Archive for the ‘Film Reviews’ Category

Go

Monday, January 26th, 2009

The last couple of weeks, I’d been thinking about a film I saw back in 2000, Go. “Thinking about” turned into “seeking out”, and it turns out that it’s available on Hulu network right now, which I can stream to my TV through my XBox 360.  So, I saw it again tonight, and for the second time, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Go was made in 1999 and staring a cast of actors whose work I’ve really come to enjoy: Sarah Polley, Taye Diggs, Jay Mohr, William Fichtner, Timothy Ollyphant, with Scott Wolf and Katie Holmes rounding out the cast. The narrative is set over the course of one night and the following morning in both Los Angeles and Las Vegas, unfolding the events after an amateur drug deal in loosely connected though largely unrelated story threads that all come back together in unexpected ways at the end.  It’s black comedy hyper-fiction told with sincere but hilarious dialogue, slick cinematography, and snappy editing.  …All supported by a very coming combination of electronica score and Techno/Ambient standards (like Massive Attack’s “Angel” and Air’s “Talisman”).

Roger Ebert states that the narrative “takes place entirely in Tarantino-land,” followed up with, “I’m not saying ‘Go’ couldn’t have been made without the example of Pulp Fiction, but it can’t be seen without thinking of it.”  James Berardinelli cites “an over-reliance on Tarantino”.

While I definitely see the connections, I felt the film was certainly fresh enough on its own that it doesn’t have to  be an homage to Tarantino.  It is its own story, and while the story-telling may be similar, at some point in time, we must recognise that multi-faceted portraits of the underbelly of society with unlikely anti-heroes, witty dialogue, and quirky, unexpected but perfect twists is a genre all on its own: Go; Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels; Snatch; Suicide Kings; and numerous other films since Pulp Fiction litter the cinematic landscape, and I don’t think we need to all credit one man, visionary though he may be.  I call it the “dark caper tragicomedy”.

I suppose that in 1999, the 1994 Pulp Fiction was too fresh to recognise that a legitimate sub-genre had been born and that it’s perfectly fine to artfully produce a film in that genre without “breaking new ground”.

Berardinelli does make a good point about the pacing of the third act being a little off, and the humour is of a completely different nature: it’s that awkward-silence humour like you experience nowadays on The Office.

In the end, though, I was quite entertained by the entire oeuvre, and what strikes me today, beyond the unusual mixture of grit and polish, was the look into the late ’90s rave scene.  I haven’t been to a rave since about the same time-frame in which the film is set (1999), and it was… well… filmed exactly as I remember it.

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The Life Before Her Eyes - strong elements, but ultimately disappointing film

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

I just saw the film, The Life Before Her Eyes, which was based on a book by the same name. It was originally screened at festivals with the name In Bloom, which may have been more symbolically appropriate, as the book’s title gives away too much of the film’s ending.

I typically don’t care about spoilers, but I know I’m rather rare in that respect.  But I will make references to “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”, Stay, and Jacob’s Ladder.  If you understand the common thread between those three naratives, then I just spoiled the movie for you (I guess). In broad strokes, the film is about the events in young wild-child Diana’s (played be Evan Rachel Wood) life and her friendship with polar oposite Maureen, in the weeks leading up to a horrific school shooting that culcminates in a gut-wrenching encounter with the gunman and the two girls in the girls’ bathroom, intercut with scenes fifteen years later from the life of an adult Diana (played by Uma Thurman), as she lives with the guilt of surviving, as well as the deep after-effects of other choices she made as a teenager.

The cinematography was truly wonderful, as was the acting and the undercurrents of the story of young Diana’s friendship with Maureen.  There are visual clues throughout the filming techniques that clue you in on how to emotionally re-assemble the story once the connections are made clear in the end.  I didn’t mind so much the continuous intercutting between past and future, as well as the playing around with chronology of the past, though James Berardinelli calls it very clearly in his review: “The non-chronological approach creates an intellectual puzzle but limits the ability of the audience to relate to the characters.”

My biggest gripe with the film isn’t the manner in which director Perlman has chosen to compose the film, or in its ultimate meaning, or even in the moral subtext of the story; it’s in the way the symbolism is continuously pounded into the audience.  There are some repeitions of elements that build up intrigue and make you wonder, “I wonder what that’s really supposed to mean”.  Then there are other elements which are repeated in not-so-subtle ways that over the course of the film actually become annoying.  It’s not that it’s clumsy or awkward… it’s just heavy-handed.  All these other elements blend together in a way that synthesise a graceful whole that is undermined by the artless hammer of these repeated statements.

And honestly, it kinda ruined it for me.

In other news, the entire reason why I was even aware of this film is because the score is composed by James Horner.  I suppose the music was effective, but in the end, it just seemed far more clinical than emotional.  It was quite a departure for his film sensibilities, and frnakly, I’m not so sure the film was more or less for his efforts.  And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way about a Horner score.

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The Ant Bully: what bothered me…

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

In my previous post regarding the 2006 Warner Bros. CGI animated feature, The Ant Bully, I touched primarily on what I thought really worked well in the context of visual story-telling.  But I didn’t really make much mention of what it’s about.  And what it’s about kinda bothered me.

Synopsis: Lucas is a smallish pre-adolescent who is often the target for the malevolence of the neighbourhood bully and his gang of runtish minions.  He projects his frustrations on the ant colony living in his front yard, wreaking havoc and doom on their entire society.  Ant Wizard, Zoc, perfects a potion he’s been working on and sees it as his way to solve problems with Lucas the Destroyer.  Making his way to Lucas’s bedroom, he administers the potion and he becomes small as an ant.  The ants bring Lucas to the heart of their colony to consult with their Queen as to what Lucas’s sentence should be.  In her wisdom, she decrees that Lucas should stay with the colony and train so that he can become an ant himself, at which point he will be given the antidote and be free to return home.  While he conducts his training, he learns more about the ant society and participates in a defense against the neighbourhood wasps, but just as things seem like they might work out for Lucas and the ants, we learn of the horrible realisation of long-foretold doom of the Cloud Breather, in the form of Beals-a-Bug, a seedy exterminator with whom Lucas had been cajoled into signing a contract before being shrunken and brought into ant society.  Lucas, having learned about teamwork from the ants, has the bright idea of teaming with the wasps to thwart the mutual destruction they would otherwise endure if they don’t cooperate.

Cute story.

Where I have my problems is in its pejorative take on individualism and self-reliance.  Not so much that the story de-emphasies self-reliance, but that it actually casts it in a very negative light and while doing so praises collectivist ideals.  Individuality and competition is bad, conformity and cooperation is good.  Of course, being an ant society, there is recognition of diversity: each ant having differnt abilities, but also there is much emphasis on the importance of finding and conforming to the role your abilities have meant you to play.

When talking about the neighbourhood bully, Lucas tells his mother, “I’ll solve my own problems.”  When finding himself stuck on a ledge, the other ants try to help him up, to which he huffishly replies, “I’m fine on my own, I don’t need help,” but as the tree branch holding him in place begins to bend, he recants and screams, “I need help! I need help!” the about-face is meant to be comedic, but the message is still clear: self-reliance is the artifact of a bad attitude.  In one scene, Lucas pouts, “You worry about you, I’ll worry about me.”  Frankly, the sentiment is one far too rare in today’s society, and here, it is presented as being the manifestation of unthinking, uncaring petulant behaviour.

The queen who had given Lucas his assignment to become as an ant spoke with a voice like an opiate: overly peaceful, with long, languid syllables, almost hypnotic. After pronouncing her sentence, she concludes with the mesmerising exhortation, “Now… let us continue our work.”  Various encounters with Zoc, who explains ant ideals to Lucas in exasperation, speak of the ant way being represented by sacrifice for the greater good of the colony.  Hova, the Nurse ant who volunteers to train Lucas in the ant ways tells Lucas that the first step in becoming an ant is that “you must find your place in the colony”, as if working within one’s proper role to serve society is the highest ideal to which one can aspire.

At the end of the film, after Lucas has learned what he was meant to, and he returns home, normal-sized, he has a final confrontation with the neighbourhood bully and his gang.  Learning what he has about the power small individuals can have when working collectively against an obstacle, he convinces the minions of the bully that they, together, can defeat him, and as the light bulbs go on, the bully runs away in fear of what has awakened in the group he had previously controlled through his individual-based fear.

Or more subtle is the scene where the exterminator, Beals the exterminator convinces Lucas to sign the contract.  Given the ear-play of “Beals-a-bug” and the swarm of flies constantly circling his head, it’s obvious that Beals is meant to represent Beelzabub (Lord of Flies).  When Lucas makes a stand to not sign the contract in his father’s absence, Beals mocks him, implying that he’s a momma’s boy who’s afraid to make decisions on his own.  This is like the serpent in the Garden of Eden convincing Eve that to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was to be like God, but here the forbidden fruit is self-determinism.

In some areas, it’s subtle, and in others, it’s not.  A number of reviewers I read indicated that the film was preachy and overbearing in its collectivist message, with Justin Chang of Variety noting “its earnest endorsement of unity, conformity and self-sacrifice for the greater good, at times suggests a communist recruitment video”.  So, it turns out, it wasn’t just me.

As someone who is coming to terms with the requirements and implications of self-reliance and individualism, my enjoyment of the film is something I wrestle with.  There’s a scene where Zoc and Lucas sit on a toadstool looking down on a human city in the distance, and Zoc is amazed at Lucas’s stories of how humans don’t typically work together, and Lucas is realising for the first time what a brutal animal humans can sometimes be for it.  And, I think of corporate entities, and how they can only profit by operating as a single well-oiled machine.  I think of how an effective society must be driven by both competition and cooperation (as brilliantly demonstrated in David Brin’s fantastic novel, Earth).  Cooperation obviously has its place in the advancement of corporate goals, and in accordance to game theory, even in the acheivement of individual goals.

Yet the idea that sacrificing for the greater good of society without individual compensation just smacks so deeply of some kind of lie.  Self-reliance and putting forth effort for personal growth and prosperity aren’t celebrated enough.  This film not only doesn’t celebrate it, but it denounces it with far too much spirit.

So, on the whole, my opinion of the film is mixed. You make up your own mind.

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The Ant Bully: what I liked…

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

I just watched the Tom Hanks-produced CGI animated feature, The Ant Bully.  I streamed it through Netflix and I am supremely impressed with the quality fo the video and the audio (surround effects abounded).

Eight years after Pixar and Dreamworks each produced their take on insect fantasia through CGI, Warner Bros.’ The Ant Bully finally capitalises on the full promise of grandeur of everyday things through perspective of diminutive scale.  Each of the predecessor films made artful attempts at presenting the overwhelming scale of human-sized objects from a shrunken perspective, but those attempts were stymied, I think, by the tongue-in-cheek manner in which the environments were exploited by the insect characters.  Something that made this film work for me was the introduction of a human character into the scale: this allows the ants to just be ants, natural in their own environment, rather than witty anthropomorphised translations of human affects to an otherwise alien environment.

In this film, the fantasy of dealing with every day objects from a miniature scale that I often dreamed of as a kid (watching films like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and The Incredible Shrinking Man/Woman) is finally realised by presenting them exactly as they are.  This was particularly true during the moments when the characters are exploring completely human environments, such as the title character’s living room and kitchen during an incredible flying adventure depicting hang gliding onrose petals adrift in fan-driven air currents across the room.  It was really rather breath-taking.

And speaking of breath-taking, I think this film so far has been the most successful exercise in exploiting fantastical lighting and texture schemes.  There are tons of translucent or internally lit objects that are exquisitely textured: it’s really a lot of eye candy, and it heightens the sense of otherworldliness in the ant’s domain.  But, even otherwise everyday objects like fragments of broken bottles are presented in an utterly different light (literally) that makes watching this film such a treat.

Here’s one example of texture that I thought was fantastic: all the ant characters had compound eyes (although they still had eyelids and irises for expression), and each ant had its own distinct facial and body markings that were almost like tribal body art:

an example of the textures, tribal markings, and compound eyes used for the ant characters in The Ant Bully

The Queen, with no irises, to give her a more alien sensibility

There was extensive use of micro-textures employed throughout the film, almost every surface.  And what made the light so fantastic was not only the refractive qualities and the translucent materials, but also a great deal of diffusion: the film featured a number of seens incorporating swirling mist and smoke that played with the light in interesting ways.

A prime example of the fantastic light diffusion and detailed textures. Click on the image to see it in detail: it's stunning.

In addition to the lighting and textures and the general rendering quality of the visuals, the visual compositions were very inventive.  In a scene where the ants team up with the local wasps’ nest to fight The Exterminator, the allusions to large scale aerial warfare, with the wasps taking on aircraft formations (both in the air and on the ground), replete with with the obligatory crash landing with a weighty slide through the dirt right at the camera… well, it was clever and incredibly well executed.

There are some moments of true wit that also make the film an engaging watch: a scene where a small firecracker’s explosion is seen/heard/felt from the ant’s worldview, followed immediately by showing exactly how trivial it is from the human perspective elicited an out-loud laugh.  MOre interesting was the arch-villain, The Exterminator, whose name is Stan Beals.  He’s an oily, conniving man with flies constantly swarming around his head.  It made me think of Beelzebub (The Lord of the Flies), and sure enough, when he presented a business card, his business name is revealed to be “Beals-a-Bug”. Clever.  Of course, the film has its fair share of gross-out moments, too: a scene in the belly of a bullfrog; a moment amidst the lice-infested follicles of The Exterminator’s crusty, flaky scalp; and encounter with nose hair and snot; and several repeated occurrences of the granny character losing her slobbery dentures in various gross locales.  The film would have survived just fine without these moments: the “yuck” was indeed accompanied by laughter, but I’m not sure it was worth it.

I was surprised at the number of talented big-name actors they brought in to bring their characters to life: Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Paul Giamatti, Lilly Tomlin, Ricardo Mantalban, and funniest (and most apropos) of all: Bruce Campbell!  Given the stunning CGI, top name actors and producers, I’m wondering why I didn’t hear more about the film when it was released.  It didn’t get all the hoopla a Dreamworks or Pixar animated film receives.  I would like to have seen this film in the cinema: especially since it was presented in 3D.   My recent experiences with 3D CGI have been amazing: I’ll go see anything released in 3D these days, the technology is that good.

However, despite as much as I can applaud this film for its visual story-telling and wit, I do have some problems with  the thematic subtext of the film, which will be the subject of a subsequent post.

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Objectified: the movie

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

I’m really looking forward to this upcoming film by Gary Hustwit, the film maker responsible for the documentary, Helvetica.  The name of the film is Objectified, and it is a documentary on the design of everyday objects.  The trailer was just recently released:

I typically don’t think the design of things garners enough attention from those who use them.  Occasionally, folks speak of “form factor” and how form follows function, and indeed some consumer attention was devoted to design shortly after the original iMac hit the scene (especially when a great deal of consumer electronics devices attempted to imitate its design).  But how often do we think about the design of the thousands of objects with which we come into contact every single day?

One of the best accounts of the subject, from a functional perspective was Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (originally published as The Psychology of Everyday Things).  But it’s fantastic that someone with an ability to tell a story to modern audiences has taken on the task of illuminating the topic of design: from the drawing board (literally) to crafting a prototype and final production; from discussing the process to elucidating the impact design has on a society and how it frames the context of their times.

The film will be release this spring.

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