The Hours is well-directed, well-photographed and well-acted. It's an adaptation of a book by the same name for which the author won a Pulitzer Prize. It's made by a director who has received oscar nominations for every one of his major films. The soundtrack is provided by one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. It stars three of the finest actresses working today. And it bored me out of my skull.
The years are 1923, 1951 and 2001. The characters are Virginia Woolf, the famous english novelist (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman), a troubled suburban housewife (Julianne Moorre) and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a New York socialite whose life seems to mirror that of the main character from Woolfs novel Mrs. Dalloway. We see them all going through basically the same story: a party is prepared, flowers are bought, suicide is contemplated. All these women are unhappy to their core. Why this is is never really explained. All three seem to have some lingering lust for people other then their partners (and of the other sex), but that's about it. It's not a movie about homosexuality or adultery, it's a movie about suffering. And whatever the reasons, these women suffer a lot. But are we supposed to suffer with them? I suppose so. Perhaps I failed to do so because I couldn't relate to them a single bit. This might have something to do with the fact that they are all middle-aged women, and I am not. Still, it's rare that I feel such disconnect from characters that are so clearly in pain.
This is something that has bothered me about all of Stephen Daldries films. His other outings, Billy Elliot and The Reader, both feature characters who experience quite intense tragedy, and I found both of those more annoying then moving. Yet it's clear from the style and the pacing of The Hours that Daldry really is not a bad director. I just don't understand him, in the most infuriating way possible. I don't know what he's trying to say, how he's trying to say it or what he's trying to accomplish with it.
Watching The Hours, I had the feeling like I was intruding upon something. I have heard people talk about this movie as the movie of their lifetime, almost like it was something sacred. It made me feel a little guilty when I got so bored that I almost stopped paying attention halfway through. I felt like an annoyed teenager, throwing popcorn at an artfilm because there were too little explosions and tits for my taste. And I think that is the best I can say about this movie: it wasn't made for me. I'm a little hesitant to say that it's a "women's film", but I think it's fair to say that guys should steer clear of this. I'm afraid that's all I can say about it. You'll have to figure out the rest yourself.
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Three chicks. Who make music that was inspired by Philip Glass. It's almost too easy.
The Beatles' seventh album, Revolver, is often regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. It has a wide array of downright spectacular songs, like Eleanor Rigby and For No One. And it closes all of this off with the mysterious Tomorrow Never Knows. The song starts with a sitar fading in. Then a drum comes in, which plays a rhythm that's just a little off. It all sounds just a little beyond what you're accustomed to. And then we hear John Lennons voice, made to sound "like the dalai lama chanting from a mountain top", who tells you to "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream".
From the mid-sixties to 1970, The Beatles were unquestionably the biggest band on earth. They radically changed popular music and their albums from that time are absolute classics which are still very much worth listening to. But it wasn't just John, Paul, George and Ringo that did new stuff during this time: art, literature, social politics and science where all undergoing rapid changes. It was a turbulent age, and many people tried to make sense of/escape from all this by using drugs.
Yellow Submarine was released in 1968, right in the middle of all this weirdness going on. It was made primarily to meet a contractual agreement, and The Beatles themselves had very little to do with it. But since the filmmakers had the license for their music it was pretty clear that it would be a hit from the start. And while this might give some filmmakers an excuse to get lazy, the makers of Yellow Submarine rose to the opportunity and made one of the nicest films ever.
Just look how happy they are
Yellow Submarine works completely on it's own logic. There is something of a story beneath all the weirdness, but it's barely relevant. The majority of the movie is spent in the submarine, where the band encounters a crapload of strange stuff. The movie seems to be very exited about all this. Like an eager child, it's just tumbling over itself to show you all the nifty stuff it's got. And it's very nifty indeed. The journey goes through a sea filled with monsters where a vacuummonster is sucking up the entire world around him, a universe which is made entirely out of holes (Ringo takes on with him and quips "I have a hole in me pocket") and the final destination: Pepperland, a mystical place filled with music and love which has sadly been taken over by the Blue Meanies. The only way to rescue the inhabitants, who have been turned to stone, is to play music (which is outlawed under the Meanies' brutal reign).
Speaking of music: I can't remember ever enjoying these songs as much as when watching Yellow Submarine. These are some of the best songs of all time, and the accompanying visuals just fit them like a boot. In contrast to A Hard Days Night, which was primarily about the band, this movie is all about the music, and so much better for it. When I'm Sixty-Four, which isn't one of the bands best songs is accompanied by a text reading "Sixty-four years is 33,661,440 minutes and one minute is a long time. Allow us to demonstrate." This is followed by an array of imaginatively drawn numbers counting up to 64. This made me so intensely happy I started singing along even louder.
If this all sounds a bit childish, it's probably because it is. But d on't make the mistake to think that this movie is solely meant for children. Much like the music it's a universal piece of art. If you as a viewer can let go of trivial stuff like "logic" or "sense" this is a very, very lovely film that I can highly recommend. Don't go acting all grown-up about it. Just turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.
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This is the closest I think I can come to the spirit of the movie without just using songs from it. Enjoy.
In 1999, TIME Magazine made a fascinating list about the 100 most influential people from the 20th century. One of these illustrious men (and women) was the Irish author James Joyce. The article that commemorates him starts with these words: "James Joyce once told a friend: "One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature". All serious young readers notice this difference. Joyce dedicated his career to erasing it and in the process revolutionized 20th century fiction". He did this mainly by way of his seminal novel Ulysses, a book which I haven't read myself but which has been described to me as "unreadable" by a friend who studied literature for the past three years.
This difference is also present in the cinema (or in any other artform, for that matter). Sometimes it manifests in silly little things, like the fact that bartenders are always introduced in movies while drying a glass with a rag, but it also shows in bigger things. Like how romance in movies seems to follow completely different roles then that in real life: people will fall in love with somebody in the space of minutes, and then yearn for them for years after that. Or how the first night for a couple is always a perfect and means that they will stay together forever. But of course, there are filmmakers who have set out to erase these discrepancies. Robert Altman shows people in large groups, instead of socially isolated individuals. Kryztof Kieslowki's Trois Couleurs make it clear what liberty, equality and fraternity truly mean in the cruel outside world. And as far as romance is concerned, there is Richard Linklaters Before Sunrise: a film which is so honest about what it means to fall in love that 99 percent of it's running time is spent with the characters unsure about their actual feelings.
Celine (Julie Delphy) is sitting in the train. Next to her, a middle-aged German couple is arguing loudly. She gets annoyed, decides to move, and sits down across Jesse (Ethan Hawk). The tone is set: even before the characters are even introduced to each other, it's made clear that love isn't all sunshine and lollipops. The characters strike up a conversation. She is on her way to Paris from a family visit in Budapest, he is making his way to Vienna to catch a flight back to the US. They seem to get along. When they get to Vienna, they say their goodbyes and he gets off. Then he gets back on, sits down next to her and tells her he enjoys talking to her and doesn't want to miss the opportunity to get to know her. After all, won't a moment like this haunt you on your deathbed when you let it slip? She, being a romantic, seizes the moment and disembarks with him. What follows is a night in Vienna filled with bonding, love and talking. Lots of talking.
What makes Linklaters films so unique is that they embrace the flaws and irregularity of being human, instead of ironing over them. He does this mostly through the dialogues in his film, which are almost always co-written with the actors. Hearing these people talk is incredibly engrossing, and it take you away farther then most films do with exotic location shooting. Yet the way these characters talk isn't the way most people talk in the movies, where one person says something and the other responds. People interrupt each other, ask strange questions and drop subject because they don't like talking about them. Many movies use dialogue to advance a plot. Linklater uses it to find his characters, and to let them find each other. There is always a hidden motive, a little something unsaid in between the lines of Jesse and Celine. Who can ever express exactly what they mean, after all?
Although it is in many way its opposite, Before Sunrise reminded me of Trois Couleurs: Blue. While Blue is a visual movie which deals with mourning and Sunrise is a talkie about blooming love, both dare to take a step back and truly examine life at a certain point. And both are movies in which very little actually happens, but which still move you more then you can really explain. The only truly crucial difference is that Blue is a meditation on a life already lived, while the characters in Sunrise still have their entire life before them. They are off to a great start.
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There is only one poet who can explain the feel of this movie, and that poet is Bob Dylan. I never expected I'd ever use this song, but here it's the only appropriate choice.
At the end of The Fall, there is a moment where all the characters sit in a room together and for the first time watch a movie. The setting is a hospital in Los Angeles in the early 20th century. The film has just dragged us through a whirlwind of impressions, and as everything is drawing to a close we find ourself in that little room with the characters that have accompanied us in the past 2 hours. There is a striking similarity between that tiny moment and the movie as a whole. Like those early movies, The Fall gives the spectator the room to interpret and let his own imagination run wild. And like that moment, where those people see moving pictures for the first time, the movie presents it's viewers with something completely new.
Giving a synopsis of The Fall is practically impossible. Not because there is a lack of things happening, or because the story doesn't make sense, but because everybody will remember this film differently. On a very superficial level, it's about Alexandria, a little girl from an undetermined eastern European background who is in the hospital to recover from a broken arm. By circumstance, she meets up with Roy, a suicidal stuntman. Even though he is in a horrible condition, he is a very nice man, and to pass the time (and other reasons I won't disclose here) he tells Alexandria stories. They are the most fantastic stories: tales of brave bandits, beautiful princesses and exotic locations. The main characters are a masked bandit, an Italian explosives expert with cigar and mustache, and Indian (from India), a mystic who emerges from a tree, a freed slave and an English naturalist who goes by the name of Charles Darwin.
These stories take shape in the way only bedtime stories can: almost like a conspiracy between the storyteller and the listener. Roys worsening condition and Alexandria's youthful innocence come together in the story, and as it progresses more and more of the outside world is brought in on it. The real life, the life of adults outside these stories is extensively hinted towards, but never truly revealed. A puzzle-oriented viewer will be able to disclose a lot from the hints that are given, but a more romantic viewer might simple let the visuals engulf him.
The first part of the movie, which is set in the hospital, is portrayed with such artistry that even the most mundane and bleak of moments are so pretty it's almost kitschy. Alexandria is a curious child, and the world through her eyes is a place of simple beauty in the way only a child can conceive. But when we enter the world of the stories the visuals just become breathtakingly beautiful. To say this is one of the most beautiful and imaginative use of sets and costumes I have ever seen would be an understatement. This is the stuff dreams are made off, and what makes it ever more mind-boggling is the claim that the movie uses absolutely no computer-generated effects. No matter how impressive the screenshots here might be, they pale in comparison to the film in motion.
The Fall is a movie that refuses any labels. It doesn't belong to any genre, artistic movement or anything superficial like that. How to watch it is entirely up to you. The director, who is only credited under the mysterious epithet "Tarsem", has invented a way of telling that is completely new, something only so few filmmakers can claim. This is one of the most ambitious and daring undertakings I've ever witnessed on film, and the fact that it exists ought to be enough reason to watch it.
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It took a while for me to find an appropriate piece of music.
I think it's fair to say that when the original Tron was released in 1982, no-one would have ever imagined that it would get a sequel almost 30 years later. This was probably mostly due to the fact that the original Tron just wasn't all that good. It was a run-of the-mill action film, with a cool early turn by Jeff Bridged (of Big Lebowski fame) but not really much going for it otherwise. Well, except that it looked like this:
The premise of the movie was that it basically took place within an arcade game, and (as was to be expected) the nerds went absolutely crazy over it. What makes 2011 different from 1982 is that nerds now rule our shit. Smartphones have become musthaves, Apple has become trendy and the acne-ridden nerds of then are now edgy. So a sequel was devised out of an old cult movie that only a handful of people remembered. And lo and behold: it's an improvement on all points.
A large part of that is due to the fact that Legacy isn't strictly a sequel so much as a remake. Which would probably have been the best way to go: the storyline of Tron was a bit of a mess anyway, and a direct sequel wouldn't have made it any easier on new viewers. The movie starts off with Kevin Flynn, the hacker-hero of the previous film, gone missing. Years later, when his son Sam is an adult, his old friend from the first film gets a page ("you still use a pager?") from Flynn with the phone number of his old office. When Sam goes out to investigate, he accidentally gets sucked up into "the Grid", a futuristic cyberspace where he finds his father imprisoned by the very software he wrote.
The story might sound a bit complex, but it's really not. This is, first and foremost, a visual movie, and it must be said: it looks downright fantastic.
Boo-yah!
The whole movie has a very clean, spacey feel to it, something scifi movies seems to have been snubbing lately. Which is a shame, because the movie is an absolute blast to look at. Add to this the awesome score by Daft Punk (who'd ever guessed these guys could actually compose?) and you've got an absolute killer in the appearance department. This is the kind of films it's actually worth going to the cinema for. The performances are also generally solid: Garrett Hedlund is a bit bland, but Jeff Bridges is just as good as you'd expect him to be, playing a sort of cyber-hippie who seems like a mix between a Randall Munroe and The Dude. Michael Sheen also pops up for a moment, and proceeds to go absolutely goddamn nuts. I'm not really sure what his characters is supposed to be, but the way he plays it (like David Bowie on speed) is so entertaining you won't really get hung up on the fact that he doesn't really matter for the plot.
The only real issue with the movie is that a lot of very interesting ideas are hinted at (especially in the beginning), but never really explored. A sequel seems almost unavoidable, however, so we'll see what Tron: Genealogy brings to the table. In the meantime, this is a solid piece of eyecandy that's exactly the kind of mindless fun you'd expect of it.
Now this is an interesting case: a thriller where the person you will root for is supposed to be the villain. The reason most suspense movies portray their bad guys as ridiculously evil (shooting their own henchmen and such) is precisely to avoid this sort of thing. Instead of ending with a final "fuck you" to the villain and a kiss-off between the hero and his love interest, it ends with the downfall of a man who is genuinely nice despite all odds being stacked against him.
The movie starts off in a conventional enough manner: we are introduced to the hero and the heroine, played by Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. These two were the biggest stars of their day, and it's not hard to see why: besides being both stunningly good-looking, they have a great chemistry between them. They talk in the way only characters in movies like these can: witty, romantic and without ever making a faux pas. Grant, who is a government agent, convinces Bergman to spy on an old acquaintance of hers whom is suspected of shady dealings. After some persuasion, she gives in and meets up with the guy. The man takes a fancy to her, and her contractors order her to seduce him.
Up until this point the movie is great fun, if a bit by the book. But once this acquaintance is introduced, the movie takes a very bitter turn. Alex Sebastian, played by Claude Rains (whom you might remember from his memorable role as the police captain in Casablanca), is simply a far too nice guy. Even if his alliance lies with the wrong people (the nazi's in this case), he's clearly deeply in love with Bergman and makes a great many sacrifices to be with her. Yet he is played out mercilessly, both by Bergman and his dominating and scornful mother. It's the latter who comes up with the plan to dispose of Bergman when they find out what here game truly is.
Mothers like those seem to be a "thing" for Hitchcock.
What makes the fall of this man even more saddening to watch is that he is the only one truly taking blows in the movie. It's clear that Grant and Bergman are going to end up together from the get-go, but as the movie progresses it's hard to see what they share besides a sense of mutual cruelty at each other. Grant was known for playing mischievous and lovable everymen, and his character here is anything but lovable: as soon as he walks into any trouble he becomes jealous, mean and generally behaves like an absolute prick. And yet he still gets the girl: Bergman seems to yearn for nothing but his approval, like an insecure teenager who dates a jock to boost her self esteem. Rains is, despite everything, clearly the nicer guy in this triangle, but when he desperately pleas for his life and the company of the woman he loves at the end of the film he gets brutally shut out. If this were a highschool film, he would have been played by Micheal Cera. And it would have never ended like this.
It's not that the idea of a tragic villain is uninteresting in any way. But why use this idea in a thriller? Thrillers aren't meant for character studies, thrillers are meant for the public to bite their nails to and return them home smiling when all is right in the world again. Notorious' ending is one of the most depressing ones I've seen in some time: not only is the hero shown to be a dick, but the nice guy is shown to be doomed. It's not so much an anticlimax as a contraclimax: the big cheer is replaced by a harrowing last look and a character walking to his certain death.
The movie is undoubtedly well-made (this is Hitchcock, after all), but there is no getting away from the fact that we are asked to condemn a person simple because. Rains final moment reminded me of the moment in Inglourious Basterd where a german officer is waiting for the "Bear Jew" to show up and beat him to death. You can see the fear in his eyes, and for a moment this man is the one you root for. But where that moment is short and mostly played out for laughs, Notorious is dead serious. I think it's about time that we filmnerds took a good hard look at our collective Hitchcockboner, and this seems like an excellent place to start.
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This is how I felt after the movie. Not exactly what you'd expect after a thriller.
Hitchcocks movies are often described as machines. When you sit down to watch them, you are fed into them. Mr. Alfred will then make you a puppet on his strings, making you feel exactly how he wants you to feel. You emerge scared shitless, laughing or with a silly grin on your face. This is the way most Hollywood movies are: experience in a can. The good ones, at least. The shitty ones don't feed you emotions, but little signs reading "feel (emotion X) now". You completely see through the illusion that way, which makes the movie obnoxious rather then moving. An excellent example of this is Dead Poets Society, a movie that tries so hard to make us cry it only made me groan.
The movie tells about a group of gifted youngsters who are being held down by The Man in the form of a repressive school system. But then they get classes from a cool and inspirational teacher, who opens their eyes to the beauty of the world and their true potential. But although the people in charge try to put them down, in the end they all... what do you mean, that is the plot of a thousand other movies? Well, this one is different, because it ends with one of the boys killing himself and the teacher getting fired. So much for the all's-well-that-ends-well moment at the end that is always the high point of movies like this.
They do stand on their desks, though. So there's that. Dude still gets fired, though.
What's even worse, though, is how untrue Society is to exactly the point it's trying to make. Tom Schulman, who wrote the movie, apparently wants to advocate a free-thinking, romantic sort of lifestyle. He did so by writing a sentimental, melodramatic movie. But the worst crime it commits is playing it safe. There isn't a single deviation from the formula here. Come on, Schulman! Just making the characters cite tons of poetry doesn't make them romanticists! In fact, it makes them come of as whiny bitches, instead of the heroes in agony you want them to be. You can have all the criticism you want on the romanticists you want, but at least they were sincere.
Schulman was educated in a restrictive, authorial school himself, so you could see it as a way of coming to grips with his youthful ideals. But what is there to take away from this? Schools like that don't exist anymore, and children nowadays are being encouraged to be creative and free-thinking and such. This movie is about a problem that was solved before I was even born and how bad it was. This was not a rebellious act when it was made, and now it's even more painfully safe. If you want to see a movie about a true rebel, go check out Steven Soderberghs monumental Che. That guy had balls in the face of death, and the movies are made that way too. Dead Poets Society doesn't even have the stones to mix things up in the face of bad reviews. Get the fuck over yourself.
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P.S. If you think I'm being hard on Schulman: the man won an Oscar for this piece of shite.
- The hippies were against it,
- The Americans lost it,
- It really, really sucked to be in it.
As you might have guessed, almost everything I know about this war comes from movies. But it's pretty amazing how alike most Vietnam movies are: they show some nice dudes who go off to war, and they slowly go absolutely mental. That's the basic plot of Full Metal Jacket, of Apocalypse Now and, yes, of this one. But even though this movie is considered just as much a classic as those other two movies, The Deer Hunter tells that simple story in such a boring way that you really shouldn't bother.
The movie stars Robert DeNiro, Cristopher Walken with a babyface and John Savage as the guys about to go to war. These are tough guys, which the movie shows by having them handle tons of molten steel in a factory. Subtle. We see these guys hanging out, getting drunk, and hunting deers. This goes on for almost an hour. And they talk an awful lot. A. Very. Awful. Lot. In one of the final scenes of this first hour or so, there is a bit where the bunch goes hunting and John Cazale (who plays one of the main characters friends) forgot his boots. He asks DeNiro if he can lend his spare pare. DeNiro refuses this, because Cazale always forgets his stuff. The rest of the guys tell him he's a dick, and eventually he lends Cazale his boots. This simple conversation takes more then 10 minutes to complete. Sure, it might typecast the characters, and it might be "realistic" but this endless torrent of dialogue makes their words almost meaningless. And it is boring as shit to watch. Besides, wasn't I watching a movie about the Vietnam war?
Yes. In a single cut, we are thrown from the safety of a late-night bar to the action in Vietnam (this is pretty awesome, I'll give the movie as much). DeNiro, Savage and Walken are captured by the Viet Cong and are forced to play Russian Roulette. This is the one part of the movie everybody remembers, and with reason. It is pretty damn good. It's tense, gory and it really shows these guys battling something as elemental as chance. Good stuff. But before you know it, they escape and all get hauled back to safety. Chris gets a chance to flex his acting skills in a great shot where he breaks down from the PTSD, and then it's back to America for these boys. And that is where the shit really hits the fan.
When the guys come back, something happens that no-one ever saw coming: the soldiers are having trouble getting back to their normal lives. Gasp! This takes up the full final hour of the movie. As you can imagine, this is once again boring as shit. We see De Niro breaking down in his hotel room and crying on his bed. This scene lasts forever, and tells you something that you could have guessed would happened from the get-go. Maybe it was shocking back then, but it's not like PTSD is some problem that gets ignored on a large scale anymore.
I think that's the main problem with this movie. We already know what it's trying to tell us. This was one of the first movies about the Vietnam war (made even before Apocalypse Now, but that wasn't really about the war), and it was pretty explosive back then. But watching this movie is like watching a movie about the Holocaust now: we know it happened. It was terrible. But unless you can show us something we haven't seen before, it just won't move us anymore. I'm sorry if I'm a jaded person, but I just don't feel any great human tragedy in this movie, nor do I think many people from my age will. I won't advocate a boring movie. This one can get kicked out of the canon right away, if you ask me.
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P.S. If you're interested in an original take on the Vietnam War, check out Rescue Dawn.
Loads of good songs about the Vietnam war, but I think this is one you've never heard before. Listen to the lyrics, they are incredibly powerful.
Something that has always intrigued me about Japanese movies is their use of mythology. Most western movies deal with evil as something that is inside people, something you can avert by living virtuously. But Japanese movies, with their pagan mythology, deals with morality in a completely different way. I'm by no means an expert in anything Japan-related, but my impression is that they view the struggle between good and evil not something man is spiritually caught in between, but physically. You can at any moment get attacked by demons for no particular reason. If you don't fight, it will kill you dead. End of story.
Besides the fact that this is much manlier, it offers a completely different movie-watching experience. Instead of focussing on the psychology of one or two characters and have the story driven by them, Japanese movies often feature a large group of people struggling with forces as elemental and massive as life and death. Their intentions are clear, and you can mostly sympathize with their struggles, but the morality of their actions is never clear or simple. Couple this with the wealth of symbols of Shinto, one of the largest polytheistic religions in the world, and a very rich folklore, and you have enough source material to make some pretty magical films.
And that is exactly what Princess Mononoke is: magical. Not magical in the way that Disney movies are magical, that's pussy magic. Magical in the same way you feel when you see the world from atop a mountain, and realize how huge everything is. Magical in the same way you feel when you watch the stars on a quiet night, and reflect on your vulnerability and the mysteries of the universe. Magical in the same way you feel when you walk on the grass barefoot and daisies get stuck between your toes.
Those little fellas are called Kodama. They are basically the coolest thing ever.
Princess Mononoke tells the story of Ashitaka, a young prince whose village gets attacked by a giant demon god. When he kills the beast, a curse is put on him. The village elders tell him that there is nothing he can do about this: the curse will slowly deteriorate him until he dies. Without as much as a blink, he accepts his fate and sets out to the west to find and destroy the source of this curse. When he arrives, he find himself in the middle of a conflict. There is a war going on between Lady Eboshi, a militant woman who runs an iron forgery and Mononoke, a child raised by wolfs who hates humans and tries to protect the forest she lives in. It's a masterstroke that Miyazaki didn't make this conflict one-dimensional: Eboshi might destroy the forests for her industry, but she is also the caring head of an entire village of people who are really quite nice. And although Mononoke might seem the ideal protector of nature at first, she is also a moody and vengeful child with little regard for anything other then her own ambitions. And then there is the mysterious Deer God, the deity of the forest who seems to represent the natural order of things, without the meddling of man.
This is only one of the many tales that goes on within the world of Princess Mononoke. A slew of secondary characters (that would be able to carry an entire movie on their own) inhabits the movie, but their stories just play in the background, without really influencing anything. It really feels like the movie takes place in a universe on itself. This is helped more than a little by the absolutely gorgeous animation. Hayao Miyazaki is the head of the only film studio in the world that still works primarily with hand-drawn animation, which basically makes him a saint in my book. The drawing is so amazingly beautiful and complex that it's a miracle it works in motion, but it does. Fantastically.
Imagine this thing moving.
Anyone still dismissive about the merits of animation will be convinced by this movie. It tells a tale that could never have been told by live-action, in a universe that could never have been created with live-action. This is not a children's movie. Not even a teenagers movie. This is epic Japanese fantasy in the legacy of Akira Kurosawa, and if you're in any way interested in having your mind blown you should not let this pass.
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I think there are very few people on the planet who can express the atmosphere in movies like this. Jonsi is one of them.
This movie is going to be my nostalgia. When I am old and smelly, this will be the movie I will play on my holodeck 3000 while telling my grandchildren about "the good old days". Even if this movie is not going to be wildly successful (and thus far, the box office seems like it isn't) it will probably still be a major inspiration to many filmmakers for years to come. And even if that fails, it can still claim its rightful place as one of the most daring and best attempts to capture the zeitgeist of the moment.
Scott Pilgrim himself is not exactly what you'd call a normal hero. One part of him is the charmingly incompetent hero we find in every romantic comedy, a role on which Micheal Ceras career was pretty much built. But his other part is an irresponsible, whiny, selfish, lazy hipster, who actively keeps up the image of being a lovable chump so that people won't judge him (props to Cera for taking his career in this direction and still delivering). Scotts plans seem to be working out pretty well: even though there is a whole lot of unspoken pain in his social circle, no-one seems to be to eager to bring this all down on him. He just lives his precious little life of playing in his shitty band Sexbo-bomb, playing videogames and living off his cool gay roommates money. Even when he starts dating a 17-year old (who is obviously deeply in love with him) because he wants "something simple", no-one really calls him out on it. Enter Ramona Flowers. Scott falls for her like a brick as soon as he sees her, but it turns out that just being the lovable chump won't work this time. Ramona has seven evil exes, whom Scott has to fight each one of them in order to win her heart.
Totally worth it, though
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World might not be what you expect of it. You see, while the battles are certainly there (and are certainly awesome), they are not really fights. They are metaphors for coming to terms with Ramonas past. Pilgrim himself is a massive nerd, and the way he makes sense of the world is the one he knows best: with video game logic. Coming to terms with his girlfriends past is just another achievement to get, the boyfriends just another row of baddies to plough through. And although it might seem like a bit of a gimmick, it actually gives the movie quite some depth. Making sense of the world in movie, video game or comic terms is something a lot of young men do these days (I do it all the time), so why not show their entire world working on that specific kind of logic? But the rest of the characters, and how they're portrayed, is also very reminiscent of young adults nowadays. Their dialogues, their relationships (both friendly and lovingly), how they spend their free time, which pop culture references they make... it's all spot-on.
But just because the movie is groundbreaking in many respects does not mean it doesn't have any weak points. The decision to adapt six comic books into one film (although probably a wise one since the chance on a sequel is nil) gives the film such a breakneck tempo that it's sometimes hard to keep up. The supporting cast is also a lot less fleshed out then in the comics, which is a shame because it's an incredibly solid one (I <3 Kim Pine). But the biggest disappointment to me was the soundtrack. Even if you take out of the occasion that it's Beck, Metric and Broken Social Scene (swoon) at work here, the songs are all generally meh. Only the track Black Sheep by Metric is in any way memorable. I know a part of it is supposed to suck on purpose, but c'mon Beck. I know you can do better.
But even though Scott Pilgrimvs. The World stumbles at times, this is more due to the fact that it tries too much then too little. It might not be a brilliant film, and in a decade it will probably just be as outdated as The Graduate now, but please don't let that stop you from watching it. This is a film that boldly captures todays young adults, and does it in a way that will very much appeal to those people. Namely, this way:
I don't care if he's supposed to be the bad guy, I WANT THAT JACKET
This movie deserves more then just becoming a cult film. Definitely worth seeing.
There are only two things you really need to know about The Social Network: it's really good, and it's not real.
The news that David Fincher, the maker of films such as Se7en and Fight Club would be making a movie about Facebook turned quite some heads. Wasn't Facebook something that pretty much embodied everything Tyler Durden was against? How the hell was that going to work? But it all worked out fine.
This is probably because the movie is hardly about Facebook: it's about people making something. And judging by the movie, you'd be surprised that that something is all about social interaction. Mark Zuckerberg is shown royally screwing multiple people over and he isn't the only one who seems to not be completely right in the social department. Be it not being able to connect to people or being just a little too good at it. The title of the movie is deeply ironic: this story shows things are anything but social behind the scenes of everybody's favorite distraction from work.
The movie is about the kind of people who basically run our daily lives. It is a sign of the times that one of the most powerful people of the world right now is a 26 year old dude with an alarmingly big brain. And if there is one thing the movie makes clear, it's that his kind of person definitely has some other pitfalls then the elderly, elitist men who have basically run our shit for all of human history. Two of the supporting characters, the Winkelvoss brothers (two identical twins of blue blood and quite the manners) seem to represent this old class, and their outrage over the fact that Zukerberg stole their idea (although the movie never really condemns him as such) might be taken as a very clear example of the current dispute between traditionalist, closed-source intellectual property advocates and their fast-moving, anynomous hacker opponents. But I might be reading a bit too much in it now.
Our future leaders will walk around like this all day
Every critic and their dog has already been screaming about the virtues of the movie, and it's not hard to see why. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the acting of each three of the leading men, one scene in the beginning when Zuckerberg gets hammered and builds a website that would eventually lead to Facebook: they are all things that would make any other movie worth seeing on their own, and The Social Network has all of these things and more. And even though I was a little disappointed that their wasn't really any hard-biting critique against the website (who better to deliver this then the man who made Fight Club, after all) this is easily one of the best movies of the year.
Which brings me to the second thing you ought to know: it's not real. It's not even "based on a true story". The screenplay of the movie is based on a book called The Accidental Billionaires which was quite controversial and quite some more facts have been lost on their way to the big screen. This is not a bad thing (it has lead to a good movie, after all), but be on your guard when watching the movie. If you really want to find out what happened, do some research. Don't let this film become your only source of information on the matter.
What's left to say? Just go see the damn movie. Everybody's going to be talking about it within a few days, and it's going to end on every "Best of 2010" list in existence at the end of the year. It sure as hell will be on mine. Oh, and get the soundtrack when you get home. It's one of those rare ones that hold up on their own as well.
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I only break my "no soundtrack" policy if the soundtrack has something better to offer then anything I can think of. This is one of those moments. Turn up your speakers before you press play.
Toy Story 3 is set about 10 years after the event of part 2. Andy is now 17 years old and getting ready to leave for college. The toys haven't been played with for years, and he decides to put them in the attic. Through a mix-up (you know how these things go when you're moving) the toys end up at a daycare instead. And although it at first seems to be a heaven compared to all those years in Andy's toy box, it soon becomes evident that the daycare is run with an iron fist by a dictatorial pink teddybear called Lots-a-Huggin', who seems to have taken crib notes from both Don Vito Corleone and Blofeld. The toys soon find themselves imprisoned, and decide to escape
Okay, so that's the story. I shall use the rest of this review to list everything that is amazing about the film.
No. 1: the sweet merchandise
No. 2: it is amazing with how much attention to detail Pixar has worked out their premise. They squeeze almost every logical consequence out the simple fact that their main characters are toys. This ranges from philosophizing on what it exactly means to be a toy (and trust me, this goes deep) to a constant awareness that these characters are not more then 10 centimeters tall, yet they still have to use stuff that was made for people who are about 20 times as tall as them. Imagine you having to do this.
No. 3: It's amazing how much depth Pixar has put in their films without sacrificing the fun. I will now list the themes in this very entertaining film:
- The thin line between true commitment to a cause and becoming delusional in your importance in the matter,
- The corrupting effect of power,
- The pursuit of ones purpose in life,
- The ruthless passing of time,
- The struggle of combining a youthful approach to the world while still growing up,
- And, most importantly, mortality and the acceptance of this.
I shit you not. Pixar movies always have had an enormous thematic richness, but this movie surpasses every single one of them. Maybe it's because the main characters have already been established in the previous two films (although Buzz still has some surprises up his sleeve) and the cast can now be put up against external forces, so to say, but whatever the case, it's rather staggering.
No. 4: the beautiful character models and the buttery smooth animation
Speaking of characters: No. 5: it's amazing how well each everyone gets characterized, even if they have only 2 minutes of screentime. There is this one hedgehog doll, who is called mr. Pricklepants (heh) and who is voiced by Timothy Dalton (heh heh). He fancies himself somewhat of a Shakespearean actor, complete with an utmost devotion to staying in character. He has virtually no importance to the story and has maybe like 10 lines, but you still get the feeling you know exactly whom your dealing with. He even manages to get a few jokes in. This is quite something for such a bitpart, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone outside maybe Robert Altman using all his characters so vividly.
But all of that is basically just filmnerd babble. I think the most convincing argument I can give in favor of the movie is this: at one point, I stopped the movie to think about what was happening and what it meant. At one point, I stopped the movie because I was laughing so hard I was afraid I would miss something. And near the end, I didn't stop the movie because I was almost crying. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking this is a kiddy movie: this is, by any standard, a great movie, simple as that. Pixar have outdone themselves once more, and that is really saying something.
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At first I just liked this song for here, but it turns out the music video is totally awesome as well!
When little Bruce Waynes parents where shot
down before his eyes, he decided to rid his city of evil. He trained in a
monastry, studied forensics and disguised as a bat to strike fear in the hearts
of his enemies. Sadly, this tale is entirly fictious. But if Batman were real,
the first thing he would do is probably beat up Tim Burton. Not for murdering
his parents, but for butchering everything that ever made the character great.
Batman (the film) is something the obese, cynical thirtysomethings that write
the internet tend to drool over with glee. Micheal Keatons Batman was even
featured as the second-best Batman in this very amusing article (property of
Cracked.com). So my hopes were up somewhat when I set out to watching the
movie. And anyway: it’s Tim Burton! How bad can it be?
Awful, as it turns out.
The story of Batman is about the most basic one you can tell with the entire
mythos: there’s Batman, there’s The Joker, there’s The Girl, Joker tries to
take over shit, Batman beats him up, humping ensues, ya di ya di ya. We also
get treated to both of the characters’ origin stories somewhere along the line.
Nothing new here, and certainly nothing that could be called creative
storytelling.
Batman is basically nothing of what it should be, and whatever it does right is rather irrelevant. For
starters: the acting is blander then a mouthful of unbuttered toast, and just
as hard to swallow. How the hell did they ever make Jack Nicholson, one of the
greatest actors ever, play The Joker, one of the greatest villains ever, with
such a complete lack of depth? This is by far the worst acting job I’ve ever
seen the man do, and compared with something like The Shining it’s almost a
disgrace. But Keaton is even worse, somehow. I don’t think it is humanly
possible to be a more boring Batman. He never gives the impression that he is
the vigilante badass we all love him for. Instead, he just stands around in his
silly costume and looks like someone just hit him with a brick over the head.
Then he walks over to a bag guy and punches him with the velocity of a ladybug.
Said bad guy then falls over. (…) Thrills!
Derp
The script is downright stupid as well, the
lines are cheesy and some of the supporting characters are downright annoying.
There is this papparazo guy who is both annoying AND usesless to the movie. The
movie seems to realize this halfway through, after which he just sort of
disappears. Even the music is mediocre, and it was written by Danny Elfman, for
Christs sake! The man is a goddamn superstar of movie composers, but given this
mess of a movie even he doesn’t know what to do.
And you know what? I wouldn’t have mind. I
wouldn’t have given a shit about every nasty thing I just said if the movie
would just be fun. But it isn’t. In fact, it’s boring as hell. It’s NOT to much
to want movie starring the goddamn Batman to be at least fun.
This movie is basically just a parade of great
moviepeople working miles beyond their full potential. Just watch the
Nolanmovies again, they are infinitly better.
Science fiction horror has, paradoxically enough, always been more about people then anything else. But it makes sense if you give it a little thought. Human drama is always about confronting characters with situations that are new to them, thus creating conflict. And what makes a better drama then setting the characters (and the viewer) up against something that is truly new, namely something that hasn't existed before? Which is what monster story writers have been doing for almost 300 years now.
Take, for instance, the famous story of Frankenstein. A man builds a creature. He is, however disappointed in his work and abandons his creation. The "monster" then vows revenge and starts killing people close to his creator. When Frankenstein (the scientist, not the monster) dies, however, the monster can be seen grieving at his dead body.
If you strip away all the "we must not play God" and "science must not get out of hand" subtext, you will have to recognize that this is a very male-centered story. You can read it like a distorted father-son relationship, in which both act out their aggression on anything but each other. The problem here comes directly from reckless and emotionally detached creation and a lack of nurturing and motherly love, two attributes which are traditionally male (by which I mean that they are usually contributed to men. I'm not saying all dudes are heartless bastards).
D'aaawh
The funny thing is that this male perspective is, perhaps more even then in other genres, a staple of the horror genre (science fiction tends to be more emancipated). Psycho, The Exorcist and even The Shining* all are about battles that are fought out between men, with women trapped hopelessly in between. There are exceptions, but they are few and rarely contain a truly female perspective.
Enter Splice.
Splice is a 2009 monster movie that tells the story of Clive and Elsa, a couple of biochemists at work and in the bedroom. At the beginning of the film, they have just completed their latest project: splicing the DNA of several species together to create a new specie. But just as all the pieces are falling into place (including an interview in Wired) and they can pursue the next medical breakthrough in science, their project is plugged. Elsa, who is clearly the dominant one in the relationship, pushes Clive to continue working on their next project in secret: splicing animals with human DNA. What comes out is Dren (nerd spelled backwards), who looks like one of David Cronenbergs erotic nightmares and behaves like a mix between a sweet little girl and one of the facehuggers from Alien, including adolescent mood swings and an Oedipus complex. She (it?) is never truly an animal, but not completely human either. She's more like a force of nature. Clive wants to destroy her, but Elsa feels responsible for the creature and decides to keep it. She soon starts to nurture Dren like a child. I won't have to spell out that this is not a very good idea.
Above: not a very good idea
Splice's concept is, as you might see, pretty damn original. It's Elsa's mother instincts and nurturing reflexes that set most of the film in action, not Clives curiosity. And it's implications are rather groundbreaking as well: where most "creature features" lay the blame squarely on reason going wild without any ethical or emotional concern, Splice seems to say that it's emotion meddling up peoples logical thinking that really makes the shit hit the fan. In fact, instead of saying that the science going rogue is the issue at hand, you can see Splice as laying the blame on the supposed moral outcry of the general public that forces Clive and Elsa to go rogue. Stuff to think about.
The movie is not without it's faults, however. To reach some interesting dilemma's, the characters do things that are just impossibly stupid, especially for a couple of supposedly brilliant scientists. And staying on the subject of science: the theoretical framework for the movie is loose at best, and the "scientific"babble Clive and Elsa sometimes retort to is more then a little dumb. The movie also never gets anywhere near scary, which some people might find a letdown. On the other hand, the acting is pretty good and the special effects (especially those of the creatures) are rather spectacular for such a low-budget indie movie. And the film kept my full attention for an hour and a half, which is quite a feat in and on itself.
Splice is a movie that doesn't get interesting unless you are willing to think about it. In that respect, it is a rather good and intelligent movie. If you like discussing movies after you've seen them, Splice is a recommendation. If you want a movie to stand solely on it's own, however, you might be a bit disappointed.
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* The Shining, the way I see it at least, is all about Jack vs. himself. His wife is basically a stock character.
P.S.Wow, we can have movies with dominant females that are not evil mothers or dominatrixes now! Yay for emancipation!
Terrence McDonagh is a deranged, drug addicted cop, whose very life seems to be based on spiraling himself deeper and deeper into the reefer madness. He misuses his powers as policeman to steal drugs from the evidence room in the police station. He tortures wheelchair-bound old ladies for information. He "arrests" teen couples, takes their drugs, lets the girl preform sexual favors on him in exchange for his silence and then forces the boy to watch at gunpoint.
You have just been introduced to the hero of the movie. I remember thinking to myself: "Is this guy good or bad?". And then I remembered: "Wait, this is a Werner Herzog film. He doesn't do puny stuff like morality". And it shows: when McDonagh decides to kick the habit, his entire destructive life comes crashing down on him. It's not until he starts pumping anything slightly mind-altering he can find into his body again that everything (almost magically) works out. Some movies might not give a good example, but this one is not even trying.
The movie is, as was to be expected, strange beyond belief. It's also shocking, vulgar and as amoral as movies get these days. Needless to say, I absolutely loved it. Weird as it might be, the movie is also screamingly funny. I rarely pause a movie because I am laughing so hard that I'm afraid I might miss something, but The Bad Lieutenant managed it. The scene in question involved Nicolas Cage acting opposite two imaginary iguanas. Yes, the iguanas of his imagination.
These iguanas. They have to be my favorite iguanas ever.
Werner Herzog only seems to make fiction films about one type of person: the deranged man who nevertheless is very smart. Aguirre from The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo from the movie of the same name and now McDonagh all want to achieve... well, something. They definitely have the brains, the charisma and the guts for it, but are all hindered by being criminally insane. This very special kind of insanity is a staple of Herzog, and it's literally impossible to get if you've never seen one of his films.
You can take that as both a recommendation or a warning. This movie is made by two very gifted artists of whom it is almost a miracle they never worked together before: Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage. Herzog directs like crazy (it might, in fact, just be my favorite movie of his), and Cage delivers one of the best performances of his life. You'll just have to wonder whether you are interested in watching them deliver a shot of pure madness into your spinal column. If that idea appeals to you in the slightest, consider this a huge recommendation. Everybody else: stay far, far away from this. Your brain might melt.
The Holocaust is without doubt the single worst thing the human race has ever devised. The systematic murder of six million Jews and many million more gypsies, homosexuals, communists, mentally handicapped and basically everyone the Nazi regime didn't like is such an absurdly tragic event that it still has the capability to bring people to tears.
And then Hollywood found out about this. Ever since Schindlers List (which is a great film) won an Oscar, there have been a slew of movies that have used one of the most horrible events in history as their setting, or more precisely: as their excuse. The absolute low point in this was The Reader, a wholly uninteresting love story served with a sauce of genocide to make it a little more edible. The Pianist, luckily, is one of the movies that manages to avoid the cliches and be beautiful and touching without rubbing in our face how in beautiful and touching it is.
The story of The Pianist is that of Władysław Szpilman, a real-life pianist who managed to survive the "purging" in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw. Most of the time, this just means he tries to hide as good as he can, sometimes alone, sometimes with the aid of others. It's not a grand or epic story per se, but that is exactly what makes the movie work so well: its sense of understatement.
Everybody who owned these things is dead. Think about that for a while.
Roman Polanski, who directed the movie and survived the Holocaust himself as a kid, deserves our eternal thanks for not making the movie sentimental. Szpilman isn't shown as some kind of saint, he is just one guy out of a million whose fortune was better then that of everyone around him. His motivation to survive isn't driven by some kind of moral purpose, he just wants to survive. That he is able to do so has more to do with a series of extremely lucky coincidences then with his strength of character. This makes both the person and the film much more complex and intriguing then if he was the kind of guardian angel that has flocked so many of the bad Holocaust movies.
A lot of this complexity is also due to Adrien Brody. How he dedicated himself to the role is amazing in itself, but what he eventually did with it is almost superhuman. Most of the film he is completely alone, but he still manages to fill the screen with this enormous presence. This is film acting in the way it was meant to be: communicating not with monologues, as stage actors do, but with subtle gestures and physical presence. Brody is the only American who ever won a Cesar award (the French oscars) for a single role, and rightly so. The movie is worth seeing for this stunning performance alone.
But what truly makes The Pianist such a great film is the realization that will hit you when the movie is done: that this story is just a single point of view, just a single story in a time and place that had too much going on to even tell. This humility is what makes The Pianist a truly stunning experience that you won't soon forget. Highly recommended.
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The music of today was suggested to me by a girl who is a pianist herself.
In the early sixties, there were two subcultures that ruled the streets of Britain: rockers and mods. Rockers wore leather jackets and listened to Elvis. Mods wore tailored suits and listened to jazz. They were basically the hipsters of their time, and Blow-Up was their favorite film. They loved it because it was made by an Italian director who made "artsy" movies, because the soundtrack was made by Herbie Hancock and because the people in the movie are photographers who have casual sex and say things like "fab"! But watching it now, it is clear that the movie has not stood the test of time.
The basic story of Blow-Up is actually pretty damn interesting: a photographer makes pictures of a murder without realizing it. It's not until he enlarges the pictures that he sees what went down. Now that's what I call a premise. But the way the movie deals with it is weird and unbalanced. The whole picture-taking scene doesn't take place until about 40 minutes in, and when the movie draws to a close the story is pretty much cut off about 10 minutes before the end.
Then some mimes play tennis without a ball. End of the movie.
No, really.
Also, this happens. For some reason.
The strange thing about this film is that while it's full of random zaniness, it is almost completely joyless. Not once does the movie hit a truly light note, not even when the characters themselves seem to be having fun. The fact that the protagonist is a bona fide asshole doesn't really help either: he is cold, misogynistic and incredibly pretentious. The movie is really disengaging this way: we watch the people go about, but it's more like watching ants in an terrarium. We watch with some sort of morbid curiosity, hoping that something bad will happen.
Okay, now I'm being overtly mean. The film is not a complete failure by any standards: the cinematography is pretty brilliant and the soundtrack kicks ass as well. Antonioni, the director, is known for both having never much going on and not making this boring to watch, and that is also the case here. And while it might not be a timeless movie, there is definitely some deeper meaning in the movie (although I don't know what it is). What is left is a strange souvenir from a long lost time, when girls wore the strangest dresses in history and movies were allowed to be bland because it was "new" and "artistic". Let's hope the hipsters will have better taste.
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P.S. This movie also features one of the first appearances of Jane Birkin, the mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg. And of course she goes topless. I really wonder what that household looked like. The father was Serge Gainsbourg, in case you didn't know.
The music today is presented by Herbie Hancock who, as stated before, is awesome.
For those who are just here to read the review, here it is:
Zombieland tells the story of a ragtag band of survivors who make a road trip though a post-zombieapocalypse America. The story has been told a million times, and Zombieland doesn't try to shake things up either. What it tries to do is deliver a good time, and it definitely works on that front (with an awesome cameo as a high point). And although it's a bit rough at the edges and pretty forgettable in the end, it's still a solid comedy for anyone who likes zombies.
Allright. Now if you bear with me for a moment, I would like to do a bit of movie analysis. You see, there is a movie that has an awful lot in common with Zombieland. You might in fact call it it's British counterpart. I am, of course, talking about Shaun of the Dead. And I just so happen to think that what differs in these movies is very telling for the moviemaking in the respective countries they were made in.
In other words, what can the differences in these movies tell us about the difference between British and American movies?
Even the damn posters look alike.
To start with the characters. Both movies have pretty much the same stereotypical characters in the lead roles: there's The Hero, The Sidekick, The Girl and The Innocent Character. But it's their personal quirks that give away their nationality. For example, The Hero in Zombieland is a neurotic nerd who is uncomfortable around women and thinks to much. He looks so much like Woody Allen it's almost uncanny. But while the hero might represent the more "artsy" side of American cinema, Woody Harrelson's character (The Sidekick) represents the more lowbrow variety. His Tallahassee is the kind of powerhouse that has flocked American movies since Die Hard and Evil Dead II came out.
Compare this to Shaun and Ed. Shaun himself isn't much of a hero himself, but you would be hard pressed to find a sorer, less self-conscious loser then Ed in a movie. And this too is typical of contemporary British cinema. Shaun would fit in both a Richard Curtis (Notting Hill) and a Mike Leigh (Naked, Secrets and Lies) movie, while the chemistry between the duo isn't too different from that between the greatest British heroes ever: Wallace and Gromit.
Something that's also telling is the way the story is put together. Shaun begins before the zombie invasion, while Zombieland takes place long after it. This allows Shaun to make jokes that revolve around Shaun and Eds boring, middle class life and how it is interrupted. The humor derives almost purely from the characters this way. This method of comedy has long been a staple of British humor, from The Office to Notting Hill. Zombieland, on the other hand, makes jokes mostly based on what the characters encounter. This style of comedy, in which set pieces are constantly thrown at the cast, is what made American shows like The Simpsons and South Park such a success.
And finally, it's worth noting that while both movies essentially revolve around getting from A to B, the B in question is radically different in both movies. In Shaun, the characters try to get to a pub: a place where you can unwind and discuss the world, girls and the like with your mates. In Zombieland, the place to go to is an amusement park: a place where there are flashy lights, adrenaline rushes and candy with enormous amounts of sugar in it.
Make of that what you want.
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The music today is a song I really shouldn't like, but I can't help banging my head to a little every time I hear it.
The Apartment is a romantic comedy made in 1960 and shot in black and white. I know that a lot of people who watch movies as entertainment would find this enough reason too dismiss a movie as old and boring. Please, please don't. I say this as both a (wannabe) film critic and someone who just plain loves movies: The Apartment is great.
When the movie starts we see an office building from the inside. There is a seemingly endless row of desks, behind which the John Does of the world make their living. We then zoom in to perhaps the least significant of them: C.C. Baxter (played wonderfully minimal by Jack Lemmon). He is one of those sad, lonely guys who comes home from work every day and finds his apartment empty. But Baxter has pulled an even shorter straw. His apartment is used by his superiors as their personal fuckshack, and he can wait outside until they are finished with their bimbo du jour. And to make things even worse: the lift lady whom he is secretly in love with, mrs. Kubelik, has an affair with his (married) boss. Who then asks Baxter if he can use his apartment to have sex with Kubelik.
Not that I blame him for wanting too.
Most people would draw the line just about there. Not Baxter. He is a wonderfully strange man: shy and spineless, but also selfless and caring. He just keeps on going, completely keeping his own desires and needs out of the equation. I won't spoil too much of the plot, but rest assured that this attitude will give him a world of trouble.
The Apartement is a romantic movie that contains very little on-screen romance. It is a comedy in which enough drama occurs to fill a decent soap-opera season. And it's a christmas movie that doesn't even have a single ho-ho-ho. Normally, this would make a rom-com depressing and sluggish. It is a testament to Billy Wilder's (who wrote and directed the movie) skill that he managed to make these things work in his advantage. Keeping the romance virtually out of his movie (there isn't even a kiss-off) he manages to keep the story engaging and interesting throughout. Oh sure, we know what the outcome will be, but how in the world Baxter and Kubelik are ever going to overcome all their problems and get together keeps us guessing. The drama might hit some very dark tones (even by contemporary merits), but it makes you genuinely and deeply care about the characters. And leaving out the whole christmas bit... well, it doesn't exactly take a genius to see how that would improve the movie.
Seriously, F*** this Movie
The Apartment is one of the funniest, most endearing and best-written comedies I have seen in a long time. An absolute recommendation for just about everyone.
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P.S. The movie also has some great pacing, so you don't have to fear Once-Upon-a-Time-in-the-West-esque slow-burning drama. This movie goes as fast as any movie nowadays, which only improves it.
This song might be a bit of a standard today, but it is just as everlastingly delightful as the movie.
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