So there I go on Friday, talking all about how there are too many new movies out, and how am I going to have time to see all of them — oh, I’m so worried I won’t get to everything, blah blah blah. So what happens? How many of the movies that I previewed on Friday did I go see? Yes, you in the back …
That’s right. None. I didn’t get to one new release this weekend. For that matter, while my yearly count increased by seven to 127, and I actually watched eight (more on that in a second), I didn’t see one new movie this entire weekend. I blame Gothamist. As I boasted about in the previous post, for the first time in what is now basically a year of doing these Gothamist Interviews, we finished prepping all the interviews before the week even started. (Oh yeah, and that’s not even completely true.) The point is, while I had plans to go see Junebug Saturday night, both my friend and I came down with I’m-not-feeling-well-and-want-to-stay-home-itis about 90 minutes before we had planned to meet. And basically, most of today and much of last night was spent editing the interviews so I wouldn’t have to be concerned with them much during the week. I have bigger things on my mind. (Bigger, not necessarily better.)
This week in movie-viewing was an interesting mix for me, though.
It started on Tuesday with a screening of Jesus Is Magic, the film version of comedian Sarah Silverman’s recent show. Then on Wednesday was a Young Friends of Film event featuring the Nicole Holofcener film Walking and Talking which I had actually never seen although I had been meaning to for, well, about the last nine years.
Thursday night was the double-feature which concluded with my up close and personal introduction to the General Lee: it featured paying for Bad News Bears before sneaking into The Island. As I’ve mentioned before, I was quite interested in — excited even — Richard Linklater‘s update of a childhood favorite for no reason less than I think Linklater is probably one of the two or three most talented directors — certainly American directors — working today. To say I was underwhelmed and disappointed would be an understatement. But still, I figured I wanted to support Linklater more than Michael Bay, and besides, I really wanted to give Bay every chance possible for me to like his film, so I figured not being pissed at contributing to his gross, as meager as it may be, would help create good will. I wound-up taking it one step-further: since there was 45 minutes between films and, unusually, I was lacking reading material, I sat through the first 20 minutes of Fantastic Four, which had already stolen precious hours from my life. Suffice to say, walking into The Island, I was prepped to like something that was awful, just not as awful as Fantastic Four. And you know what? I almost did. But more on that later …
Nothing on Friday, but Saturday turned into catch-up on the DiVo’d movie day as I watched three films I’d yet to see but had recorded: George Cukor‘s 1954 comedy It Should Happen to You, a cute but ultimately really dated and, in some ways, kind of disturbing romantic comedy that also talks about fame and the desire for celebrity. I’m not sure that I agree with Peter Bogdanovich that this movie is really one of “The Essentials”. Really the most notable thing to me about It Should Happen to You is that it marks the film debut of a 29-year-old Jack Lemmon, with an “And introducing …” credit and everything.
I then watched the 1942 horror/thriller classic Cat People from director Jacques Tourneur which is simply fascinating because all of the “scares” and action are really never shown. I don’t even mean in a Psycho shower scene, no knife-penetration way. I mean that with one exception, everything in this film is handled through sound, shadow and maybe some rustling. The audience has to fill in all of the blanks, but certainly is never lost as to what is going on. If you’ve never heard of it, Cat People deals with a Serbian woman who falls in love with a young architect, but she has a secret: when she gets aroused, or jealous, she fears that she’ll turn into a black panther. And yup … she does. It’s this whole curse thing, you know?
Finally I also sat through The Village for the first time. I know people are divided on this film, and I’m not such a huge M. Night Shyamalan fan. I thought The Sixth Sense was interesting and cleverly-made, and I’m one of the apparent few who thinks Unbreakable is absolutely brilliant — one of the best comic book movies ever made, while also being unfairly criticized. But Signs sucked. And now having finally seen The Village? I guess it’s better than Signs … barely. It got fairly annoying to me relatively quickly. I was pissed-off by the revelation regarding the creatures, and I actually thought the overall set-up and his big twist was OK, but I wanted to know more of the why and how this community had been able to actually thrive this isolated. And what were the real plans of all these apparently very smart people? And the fact that Ivy was blind is, once you reach the end of the film, simply a plot contrivance allowing her to do what she does without ever actually realizing what she doesn’t see. There, that doesn’t ruin it for anybody who hasn’t actually seen it and still cares, although by this point, I can’t imagine who that might be.
Lastly, I saw The Constant Gardner. Yes, again, as I had gone to a screening a couple weeks ago that I was not sufficiently awake for. That was not a problem at today’s screening, and let me just say, this film is absolutely brilliant. I’ll spend more time on why in a later post as the film still doesn’t open for nearly three weeks, but suffice to say that Fernando Meirelles has cemented himself as one of the world’s most exciting filmmakers. I can’t call him a “young filmmaker” because apparently, he’s going to be 50 this November. (Not that you’d ever know it. At least from my vantage point at the Q&A following today’s film, he looked at least a decade younger.) I’ll reiterate that I don’t think The Constant Gardner quite reaches the level of City of God, but it’s damn close, and Meirelles is the true definition of a cinematic artist, crafting his story visually and through non-linear storytelling without ever making the film feel gimmicky. The Constant Gardner is an incredibly powerful picture with much to say about issues relevant to — yet often ignored by — the world today.
Which sort of leads me back to The Island. There is a saturation of color in the African scenes of The Constant Gardner that reminded me of a look prevalent in all Bay films, especially The Island, and it seems that Bay and Meirelles have something in common. Bay came from a world of music videos and commercials, and really, he never left that filmmaking sensibility behind — quick cuts, splashy visuals, tight short sequences — but he never caught on to letting a story unfold and flow at the proper pace. It turns out that Meirelles spent over a decade making, by his count, over 1000 commercials. The difference one sees by watching both City of God and The Constant Gardner is that Meirelles knows exactly how to keep an audience interested in his story, and he doesn’t succumb to conventional storytelling to do so. Meanwhile, he and cinematographer César Charlone create breathtaking visuals (apparently many of them using handheld Super 16!) that easily rival anything Bay has done, even if they’re often simpler.
I wish I could see The Island as made by Meirelles. It would have likely been a phenomenal film. It might have lacked some of the action sequences and focused more on the themes and the developing relationship between the two leads, but considering that all the chase and action scenes and the simplicity of the relationship are probably the film’s biggest flaws, that’s not a bad thing.
I’m going to write more on The Island and Bad News Bears some time over the next couple days, as well as my long-awaited (at least by me) comments on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a few others. For now, though, I’ll just say this: for about an hour, Bay made the best movie of his career. Whether it was a stronger script (the base idea is really kind of brilliant, which is probably why their was a feeding frenzy over buying it) or more story-driven producers keeping an eye on him, the first half of The Island is almost everything it should have been. Yes, there’s still too much running, and like the rest of the movie, not everything makes sense and it certainly could have been tighter (once again, less running!), but it was good. Too bad I can’t say the same about the next 75 minutes. But I’ll leave them for another post.
Out of Focus 