Confessions of Two Dangerous Minds

A Far Less Knowledgeable 10 Top Films of the Decade

2010-01-08T23:36:00.000-08:00

I've made a career out of being a day late and a dollar short, so it should come as no surprise that I finally got around to compiling my favorite ten films of the past decade a week after we entered the 2010s. As a cautionary note before I begin, I was a kid when the decade started and am just starting to enter full-fledged adulthood now. As such, what might have been particularly effecting ten years ago would probably strike me in an entirely different manner now. I've also seen probably one tenth of what Rosemary has seen, so please reference her list if you're looking for something approaching respectability. Now, in reverse order...

10. 28 Weeks Later (2007), Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
I've got a certain affection for the zombie genre that was detailed way back when I reviewed Zombieland months ago. This decade revitalized the genre, with the undead morphing from lumbering goofs into Olympic sprinters capable of dismembering a victim in seconds. In short, zombies were made scary again. Danny Boyle deserves a modicum of credit for this sea change with his overrated 28 Days Later, but the often overlooked second work of Spanish newcomer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is the rare example of a sequel that surpasses the original in every filmic sense. The opening 10 minutes of this film are some of the scariest and most technically brilliant moments put onto the big screen this decade. The rest of the film doesn't give one too much time to relax and is quite well done. The firebombing of an infected London in particular puts most Hollywood effects to shame. It's too bad that Boyle is rumored to be behind the upcoming 28 Months Later, because I'd like to see what Fresnadillo would have done with it. The young director has only one other film to his name (the flawed but fascinating Intacto), but he's already climbed into my pantheon of must-see directors.

9. Lord of War (2005), Andrew Niccol
Niccol's film is a most matter of fact look at gunrunning and just how bad Africa has been screwed over in the past two decades. I love great openings, and the opening scene here following a bullet from production to target from a single vantage point is one of the more innovative ever. The Constant Gardener touched on similar material and could have had this spot, but Nicolas Cage's utterly believable performance as an arms dealer puts Lord of War over the top.

Nicolas Cage is certainly one of the odder actors going. On one hand, his understated style has been brilliant here and in films like Adaptation and Face/Off. Last year, he teamed with Wernor Herzog in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to deliver a performance on par with Klaus Kinski's best. Conversely, Cage will act in any piece of crap (looking at you Ghost Rider) in order to feed his disgusting need to buy any and all material goods under the sun. The man owns a British castle, a Caribbean island, and numerous mansions throughout the States. Keep on buying Mr. Cage, I guarantee it won't make your life feel any more meaningful.

8. Bamboozled (2000), Spike Lee
Bamboozled has some noticeable flaws, but Lee's story of the rise and fall of a modern day minstrel show sticks with me years after I saw it. Lee's refusal to pull any punches is commendable, and his critical look at both the black power movement and "Uncle Toms" makes its point about the dangers of selling yourself out and adopting a false persona for money and fame vividly. Satire is rarely done as well as it is here, and while the issue of race and the media may be uncomfortable it is well worth examining. Finally, Terence Blanchard's beautiful piano backing provides a fitting mood for the film, and rapper Mos Def steals the show as a dim-witted black power figure. Look up "Blak iz Back" on youtube to see the film's fictional "Mau Maus" led by Def perform one of the Top Ten hip hop singles of the decade.

7. The Triplets of Belleville (2003), Sylvain Chomet
A.O. Scott describes The Triplets of Belleville far better than I could when he praises the film as "a hallucinatory amalgam of Paris and New York." This is an animated film, but it's a far cry from the Disney films one sees as a child. This is animation that Dali and Buñuel would love, a film told entirely in caricature, sound, and music. There is little dialogue to speak of, but the surreal world created is deeply engrossing. "Belleville Rende-vous," the film's title song, is a perfect fit for the chaotic world of The Triplets of Belleville. It's nice to know that an animated film this brilliantly weird can be made. Rarely have such ugly on-screen representations made for such a beautiful film.

6. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Joel & Ethan Coen
It's been a good decade for the Coen brothers. They made four excellent films and won their first Oscar for No Country for Old Men in the 2000s. What's more, the brothers have enough gravitas to literally attract any actor looking for a "serious" film at this point. The Man Who Wasn't There is a departure for the Coens, a neo-noir film so true to the film noir of the past that it could easily pass as a mid-1950s release. The simple story follows the downfall of a normal man, a theme common to the brother's work. What makes the film so enjoyable, however, are the simple cinematography and attention to detailwhich give The Man Who Wasn't There the look and feel of a film made fifty years in the past.

5. Shaun of the Dead (2004), Edgar Wright/ Tropic Thunder (2008), Ben Stiller
Intelligent comedies are few and far between in an era in which Will Ferrell reigns supreme. Comedy works best when it is both absurd, inappropriate, and slightly uncomfortable. Both Shaun of the Dead and Tropic Thunder are huge successes based on these criteria. Shaun uses the standard zombie theme to great comedic effect in following the story of loser Brits through the zombie apocalypse. Slapstick humor is rarely funnier (or gorier) than it is in Shaun of the Dead. Tropic Thunder uses a more complicated backdrop than Shaun of the Dead, but ends up succeeding all the same. Ben Stiller for all his terrible films must actually be intelligent because in directing Zoolander and Tropic Thunder he has made the only two decent American comedies in recent memory. Tropic Thunder is well worth seeing if only for Robert Downey Jr's performance as a black man. It should have notified studio heads that utter inanity can make a film hilarious if it is well-written. Sadly, I think that message probably fell on deaf ears.

4. Syriana (2005), Stephen Gaghan
Syriana is one of the bevy of films dealing with the Middle East that Hollywood has put out since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Following the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency, the film follows American maneuvering in the fictional state of Syriana. While the scenario presented is fictional, the incredible plausibility of the film gives it emotional weight. Syriana points out that as long as the United States has any standing in the world, we'll use our influence and military might to intervene in other countries. More often than not, these interventions will have an underlying economic purpose and will not be of any benefit to the country in question. Syriana is able to examine this tenet of American foreign policy in a crisply shot and fast paced "Hollywood action thriller" sort of way. That it succeeds both as a film and in making a point makes Syriana well worth viewing.

3. A Very Long Engagement (2004), Jean-Pierre Jeunet
As far as moving love stories go, you'd be hard pressed to find anything better made in the last decade than A Very Long Engagement. This story of a girl holding out hope that her fiance has survived World War I is on this list thanks to Audrey Tatou's performance and the incredible cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel. The overhead shots of battlefields in particular are spectacular. Every person who loves The Notebook should see this and see how moving a film can be when it is this well crafted.

2. Spirited Away (2001), Hayao Miyazaki
Where The Triplets of Belleview made the viewer appreciate the beauty of its hideous caricatures, Spirited Away does the exact opposite with its animation. Hayao Miyazaki's story of a girl passing into a spirit world is told with some of the most beautiful hand-drawn animation ever created. The whole film is sort of an oblique Alice in Wonderland. Just as in Lewis Carrol's tale, Spirited Away's world is fascinating, but it also contains a simultaneous dark undercurrent that provides it with infinitely more depth than the standard coming of age story. Miyazaki's mind has produced some of the most beautiful combinations of image and narrative seen on screen over the course of his career, and Spirited Away is his masterpiece to date.

1. Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Guillermo del Toro
I'm sure a psychologist could have a field day with the fact that my two favorite movies of the past decade are coming of age stories involving thirteen year old girls (I chalk it up to mere coincidence). I do have an extensive review of del Toro's work with a particular focus on Pan's Labyrinth and its sister film The Devil's Backbone coming up sometime down the road, so I'll save most of what there is to say here. Suffice it to say that I readily believe del Toro when he says this film nearly killed him, as I've never run across a work so obviously personal and painstakingly filmed. There are layers and layers of texture in Pan's Labyrinth, and the interplay between the "fantasy" and "real" worlds is fascinating. It is not, Rosemary, simply an escapist fairytale.

On Beauty

2010-01-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Olivier Assayas' gorgeous film Summer Hours (2008) follows three siblings as they deliberate whether to keep their childhood home after their mother passes away. The mother, an avid collector and supporter of her uncle who was an acclaimed painter, constructed a house with art, atmosphere, and room after room filled with flowers in vases. The garden is leafy and impressionistic; the interiors embody a shabby gentility.

Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, and Jeremie Renier star as the siblings torn between clinging to the rich family history their mother cultivated or forsaking their childhood utopia as their careers take them from China to San Francisco. Each one is emotionally attached to some object in the house, whether it is a platter shaped like a leaf or an assortment of wooden hands. For an interior decorator or collector of art and antiques, this film is an aesthetics dream, visually satisfying us frame after sunlit frame.

Assayas' proved his unprecedented ability at capturing everyday life in his dinner scene in Irma Vep (1996) (where a Hong Kong actress eats baguette while Luna's cover of "Bonnie and Clyde" plays in the background) and in Summer Hours the camera languidly strolls throughout rooms and gardens without ever losing it's visual or narrative power. Like a Monet painting it asks for your attention as it blooms with life and beauty.

Where Have All the Feminists Gone?

2010-01-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

In Hole's rough and tumble song Courtney Love croons, "And I know it, I can't feel it / Well, I know it enough to believe it." If only Love was meditating on the inexplicable paradox of Diablo Cody's female protagonists in her new film Jennifer's Body, where we want to believe Cody thinks her characters are strong, but never quite feel it. Jennifer's Body stars Megan Fox, the title character, and Amanda Seyfried, nicknamed "Needy"; these two characters are meant to pass as more interesting, more intriguing, and more 'womanly' than their small-town classmates. We saw this same so-called alternative character in Diablo Cody's debut Juno, a pre-packaged indie film that suggested Juno was more complicated then most teenage girls because she knew Patti Smith had put out the the record "Horses" and talked on a hamburger shaped telephone.

But where Juno appropriately mentioned Smith, faintly identifying what Evelyn McDonnell writes about in Mama Rama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock 'n' Roll, "'Love is a ring, the telephone / Love is an angel, disguised as lust / Here in our bed until the morning comes.' Smith sang how a lonely teenage girl felt, wanting to be loved and fucked," Jennifer's Body fails to identify the paradox of the vulnerability and the insatiable appetites of high school girls. Yes, Jennifer is suddenly transformed into a man-eating demon, but Megan Fox is too busy seducing to ever play her dinner scenes for laughs.

Jennifer talks candidly about her sex life, courageously marches up to a city band and introduces herself, and then seduces the bartender to buy the lead singer drinks, but what initially appears to be a rebel, soon dissolves into an insecure girl who, after a mysterious fire burns down the bar, passively agrees to ride in the band's van; despite Needy's pleas, the blackout windows, and the band's Greenday, creepy disposition, Jennifer allows herself to become a victim, now fitting Camille Paglia's definition of "pampered, white middle-class girls [with] infantile personalities, emotionally, and intellectually underdeveloped."

The weak female characters aside, Jennifer's Body fails at providing enough salaciousness. Director Karyn Kusama shies away from the gore, the humor, and simply tantalizes us with a scant few sexual scenes that are so tame they could belong in the High School Musical series. For all her tattoos and talk, Cody has simply written a fluff piece that holds together like Michael Bay movie. As Le Tigre sings, I'm ready for a feminist sweepstakes, not just on my CD player, but on my DVD one as well.

Learning Lessons

2010-01-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

Once asked by a reporter, "how do you know when you're finished?" the 1950s painter Jackson Pollock replied, "how do you know when you're finished making love?" These two questions get at the crux of Martin Scorsese's short film "Life Lessons" in the collection New York Stories (1989). Nick Nolte stars as the wide-eyed, bushy bearded painter Lionel Dobie who is unprepared for his upcoming show and trying to rekindle his romantic relationship with his assistant Paulette, played by Rosanna Arquette in a gutsy, if vulnerable, performance.

Nick Nolte amazes as the self-centered, albeit needy, painter as he shuffles through his New York loft playing tape after tape of soundtrack worthy music from Ray Charles to Bob Dylan. Lionel is earnest, but desperate and Paulette, at the end of her rope, both teases him throughout the film and dismisses his advances. Arquette is convincing as the beautiful novice who both welcomes the chance to rub shoulders with the elite, yet ultimately is overwhelmed by the experience and is unsure of how to conduct herself in circle after circle of acclaimed artists.

Even more then the story and the performances, it is really the cinematography that makes this film worthy of repeat viewings. Scorsese peppers the film in irises which are meant at times to pinpoint the correlative of Lionel's fixation or to simply focus on specific details in his apartment like a crystal glass of whiskey smothered in paint. There are the track shots that follow Lionel as he walks the length of his enormous canvas that allow the audience to see what he sees, but from a removed, third person point of view. These shots lend a kind of intimacy to our relationship with the protagonist. We invest in Lionel's need to determine when he is finished, in his art and in his relationships, but allow the film the time to answer those questions for us.

Top 10 Films of the Decade

2010-01-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

As we ring in the New Year with resolutions, it seems only natural we would reflect on the past decade as well: politics, pop culture, and the post worthy films of the past decade. I've conjured a list of the top ten and a runner up list of the ten who couldn't quite make the cut, but still deserve another viewing.

(1.) In the Mood for Love (2000) - Wong Kar-Wai's luscious, melancholy meditation on forbidden love is swathed in brilliant reds. It is a symphony of color and restrained emotion.

(2.) Requiem for a Dream (2000) - This harrowing horror story of four people destroyed by heroin and pills is an intoxicating mix of quick cuts (that mimic the characters' highs) and the Kronos Quartet's disquieting soundtrack.

(3.) Ghost World (2001) - This black comedy is about graduating high school when you still have no idea what you want to do with your life. It is Steve Buscemi's finest performance as the green cardigan wearing, record collecting recluse Seymour. The vintage clothes and sets are extraordinary; the acting even better.

(4.) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Squid and the Whale (2005) - The first is a yarn told in Alec Baldwin's smoky, New England accent, but both are about a family of underachieving genius which are both poignant and sprinkled in enough taxidermy and corduroy blazers to make Norman Bates proud. Anderson's soundtrack includes Nico, Nick Drake, and the Ramones among others. Gene Hackman and Jeff Daniels have never been so irresistible...or infuriating.

(5.) Monsoon Wedding (2001) - Mira Nair's family drama set on the eve of an arranged marriage has just been re-released by the Criterion Collection - and it is a well deserved accolade. The preparations and the ceremony are both intriguing and gorgeous, with shot after shot dripping in marigolds and music.

(6.) Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006) - Naomi Watts' spunky debut is pure delight and Laura Dern's geometrical face is a blue print of fear. The first is a dreamy meditation on making it big in Hollywood, while the second is a terrifying look at an actress who already has.

(7.) Secretary (2003) and Happy Endings (2005) - These two films tie for their stunning performances from the indie queen Maggie Gyllenhaal. Whether playing a submissive in an S&M relationship (which convincingly transforms into a sweet, if off-beat, love story) or a feisty singer, Gyllenhaal is charismatic, wide-eyed, and delightful.

(8.) Lost in Translation (2003) - Sofia Coppola's academy award winning film subtly captures the love that blossoms between two strangers during their stay in Japan. The long lens' emphasize the two main characters isolation and the sparse, but sharp dialogue sings.

(9.) The Lives of Others (2006) - A beautiful story on the redemptive power of art, this film follows a police agent as he spies on a playwright and his actress girlfriend; the agent slowly becomes absorbed in their relationship to one another and their work.

(10.) There Will Be Blood (2007) - A chilling story of power and greed, this film contains some of the best performances of the decade from Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. The sets are almost operatic in their grandeur and beauty.

Runners Up

(1.) Traffic (2000)
(2.) Storytelling (2001)
(3.) Shaun of the Dead (2004)
(4.) The New World (2005)
(5.) No Country for Old Men (2007)
(6.) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and Summer Hours (2008)
(7.) Grind House (2007) and Inglorious Bastards (2009)
(8.) Let the Right One In (2008) and Thirst (2009)
(9.) Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
(10.) Man on Wire (2008)

Grating Emptiness: Alvin and the Chipmunks

2010-01-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

After nearly a month off I'm quite pleased to mark our return from the realm of defunct websites that start out with the best of intentions and then shrivel and die in short order. No, that was not to be our fate. We're here to erratically analyze films with no seeming structure or narrative thread.

As such, it seems only natural that I would follow up Rosemary's burst of wide-ranging reviews with a close look at the pinnacle of American cinema in 2009, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. Babysitting one's younger cousins definitely has its perks from time to time, such as the rare opportunity to see an inspired children's film such as Alvin 2 on the big screen.

I've got to admit that Alvin provided exactly what I was expecting going in. Kudos for that, I guess. One expects that the "plot" will be a combination of Hollywood's most tired cliches from the past quarter century. It is. One expects to see the actors mail it in for the check. They do. One expects the story to be cluttered and far too complicated for the target pre-teen audience to follow. It is. One further expects the addition of female "Chipettes" to lead to over-sexualized dance numbers and innuendo in a film aimed at eight year olds. Thankfully, we are not disappointed.

David Cross is the actor who most needs to make a public apology for his role in Alvin. The man co-hosted the funniest sketch comedy series of my lifetime in the '90s with The Mr. Show on HBO. Earlier this decade, he was pretty funny on Arrested Development. Now it seems like every ounce of edginess and humor has been wrung out of Cross in his quest to make it big. It's pretty sad watching him go through the motions, and he'd be best served to hang it up and go back to stand-up at this point.

But truthfully it's not really a surprise that Hollywood spit out an unnecessary sequel at Christmastime in order to make a quick buck (over 120 million domestically in its first three weeks). At least someone decided that making the chipmunks look like they were "street" (seen here) was a no-no for The Squeakuel. What's sad about the whole affair is how no effort whatsoever was put into the film. The film copies most of the elements of High School Musical, adds some pop music covers, and tosses in a few fart jokes. It might be the most empty moviegoing experience of the year, a movie without any substance whatsoever. Thank god it's going to make 200 million dollars, so we can eagerly anticipate another sequel with a cute tagline in two years. Be still, my beating heart.

Oh Father

2009-12-29T17:55:00.000-08:00

Amy Berg's devastating documentary Deliver Us from Evil (2006) traverses through the past of the Catholic priest Father Oliver O'Grady who raped and molested dozens of children over a span of thirty years. Through interviews with both O'Grady and the victims and their families, Berg examines not only the ramifications of O'Grady's actions, but the politics of the Catholic Church as well.

Though this documentary does not wholly fit the definition of an expository mode of documentary, Berg does sway the viewers' opinion of O'Grady through her more extensive interviews with the victims and even some of the victims' parents. While there is no narrator, Berg splices the main story with interviews of Catholic priests on trial, blatantly attempting to deny their knowledge of O'Grady's acts and their own concealment of his history with each new parish they sent him to. One of the most disturbing parts of the film is when a psychologist explains that, to a Catholic priest, any sex is 'bad' sex, thus, raping a child is simply on par with a consensual adult relationship between a man and a woman. The reflections of O'Grady himself reveal a man who cannot comprehend the ramifications of his actions, nor totally accept that he has done anyone harm. Congenial and candid, he admits to his actions, but qualifies them by stressing that most of his advances were done out of tenderness. As he talks against the backdrop of a playground, the effect is chilling.

Berg's documentary is not argumentative, nor does she condemn the Catholic faith; yet, this film grapples with the hypocrisies of Catholic politics and the Church's betrayal of the families who suffered under the hands of their priest. Though this film is filled with pain, Madonna's lyrics could be applied to the victims' relationship with O'Grady when she sings, "you once had the power" - had, but now has not.

Image courtesy of movieposter.com

Fear and Loathing in North Carolina

2009-12-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Martin Scorsese's remake of the film Cape Fear (1991) is a delicious and satisfying thriller of betrayal and revenge. The plot centers on a lawyer, Sam Bowden, played by the soulful Nick Nolte who conceals evidence in a trial when defending the accused rapist Max Cady, played by Robert De Niro. Once released from his fourteen year prison sentence, Cady returns to follow and terrorize Bowden and his family. Though the sets are campy (a North Carolina sunset has never looked so sienna and Spanish moss trees have never populated a backyard in so much lacy abundance) and the southern accents are strained, Scorsese's cinematography and the performances do not disappoint. The numerous quick zooms and tracking shots add a layer of paranoia and uneasiness to the plot.

Yet, it is Juliette Lewis who steals the film as Bowden's fifteen year old daughter, a Lolita in a retainer and cutoff jeans who fits the Nabokov description of "frail, honey-hued shoulders, the silky supple bare back, the chestnut head of hair." Lewis swings her arms when she talks and fiddles with her hair, but her performance is childlike, not childish. She holds her own in a scene alone with Robert De Niro as a girl captivated by the adult mysteries of sex, but shaken when asked to participate. She is self-assured without knowing it and her performance is steady and strong.

This film is not one of Scorsese's finest or most artfully done films, but it is entertaining as most revenge tales are. Cady lives by William Shakespeare's words, "if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge" and this motto guarantees two hours of substance, satisfying his palette and our own.

Image courtesy of afi.com

Alejandro Jodorowsky: Man with a Movie Camera

2009-12-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

The acclaimed Mexican avant-garde film director and actor Alejandro Jodorowsky makes movies which embody the main elements of second cinema: an absence of continuity editing, parallel montage, and intellectual montage. In Sergei Eisentein's essay "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" he compares hieroglyphs to single shots in a film which, when combined, form a meaning or idea. Eisentien writes, "the point is that the copulation of two hieroglyphs of the simplest series is to be regarded not as their sum, but as their product, i.e., as a value of another dimension, another degree; each, separately, corresponds to an object, to a fact, but their combination corresponds to a concept." It is this idea of forming concepts through the combination of images that dominates much of Jodorowsky's work.

In his first feature length film, Fando y Lis (1968) (which caused riots in Mexico upon its release), Jodorowsky loosely creates a narrative involving a couple searching for the mythical city Tar. In the film there are seemingly insignificant shots of the couple painting their bodies in the other's name, interspersed with quick shots of a young boy riding on a white horse in the desert. A defining feature of Jodorowsky's films are jump cuts between two unrelated shots that eventually develop into an extended scene. This film is reminiscent of Fellini's film 81/2 (1963) in the sense that it is visually evocative and repeatedly explores femininity and gender (like the scene where a group of drag queens overtake Fando and Lis and dress them in the opposite gender's clothing).

Jodorowsky's next feature film El Topo (1970) is a radical departure from the dreamy and ethereal Fando y Lis, yet still falls into the avant-garde category. This film is primarily a spaghetti western as the film follows El Topo on his journey to defeat four masters in the desert. Unlike the black and white Fando y Lis this film pulses in color, like his most famous film The Holy Mountain (1973). The blood, the garish skirts of women in the town, and the undergarments of a priest remind one of the astonishing Technicolor days of films like Singing in the Rain. Both of these films are saturated in the bright and the beautiful. The Holy Mountain is, in some ways, more visually satisfying due in large part to the impressive sets. In one scene the protagonist awakes to find himself in a large room in which hundreds upon hundreds of life-like statues of his body surround him. In another scene, he climbs to the top of a bright orange tower and crawls into a tunnel that looks like the inside of a rainbow.

Jodorwsky's films are cerebral, provocative, self-assured, and dazzling. Though his style and sensibility require a certain degree of initial patience, his shots and scenes are hieroglyphs worth deciphering long after you finish his films.

image courtesy of nndb.com

Poison Paradise

2009-12-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

With the current climate talks in Copenhagen it seems an appropriate time to return to Todd Haynes' harrowing debut Safe which paints a portrait of chemical induced hell in a palette of pastels. Julianne Moore is the protagonist of the film, a 1980s housewife whose days are filled with fruit diets and teal couches and whose nights are sleepless, saturated in television. Moore is stunning as the woman who suffers from an immune disorder that is caused by the pollution and chemicals that inhabit her rich and pampered suburban life. Her voice, in particular, captures the voice of a woman who spends most of her time in silence and is a compliment to her character's vacuous existence.

Haynes lingers on Moore's mundane day-to-day activities like trimming the flower boarder, attending her step class, and getting a perm with close-ups which focuses on a particular chemical cleaner or beauty product that the audience might otherwise ignore. The effect this camera work has is to create an ominous world where even the shampoo in the frame steadily becomes a menacing presence as Moore's character becomes increasingly pale and gaunt. We recognize this world's danger zone of interiors where everything is man made and no character is allowed a natural existence, both literally and figuratively. Though Moore passively accepts her responsibilities as a rich housewife, her beige and salmon decorating scheme becomes a metaphor for her character's immune deficiency. Nothing is vibrant in this world; everything is a whiter shade of pale.

This brilliant and chilling film about a character's isolating illness is as resonant today as it was when it was made in 1995. To watch it in the midst of environmental debates causes the viewer to hope that we will do more than, as the New York Times wrote, "'take note' of the pact shaped by five major nations." Let's avoid what Britney Spears sings in "Toxic": a "taste of a poison paradise."

Image courtesy of stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com

Drinks, Dancing, and Discussion in "The Last Days of Disco"

2009-11-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hollister Hovey, the fashion forward blogger whose aesthetic is described as "an eccentric version of decaying WASP-y, Teddy Roosevelt by way of John Derian" by the New York Times, matches the aesthetic sensibility of Whit Stillman's hilarious dry comedy The Last Days of Disco (1998). In Stillman's film, the final installment in his trilogy, two college girlfriends (brilliantly played by the shrill Kate Beckinsale and the demur Chloe Sevingy) spend their days as publishing assistants and their nights as glamorous, disco dancing divas.

While the film is saturated in 70s hits like Chic's "Good Times" or Carol Douglas's "Doctor's Orders," Stillman's film is philosophical and biting, outrageous and fascinating. The characters' intrigue in the club lies primarily, as Stillman says in a New York Times interview, in "the music, the atmosphere in the clubs and the narcotic of exclusivity." Yet, these characters are not just merely party animals, but successful, affluent, and cerebral. A conversation about the children's film Lady and the Tramp garners a zealous reaction from one of the men who says, "Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy, blond cocker spaniel with absolutely nothing on her brain; she's great looking, but, let's be honest, incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest, is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind: an oily jail bird out for a piece of tail or whatever he can get." It's not just the cocktails that provide a zinger in this film: the dialogue does as well.

These characters' vocabulary conjures up images of a childhood spent at boarding school with summers in the Hamptons complete with horseback riding and croquet. They wear Lacrosse and order vodka tonics. They edit books on Tibetan Buddhism and judge their success on whether or not they can afford to send their suits to the dry cleaners. They use words like "tremendous," "ferocious," and "extremely" the way others use definite articles. While all the performances are solid, it is actor Chris Eigeman (who plays the womanizing, club manager Des) that dazzles and says, quite seriously, "what if 'thine own self' is not so good, what if it's pretty bad? Would it be better in that case not to be true to thyself?" This film is true to itself - and that truth does not disappoint.

Image Courtesy of iwatchfilm.com

Stark and Sterile: Children of Men

2009-11-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

In the process of watching Children of Men for a third time and then going about the business of making up this review, I came to a few conclusions...

It is almost impossible for me to write a review of this film that isn't preachy or over the top because I think it's incredibly well-done and I want whoever stumbled across our site while looking for the wikipedia entry on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to feel the same way even if I don't make one astute point in this entire review.
My only "talent" as a reviewer comes from taking sarcastic cheap shots at bad films. These somewhat amusing asides are in short supply here. You have my apologies in advance.
Rosemary, any personal biases towards Clive Owen due to his performance as a general scumbag in 2004's Closer are no grounds for dismissing this film outright. You've got to do better than that.

So then, with all that established, what makes Children of Men worth your time? The storyline certainly isn't anything particularly ground-breaking, with a suddenly sterile humanity decaying into totalitarianism and anarchy. A similar storyline played out quite entertainingly the year before in V for Vendetta, even down to the British setting. What makes Children of Men so worthwhile is that director Alfonso Cuaron is able to create a diegesis in which what transpires is an entirely believable representation of what could happen in a world stricken by infertility.

Let's turn to the acting for a second. Julianne Moore always plays sort of the same character, but she's fine here. Michael Caine seems like he has a lot of fun taking a sharp departure from his normal roles by playing the aging hippie. But the star here IS the star. Clive Owen is brilliant as everyman Theo, the ex-activist who lives a life without any real meaning. I've got a theory about Owen. Hollywood seems to think he's an action hero a la Bruce Willis and even threw him into a Oceans' Eleven-type spy thriller last year with Julia Roberts (Duplicity). The man is terrible in these roles. He always comes off as kind of a schmuck, but he's damn good at playing a schmuck. More Closer and Children of Men, less of The International and Duplicity. Who knows, I might even be able to convince Rosemary that the the man's at least good at portraying a facsimile of himself.

If the acting in Children of Men makes the film, setting the film in Britain certainly helps too. If you want to set your film in a depressing, post-industrial hellhole, just go to Britain and turn the camera on. Trust me, it won't disappoint.

Since the two of you that read this website besides Rosemary and I probably stopped reading this review three paragraphs ago, I'll be quick here with my last points. Firstly, there is a single shot in a car that goes on for minutes without a cut. If you appreciate adventurous technical filmmaking, Children of Men will not disappoint. Lastly, this is the only film whose soundtrack I've actively sought out. Franco Battiato's cover of "Ruby Tuesday" fits perfectly, and any film that uses a song with the line "c*nts are running the world" is aces in my book...Because really, have truer words ever been spoken?

-The Cat

Next Up: Let's continue torturing Rosemary by continuing this look at contemporary Spanish film makers with my absolute favorite movie of all time, Pan's Labyrinth.

Image courtesy of moviesbuzz.com

Belle in the Bourgeois: An Interview with Seth Buddy on the Film "Belle de jour"

2009-11-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

Seth Buddy's love of film became evident to me after he showed Un chien andalou on VHS one day before lunch in high school. His enthusiasm for the sixteen minute short film introduced me to director Luis Bunuel and his later films, including the acclaimed drama Belle de jour. Belle de jour follows an upper class housewife, Severine, played by the wide-eyed Catherine Deneuve, as she satisfies her base desires in a brothel while remaining chaste in her marriage to a wholesome doctor.

Rosemary: How did you discover this film and what are the elements of it that fascinate you the most?

Buddy: Believe it or not, my mom turned me on to this film at some point in early high-school. She taped a documentary about Bunuel off of PBS and she sat me down and made me watch it. There were excerpts from all of his films in this documentary, so my interest was piqued to track down these movies and watch them in their entirety. The fetishistic, sexually deviant aspects of all of his films appealed to my adolescent brain; the women are all so cold and sexy and indifferent to men's weird desires (for the most part).

R: Severine is a woman disgusted by men's compliments, adoration, and advances in her everyday life; yet, she decides to work in a brothel where she is always the object of men's desire. Do you think her decision to do that is cathartic one? A way to explore her sexuality? Or is she just replaying the objectification she experienced as a young girl?

B: Bunuel was always trying to stick it to the rich. I think that played a large role in his creating a story in which a pristine example of white bourgeois purity becomes a prostitute, only to fall in love with the seedy (if not extremely handsome) small-time gangster, the antithesis of her husband. In the real world, prostitution is never happy, but in the world of fiction, it can represent sex stripped of all of its artifice, brought down to a transaction. For Severine, the potential violence, the anonymity, and the overt objectification of prostitution are thrilling. Remember how the gangster character inspects her body and rejects her because of the placement of a mole? That is in contrast to the subverted objectification of her husband's friend's desire for her.

R: At first, Severine's fantasies are separated from her reality through a cut that takes us to an entirely different scene; but, by the end, her fantasy seamlessly intertwines with her reality; and, the final shot of the film places us on the same road from the beginning of the film, with the same aural cues of the bells on the carriage. What do you make of this?

B: I always thought of the bells as her violent, dirty fantasies welling up out of her subconscious and disrupting her life. My take on the end is that it fits in with the surrealist idea of destroying meaning, in this case by setting up an intentional contradictory situation that makes the system break down entirely. The husband is handicapped and not handicapped simultaneously, the end result being that you can derive no ultimate meaning from the end (or any other part) of the film.

R: Severin's clothes are an interesting mix of military novice and what her husband's friend calls "precocious schoolgirl." How do you feel like Severine's clothes define or enhance her character?

B: The clothes reinforce the icy purity that was expected of her in her bourgeois life. It also set up a more stark contrast with the world of the brothel where she was either stripped bare or was half naked (and at her most content). The brothel and the nudity would be the opposite of all of the trappings of her wealthy, clean, pristine existence, the clothes included. The idea of filth is explored in the fantasy in which she is having shit thrown on her white clothes and she is being called a 'slut,' etc. (That is also what makes her realtionship with the Michel Piccoli character so complex - she has fantasies of being defiled, but it revolted by an uncouth man from her own class who wants nothing more than to defile her. She has to go to the odd [the Asian man] and the violent lower class [the gangster] in order to feel the sexual thrill of defilement.)

R: Last question - what is in your DVD player right now?

B: Elmo.

- Guest critic Seth Buddy can be found teaching French and baking bread.

Image courtesy of posteritati.com

The Small Joys of the Utterly Predictable: Whip It

2009-11-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Drew Barrymore hasn't spent too much time in the South. There is slightly more to the South than cornfields, football, and bbq diners. I'll make another assumption and say that, given the opportunity to direct her first film, Ms. Barrymore decided to play it safe and be as predictable as possible. That isn't necessarily an indictment in and of itself. An entertaining paint by numbers "teen girl finding her place in the world" story told in the context of an underground roller derby circuit and acted out by a stellar cast is fine by me. I'd even go so far as to unequivocally state that this is the finest movie about roller derbies ever produced.*

As mentioned, the cast here is excellent. Ellen Page is very talented, though she seems to be cementing her role as the indie outsider chick at this point. It's also nice to see Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat acting again, as Page continues to make a career out of starring with former Arrested Development cast members. Marcia Gay Harden's turn as Page's mother probably is the film's strongest performance of all, though that Southern accent is straight out of Gone with the Wind.

Whip It's simple plot follows a standard archetype of the girl who doesn't fit in with her small town finds love and acceptance elsewhere, which in this case is the underground roller derby circuit of anti-establishment Austin, Texas. None of the plot twists will remotely surprise you, and some of the particularly obvious twists are groan-worthy. A good deal of the film also defies common-sense, as the audience is left to wonder how a high school girl could possible be spending night after night hours away in Austin without arousing her parent's suspicion (until of course her budding roller derby career can be threatened by the discovery).

However, try as I might I couldn't this into a sarcastic trashing of Ms. Barrymore's first film. The soundtrack is a kick ass mix of hipster and rockabilly tunes, the roller derby scenes are lots of fun, and the whole thing just works as a weird jumble of reassuring cliches. Whip It is a nice rainy day flick to wile away a few hours with that's sure to be popular with the pre-teen girls of upper middle class liberals, sort of like a Southern Bend it Like Beckham.

*Granted, this may be damning Whip It with faint praise as the only other films about roller derbies I can recall are the original and remake versions of Rollerball. While James Caan and LL Cool J might not have much else in common, they can stand proud of their lead roles in these affronts to all that is good and decent.

-The Cat

Next Up: The first in what will be an ongoing series of reviews chronicling modern Spanish filmmaking. Because I know Rosemary hates it, let's go with the magnificent post-apocalyptic drama, Children of Men.

Image courtesy of movieposterdb.com

Mr. Harrelson's Opus

2009-10-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

Fear not, dear reader, this blog is Confessions of a Single Mind no more. While Rosemary has entertained you with literary allusions and sparkling prose, I've battled off some form of the plague and made a valiant attempt at finishing a thesis. These circumstances when combined with some other mitigating factors (my general sloth, for instance) have conspired to push back what I'm sure is a wildly anticipated first stab at a film review.

And really, what better way to mark one's debut than with a zombie flick? The genre’s been around long enough to produce a few classics, be completely reinvented this decade, and now devolve into satire. Zombieland is the second such “zombie comedy” we’ve seen, following 2003’s Shaun of the Dead. The plot, if you can call it that, follows four survivors of the undead apocalypse traveling to a theme park in Los Angeles. The writers certainly didn’t forget their favorite stereotypes. We’ve got the neurotic loser (Jesse Eisenberg), kick-ass Southerner (Woody Harrelson), and girl power sister duo (Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone). Eisenberg and Harrelson have great chemistry together, and provide the vast majority of the laughs. The first half hour of the film is hilarious in an R-rated Three Stooges sort of way, especially if you have an adolescent sense of humor like me. After that, with the introduction of the two sisters (we’ve officially hit saturation point with Abigail Breslin), the film drags towards its inevitable nerd boy and hot girl fall in love conclusion. There are, after all, only so many ways a zombie can be comically murdered, and at 81 minutes the film’s still too long.

All this being said, if you really don’t want to think for an hour and a half by all means get yourself to a theater for Zombieland. It’s trash entertainment at its finest, and is enlivened by an actually funny Bill Murray (who knew???) and a punk rock soundtrack. Decent comedy from Hollywood is in short supply these days (Tropic Thunder… and what else this decade?), so even though it’s slapstick, crude, and utterly conventional I’m glad I spent the 8 dollars for the matinee.

In sum, Zombieland is proof that the genre probably needs to crawl back into its grave for another couple of decades, but it also shows that Hollywood can make people laugh once every decade or so.

-The Cat

Next Up: Drew Barrymore has fun with Southern stereotypes!

Image courtesy of about.com

2009-10-19T18:52:00.001-07:00

Hongryeon’s End

2009-10-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

In Interview last year, the designers of Rodarte, sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, said Japanese horror films were often the inspiration for their collections. Yet, it was the film A Tale of Two Sisters that complimented their aesthetic sensibility the most because, as Laura said, "in the posters, these girls are in little white schoolgirl dresses and they're all covered in blood. So we wanted to do these blood-soaked dresses."

While not everyone's fashion sensibility matches the macabre and the horrific, Ji-woon Kim's surreal film A Tale of Two Sisters is beautifully wrought, not only through it's suspense and terror, but through the details of the house itself: the red velvet coverlet on the step-mother's bed, the girls' closet neatly packed with twenty dresses of the same print, a woven pair of slippers that belonged to the girls' dead mother, the green haze of shadows in the sitting room. Every color and fabric, from the step-mother's red lipstick to the green gown of a spirit girl, is as vivid as the details in a John Singleton Copley portrait.

The narrative explores two sisters' love, Janghwa and Hongryeon, and a step-mother and house that threaten to severe their bond. The basic plot is conventional (think about the power of interiors in films like Rosemary's Baby and The Shining) and it has the dream-like quality of a David Lynch film; yet Jangwa's fierce love and protection of her younger sister provides a poignancy that the horror genre often lacks.

In a film about mistaken identity and intrusive forces, Kim's use of camera movement continually unsettles the audience, like in the scenes where he uses a stedi-cam to trail behind the step-mother as she walks through the house. We are unable to conclude if these shots are a subjective view of the evil presence in the house or simply an objective view that only the audience can observe. Much of the film's tension comes from not knowing whose vision the camera's eye is meant to match.

A Tale of Two Sisters haunting and moving, tragic and beautiful; like a piece of cloth that unravels all our expectations and stitches it into an entirely new, albeit blood-soaked, piece.

Image courtesy of asian-horror-films.com

What We Choose to Retrieve

2009-10-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

Freud's theory that, "it may indeed be questioned whether we have any memories at all from our childhood: memories relating to our childhood may be all that we possess," ties directly to Andrei Tarkovsky's transfixing film The Mirror (1975) which interweaves personal narration, historical newsreel footage, and past memories with present moments. This cinematic welding assembles the life and memories of a man, with some of the seemingly unrelated sequences (like the news clips or his mother leaving the house) still braided into his narrative.

The scenes that take place on the man's childhood farm are the most bewitching, due to the use of light and the over exposure which washes everything in amber. Tarkovsky's shots of wind and rustling leaves vaguely recall a similar motif used in Michael Antonioni's L'avventura, Blow Up, or L'Eclisse; yet, in these shots that sweep the homestead, we linger with a space and time that this man can no longer fill. The silver birches and the grass, sweeping back, parallel the eerie shots of the man's mother washing her hair in a basin (her skin so translucent she appears to us like a specter) or walking through the dimly lit wooden rooms in a white dress.

It is Tarkovsky's ability to intertwine many different facets of memory (without the superfluous cuts and editing of recent films like Good Bye Lenin!) that create a more complete portrait of a past than a traditional narrative film is able to achieve. This film operates the way our minds do - one shot of a barn burning in rain leads to a present day image of the protagonist observing his son standing in the rain next to a burning branch. So, too, do our minds retrieve or relate moments to our childhood (paintings, footage, and conversations) without any explanation or transition, sweeping us, like the grass and the birches, to occupy each shot and scene, windblown and full of wonder.

Image courtesy of womdersinthedark.wordpress.com, which is a nice blog in its own right

Live Through This

2009-09-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

In an interview, the poet Jack Gilbert said that when he was younger he made a list of things he wanted to do in his life - not to die before he'd been in love, not to die a virgin. In Bernardo Bertolucci's film Stealing Beauty (1996), these same desires are shared by the film's heroine Lucy.

Swathed in Tuscan sunlight, Liv Tyler's Lucy is all lip, hair, and leg. She has returned to Italy to visit artist friends' of her mother, a famous poet who has recently committed suicide. While the household husband has been commissioned by Lucy's father to do her portrait, we later learn she's looking to lose her virginity to an Italian boy, Niccolo, who gave her her first kiss at fifteen and to find out the identity of her biological father.

Yet, these plot details come second to the scenery, soundtrack, and sexual experiences of those residing in the country home. Bertolucci is more comfortable lingering on a group languidly smoking a joint at dusk and discussing their first time than he is at teasing out Lucy's emotional and psychological state. Instead, there are the long shots of Lucy writing in her journal (the words gliding across the screen as she writes them on the paper), a close up of her placing a polaroid of Niccolo under her blouse, and the static camera pausing to observe her jumping around, screaming out the lyrics to Hole's "Rock Star."

These small snapshots create the dreamy and sensual atmosphere of a teenage girl's life and mind - one who can quote Liz Phair, Billy Holiday, or Porstihead lyrics, somberly expose her breast while being sketched, and spend an afternoon picking Queen Anne's lace in a field, right at the root.

This is not a film that lends itself to great discussion or thought, but it delights our eye and ear, and provides us with a quiet happiness that can be found in Jack Gilbert's ending to "Burma," - "All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then. / Like a giant bell ringing long after you can't hear it."

Hi, Hello, and Welcome!

2009-09-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

If you’re reading this you’re probably related to me or Rosemary, though perhaps we ended up getting wildly famous and this sad little introduction has now been read by thousands. Confessions of Two Dangerous Minds is a simple little venture, really. Rosemary and I discovered we held a mutual appreciation for films that are a bit off the beaten path, and now we’re two of the thousands of others spouting their uninformed opinions on the internet.

This love of the stranger side of cinema, as our title pretentiously states, is really all we have in common here. We do love some of the same genres of film (as I’m sure you’ll see), but Rosemary knows her stuff and is going to be providing insightful critiques of all varieties of film. I’m a bit cruder and will merely attempt to be your resident ranter and raver, lampooning some while waxing poetic about others. We're a little too broke to review bunches of new releases, but hope to on occasion.

The great positive of such an arrangement as ours is that I believe we’re different enough to provide something worthwhile for anyone that stumbles across our little site. I hope you agree, and thanks for stopping by.

-The Cat