserves. Firstly, almost no one realizes that most films of that era were shot and projected at 18 frames per second, not 24 as we are used to today. It is such ignorance which is to blame for the ridiculous, sped up look we have become accustomed to when watching silent films. Unfortunately, this formerly asylum-bound print fell victim to this practice; it was clearly shot at 18 fps, but then transferred at 24 fps. So, though it was Dreyer's original cut of the film, I still have not seen it as he intended. Ignoring the original frame rate is just as destructive to a film as inflicting pan-and-scan on a letterboxed movie to make it fit 4:3 televisions. Hopeful someone who knows what they're doing will get their hands on this print and release a correct transfer on DVD. If we had been watching silent films at the proper frame rate all along, I have no doubt that modern audiences would take them millions of times more seriously and be more willing to fold them into our collective memory of cinema.

(Above: Maria Falconetti as Joan of Arc in a still from The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928)

Box Office Mojo is a depressing website

I was filled with a new level of dread about the state of popular cinema today on a visit to the perfectly benign looking Box Office Mojo.com.  First I saw this weekend's top 5 grossing films:

3 sequels, two of which are in 3D, and Red, based on a comic book, leaving Clint Eastwood's Hereafter the only original film in the bunch. I thought, good god, this sequel/franchise and 3D mania has really gotten out of hand, so I took a look at the top ten grossing films of 2010 so far:

7 mostly 3D sequels and/or remakes, one 3D based on a book, and one 3D with an original story (and by original, I simply mean not a derivative work; I'm making no judgments about the actual story of Despicable Me). Only Inception is both completely original and 2D, and its all the way down at number 5. 3D aside, the mere sight of so many franchise films at the top of the financial heap is distressing. But this must be a recent trend, right? Surely Hollywood must be going through a phase. So I went to look at the top grossing films for each year of the past decade or so:

When You Know Too Much

I cannot see The Social Network. Let me back up. Usually, a movie you haven't seen yet is ruined by spoilers, details about the plot that lessen the impact of the film's surprises. Occasionally, however, a movie becomes so talked about that the peripheral chatter outweighs the film itself and overshadows it. I've experienced this three times: with Brokeback Mountain, Slumdog Millionaire, and now The Social Network. I've read about it in every newspaper, on every website, and seen news about it on every TV show. I'm too aware of it. The film occupies too large a part of my brain without having seen it. I would not be able to experience it in a fresh and enjoyable way at this point. Now I have to wait until the film is no longer on my radar so I can see it and judge it fairly, on its own terms, without being burdened with knowledge of awards buzz, critical analysis, details about the production, or its perceived cultural impact. I fear this may be never.

(Top: still from The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956, Paramount Pictures)

The Hobbit gets ugly

Though it has recently been announced that a film version of The Hobbit is finally going into production this February, directed by Peter Jackson and staring Martin Freeman as Bilbo, there are still some unresolved issues. Its really a quite contentious saga involving striking actor's unions, corporate intimidation, and bitter international rivalry. Watch a rarely riled-up Jackson explain things from his side:

Zach Galifianakis gets a taste of his own medicine

You might be familiar with Zach's on going web series Between Two Ferns, where he awkwardly interviews the likes of Sean Penn, Jon Hamm, and Natalie Portman and asks them inane questions like "do you like websites?" and "did you also shave your V for vagina?" In this video from a local news station in Texas, Mr. Galifianakis finds himself being interviewed by a real life counterpart to his Between Two Ferns persona. Its hard to tell if the guy is for real or just putting it on. Take a look -

"I didn't hurt it!"

The Vimeo Awards were announced earlier this month, which is where we find "oops", the winner for best experimental film. It is brilliantly and seamlessly cut together from found footage of people dropping their cameras. Take a look.



The camera becomes like a portal to these little extreme moments in people's lives. Some are more inane - "I'm gonna drop my camera into my laundry basket. Here we go!" - but many are filled with sheer exuberance, joy, shock, panic, fear, and wonder. My favorite moments: the remote-control plane smash cutting to a roller coaster, and the pure warmness and thrill of the father and his small daughter sledding. Just gorgeous.

Review: Winter's Bone

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone is a creaky, noirish hero's quest set in the impoverished Ozarks in the brittle dead of winter. Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl with a steely gaze and a quick mind, is saddled with raising her younger brother and sister and caring for their catatonic mother in the wake of her absent, meth-cooking father. Ree teaches her siblings to cook, shoot, and other adult responsibilities, as if, even at these tender ages, they may have to suddenly fend for themselves. Their is a wary, knowing doom in Ree's eyes that is heartbreaking; no 17-year-old should possess this kind of foreboding wisdom, but for her it is a necessity.

A thick undercurrent of cold, stinging dread lies beneath every scene; as Ree searches for her father, who has skipped out on his court date after putting the family home up for bail, she comes up against a frozen wall of secrecy almost everywhere she turns. Through it all, Ree faces enemies, gains allies, and passes trials and tribulations.
I'll not end without discussing what everyone who's seen the film is talking about: young Jennifer Lawrence's topnotch performance as Ree. A less ballsy director than Granik would have cast a 20-something to play the teen, and it would not have worked; there is no one better, of any age. Lawrence inhabits the character so thoroughly that it is hard to imagine she is not naturally of the film's milieu.

Review: Enter The Void

Trudging away from the theater as the end credits rolled, I had to struggle to keep from collapsing, the cosmic weight of Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void is so great. Expansive is too narrow a word to describe the film's universe and cinematic language.

Oscar is a young American living in Tokyo, dealing drugs small time to raise money for his sister's plane ticket so she can join him in this far eastern city of lights. We open on a scene of them bickering (the language of siblings), shot from Oscar's POV; this take lasts for at least the first 20 minutes of the film, wherein we see the lights of Tokyo, drug-induced hallucinations, and Oscar's moment of death at the hands of the police. Then things get weird.

Though we are with Oscar for every second of the film, the real star is Paz de la Huerta as his sister, Linda; we see her brother's face maybe twice, and mostly when he's dead. De la Huerta delivers a towering, harrowing, and fragile performance that is daring on a number of levels. Noe is a director who can win an actress's trust completely; those who've seen Irreversible know what I'm talking about. De la Huerta does everything, bares all (physically and emotionally), and goes everywhere the film demands.

Noe takes universal paradigms - life flashing before your eyes at the moment of death, the afterlife, and reincarnation - and runs with them. What blew me away was how the film explores these anxieties so deeply yet so simply. After he is killed, Oscar's spirit or ghost floats around the city watching over his bereaved sister, all the while trying to make sense of this new and confusing plane of existence. Like the opening scene, it unfolds entirely from his strict POV.

Perhaps the greatest pleasures of Enter The Void for me as a filmmaker are the lighting and color; the photography marinates in green and purple neon, such a great relief from the insidious orange and teal plague that is afflicting more and more films these days. Though filmed almost entirely at night, the city of Tokyo is so bright it acts as one giant practical light, providing all the illumination we need for a picture about death and life and all the sticky, unpleasant details in between. Some may find this method of cinematography a bit graceless; characters' faces will disappear into darkness for chunks of time and so on, but if you're bothered by this then you're missing the point. 

I can safely say that Enter The Void is unlike anything you have seen; I don't have to know you. The film is so completely unique that I have utter confidence no person has seen anything like it, no person but Gaspar Noe.

The Prestige: They Want to be Fooled

Part 4 in a series of essays on the films of director Christopher Nolan. Originally posted December 12th, 2008.

The Prestige is, on the surface, a story concerning rival magicians in Victorian London. But, at the heart of things, it is really a film about film-making.
As far as I'm concerned, the goal of any film is threefold. I call it the 3 Es: Engage, Entertain, and Enlighten. Before either of the later two can happen, the audience must first be engaged. This means giving them a point of reference; that is to say, introduce them to something familiar right off the bat: a character that is relatable, and a situation or conflict that is easily comprehended. Once the audience is engaged, it is the filmmaker's duty to then entertain them, by putting the established characters in humorous or nerve-racking situations. There is a certain flare for creating truly entertaining scenes that only a few select directors possess. There is a kind of showmanship quality to film-making. The final thing a film must do is enlighten the audience. That is, the film should come to a point that stimulates the mind of the viewer. This is not always achieved and is even more difficult to pull off than pure entertainment. This third aspect is what separates great films from those that are simply good. It helps the film stick in people's minds long after they have seen it.
The above three elements of the film viewing experience are directly comparable to the three stages of a magic trick, as discussed in The Prestige. These are The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. The Turn is when the audience is shown something ordinary; a handkerchief or a small bird. This is much like the beginning of a film when the audience is engaged by something equally familiar. The second part is The Turn, when the ordinary thing is made to do something extraordinary, like disappear. "But," as Michael Caine's character says in the the film, "you wouldn't clap yet. It's not enough to make something disappear. You have to bring it back." This seemingly miraculous return of the vanished object is The Prestige, and it is the most important part of the trick. These latter two parts are similar to the way entertaining the audience can bring them to something enlightening; how a heart pounding chase scene can wind and twist and turn, and then deposit us at some great, profound truth.
Another convention of magic tricks that is shared in film-making is the suspension of disbelief. It is said in the film that the audience knows that it is only an illusion, but they don't want to know how it is accomplished. "They want to be fooled", as they say. This is equally true with the film viewing experience. Any individual of even average intelligence knows full well that what they are witnessing on screen is not entirely real, but they ignore that fact. They want something extraordinary. They want to see something aside from their familiar reality. They want to escape, and it is the job of both the magician and the filmmaker to render a believable fantasy for the viewing public.
Filmmakers are the magicians of their day. With both magic and cinema, people go to the theater to see something outside of their own, regular experience. They are, at first, presented with something against which they can compare their own lives. "I know what this is. I get this", they think to themselves. Then, through this relatable proxy, the audience is taken on a journey into previously unknown territory, where they witness things they had never imagined and certainly did not expect. Then, at the end of this voyage, and indeed because of it, we come to a profundity that we had not known, yet it is undeniably true. We leave the theater having gained a fuller experience. Or course we know it was all smoke and mirrors, but to dwell on this notion would ruin something very special.

The King's Oscar Speech

Every year gives us at least one film with its eye firmly on an Oscar statue, and 2010 is no exception. This time it appears to be The King's Speech, a film about King George VI's speech impediment. Cinematical examines its chances:

There are plenty of things in Speech to appeal to the Oscar voter. It's a period piece about the inner workings of the British monarchy, and, more importantly, about the vulnerability of those in power. Like I said, everyone loves an underdog who overcomes and thrives in his or her new milieu, but even more so when it's someone who is in a position of great power.

And WW2 is involved. But will Americans, even those who are Academy voters, care that much about some boring British monarch with a speech impediment? I already don't. And I would hardly call the goddamn King of England an "underdog". Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I doubt the greatness of Inception will be hard to forget, even come Oscar time. 

Colin Firth looks pretty bored already. Not a good sign.

Review: The Square

Boring, even when wet.

This sloppy Aussie noir could have been a really great film; it gets off to an excellent start, but becomes lazy and uneven as things plunge to a finish.

Produced by many of the same blokes who recently brought us Animal Kingdom, it is in fact directed by Nash Edgerton, whose brother Joel played a supporting role in both films and helped write The Square. Understandably, it feels very much of the same cinematic universe.

The main problem is our blandly stoic protagonist. This is the second Australian film I've seen in as many weeks with a boringly morose hero who's expressionless visage and blank attitude make it very difficult to empathize with him. His face remains frozen in the way pictured above for almost every minute of the film. Additionally, and I don't think this is too much of a spoiler, he doesn't appear to really learn anything by the end of the story, and his constant grimace does not help. He has no arc, he just does things, then the movie ends. If we cannot sympathize or at least be entertained by the protagonist, then nothing else matters; the hero is the face, of the movie and if the face is nearly comatose, then so are we.