Movies 2007 Rountable Spectacular

Part VI: Where Nimero begins to talk about that which he does not know

Click here for Part I of this roundtable
Click here for Part II of this roundtable
Click here for Part III of this roundtable
Click here for Part IV of this roundtable
Click here for Part V of this roundtable


Colbinski, I like your take on both characters you mention. But only one character and one of those movies has really lingered in my mind. Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview in Blood is his normally commanding self, so much so that I am probably taking his performance for granted. Day Lewis has the ability to encompass his character fully while making everyone else around him believable too; that all the acting in this movie appears effortless. There were many wonderful scenes. The opener you mention is great but what stands out more fully is the derrick fire after the first big oil strike. The excitement and pandemonium all around. The camera sweeping in and out following Plainview as he runs around and tends to his son. The blaze always in the background like a supporting character. It was exciting and I felt as if I should shield my eyes from the fire’s brightness and grab a pail of water to help out. At this point I was willing to be swept away into the undertow of the story and let it take me over. It never happened. I remained engaged and intrigued. I think it is a powerful, very good film and I highly recommend it. It just didn’t resonate with me much since I left the theatre. I don’t see Plainview as a great character and the film itself hasn’t left me pondering it any further.

Contrawise, I agree with you about Wei Tang’s job as Wong in Lust, Caution. I can still see her ruby red lipstick on the coffee cup, feel the gaze from her smoky eyes as she readies to seduce Tony Leung’s Mr. Lee. I remember her innocence as she bravely joined the theatre group in college and shared her enjoyment upon her surprising success. I was as uncertain as she was concerning her final decision. All this sticks in my mind even though the first thing I said upon exiting the theatre was “It was way too long.” Then over the next couple of days I couldn’t get the story out of my head. After sussing it over I finally understood everything. It all hit me like lightning a few days later. Like lightning, the film left an indelible mark on me. Perhaps, I am confusing my dull-wittedness in taking three days to “get” the movie with said movie being great. Anything is possible. I still think the movie is too long and some of the sex scenes belabored but Lust, Caution is one of the best of the year.

Two other movies that stayed with me after leaving the theatre this year were The Host and In-Between Days. I won’t rehash either one as the linked reviews, ably done by you and me, respectively, can catch everyone up on why we liked those movies. I do want to look at In-Between Days and Juno together and explain why I greatly enjoyed one and was nonplussed about the other.

Now, I realize it is not fair to either film to compare or contrast as they differ vastly on many points. Other than some similarity in content - teenage girls who make certain decisions about sex and face consequences from those decisions - both films are considered “independent.” I begin my review of In-Between Days thusly:
“This small film represents what I enjoyed about independent movies when the word ‘independent’ first came into vogue. The recent change to films that seem to be all zany families, quirky characters or outlandish situations can make one forget how enjoyable indies used to be.”

The beginning of Juno was everything that is terrible about American indies. I suffered through the first fifteen minutes of this movie. Suffered terribly. It started with intrusive, loud, quirky music, continued into a precious water-colored image of Juno walking around town sipping a Big Gulp while the credits rolled, and ended in a mini-mart where the too-cool-for-school Juno cracked wise with a Comic Book Guy wannabe while purchasing a home pregnancy test. My main problem with indie film is that you can always use quirky and precious as an adjective and not be wrong. Thankfully, Juno’s hipness stopped grating on me long enough to actually warm up to her and provide a decent, but not great by any means, movie. I also grant that after seeing this and saying to myself “So what” the underwhelming feeling I have may be a reaction to the exalted status that Juno is currently enjoying. Reviews proclaim how real-life it is and how daring it is to take on teenage pregnancy. I don’t get it. There are good scenes, funny scenes and touching scenes. But nothing earth-shattering and nothing coming close to real. I am probably completely out of touch with what a real 16-year old girl is like these days and therefore talking out of my ass but I don’t think it is Juno. One aspect of the film that has been praised is how she feels like an outcast when pregnant and in school. True. But the entire rest of the film portrays her as an outcast – she’s in a cool band, dresses in raggy t-shirts, and adores 1980’s punk. Sixteen year olds who did this in my high school during the 1980’s stood out and were considered outcasts. Add to Juno a pop-culture awareness that dwarfs most everyone else and I found this character to be false. Having said all this I did warm up to her, regardless of this phoniness, and I was pulling for her by the end of the movie. And a big saving grace for Juno is that the eponymous character is the most quirky one around. I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it, if like all other indie films, she was surrounded by quirky family and friends.

Now, Aimee, the young heroine from In-Between Days, seems more real. I find myself relating more to Aimee than to Juno. On its face this is absurd. Aimee is a teenaged immigrant from Korea living with her mother, dreaming about her absent father, and just trying to fit in with her peers. Maybe the whole feel of In-Between Days won me over. In-Between Days is close and personal while Juno looks like it came right out of a film school mind into a studio’s lap. But the two girls are so different (again I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to teenage girls). Aimee struggles through her first crush and rejection and ends up with a guy she now might or might not really like. Juno is with a cool band member who digs her like no one else. Aimee just needs to know someone accepts her. Juno doesn’t give a rat’s ass what others think of her (until she’s 9 months). Aimee has trouble communicating with friends and even with her busy mother. Juno has the most supportive family one could hope to have if you are a teenager and pregnant. Aimee ends the movie as confused as she was when it began. Juno learned a nice lesson about herself and love. Mainly, I think it comes down to this between Aimee and Juno. Aimee is who most people were in high school and Juno is who most people like to think they were.

Colbinski, I am lapping you in posts! Get to it!

Movies 2007 Rountable Spectacular

Part V: The marvels of celery

Click here for Part I of this roundtable
Click here for Part II of this roundtable
Click here for Part III of this roundtable
Click here for Part IV of this roundtable

Well, despite my prowess in fantasy football pick ‘em, maybe I am a movie snob. Better than a goddam hipster.

I am not sure how much more I have to say on The Bourne Ultimatum or Brand Upon The Brain! other than the former is the best action/thriller movie I have seen and the latter was my favorite movie-going experience of 2007. But I’ve already said that twice. So now having built up these two movies I must expound. The pressure mounts. But after my continued griping it will be nice to talk about what I liked.

I place The Bourne Ultimatum in the action/thriller category to separate it from action/adventure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Both are well done and non-stop but they are different types of movies. If there is a better category let me know. The entire Bourne trilogy has been a very pleasant surprise. The Bourne Ultimatum is the best of the bunch. Like The Bourne Supremacy it leaves off where its predecessor ended and then just doesn’t stop engaging. There wasn’t a moment to rest as you are swept along from one foreign city to another until the climax in the Big Apple. Even Julia Stiles’ twitching eyebrows school of acting couldn’t divert me. Now, I’m a sucker for the protagonist who is better than everyone else and always one step ahead of those chasing him. Matt Damon plays this type in Jason Bourne perfectly. Always a calm demeanor, finishing up looking over a building plan and walking out a half-second before someone walks in, seemingly giving up his position to know exactly how to get his fat out of the fire. The movie is taut and compelling. There is a sense of urgency that drags you along. An excellent scene has Bourne on a phone walking through a crowded area giving directions to someone on how to leave the same area unnoticed. All the while he is taking out government operatives. Everything happens so convincingly and slyly. Sometimes when I am in a crowded place I wonder what it would be like to have a Bourne roaming through, chased by people just like him, but never noticing anything out of the ordinary. The Bourne series, and this movie in particular, creates a world I don’t think exists, but think maybe, could exist and, further, think it would be cool if it did exist. (Not cool in a we have a government that trains expert killers and then disposes of them unceremoniously when their usefulness expires sort of way. Just cool is all.)

A different movie in every way is Brand Upon the Brain! Although The Saddest Music in the World and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary were great, I haven’t been enthusiastic about everything director Guy Maddin has done. Cowards Bend the Knee was so-so and his shorts seem repetitive. Brand Upon the Brain! was great, not only due to its content – an autobiographical story of a man going back to the island lighthouse orphanage where he grew up – but because I saw it live. Yes, live. It was still moving pictures projected onto a screen but accompanied by a real-life narrator, a real-life orchestra, and real-life Foley artists. The narrator and orchestra gave feeling to the pictures flicking before my eyes without being a distraction. I wish I could say the same about the Foley artists. Three people decked out white lab coats and safety glasses seamlessly creating the sound effects. I may be imagining the safety glasses but they fit the atmosphere as I now imagine it. The wind whistling, the waves crashing, the pitter-patter of children’s steps up and down the lighthouse’s long never-ending spiral staircase. And the celery! My god, mounds of celery crunched and squeezed to make superb sounds! A boat on the water, the creaking of a floorboard, a mother's muffled voice. Is there anything celery can't do. What it lacks in flavor it supplies in versatility. These people are geniuses. For much of the movie they mesmerized me. I’d hear a sound and look quickly to their pit to see how they made it. Of course I was too late. So, then I’d have to anticipate the next sound and make a premature glance all the while being lulled by the narrator’s smooth voice. It was like listening to the soundtrack. Amazingly, if the narrator, orchestra, and Foley artists were all out of sight you wouldn’t believe you just watched everything live. It was fantastic. I would see more movies with live accompaniments. But, for sure, Guy Maddin and his modern Cinema-Scope style is the best suited to something like this.

Colbinski add your thoughts to Brand Upon the Brain!

Movies 2007 Roundtable Spectacular

Part IV: Lingering Character Studies

Click here for Part I of this roundtable
Click here for Part II of this roundtable
Click here for Part III of this roundtable

Relishing the lowbrow, exalting in the highbrow, and ignoring the middlebrow is a pretty decent modern definition of a "snob" as it concerns popular culture. But then, I know that your taste for genre and b-movies are genuine and were built on comic books and Saturday afternoon Hammer films and the 4:30 movie (Planet of the Apes week! Godzilla week! Elvis week!)rather than the hip post-modern irony that attract so many to the low budget and bad movie fold. (And,I'm sure, there's a snobbery at work in the above statement on my part as well. Oh,well.)

Back to movie talk. There's been two movies this year that really rattled inside my head for days after I saw it: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (you know we've entered a "highbrow" discussion when I preface the movie, er, film, titles with the director's name). The key to both of these movies is that they contain intricate, complex and unique character studies of the main character. This is coupled with an intricate, complex and unique study of place. And all of this is established, in both movies, in the opening sequence. There Will Be Blood opens with an ominous buzz as the camera pans down from a mountain-scape to show a single man working. The scene ends with the man showing the desire to survuive (or, as we learn later, not fail)and the camera pans back up to the mountains and the ominous buzz kicks in again. A brilliant opener that casts the American west in 1898 and this man as inseparable and of a piece. As the story moves on through the decades, this relationship becomesmore entwined between the man, Daniel Plainview, and the oil rich, sun-baked California terrain.

Similarly, in Lust, Caution, the opening establishes place and character and sets up the tension of what will slowly unfold. Lee's camera cricles a majong game and follows the action on the table as the women interact. From this, at times catty and intense, exchange we learn much about the youngest women, Wong Chai Chi, and, as the movie back-pedals to lead back to this game, we see this game through a new lens.

The trajectory and choices of these characters is the main reason why these movies have stuck in my head. In Plainview's case, it's hard to pinpoint when the land - or what's in the land - transforms him. He seems a charming huckster at first. How much of the early Plainview is sincere? When did the greed steep in and turn him ugly? Was it always there?

Wong's main choice had me boggled for some time after. The scene is wonderfully played out and the aftermath heart-wrenching. Soon afterward, I realized that Wong reveals the answers to these questions in a an outburst of anger and frustration. Plainview, in angry and frustrated outbursts only hides himself deeper. Two very different movies, two lasting impressions.

Now, Nimero, quit beating around the bush, and finally get to your impressions of Brand Upon the Brain! and The Bourne Ultimatum.