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On the road to the BC Bike Race 2016
10 years ago
Where the Wild Things Are...
Always need some time when I watch a movie like Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Just want to be sure, you know, about what I think and what I feel about the movie. I shall need some preliminary remarks: I’m not from North America, and, before watching the trailer of the movie adapted from Maurice Sendak’s book, I had never even heard of it - I remember my childhood being characterized instead by the fantastic journeys of Jules Verne.
Yet, since the opening titles of the movie, I realized how much the wild things were significant – “an institution”, thanks Lumpycam! - for anybody else in the theatre. Cheers and applause, and a continuous giggle surrounded me as the first titles appeared on the screen. And then laughter and awes, intent and ravished silence, and a sense of true and magically light-hearted involvement rose up as the wild things made all the spectators – yes, me too! – join them running, jumping, screaming, feeling happy and sad; experiencing a whole range of emotions all together as only when we were kids we were able to do, while forgetting everything else throughout the whole movie. As I said, I have never read Maurice Sendak’s book, yet the movie Where the Wild Things Are, and the children’s book itself, I suppose, whose intense meanings lie in our subjective sensitivity, have that magic only few other great stories (and movies) have, that ability to become part of our imagination that makes them absolutely timeless, so that they will accompany us for the rest of our lives.
Visually speaking, the sparkle of the movie lies on Spike Jonze’s fresh and light approach to the story, and on the simple and even somewhat gross, yet beautifully real, appearance of the wild things. Whereas creatures’ reality appears to be a too easy job for today’s available visual effects, however the director keeps their “simple” look, as the wild things seem belonging to the same visionary world of movies like Wolfgang Petersen’s Neverending Story (1984) – do you remember the funny looking white dragon Falkor with its big eyes and huge mouth? – and Jim Henson’s stunning Labyrinth (1986). The reference is not accidental. The wild things are as cute and funny, and belong to a part of our being we should never forget. Feel like everything would be better. That is.
9 tiny protagonists for a story a little too short...
I have always been intrigued by movies about post-apocalyptic worlds (I know, sounds weird!), a branch of science-fiction which has been assessed differently by many film-makers, some more successfully than others. In this context, I believe Shane Ackers’ 9 is one of the most original. It is certainly not for the humans-machines war starting point, although this appears to be happened in a world that could actually be our past – an alternative reality? But rather because of the creatures hanging around the empty streets and the ruins of this post-apocalyptic world, nine tiny beautifully vintage rag-dolls somehow magically created by a scientist in an attempt to preserve human life. 9 is a visually amazing dark fairytale in which it’s easy to see the visionary support of Tim Burton, an animated movie whose attention to details lets the spectator get truly and fully involved into action ever since the beginning.
Yet, as the closing title burst out into the screen, I have to say I couldn’t help feeling disappointed for a number of reasons. In fact, I wanted more of those nicely hand-sewn rag-dolls. I wanted to understand more about their nature and their different humanity, a few questions being remained unanswered: why rag-dolls? Why just nine? How were they able to live? And I would have liked to see more about that post-apocalyptic world and the machines it was ruled by.
In the end, I feel this movie could have said more, full of potential as it is. However, I liked 9; I liked very much its tiny rag-dolls, their camera-like eyes, their different and complex personalities. And I really think that, in spite of the narrative lacks of this movie, the best screen-writers definitely work in the animated industry.
The Informant? Definitely talks too much!
There shouldn’t be anything wrong to say about a movie counting on one of Hollywood’s best directors, Steven Soderbergh, a truly inspired Matt Damon and a top story that happened in the world of corporations back in the early ‘90s. So, why this feeling of disappointment as I came out of the theatre, last week? It’s hard to tell, as overall The Informant! is not a bad movie. Yet I can’t help thinking that, giving the high expectations I had, I thought that something had gone wrong, the movie being too long, or boring, which is the same, in the end.
Could it have been different? Probably not, as it so often happens whenever the storyline covers events spanning over a long period of time, a rare exception being Zodiac (2007), by David Fincher. I have always wondered in fact: how is it possible to pretend that the characters, their world and social relations, and their personality would keep a clear consistency throughout events actually happening with long intervals in between? The Informant! is no exception, and as the story goes – telling about over 15 years of the life of Matt Damon’s real character, Mark Whitacre – narrative gaps emerge that make me feel uneasy, and then sceptical, focus getting lost, interest fading away.
That sounds like a misplaced opportunity, as at the beginning, actually, the movie appears brilliant and natural, providing the spectators with extremely interesting insights on corporations’ misbehaviour in the agro-industrial field (but it could have been any kind of business). Moreover, Matt Damon is really inspired, finally ordinary and fat, catchy and funny, while Steven Soderbergh adds a very nice touch, using an elegant style Ocean’s-like clearly recognizable. But, as the protagonist loses his grip on reality, tricked by his own lies, so the spectator gets lost, muttering disappointedly as the closing titles appear: is it possible this was all just about a too loquacious pathological liar?
The best way to do it is with scissors…
While waiting to watch the last Soderbergh this week end, for my next review, last Sunday I watched - guess for the third time - one of the finest Alfred Hitchcock's movies, Dial M for Murder (1954), the story of a former Tennis pro who carries out a plan presque parfait to kill his wife. And I enjoyed it, once again, as I found its charming characters, the brilliant dialogues and the intriguing plot simply perfect.
You see, simplicity and perfection are defining characteristics which so frequently occur in the reviews concerning Hitchcock's suspense and mystery movies. And indeed simple and perfect appears his ability to choose the best cast (Ray Milland, no murderer has ever had more charm), the best location (should it be just the living room of an elegant London apartment) and the best script - a' propos, asked by Peter Bogdanovich on the reason why he made Dial M, Hitchcock replied "When batteries are running dry, take a hit play and shoot it", the hit play being Frederick Knott’s. The shooting, for instance. The shooting moves around slowly, leading the spectator's eyes, yet as if it actually was the spectator's eyes, and each and every detail appears therefore even more realistic and at the same time more necessary. Overall, action is always truly simple, as life appears to be, but there it is, as Hitchcock used to say, mystery and suspense, in the shadow as in the sunlight, in the quiet London apartment next door as in a most charming villa of the French Riviera
Unfortunately, sometimes it appears to me increasingly hard to find a movie based on Hitchcock’s advice for simplicity, which most of the time is synonymous of perfection. I feel like it had been kind of forgotten by those who make cinema and, as a consequence, by those who watch it. Don’t worry, though. I don’t pretend to be Hitchcock’s hero. I just thought to dedicate this post to a very fine movie – which is the purpose of this blog indeed. And to tell you that if you don’t know what movie to watch, and you’ve never watched Dial M for Murder, this is the time. For, although Le Crime était presque parfait, according to the French title, Hitchcock’s movie is. Perfect.
Prawns Anyone? Yes, please...
Every once in a while I happen to watch a movie I would love to write myself, a movie whose magic goes on beyond the end titles, catching my mind, putting a spell on my imagination. Every once in a while I feel like as if the story I have been told about in the last couple of hours was damn real and the life of its main characters could in fact go on, as does the life of everyone else. This is the case of District 9, surely one of the most surprising and involving movies of the last few years, superb science-fiction, although the movie is not (only) science-fiction, the category being a clear oversimplification –as it always is.
In fact, the story line has the strength and credibility of a journalistic reportage, whose visual and narrative language is brilliantly mixed, throughout the whole movie, to the subjective experience of the main characters. As a result, I literally got hooked up, first drawn into the documentary-like scenes of the daily life of a urban ghetto – the District 9, right – populated by an Alien nation arrived in the sky of Johannesburg 20 years earlier; then, I found myself launched at the highest speed, following the desperate attempt of the main character (Sharlto Copley, aka, Wikus Van De Merwe) to restore his humanity, as moral as much as physical. In addition to a particularly involving plot, the visual effects are dazzling and perfectly consistent. The alien creatures, nicknamed prawns because of their appearance, look absolutely real – and kind of gross, actually – as well as the shootings of the spaceships, as if, instead of sitting down inside a theatre, you were watching an ordinary report of the daily news on TV.
Overall, the movie, directed by the talented Neil Blomkamp, changes the way we would expect the “encounter of the third type” should be. Yet, once again, the meeting-interaction between humans and aliens is presented as another chance to think over issues like diversity, in-tolerance and greed. And once again, the answers we find are unpleasant, much more than the look of the prawns, poor lads unfortunately stuck in the wrong planet.
Inglourious Basterds...Inglorious indeed...
I love Quentin Tarantino’s movies. I think the badly reviewed “Death Proof” was pure, brilliant entertainment; a perfect homage to B-movies made in the ‘70s. Nonetheless, watching Inglorious Basterds I had the feeling there aren’t many good ideas in it. Actually, the movie appears to be repeating patterns already exploited, and the result is that even the B-movie-like scenes, rather than homage to a genre, become genre themselves, losing their appeal and originality.
Yet, the beginning dialogue is Tarantino’s best. It is well written, absolutely credible and unique in defining Colonel Landa’s disturbing inhumanity. And the rendez-vous in the French tavern is superb, feverishly quiet before the cathartic release of bullets, something always expected in Tarantino’s movies and nonetheless always successful. Here there is also a beautiful homage to Hutton’s Where Eagles Dare (1969), the Gestapo Major Hellstrom (August Diehl) bursting in to the scene the same way Gestapo Major von Hapen (Derren Nesbitt) does in Hutton’s movie.
Moreover, Brad Pitt and his basterds are as unlikely as catchy characters, whose definition inglorious couldn’t be any more appropriate, and actually it appears as though Tarantino could be able to re-define the British dictionary through his own characters.
However, the movie’s story line seems weak, just a pretext, as though plenty of stories had already been told about the WWII and there was no reason for another good one – and indeed, Tarantino feels even the need to change history with his surprising (?) finale. Yet, the story line’s weakness wouldn’t be a big deal, if the basterds were more present during the movie. I definitely would have loved to watch more about them and more inglorious actions.
In the end, I feel somehow disappointed, although I’m eager to watch it again, knowing that Tarantino’s movies give their best on a second date. I am sure I will enjoy the really good things I found in it. A propos, Rod Taylor, unforgettable protagonist of some great classic movies like The Time Machine (1960), The Birds (1963), Chuka (1967) and many more, is the finest Churchill ever seen on the big screen. Thanks to be still there, Rod!
