| |
|
SCREENING LOG - 7/03/2006-7/09/2006
Back to 2006 Index ZIDANE, MAIS POURQUOI???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8hazS_JDBc
An Inconvenient Truth (2006, Davis Guggenheim)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/
yes - strikes me primarily as a ultra-sophisticated slide show, and secondly as a slick public relations video second, than as an accomplished work of filmmaking. The Fortune (1975, Mike Nichols)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073008/
TSPDT #872
mixed - a very mean work with misogynistic overtones that the makers seem to regard with more giddy nostalgia than critical distance.
Meantime (1984, Mike Leigh)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082727
TSPDT #873
yes/YES - I had to watch this twice to get an appreciation of it. At first, the dialogue is hard to penetrate for ears untrained to thick working-class British accents, and tonally the film is all over the place, but that's what makes it intriguing -- moments of reckless glee are treated with sadness, while starkly tragic moments are infused with gentleness and unexpected humor -- if these wicked curveballs are indicative of Leigh's early work than I sure miss it in his straighter recent films. Tim Roth's performance is largely off-putting, though perhaps purposely so -- one can't quite tell whether his inexpressive character is retarded or repressed, but again, this kind of impassiveness seems in line with an unruly vision of the world Leigh is trying to put forth. Complementing Roth is Phil Daniels, whose masterful performance covers all kinds of moods, from abusive to tender, often at once -- his soulful eyes half-buried behind spectacles and a foreboding thick mustache physically embody his contradictions. It has some of Leigh's most striking setups, at times recalling Ozu - long shots down apartment hallways where voices, hands and torsos are all that identify people as they move through shared spaces. This movie may very well grow to be my favorite of Leigh's career.
(#5 for 1984 between THE TERMINATOR and STRANGER THAN PARADISE)
Modern Times (1936, Charles Chaplin) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/
YES YES YES for the first 20 minutes, yes for the rest for an overall rating of YES
(#4 for 1936 between MR. THANK YOU and THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE)
Les Anges du Peche (1943, Robert Bresson)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035636/
yes - Bresson's first feature is a fascinating point of reference for all that would follow. The proto-noirish plot follows a zealous nun who puts too much trust in a most unusual femme fatale, a newly joined sister who's actually a muderess on the lam. Bresson's cinema is at its most conventional here, genuflecting to advancing the narrative and enforcing plot and character points, but it's nothing to be ashamed of, handled with workmanlike integrity. His lifelong themes of suffering and salvation, innocence and abuse, imprisonment and liberation, are already in place, and though the script builds to a suspenseful climax, Bresson shifts the focus from building up the dramatic tension to anticipating a moment of grace that feels inevitable -- and, like in his later films, it becomes a matter of witnessing how it unfolds.
(#10 for 1943 between FIRES WERE STARTED and OSSESSIONE)
Back to 2006 Index |
