The Namesake

It is better that The Namesake looks and feels more like entertainment than it does an art film. The film is about the cultural divsions in an Indian family over the years. The story begins with the parents meeting, marriage and leave of India to go to the United States. What they come to is an entirely different world. The values and customs that their children are brought up represent an opposite extreme of what the parents themselves knew as children. The crux of the film is about the children trying to come to terms with their parents to appreciate what they have to offer.

The film is by Mira Nair, an accomplished filmmaker of the subject of Indian heritage. The film doesn't measure up to earlier efforts by her, but the film is better because it feels so translatable to American audiences. The story has some insights and perspectives, but not enough to climb over better, more depth films. It would be just another film of a recognizable sub genre if made to suit the art market. Cultural explorations are a good norm of that market, but with some recognizable American actors the film becomes a small gem to American audiences who will recognize Kal Penn. Nothing astonishing, but a good enough effort that has its heart and mind in the right place.

Across the Universe

The limits of interpretation apply to Across the Universe. The Beatles, icons of the 60s, have their music served up as story and discussion about two youths who fall in love but are torn apart by the political struggles to stop Vietnam War. A different Beatles song lays out a different emotion and thought for the short history of the characters and their times.

The film is a true musical in the sense that the lyrics are suppose to be as important and as meaningful as anything piece of dialogue, but the film over values the meaning of the music of the Beatles. The band dealt with both pop tunes and explorations in rock and darker subjects, but the idea that some of their songs are good for political climate of the 1960s is much less believable. The Beatles were politically aware but most of their progression with material and subject matter was personal. The few times they did outright deal with social change it was done in the most general way. The film milks those for songs for all they are worth and even extends the meaning of other songs to prove points that had little to do with original intention and isn't very believable now.

For Julie Taymour the filmmaker the story matters very little. She continues her exploration of mixing styles and sets to create visual poetry, but she underwhelms in Across the Universe. A few ideas and visuals are good, but she keeps the visua moments spread too far and too tin over the course of the film. Each new visual moment has a new set up and design and lasts many seconds instead of minutes. When Federico Fellini made Juliet of the Spirits, he tied the visuals together for twenty minutes of length sometimes. He understood the visuals were important, but it was more interesting in how they could be brought together through editing. Julie Taymour tries to impress us more with exaggerated production sets up. She doesn't link the visuals to that many impressive filmmaking sequences.

Definitely, Maybe

Love stories are like pop songs. They deal with our most intrinsic interest in life, but they also gloss over reality for ideal and conveniance. People always make too much importance of them. The fact they can relate to the basic feelings isn't that important. The words "I love you" are meaningful to everyone, but replicating those emotions in sugar coated works of pop entertainment always has great limitations.

The difference with Definitely, Maybe is that the story does try to complicate an age old formula. The father tells his daughter the story of how he fell in love with his mother. He tries to convince her it is complicated but she argues that it isn't. And so the film begins by relaying over his history with three different women and how chance events and new moments moved him from one girl to the next or from one great moment to a low one. Definitely, Maybe has a few ideas correct in that it cannot leave definite impressions of each woman or moment. Some characters just do drift away and ideas of his old self also just fade.

The few good parts of the film are shading around with what is still a standard vehicle movie. Ryan Reynolds is judged as an actor by his likability instead of his depth and the final hurrah with the great romance has the characteristics of a full fledged dream come true. It's relatable to no one but people who live vicariously through romance novels, stories and songs. I'd be lying if I didn't say the film tugged at a few of my emotions, but any sad situation can do that. The story of feelings in movies and how we relate to them has more to do with personal experience and intellectual thought. All of our senses have to be challenged. Definitely, Maybe just challenges a few and white washes a lot more. It's still just a holiday movie in the end.

Kid A - Radiohead

This is the last album by Radiohead that I paid serious attention to. What they developed with OK Computer was a sophisticated sound that was the result of a few albums of experimentation with guitars and other instruments. The album also had a high concept, but that is of lesser interest. Sometimes people associate greatness with the attempt at meaning, but Thom Yorke doodled a bunch of lyrics that hit the listener over the head with their obvious meanings. The true excellence of the album was the band's groing ability to develop with their original sounds and show slow but thoughtful progressions in their music. When Radiohead finally followed up OK Computer they didn't keep growing with their sound but instead they abandoned years worth of accomplishments for a new identity. The new make up was concentrated of new instruments and sounds.

Kid A is their romp through beats and computer effects. A styling so far off it was considered avante garde by anyone who had associated Radiohead with their earlier incarnations. The problem is that progression with musicians usually is associated with the instruments they are good at. Considering Radiohead isn't breaking new ground but going, numerous songs on Kid A can be considered simplistic, off beat versions of much better material. The National Anthem incorporates trumpet work with drum beats and other computer effects, but the progression of the song is a layer by layer introduction of each new instrument. There is little make up to the composition of the song beyond the basic beat that drives it. The use of the trumpet is just a decorative sound for a basic beat. When David Bowie experimented with electronica in the mid 90s, he also used simple beats to decorate whole songs. It showed his ability to cloak himself in new music without making it part of the best of his abilities. The shock is that when bands like U2 experimented they did so by associating many of their old instruments in with the new ones, but Radiohead designs most of the songs on Kid A to breed a complete new identity. They try to make an album that takes on talented musicians of the genre with only a few years experience. In some ways the success of Kid A is a backhanded compliment to the genre.

I've heard that Radiohead progressed after Kid A, but once I found Amnesiac to be disregardable I lost most general interest in the band. Someday I may find my way back to the band, but an album like Kid A doesn't live up to the hype.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

Sgt. Peppers isn't the greatest album or even a good one. In the scheme of musical conceptions it isn't even a true album. The Beatles felt like it was a breakthrough for them because of the high level of experimentation relative to earlier efforts. The concept is that the album is being played by a mock band called Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, a kind of marching band that represents all different facets and personalities of the band. The fact that the Beatles would deal with different personalities was to be expected because the band was growing more tired with their original incarnation in every new album. The problem is that they had no good idea to go about showing the personality splits amongst the bandmembers. Instead of making a cohesive album filled with thematic, tonal and structural similarities, they made an album that is a collection of songs with no similaritiy amongst each other at all. The tie in to the concept is that each bandmember was able to mold and shift the songs to their design, but it was all for the purpose of an idea that wasn't even a concept. It's a rationalization. In Sgt. Peppers they also ditched a lot of their pop song structure with songs that challenged the bandmembers vocal abilities. Paul McCartney most notably comes up short and sings many songs with a lackluster thud. He wouldn't develop a great range until Abbey Road with the powerful stylings on such songs like, "Oh, Darling". The power behind that singing would have helped some songs on Sgt. Peppers. Abbey Road also was the album that did combine all the sounds of the Beatles and match it into an album that was an album. Different musical interests are everywhere, but all are tied with similar sounds and structures that appear through out. Plus a slightly more interesting concept drapes the album, but concepts were never the band's strong suit anyways

Finding Forrester

The film is likeable to me because it mixes two of my favorite things, basketball and writing. Other than that there is nothing to it. Gus Van Sant makes another film about an unlikely genius. This film just pales in comparison to Good Will Hunting. The story is smaller and the themes are almost nonexistent compared to the earlier film. Some filmmakers accidentally make early films of theirs shine by making new ones later about the same subject that really dissapoint. I wonder if Van Sant doing this film a few years later was such an accident. Also, I have a bone to pick with its believability. The young black basketball player is discriminated against because he is 16 and black and yet has an extensive knowledge about literature. OK, the film focuses on the fact he is black. I'll disbelieve it because he is 16! No one that young can have read so much in the timetable the film gave. It's impossible. Fun movie to watch, but not to take serious.

Saraband

The breath and depth of Scenes from a Marriage makes the idea of a sequel hard to grasp, but Bergman returns to the topic. The good news is that he reunites the original leading actors. The bad news is that the story does not hold up to the original Ullmann and Josephson, long divorced, reunite but have little shared history since their break up. The film has little to base on about them so it is mostly about secondary characters, Josephson's family mostly. This introduces fresh characters and themes into a story that already has much to it. Bergman doesn't contribute very well to the original characters with this. He borrows old themes from other films and makes a film that exists on the idea that multiple stories is better than one quality story. Bergman is a master dramatist, but even a master had to be dumbfounded about how to write a sequel to such a dense film about a couple who decide to part ways by the end. The sequel had to be about something else to exist. It is that and sadly the results do not impress.

Breaking the Waves

A ridiculous film. The story starts out fine and develops an interesting moral dilemma, but the film announces bankruptcy when it starts to become a film about right and wrong in the eyes of God. The conservative religious folk condemn the actions by Watson's character, but her character is honored by church bells in the sky upon her burial at sea. The fact this film develops with many themes and ideas and then reduces itself to a simple morality tale that goes against the dated religious belief of a small town is bad enough. But the film gets really bad with the ending church bell scene. It says Watson was in the right with God but with no context. Just praise be her and her committment to her husband. C'mon. There is no challenge in this ending but only a satisfaction to the taste buds of the audience. It is also an unlikely and out of place romantization within a very stark and dark disturbing story. Late films by Lars Von Trier have been poor for trying to merge the realism of art films and Hollywood characteristics.

Casablanca

This should be considered a cult film. Those who love the film do so without regret or angst. They also do so without just explanation to why it is great. Those who hate it can point out the obvious romance cliches, but those cliches are why the first group loves it. Ingrid Bergman is a model photographed from one side instead of an actress here and Bogart has fine moments, but the writing doesn't give him a character. It's a camp romance filled with cliche dialogue that reminiscences about what they had in Paris, but not about them. People should not compliment what just formulaic for the times. Incompetence is the only thing that held this movie back. I also don't believe Ebert when he says the depth comes in the scene of actual French citizens sing the song of French resistance during WW2. It is only one scene. Ebert does a better job in his commentary to point out the numerous filmmaking inaccuracies in the film. So much for the height of classical hollywood cinema!

Szerelem

The dissapointment for some with this film is that more doesn't happen, but the film (with a less than satisfying title) is a small but wonderfully textured story. A woman routinely visits her bedridden mother-in-law and both have to deal with their son who is a political prisoner. The mother is dying and the son isn't due back anytime soon. But without warning, he is released and unexpectedly comes home but is too late to see his mother again. The film doesn't make this a big dramatic moment. This scene of his return meshes with all the others. The beauty of the film is the simple conversations and the wonderful filmmaking that bring to life the mother's dreams and ideas. None of the ideas are specific or really add up to greater ideas, but wonderfully add detail to a day in the life of these characters. It's said the beauty of good literature is the texture of the characters and scenes. That can come in many ways. Szerelem finds another way to tell that equivalent on film.

Persona

A nurse is asked to treat an actress who refuses to speak and have any contact with her family. The hospital believes the condition is self willed so a young unassuming nurse is enlisted to dig at the reasons behind this peculiar act. The two women get to know each other intimately and challenge each other to find their bounds and limits. At one point the film stops being chronological and straight forward and takes on a narrative that illustrates the complexes of both personalities. Persona is one of the richest experiences in all of cinema. The appreciation only deepens with every viewing. Bergman always had an idea to film the subconscious and soul on camera. He's done many films to many levels of quality, but no film seems to match Bergman's ambition the way Persona does. It is unbelievable that a film under 90 minutes and made in 1966 is still one of the complex portraits for an art form, but Persona is one of the few perfections we have.

Requiem for a Dream

The fact the film is disturbing and powerful should not warrant kudos. Certain subjects will bring out those feelings. The film is amateur hour and mostly nonsense. There is little detail to the character's lives. Each person is introduced and the film speeds to their problems. The depth of the storytelling is in how much the camera set ups and tricks shots dominate. The purpose is to create a drug state, but the film is so repititious with a few set ups and tricks that there is little imagination to the filmmaking. Instead it becomes nauseating and numbing. All the characters have different addictions and problems, but the state of their reality seems to come with the same look and feel. Arnofsky would develop with The Fountain, but the big budget here doesn't hide the fact this film feels like Pi did as a starter film.

The Usual Suspects

I remember when this came out. A review said, "If you can predict the ending, a top job is waiting for you at the FBI." That's funny because the only interesting thing about this film is the ending. The rest is a fluff genre movie that tries to take itself too seriously. The story pretends to be meaningful when it is just tired, but is paced slow enough and has a few dramatic scenes to give the illusion it is something more. The ending reveals an intrigue into deception, but reveals nothing more about the characters or situation. The rest of story just comes off as an exercise in criminal acts than anything else.

Walk Hard: The Story of Dewey Cox

Walk Hard makes itself exist between good satire and the muddled version prevelant in so many Will Ferrel movies. The film had a chance to be more, but collapsed under the pressure.
The problem is that the movie clings to the latter interpretation of satire. It's more structured than the usual Ferrel mess, but the exaggerrations are still there. John C. Reily is playing Dewey Cox through and through. When his character hits moments hat reflect other great musicians, it's all still the Cox persona. It's no more ridiculous than how Ferrel would have seen him be if he played the part.

Parts of the movie are funny because they feel like comic twists on popular history, but a lot of it feels like loose make ups of what really happened. I only got a sense of some musicians while most were too generic to be insightful. As the Great Dictator proved, you do need to accurately portray your subject before you send him off on zaney adventures. That's the only thing that Chaplin didn't do.

The ultimate problem is that I feel is that the filmmakers captured and undermined music history as thoroughly and accurately as Wil Ferrel did Nascar racing with Talladagha Nights. The film was too loose with the references and the story dragged too much. We don't care too much for plot and instead want a series of good jokes.

SLC Punk!

Discussion about structure and aesthetics in a film are relative to the constructions that make up its fictional characteristics. SLC Punk has fictional elements certainly, but also has ties elsewhere.

Documentary is rooted in the idea of image as truth and story as nothing more than a recorder's basic objective. While SLC Punk! is not as documentary oriented in recording story as films like Il Posto or others, it has an aesthetic that defies easy criticism because its whole point is to be nothing more than an extended memory of early wild days and growng pains.

Thus the question of whether the film feels sincere or is edgy enough becomes relevant because all the characters are suppose to exist as worthy interpretations of disgruntled youth. The film has a structure of being a series of parties and misadventures, but it does have poignant moments in between all the scenes that don't exhibit cheap sentimentality.

The film has an edge to it that could exhibit comparisons to other indie films like Trainspotting, but the film doesn't wallow in grunginess to just do it, but has points that speak to the advent of maturity for a rebellious youth. The film does make aesthetic decisions to get to this point, but the fact is that it doesn't try to heavy hand the material or make points beyond the characters basic growing up. The ending is sad and climactic but that doesn't make it fictional because the teary moments are rooted in pain and flavored with as much abrasiveness as any other part of the film.

Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring) - Christopher Hitchens

It is pretty absurd to think a book by a contrarian about the subject will get total love and agreement from other contrarians. Hitchens does take a viewpoint on numerous subjects. Those things remain to be debated. But the best thing he does in this book is gage the reasons why people become contrarians and how they can protect that individuality. He understands the inert feelings involved. Thomas Jefferson once said he had to find the argument in everything. He didn't know why, but he just had to. This book professes the same thing. It also does well to explain why the contrarian voice is needed in society. Whenever I find my confidence wavering because I am against all opinions, I can come back to this book to find comfort.

Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me - Craig Seligman

I read this out of simple appreciation. Like Craig Seligman, I too have a distinct attraction to both Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael. The benefit of Seligman's book is that he makes his personal affection a drawn out work. The structure is basically a commentary on both authors and the narrative voice is as casual as a conversation. He doesn't start at their beginnings and go until the end, but hits earlier and later periods often and with ease. The reader who is already well versed in the writings of both writers won't learn anything new here, but they will get a picture of Seligman's appreciation for them. Since the book is sometimes as much about Seligman as it is Kael and Sontag, it makes the book a personal journey as well. I'm not an expert on either writer so I also saw this book as a good introduction to them. This book isn't a mighty or grand work, but since books about both writers are very few in number, it's a special accomplishment nonetheless.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South - James Agee

James Agee's naturalistic answer to James Joyce's Ulysses. Inspired by the scope of Joyce's work, Agee tries to do it in a documentarian style for an impoverished American family in the 1930s. Joyce took on Ulysses through an array of styles and structures. Agee doesn't represent the history of literature like Joyce does, but he uses a mixtures of styles and structures to comment on a family and period of history. The ambition is to cover every part of daily life at the time. Photographs by Walker Evans bring light to all the detail in the book. When released in the 40s, critics were harsh but positive reviews came in the 60s once critics were able to transition into comfortability with the style. Unlike Ulysses, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men wasn't an immediate classic and given instant analysis and writings about it so praise was slow to come. Biographies about Agee and texts on the book are recommended if considering reading.

I Am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe

Not Wolfe's most impressive novel, but definitely his best orchestrated one. Every novel he has done has dealt with a scope and frame that was too large for him to wheel all the way. I Am Charlotte Simmons is very good and the end hits the right note for all the characters. The other note about this novel is that as much as everything about college life seems exagerated, it isn't. I read this before I went to live in a college dorm and my instinct was to second guess every idea and claim in the book, but Wolfe turned out to be accurate to an uncomfortable degree. For a writer who steps into other worlds with his novels, accuracy is an important element.

The Forging of a Rebel - Arturo Barea

The large story of Arturo Barea's life and political career. He has little to say about his family as an adult, but much about how his childhood shaped him and the circumstances that took from a lowly soldier to a working revoluionary. Barea keeps the narrative focused on the escalation of small events that eventually made him an important part of the Spanish Civil War. Many people outside the political arena have little idea how one man can make a difference unless that person becomes a dictator or outright leader of a group. Barea was the working man behind the scenes. This book isn't dense with political ideas, but has a lot to say about the political life. It was hard to end this book. I felt like I became intimate with the passion of a man.

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

Yes, his Pulitizer Prize winning novel, but I don't know. The novel does right by following a realism track. Roth never did well with plot. The novel is also ambitious like his best works, but it is also redudant. The first forty pages is mere introduction, but after that the story is repetitve with the protaganist repeating the extent of his anxiety over and over again. One situation leads to new things, but the novel is focused on capturing the psyche of this disturbed man that it doesn't know when enough is enough. Roth writes his most radical book here, but the novel lacks the larger perspective in his better 90s works. I actually preferred I Married A Communist to this one. It has a similar subject and handles the outside perspective of the character better. That's also the only novel in that decade by Roth not to win a major award.

L.A. Confidential - James Ellroy

This isn't the usual mold for a crime novel. The structure is a dense crime report. The characters fit as if they were posing for mug shots. You get their most hard boiled image. Even for Ellroy this was an evolution. His early books are typical in structure with his usual tough punch. In L.A. Confidential he adapts the story to feel like it is home to the time period of the 1950s. The vernacular is so deft that there isn't just numerous expressions of common slang, but sentence structures that were common for the 50s. L.A. Confidential is encompassed by an authenticity all its own. He backs this wonderful language with a crime story that has ambition to devalue every other and with a story larger than five crime novels put together. White Jazz showed he could write in this style with a smaller focus, but L.A. Confidential is huge. In the movie the action takes place over a few days. In the book it takes place over about twenty years.

Humbolt's Gift - Saul Bellow

Tom Wolfe made this story a culutral examination with two of his novels. Saul Bellow makes it a personal one. The story is of the man who searches for great heights but has to come great pain before he can understand the beauty of simplicity in life. Charles Citrine is a version of Bellow's Herzog, but he keeps his thoughts to himself instead of sending them to everyone. His self importance clouds his ratonality with others and leads him to clustered situations of confusion and plight. Bellow is masterful with detailing the bulk of his excesses. He's so good that this examination of Citrine is almost too detailed. The point of view is from Citrine so we are privvy to all of his excessive thinking. Bellow doesn't focus enough on the ticking clocks in Citrine that get him to have a change of mind. All of a sudden he just does. His reasons encompass events and thoughts across the whole novel, but the reader is never thinking this event would come to pass. It feels tacked on. Other novelists told stories like this outside of the first person point of view and focused on the fatefulness of the protaganist's journey to self discovery. It made us look at the events with more awareness. In Humbolt's Gift we are beholden to his thoughts and whims to self entertainment for the character. Bellow is masterful with his writing, but too distanced from making the final revelations truly work.

Closely Watched Trains

War films are made by the plenty, but none with the personal context like Closely Watched Trains. The story follows a youth whose purpose is to take over his father's duty as a railway platform guard. His first day on the job is queazy and his escapades lead to the hope of sexual liaisons instead of honor on the job. The focus on this character, a general issue-type one, relates him back to the old guard mentality that the youthful are to follow in their parent's footsteps. Or, in the case of war, they are to follow in the footsteps of national allegiance. This film wonderfully shows the personal ambitions that lie in people even during the most honorable causes. The end, with the youth turning unexpected rebel to the war, is a pronouncement of the film against old ideals of allegiance and honor in war. But the film is most memorable for its vivid characters and wonderful writing.

Princess Mononoke

Most fantasy films don't resonate because the stories are ham and filled with plots that deal only with the world around the story. Princess Mononoke has a lot of discussion and explanation about a world where humans and animals battle for control of a forest, but the story is rooted in deep human emotions. The story is supposebly about a foreign situation, but is about the very unclear nature of right and wrong. Actually if someone looks at this foreign world they see signs of Japanese culture in mythical and religious beliefs. Like Kurosawa before him, Miyazaki uses a distant subject to deal with very modern feelings.

Cinema Paradiso

The film for film lovers. I find that even the most critical film goers accept the romanticism of this movie because it is about their own feelings at the beginning of movie going. It's interesting because the movie is far from perfect. It condenses and simplifies what Fellini did with Amarcord into a ready made product that takes advantage of old movie lore. But, so what. I was a wide eyed 15 year old kid when I saw this movie and I am still wide eyed kid when watching it. An essential movie in my life.

And the Ship Sails On..

One of the most pleasant Fellini films ever. By this time the style that began in 8 1/2 had become a good memory for Fellini. I say that because this story is so simple, so imaginative and so friendly. His ambition isn't to out due what he did, but to make good on the best features of his filmmaking. The story, set on a luxury liner, is about a memorable bunch of odd passengers and a lovesick elephant! The tone is quircky. Even the ocean is fabricated to set the perfect mood. Wes Anderson makes films these days about similar characters, but can't paint a picture of them without a chuckle at their expense. Fellini loves the characters. We should be grateful for that.

Ronin

Standard comedies go by the way side of explanation because everyone has their own sense of humor. It's something everyone knows but can't explain. I'm starting to believe people have a sense of genre as well. I couldn't make a great argument to someone outside the crime/esponiage fold why Ronin is really good. To those who appreciate the genre it is in the simplistic story and tight focus. Made in the late 90s, it was a-typical to other 90s crime movies. It didn't add new elements to the story and didn't worship at the altar of Tarantino. It is a classical thriller made by a classical director. In the 60s, this film would have been standard. Today it is refreshing. The professional cast helps. De Niro and Reno are both capable actors, but both work their standard movie star personas here.

Scenes from a Marriage

Bergman originally said this six part series took him six months to write, but thirty years to experience. The largeness of the story eclipses many personal films previously done by Bergman. Typically a ninenty minute filmmaker, Bergman held thematic and structural ambitions in check while he focused on simple stories that would exude the belief that film was able to discover the depths of the soul. In Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman takes the best of his ability there to tackle a subject that has the width and breath of a complete thought for a major subject. Bergman manages to keep the story personal instead of strutural by having the scenes be a series of conversations at different points in the marriage. The scene are charged and dramatic, but they encompass the extent of these characters' lives together that it feels like a larger comment on them.

Beerfest

Two reasons why this is good, 1.) It's funny. 2.) The film is the best promotion for homosexuality in any recent movie. Why do I say this? There is no female love interest. The characters are shocked and disturbed when they find out granny was a whore. The film also shows male bonding to an uncomfortable degree. One of the characters was a male gigolo and another zones out his wife to be with the guys and another continually makes homosexual freudian slips. And that's just the beginning. I'd like to think the writers were conscience of this and did it purposely to go against the standards of guy movies, but I'm not sure. Either way, this film has found a large male audienceand the best education for them may be the subconscious kind.

A Woman Under the Infuence

The art of uncomfortability. Cassavetes goes further than anyone to personalize his projects. This film, set in his own house, starring his family and friends, made by other friends, was produced from money off mortgages on his house. The story stars his wife as a manic housewife whose erratic behaviors sends her to a mental hospital. Family and friends make her out to be the problem for the whole family, but a welcome home party turns into a large fight and shows as many problems in the husband as her. A "woman under the influence" may be her under the influence of a controlling husband. The uncomfortability comes in the doco-realism of the story and the focus on the most unnerving moments of the situation. Cassavetes always said he filmed Gena Rowlands to play himself, but I don't understand how that applies here. Cassavetes personalizes this story, but this may be a foreign subject. The reward of the film is in Gena Rowland's performance but the film may have been kept from greatness becauses it focuses so much on the realism that it lacks clarity about the characters.

Knife in the Water

Polanski's contribution to Polish national cinema is actually his development of many norms that would define 1960s art house cinema. It never became a genre, but it did have tendencies and similarities in a lot of films. Knife in the Water features a story about a couple on a yachting trip who take along a mysterious traveler. Things start out fine until emotions are played with and the happy threesome becomes disjointed. The story is not interested in promoting a conflict and resolution, but to allow the tension to swirl. All the characters end the story on an uncertain note about what is next. The film's focus on a real situation and small moments gives it a realism that was different in the 60s. Even Italian neo-realism had stale plots in their films. Polanski made a classic example of a film and story that could be something else. Very memorable.

Hands Over the City

Franesco Rosi is the different kind of political filmmaker here. Most focus on cultural stories with a political emphasis, but Hands Over the City peers into the beaucratic make shift of an Italian city. The film starts out with a building collapsing and people dying. It goes on to focus on the city planner's reaction to the collapse. He doesn't try to correct the situation. Instead he tries to swindle deals to keep other building projects around the city going. The collapsed building was an example of the city's future "housing projects." The story doesn't focus on the dramatics that would exemplify right and wrong, but instead focuses on the grasp of the city planner's beaurcratic powers with politicians and businessman. Rod Steiger plays the city planner, a notorious character to all in the film, but the greater evil in the film by the end is all the politicians and businessmen involved. The film doesn't make any detail fantastic. Every detail is level headed and focused on structures of city government. Many filmmakers were making excellent political films at this time, but none with such dedication and vision as Rosi. An underappreciated master.

Paper Moon

When Bogdanovich made this, he was pigeonholed as the critic turned filmmaker who had his eye geared toward the past with low key black and white films. Paper Moon was his light affair. Starring Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal, a real life father-daughter duo, they play con artists who may or may not be father and daughter. The film is good because it is sweet on a small level. The quiet, funny moments between father and daughter pay off. When this film was released, it didn't get the greatest reviews. Tatum O'Neal was the stand out, but critics faulted the film for being less than satisfying. Too many ambitious films made then crowded this work. This film works better today because it is a good memory of better times in filmmaking.

Beautiful Girls

Life in the middle of nowhere. Thirty-somethings come together for their high school reunion. Some have gone on to greener pastures but most are still waiting for the rest of their lives to begin. That debate is coming to a head with a few men who are in relationships but cannot fully give themselves up to it. They live with the idea that someone better is bound to come. The film Beautiful Girls shows them as near middle aged youths who still go to the bars and still have good times like it's the old days. The film is very funny and down to earth with the portrait. There is no exagerration. It also leads to the end revelations with little hoakiness. The 'beautiful girls' are really the girls around them the whole time. Their denial of age kept them from seeing that. The film is set in a small winter town with idiotic fun guys. It's hard for me not to sympathize or relate to the characters. Sometimes the subject of a film is bigger than any comment you can make and you have to give in to the peaceful memories of yourself. I definitely am not middle aged yet, but I am from this same environment and I have not grown up any quicker than these guys.

Raging Bull

One of Scorsese's best films. In the varied career of Martin Scorsese there has always been experimentation with genre and reference. Taxi Driver, a supposed serious work about a Vietnam Vet rebelling against society, has more comment today about its noir tradition and stylistic techniques. Raging Bull borrows from 1960s Italian cinema realism, but little comment is about that. That is because the style serves the story and character. Scorsese is fully devoted to lifting the inner emotions of the film instead of sugar coding it. De Niro plays Jake La Motta to tragic effect. Scorsese allows the script to draw out the parimeters of a rise and fall story, but the true detail is in the emotions of how personal the story goes. The black and white, a staple cinematography touch for any film set in the 1950s or earlier, better represents the grittiness of La Motta's life than it does the time period. Scorsese did everything right to film this story. It's too bad the focus and talent in Raging Bull has been the exception in his Scorsese's filmography.

A Hard Day's Night

For a Beatles fan, this film is a reward. It has the perfect balance of fictional humor and Beatles persona. At the time of release the film probably had the stench of a marketing tool for the band, but age and endearment has given this film new life. My interest is in Richard Lester though. The ultimate comic filmmaker, he handles the story pitch perfect in filmmaking and composition, but the film has too much limitations. It has neither the cinematic or thematic ambitions of later films. A true early work for Lester.

Mirror

First off, I don't believe this is film poetics. The imagery is powerful, but images don't connect together or double up to create ideas or implant symbolism within the viewer. This film is closer to a painting. Tarkovsky creates a distorted memory of World War II. The film goes from scene to scene with no literal connection but a similar meditative feel. The film is short so each viewing becomes a different impression of an abstract piece. The fact that the film, on third and fourth viewings, still resonates with the deep pains of Tarkovsky's memory, makes it successful. This film has always alluded me by way of description. Even essays I've read have done the film little justice. But I've grown with this film through Bill Jensen's paintings. He's a painter who took European art films and created abstract texture works based on them. He dabbled with different Bergman films. I don't think Bergman was the right filmmaker for this remodeling, but Tarkovsky perfectly fits it with Mirror. The texture displays feeling instead of ideas. Tarkovsky is very philosophical in other works, but pure emotion here.

Shock Corridor

I have a soft spot for Sam Fuller, but as I get older I have less of a soft spot for some of his films. Consider Shock Corridor: made with almost no budget, Fuller found a way to make a film that attacked a subject he was passionate about (abuses in mental institutions) but again his pulp writing career does not translate to pulp excellence in film. He merely recreates the basics of the B movie. The film was timely for attacking taboo subjects, but only in a few inane sequences. The positive is that the film manages to capture intense performances and create some gritty film sequences. But that's all. The fact we have James Ellroy and others now bleeding excellence into the pulp world does not show evolution, but examples of men who did a lot better work. Sam Fuller always maintained story was most important in film, but Shock Corridor is very limited. I'm glad he was making films though.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson - Joseph J. Ellis

This book had a large influence on me when I was 17. The interesting thing about Jefferson is that his unique character is as much of a subject as his biography. I didn't understand it then, but the characterization this book paints would serve as parables in my life about the nature of intelligence. The first is that we applaud those capable of good grammar and command of it but Jefferson was so poor at it that his first State of the Union Address was only heard by the first three rows of the audience and read along by everyone else because the speech was published in a newspaper that day. Then there is the self image of intelligence. Jefferson perceived himself to be smart, but said he couldn't even argue what color the sky was with John Marshall because Marshall's intellect was that intimidating. As much as anyone wants to view themselves the authority on a subject, there is always someone around the corner who knows more than you do. The last thing is the purpose of argument. Ellis said that Jefferson found an argument in any situation, no matter what was being discussed. I don't follow this in detailing my ideas of a work of art or something, but it does speak to the fact that the colony of agreeance can be very large for a subject but none of those members are helping themselves better understand what they really agree about. These are all small lessons that still stick with me.

The Confusions of Young Torless - Robert Musil

Robert Musil is the other major Modernist writer of the 20th Century. The Confusions of Young Torless was his first novel and written while he was a student. The novel is wonderful in parts, but still feels like a first time effort. Musil creates vivid accounts of schooling and its hang up and worries, but he is so matter of fact with the protoganists worries that it feels like he is skimming too many surfaces of what he can do to bridge narrative with character. The plotting of the story is wonderful as it keeps a tight narrative but mixes it up with accounts of memory that take the story different ways and give the sense the novel is an organic being, but the characterization could have probed deeper. My criticism may be too harsh as this is a first novel and a very unique one for being so assured and well written in many ways.

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

The best thing about this book is that it exists. John Kennedy Toole, himself a tragic figure, does a high wire act with a comic character in Ignatius J. Reilly. He has elements of sad realism mixed with high absurdity. The situation he faces gets more absurd as the novel goes along. The personality of poor Ignatius J. Reilly seems tied to his author. Toole does his best to keep the personal sadness mixed in with the comedy. The fact that the writing never suffers is because of wonderful conciseness and excellent detail. The novel takes the plot to such heightened levels that a lesser written novel would have come off as ridiculous and amateur. Toole keeps his writing mechanics strong and makes a good novel out of a ridiculous subject.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

My travel with Jack Kerouac began and ended here. On the Road is rightfully a classic work, but an immensely bad one. The Beat Generation, as this novel defines it as, speaks to the breaking of structural and moral regard so a novel can be written on the most basic level and represent the most common thoughts of an individual. One could say the travel of a person across a great distance to find himself recalls other large works, but On the Road isn't about anything. It's a masturbatory work about a character who is more self absorbed than self reflective. The writing, suppose to be rough, instead looks like it was written by someone with the talent of a decent high school writer. The novel is really amateur hour. The subject is suppose to be exciting and fun to read, but quickly bored me in all senses. A walk with a character where nothing interesting happens on any level is just a stiff walk. Those who still credit the novel for breaking structural norms can stand down because novels as early as the 1930s were doing basically what On the Road does. They were actually better and more interesting, but they didn't become famous. On the Road had the lucky chance to debut during a cultural shift in America. I don't believe there was a purpose to record the turning tide of America. If there was, it was badly done anyways. Kerouac doesn't develop it as a theme. He just records the basics of his life. The worlds just aligned for that to be considered semi-meaningful because it incorporated a new America.

The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again - Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart is a good columnist and after reading this book, I'm going to recommend he stick to that. He's right to believe there is some purpose in democracy within Iraq. He's very right to criticize the Bush administration and he's also right that Liberals have and could fight a better battle in war time. I agree with everything he said but nothing in this book compelled me. Most of it is general history about the democrats in war and their ability in the past to "fight the good fight." Little of this history is truly depth compared to the mountain of literature already available. Beinart's history lesson is meant to be lead up to his analysis on the Iraq War. The problem is that analysis only comes in continually occuring mentions and then explanation for just fifteen pages about what to do with Iraq. I'm kinda miffed. Assuming his readers already knew much of the history he describes, this might have been a better essay instead of a book. I wish a book of all his columns over the period of the Iraq War was published. That would have been good reading for anyone not familar with him.

Albums of a Life: A Memoir - Stanley Kauffmann

The best thing that Stanley Kauffmann does is make the right literary choices to make his memoir, Albums of a Life, an excellent portrait. Kauffmann doesn't concern himself with accolades or personal achievements in which to measure his biography against others, but focuses on personal moments with others and how they were most meaningful to him. The book is based on episodes of different interactions with people through out his life. Some are lighthearted and funny while others are poignant. Kauffmann doesn't focus on making each episode more than what it is. He writes with a strict concern for the facts of the situation and has little personal commentary, but this matter of fact approach works. The episodes don't lead to major changes in his life. They are written to linger on in the memory of the reader. Kauffman's concern of the scenarios and situations and the value of his observations and life lived makes the structure of his memoir all the better. It's interesting that a film critic had nothing to say about his film criticism. That avenue of writing is another form of auto-biograhy. Kauffmann understands the differences with excellence.

The Human Stain - Philip Roth

A well constructed novel for Roth. One magazine said the novel combined all elements of Roth's history into one piece. Considering Roth's history encompasses all degrees of fiction and even non-fiction, it was quite the statement. I actually agree but I don't consider it to be a true compliment. Roth hones in all of his personality to make a novel closer to a classically structured one than something of great innovation. He doesn't expand his parameters as he brings them back to familarity for non-fans. I recommend the novel because the writing is too good, but it isn't a step forward for Roth. His last novel of true strength was the previous work to this one, I Married A Communist. The Human Stain stands now for being Roth's last modeling of excellence. Some commentators get a little too excited because the book tells a classic Roth story in a new way, but it's still a step backwards for him.

White Jazz: A Novel - James Ellroy

If L.A. Confidential was the grand portrait of a cty under fire then White Jazz is the grand portrait of a corrupt police officer on the edge of sanity. Ellroy not only tackles the story with his usual boldness and bravado, but perfectly aligns a structure to the story to fit. The story of the corrupt detective is chaotic and meanders from one scenario to the next. The only constant is that he is at the focal point of every dirty deed and wrong turn. Ellroy builds a character portrait to the free wheeling nature of a Jazz piece. That description has nothing to do with the title, but it does have something to do with period. Jazz was the most innovative music of the time and Ellroy takes the simple characterization of a crime novel and lets it flow from all sides that the basic identity becomes lost in the shuffle. Jazz progressed this way as did Ellroy in his career. White Jazz is highly recommended entertainment.

Why Orwell Matters - Christopher Hitchens

As far as George Orwell is concerned, this is a beginner's book. The information about him is thin and reads like an pamphlet professing one idea of the man over another. The true concern of the book is Christopher Hitchen's idea of moral bravery. A longtime sufferer of leftist ideologies, Hitchen's sifts through Orwell's past conflicts with both the right and left like he is digging at his own personal beliefs. Hitchens, a daring writer, has always stood in between beliefs and been skeptical of everything. The George Orwell he seeks is the man who stood against evils during the most disillusioned times. Orwell's tough stances against communism in the 30s and 40s could be a historical reflection of Hitchens current stance against Islamic Funamentalism today. Popular belief says he is wrong, and he may be, but Hitchens does render an excellent image of courage and strength. Orwell is the perfect subject for him.

People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) - Howard Zinn

If history books should be looked at as literature, Howard Zinn is always in between a rock and a hard place for me. His details are never dense enough to compare to the best of the thickest history books. All history books are bias, but Zinn represents a deep bias. I sometimes believe he would be better served to structure his books along the lines of issues and ideas instead of straight history by date and event. He wouldn't remind me so much of how he seems to be a spokesperson first and not an academic historian. That being said, he handles the subjects well. It would be frivolous to say I either agree or sympathize with most of what he says. The truly revealing moments come in ideas that are controversial but agreed in other historical books by conservative writers. Example would be the condeming of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and why the United States did it.

Apocalypse Now

A very flawed film. Coppola manages to astonish with the excellent production and cinematography, but the film tries to be more ambitious with story and character. It takes the mission of a Captain hunting down a crazed Colonel and makes it into a mythic telling of the chaos of Vietnam and the 70s. Coppola handles the hefty subject with trendy cultural references that show what decade the war is in. The problem is that these references also become the extent of the symbolism and meaning in the film. Robert Duvall's caricature performance of a crazed surfing happy colonel is suppose to be meaningful. For me it should have been an anecdote. The film is suppose to dig at meaning and larger ideas, but features general 70s chiq only. The redux version includes a French plantation scene that does get specific, but structurally it takes the film too far off base. Marlon Brando plays the infamous Colonel Kurtz to an exaggerrated level. The similarity his performance has is that it encompasses the mythic nature of the film, but his character offers dope poetics that shows he is insane and nothing more. The film boggles so much that it even isn't personally revealing. The excellent production is almost convincing that the half ass story is actually good.

Born on the Fourth of July

A biographrical film by Oliver Stone in the same vein of The Doors. Stone tells an intense story that starts with a definite image of a man and his beliefs and then goes full circle to see how he completely changes. The subject in the film is Ron Kovic and his life altering experience in Vietnam. Stone doesn't focus on ideas with the story but focuses on the experience of Kovic's change. Ideas are within the narrative, but Born on the Fourth of July and The Doors lack the large themes in Nixon and JFK. They focus on the brutal details their main characters go through to discover their revelation (in Born on the Fourth of July) or demise (in the Doors). To make this concept of storytelling work Stone has to be a gifted and challenging filmmaker and he surely is. The sweet moments at the beginning of the film have as much grace as a quality Speilberg film and the tough moments aren't repititions of the same gritty shots, but filmmaking at different speeds and camera objectives. The film is wonderfully nuanced and features the actor Tom Cruise when he was ambitious and considered one of the young premiere acors. He is convincing both as a naive youth and a broken down crippled soldier.

Superbad

You either love this or you don't. I'm pretty stupid so I loved it. The movie has the right elements of honesty about high school and the right degree of disguting humor. That makes the movie both funny and familar. Too many times PG-13 oriented stories have tried to capture how disgusting boys can be. They are never close. Superbad does a pretty good job, but is a dumb comedy. It makes me laugh at that side of me instead of reflect upon it. In a perfect world I too would have ended up with the girls the characters get at the end. Fuck that. Critics are already calling this a comedic classic. It shouldn't be reviewed in print, but good. Animal House and Caddyshack and the like are children's stories. They don't reflect how funny and disgusting people can be. Permissiveness, very much exploited in Superbad, also represents reality, haha.

Mr. Arkadin

This comment refers to the comprehensive version. This film is a sadness. There is a great opportunity for Orson Welles to remodel the legendary character Charles Foster Kane because Mr. Arkadin is the first character for him that was of resemblance. Welles insteads side steps any ambition and tells a sloppy genre story. The film has more interest for plot revelations than anything else. The Cahiers Du Cinema critics praised the film for its unprofessionalism that made it feel more authentic than other films. That unprofessionalism wasn't a step back to Italian Neo-Realism or something meaningful, but just a lack of competance to tell a well constructed story. The plot has too many loops and holes to be good and Welles films the story very plainly. The film is more notable for on location shooting than any conceptual ideas. It doesn't help that half of the lines are as laughable as they are implausible. Welles has no sense of rythm or competance to tell a thriller of this kind. The film would have been better in the hands of Jules Dassin. Mr. Arkadin is as far from Citizen Kane as Welles could get.

Fanny and Alexander

This comment is for the television version. Bergman's send off in film isn't a compilation of everything he has done in film, but his a majestic look back at all the facets of childhood. The first episode is a vivid recreation of the ideal childhood. Bergman is the imaginer by creating a gorgeous set for a fantastic family christmas celebration. The visuals compliment the fantastic characters. I say fantastic because in Bergman's auto-biography, none of the characters really match any relative he talked about. The major piece of the first episode is the Magic Lantern that adhorned Bergman's own childhood and allowed him to dream of filmmaking at a very young age. It symbolizes the best memories and dreams that decorate the first episode. The later episodes deal with the death of the father and the children bearing life under the rule of a chaplain as their new father. The character has no likabilities of their real father, but he does match Bergman's own father well. The scope, enjoyment and imagination of Fanny and Alexander suffice enough for fufillment, but if a comment is to be made it is that Bergman looked back at childhood and tried to recollect the best elements he knew from his life and imagination but in the lifetime of Bergman, no memory was just pleasant. Every one had a jolt of pain. The later episodes are not just jolts, but reflections by Bergman on true feelings. The imagination has to have a dance with the realistic and painful. This has been part of even the lightest Bergman films. The fact the film ventures to sadder and drepressing subject matter also makes this memory by Bergman a complete one. He takes an exhausting look back and says as much as he can within a film. We can only thank him for making his last hurrah a defining memory that still stands tall to this day.

Swing Time

Not only quality entertainment, but a dancing film by dancing professionals. To put this as noteworthy isn't to say professional dancers haven't always graced film, but for a period of time they were allowed to make the art of a film. Swing Time doesn't have intricate editing or stylized compositions, but graceful recordings of Astaire and Rogers in action for long periods of time. This allowed dance critics to review films and be able to review with an expertise no film critic could have. Today all dance films are designed by editors and directors who have a vision of how the dance will look like. Choroegraphers have to play second fiddle or make a big time star look like he or she can really dance. Swing Time is my favorite Astaire and Rogers movie fo the delight in the screenplay and good jokes, but their films also remind me of a time lost in movies that will probably never be seen again. Good entertainment should respect the laws of film art, but no editing or design has been able to replicate the enjoyment of pure quality dancing.

Natural Born Killers

The best film of the 1990s for me. The general compliment is that this film does good satire about the media's obsession with violence. Yes, this film and many others have made that a normal subject in film, but Natural Born Killers is so much more. First the filmmaking isn't just chaotic or repititive of indulgent editing. Natural Born Killers has shades of numerous cinemas and histories in filmmaking. The purpose isn't just to excel at film language. Films that do try to transform their stories to the genre or style of reference. Natural Born Killers molds the references to fit its greater designs. The film has rythms and tendencies that make for a common thread in filmmaking, but each viewing shows how dense this really is. Stone allows editing to dominate the film. This isn't to capture numerous angles of a situation, but to add varying notes of feeling and reference. The wild imagery mixed with the brutal soundtrack makes for one of the most detailed and powerful filmed expressions of madness I've ever seen. Stone doesn't just visualize the extent of insane visions, but shows their fears, histories and deepest pains. Natural Born Killers deals with characters and a situation that has become stock in movie-land, but because each new situation for the killers focuses on the "how" and then branches into the "why" - which implicates society - the film becomes both a personal and societal study. The film shows how deep the excitement of violence runs within all of us. And don't believe Oliver Stone isn't aware of his attraction to Mickey and Mallory. He ends the film on a dream-come-true for Mickey and Mallory as they drive off together happy and with children. Nothing about this scene suggests the ironic or comedic. It is Stone's visualization of two killers who, by the end, looked more sincere than other characters.

The Gold Rush

Chaplin is a marvel in many ways, but he wasn't always the masterful director people claim he was. In Gold Rush he clings to a small story but it is so misguided in execution and direction that it is almost impossible to follow all of the action. Chaplin realized this and in 1940 he added a narration (done by him) to the film just so the audience could keep up with the story. It made the movie watchable, but a silent film shouldn't need to be saved by a narration to make sense. There are some good moments in Gold Rush, but the film is too problematic.

Lost in Translation

This film meanders. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that if you know what you are doing. Lost in Translation is just clueless. It has a theme and plot points that are symbolism to that overall theme. The two characters played by Murray and Johansson meet and understand the similarity of their dilemma, but nothing more is delved into between them after that. The characters meet different people and see different sights, but each new encounter acts as the same old symbolism that they feel lost in a different culture. The story meanders but isn't focused on the experience of their journey or its cogitative purpose. It's focused on cheap symbolism that shows the distance between the characters and the culture instead of between themselves. If the film had more to offer about Japan than sideshows on its weirdness, I'd be interested. It doesn't and is just an outstanding bore instead.

Sherlock Jr.

One of my favorite Buster Keaton films. Keaton always was the better director over Chaplin and Sherlock Jr. shows how. The story is a mere 45 minutes or so, but features as much ambition and thought into the comic scenes as any longer work by either Chaplin or anyt other. Chaplin loved to allow a scene to linger to keep the laughs going, but that idea of storytelling has faded with a preference for shorter scenes and focused laughs. It is also generally hard to keep a story on track when one simple scene can take over eight minutes. Keaton, later on with Steamboat Bill Jr., would test the endurance of every scene by playing it out too long, but in Sherlock Jr. he is very sane and masterful with the quick scenes and firery storytelling. Sherlock Jr. isn't a short film. Academy standards say a feature length has to be forty five minutes. No one does that anymore. That's a shame.

Batman Begins

I liked it, but something is lost with this remodeling of Batman. The character is based off comic books that were based on simple myths and lore. The themes in the story were simple. The imagery though was powerful and fantastic. Burton's original film, featuring a bad story, played up the visuals and identity of Batman. Nolan instead takes the myth and reconstructs it to be a dramatic story. Each particle of the Batman legend is reduced to a dramatic explanation. The story in this film is better than anything Burton could do, but the film is too worried about plot points to be effective for creating the grandness of Batman. This film is based on later graphic novels that figured the identity of Batman was worthy of true dramatic exploration. I don't think he is. There are limitations to what can be done with a caped crusader as a meaningful character. Batman started out as the equivalent of a serial character. He should be amplified in film to the best of that nature.

Good Will Hunting

This film does some amazing things. Will Hunting, the genius from the wrong side of the tracks, is a stock character who has been used as a heroic type in other bad films. He has the same invincibility in mind that any super hero has in physicality. Good Will Hunting doesn't exploit that but delves into it. It has layers that reveals not only inner truths about Damon's character, but greater ones about the nature of intelligence, compatability and happiness. The supporting characters also come to terms with their own selves. And the film doesn't serve up these observations in manufactured moments at the end, but in consistently revealing and enlightening scenes all the way through. Nobody has anything in common with Will Hunting's genius, but they do have things in common with his personality and search for himself. The fact this film speaks to the philosophical and personal level of so many different people says a lot.

The Virgin Spring

The subject of strict traditional Christianity is nothing new for Bergman. He grew up with a father as a preacher and lived under a strict household. That experience allows him to dig the best he can into a moral revenge film. A young virgin is brutally raped and murdered. Her tormentors are forced to face the wrath of her father who kills them out of vengeance. The story though is alien to Bergman because it plants a christian belief that later films showed he didn't have. Bergman's experience is the only tie. The Virgin Spring is a development for him over Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries but still finds dealing with a story that doesn't reflect his deepest pains or challenge his potential.

Irreversible

Gaspar Noe does a lot of good in the filmmaking. The camera movemens are expressionistic and geared toward the feelings in the film. They also display enough imagination that easy categorization is out the window. The first twenty minutes can be described as a nightmare. Noe does enough to alarm the audience before making them numbed. The story and screenplay have the problems. Noe is depicting a brutal segment of the world. Uncomfortable scenes are set in very uncomfortable places. OK, but Noe loses confidence when the personal problems of the characters begin to be shown in the most exagerrated ways. Cassel's out of control behavior being shown in a rampant drug and sex binge has to be the most obvious way to show a character trait. Also each scene becomes easily identifiable for what's it is trying to say about the characters. This minimizes the importance of the filmmaking that is trying to express those feelings because the story seems hell bent to lay them out. If Noe was able to marry his outstanding filmmaking to a proper story of substance and nuance, Irreversible would be an outstanding success.

Citizen Kane

There is so much to say. Citizen Kane represented both the history of cinema up until 1941 and its future to come. Its influence is still being felt on numerous levels in many films. When it was released, James Agee short changed the film by saying it was only a series of cinematic shots from German Expressionistic Cinema. Citizen Kane combined shots from all facets of cinema including German expressionism, but also silent cinema and deep focus cinematography that was becoming prevelant in 1930s French Cinema. Before this film it was a norm to combine styles and touches from different cinemas, but Citizen Kane put it all on a grandoise level. Professional technicians in films were told to hide the style behind the story. Citizen Kane is about its achievement in style and structure. The focus on its own language would be a precursor to many art films of the 60s and beyond that took on film theory and poetics. As Pauline Kael said, Citizen Kane has a dramatic story, but the rosebud symbol at the end is a false one to inner meaning of Charles Kane. It doesn't explain him but only asks another question of what Kane's main identity in life really was. A lot of people I know are ambivalent toward this film. They know it is a classic, but it is a Hollywood classic that has no likeness to any other film made at the time. People have to stop comparing it to other Hollywood works. Citizen Kane was released in 1941 but its true release was really 1947. That's when it was released in France and erupted the foreign market to take influence for the first time from an American filmmaker. Hollywood owes every genre (besides the Western) to a foreign cinema, but America gave the rest of the world something more. They gave it its basic identity to art cinema. Citizen Kane was one of the best early opportunities for film to evolve over genre stories.

He Got Game

The story of the up and coming basketball star and the media buzz surrounding him. The very bad movie, Blue Chips, addressed every cliche possible for such a story. Spike Lee tries to elevate the stale subject. The filmmaking is noted by almost lyrical editing and colorful textures in the cinematography. The story deals with the pain of an accidental murder that killed a mother and imprisoned a father. The son has to come to grips with the hatred he has for his father and be able to deal with the pressure situation of taking on a full fledged basketball career. The story is poignant because it makes a fantastic situation ring true in the relationship of a father and son, but Lee's filmmaking is most noteworthy. He has a fluid imagination in mixing basketball play with the media coverage that involves staged commercials and ESPN coverage.

Troy

Minor nod to Brad Pitt. An attractive man, he epitomizes Achilles the way no one else could because no one is the physical specimen that Brad Pitt is. Every ounce of him is believable as a mythical warrior. It was even good to see him do most of the choreography in the fight sequences. The rest of the film is worse than bad. The historical interest is nowhere to be found. This film isn't even on track enough to be good cliff notes of the actual legend. Everything is butchered and made acceptable for the populous. If the film had a ridiculous style and more action scenes it could be false artistry and live on like 300 does.

Forrest Gump

When Robert Zemeckis is doing good work he can be an excellent entertainer. That was true of Back to the Future, but he's pushing it with Forrest Gump. He makes devastating subjects the topic of a heartwarming tale like it was any romance. Many moments in the movie make you smile on the outside and in, but Zemeckis glides over everything and gives each subject the most innocent context. Even good comedy has to make the subject stand for something. Zemeckis' innocence borders on offense. Spike Lee has always been complaining of Zemeckis' continous infusion of whites into black history. In Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox is the reason Chuck Berry does what he does. In Forrest Gump, a young Gump gives Elvis Presley his moves, not southern black music and dance. Back to the Future seems truly innocent because Fox is in a time warp and borrowing from Berry to influence Berry, but Gump is a step over the line. It seems innocent but it starts putting assumptions into viewers minds about the history of rock n roll. Zemeckis' glad handing of other topics strikes a similar unnerving trigger. It's sad some high schools use this film as a history lesson. Tom Hanks, fresh off an excellent job in Philadephia, shows he can be a physical actor here. Nothing more.

Dances With Wolves

I've never been much of a fan of romantic epics, but I can appreciate when they are well done. Kevin Costner makes a good one that is also relevant. Historical epics usually take a look at our European roots, but Dances With Wolves focuses on our Native situation. More importantly, it embraces the common truth that white men were members of Native American tribes. It is a lost dimension of history that white men and women did flee towns to join tribes for numerous reasons, which mainly was poverty and famine. The fact that Dances With Wolves has a dumb set up doesn't matter. Unlike Last of the Mohicans, the story is focused on the inherent differences between two cultures. I think a more in depth and serious film is to still be made, but if I'm going to view romantic epics with a generalized viewpoint, I'll take what Costner has to offer as far as uniqueness and relevancy is concerned. Costner also does a decent job directing. He plays with the scope of a John Ford Western and intimate drama well. Both viewpoints work well through out the story and Costner competently films it all.

All the Real Girls

I dissent against this film while being a large fan of George Washington. That film was innovative in structure and style for a small budget film while retaining strands of realism that made the film stand out. DGG's follow up, All the Real Girls, only has the realism left over. The purpose is to make an honest and true love story, but capturing the minor moments of realism between a couple does not cut it. Any love story has to play to the experience of the audience. The film has some things to say about the meaning of a relationship, but has much more to say about the awkward moments in it. Capturing realism in such a story isn't truly capturing the real meaning of it. People will be reminded of similar moments instead of lasting impressions and meanings of a former love. Other filmmakers like Werner Herzog and Robert Altman had poor tendencies to question the best method of realism for a situation instead of ask questions about the morals and ideas of the story. DGG has a lot of potential and I root for him, but he invested in the wrong focus here.

The Magic Flute

My reluctance toward opera was overwhelmed by how good this adaptation is. It isn't what is changed that is good, but how the opera was presented. Set on stage, the film opens with faces of children in the audience. They sit happily anticipating the beginning of the opera. The wonderful faces set the right tone to smile at the rest of the film. Bergman films the stage recreation. Through out the story, he mixes in shots of a specific young girl. As a child, she can understand the gist of the story but not the specifics of the art, but she's still entranced in the story. Her enchanchment becomes ours. Bergman hasn't been one to adapt specific plays to film, but he creates the right atmosphere to make The Magic Flute both faithful to the original and something more than a typical adaptation. Bergman uses the right elements to make it grand entertainment.

Dog Day Afternoon

It's amazing Sydney Lumet was able to make a film like this in the 1970s. Not only make it, but make the main characters sympathetic to the audience. The general story is that two men take hostage of a bank to pay for a lover's sex-change operation. The implication of a homosexual relationship and a sex change operation was the last subject American audiences were ready to face. Lumet handles the taboo subject by keeping it hidden until late in the film, when the audience has already grown accustomed to the characters. The rest of the film is well handled. Lumet has two stories to worry about filmically, the inside the bank story and media frenzy outside. Many filmmakers deal with conflicting stories like this by having filming the media frenzy to look a well packaged commercial. They want the audience to associate what they are seeing as media coverage of a hostage situation to what they see in the news. Lumet instead films that portion to be a like a documentary instead. He doesn't allow that portion to be glitzy and out of sync with the rest of the film. He keeps the story sane. Al Pacino had a break out role here. The Godfather films put him on the map, but they also stereotyped him. Many critics commented at the time how this performance was the furthest thing from those films. It is. Pacino plays a vunerable character who has an emotional center. Godfather Part II showed that Pacino needed to operate at the level of calm and deceitful only to locate the persona of Michael Corleone. Dog Day Afternoon not only allows him to give a different performance, but a much deeper one as well.

House of Games

Watching it now, this film fits into a mold that is very recognizable. Mamet has contributed to this with two later con movies of the same tone. But when it was released, it was something else. The film has numerous odes to and touches of Hitchcock, but Mamet adds a new texture to the formula. The first is the acting skills present. Hitchcock sometimes had amazing actors in the likes of Henry Fonda and others, but mainly he dealt with Hollywood likes. Mamet utilizes a lot of his theater crew in House of Games. The second is the stage aspect from Mamet that injects into the story. The characters have a much more developed script with a greater degree of nuances and language to attack the themes. Mamet is remiscient of Billy Wilder who dealt with different genres and stories but always carried a tone of craftmanship to everything he did because he was always the writer. Hitchcock would pick from a jumble of projects and once Hollywood executives understood he was geared toward suspense, the offers of scripts sometimes became too repititious of what he had already done. Like Wilder, Mamet injects an organic center into a common Hollywood story and makes it his own.

8 1/2

The film of liberation for film artists. The comment comes with some considerations though. This film wasn't technically innovative or new. Fellini borrows tricks from numerous other films. Some of those films were more ambitious and technically innovative than 8 1/2. This isn't also doesn't feature a deeper story for Fellini. La Dolce Vita was a crescendo work for Fellini as far as realism and character depth in story goes. 8 1/2 features a silly story with even sillier symbolism. The scene with Mastroianni whipping all his women to keep them in line is a comic charade of any ambition that the film has to develop themes between Guido and his women. The end, featuring a mysterious ambigious ending in whether Guido killed himself or not, is a false question. There is little question what happens. It's so little it doesn't even matter. The film matters though because of the inert feelings that tie the filmmaking to the emotions in the story are so strong. When Martin Scorsese introduced this film years ago, he described the story and themes by repeating the word "pressure". He wasn't devaluing the film by simplifying the emotions to just one word. He was addressing the fact that film was less about story and character and more about the composite of the scenes and feelings involved to be about one essential feeling. Fellini was making a personal film that he believed in but his true megaphone was the camera movements, music and accumulation of scenes that made less of an impression for quality story as they made an impression of a filmmaker or artist who had the experience to feel what Guido felt in his search for clarity. Art critics depend on the insight of their impressions of a piece. Only so much can be said about the brush strokes and their history. Quality can be gaged, but the true meanings lie in between the strokes. The true meaning also lies in between the scenes of 8 1/2. This film was liberating for filmmakers because it allowed them to tackle personal commentary within the narrative. Later filmmakers like Terrence Malick and Andrei Tarkovsky have excelled at this branch of filmmaking. They feel it's their best chance to find true meanings.

She's Having a Baby

My favorite John Huges movie. The only regret is that Hughes makes this movie look too much like a 1980s commercial. Too many sequences play out to 80s fantasy. I think this film was stylistically out of date within three years. Other than that the movie is the most heartwarming by Hughes. When I watched Apatow's Knocked Up, I was reminded of this a lot. Both are about young parenthood and the trials of dealing with responsibility and making the transition to a working parent. Knocked Up is really funny, but She's Having a Baby made me question parts of myself to see how I could fit into that world. Hughes does amazing editing work at the end to highlight the thoughts, pains and joys going through Bacon's head right before delivery. I liked Ferris Beuller, but not much else by Hughes. He graces this story with a pure talent in Bacon and not an amateur in Estevez or Judd. The right combinations make the movie work.

Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn - David Hajdu

David Hajdu does his best to give an unlikely subject in music history a full biography when it is assumed details would be lacking. The importance of Billy Strayhorn should be understood in that he gave Duke Ellington the creative push that lifted him out of a creative slump and made him an important figure in the late 1950s and 60s when the face of Jazz was rapidly changing. It's just that Billy Strayhorn was Ellington's arranger and not exactly a major figure. Strayhorn bridged friendships with major figures, but lived a life of an openly black homosexual in the 1950s. Even his outward looking friends knew the dangers of it. His identity made him a back figure to music history. Hajdu rescues Strayhorn from obscurity and celebrates him. Sometimes the book is based too much on interviews, but Hajdu is the best candidate for the job because he is a biographer and a critic. The importance he places on Strayhorn's work is the best commentary he can give.

Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I remember reading a book on studies of Eastern European literature in the 1960s and 70s. It commented on the political restraints writers faced, but made a better point in that Western reaction was to sometimes award these novels with greater reward than their talent merited just because the work came from a tolitarian state and had to will itself to our shores. Solzhenitsyn makes Cancer Ward a perfect example of this. His novel is a multiple story of the happenings and goings of an impoverished Soviet Union hospital. Some characters have political bents and some just have offbeat ones. Their cliches is that they all become interesting on general humane levels. The worst that a serious novel can do is give the audience characters and situations that just tug at their emotions and get them to sympathize. I cared about the characters in the book, but I wanted more detail about the grimness of life. What I got was a grand style sweep that made reading the novel more fun than it should have been. There is even a subplot romance that got me interested in the possibility of an unlikely romance, but it is nothing but a small side bar to the story. Romances like these come when the author is fearful their audience is getting bored. It also happens as comittment to a genre standard. Cancer Ward has elements to appease every kind of reader, but no elements that will challenge them. I only saw moments of sincere realism or detail to life that in the end the finished product wasn't worth the subject or theme.

Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me - Craig Seligman

I read this out of simple appreciation. Like Craig Seligman, I too have a distinct attraction to both Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael. The benefit of Seligman's book is that he makes his personal affection a drawn out work. The structure is basically a commentary on both authors and the narrative voice is as casual as a conversation. He doesn't start at their beginnings and go until the end, but hits earlier and later periods often and with ease. The reader who is already well versed in the writings of both writers won't learn anything new here, but they will get a picture of Seligman's appreciation for them. Since the book is sometimes as much about Seligman as it is Kael and Sontag, it makes the book a personal journey as well. I'm not an expert on either writer so I also saw this book as a good introduction to them. This book isn't a mighty or grand work, but since books about both writers are very few in number, it's a special accomplishment nonetheless.

If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!: The Life and TImes of Sam Peckinpah - David Weddle

There is a place for criticism, but the starting point for understanding most artists and their work begins with a good biography. What a good biography can do is align the artist with his or her time period and best give a context to their work. Biographers are always favorable to their subject, but they are also more likely to speak about the artists intention with a given work before a critic is. Too many times a critic will give his idea of what the artist's intention should have been! Then the enormous details in a good biography is a happy bonus. This book is the best biography about Sam Peckinpah. It takes his excesses and doesn't try to rationalize them but instead explain them. David Weddle, the biographer, has a good filter in what perspective to give Sam Peckinpah the man that doesn't amount to neither a smear campaign or a blow job. It's level headed. But the best part about this book is the excellent story of how Sam Peckinpah came to be the filmmaker he was, mixing a cowboy-esque background with theater. The two contradictions in Peckinpah's life worked themselves out in a film career. Peckinpah was enough of a character in real life to make any biography a fun read, but this is an insightful rendering of an interesting man.

Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander - Gary Berntsen

Personal fascination. These books seem to come by the truck load and are written (or ghost written) by people who just basically tell their accounts of what happened out in the field of war. Sometimes unlikely serious films come out of them (Syriana from See No Evil) or TV series are made (The Unit from Inside Delta Forces). Jawbreaker was suppose to have been adapted into a film, but it's still a fun read for me. The world of Special Forces and Military Ops has endless interest. The subject in this book is the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Considering the headline grabbing subject of the book, one would expect interpretation and ideas into why he hasn't been caught, but Jawbreaker is just an account of one of the better chances we had to catch him and didn't. The book even skirts the chance to make a big deal out of that missed opportunity. There are a few political overtones, but not many. It is military perspective of a military mission. Since I have no problem with that, I considered this a decent read. I have even come to enjoy all the black blotches on pages detailing guarded information about missions and details that can't be made public. It's the sign of authenticity.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism - Megan Marshall

The times of transcendentalism in nineteenth century America. Many notable writers of this period have been discussed, but with this biography, add the Peabody Sisters, especially the eldest, Elizabeth. Megan Marshall makes her a fascinating subject as she merges from the trials of her personal life with her greater achievements. Elizabeth Peabody opened progressive schools in the New England area, but the biography isn't just about her, it's about all the Peabody Sisters. This is what makes the book spin into lower tier stuff. The other Peabody sisters have accomplishments worthy enough to tell, but Marshall focuses too much on their personal relationships. The fact that Elizabeth loved the two men that eventually married her sisters is too vital in the book. Then the book ends with both sisters (Elizabeth never married) getting married to their ideal husbands to give it the glow of a Jane Austen affair than an actual serious study of their lives and time. What the Peabody Sisters did after the marriages is only the value of a small epilogue. Interesting book, but too many faulty parts and purposes.

Women: A Novel - Charles Bukowski

If I was a book reader during Bukowski's lifetime, I'd say my goal in life was to out live him so I didn't have to read any of his work. I'm finding it difficult to out live his legacy so I was forced to read a novel - something - by this man. I chose Women for no reason. Officially it is about a fictional writer, but basically it's a day to day account of Bukowski's continious affairs with women and half baked ideas about writing, art, women, education and everything else. Nothing he says is insightful or interesting. It is the parading of a man who lives for his ridiculousnesss because it is celebrated by others. There is no dimension to the character in this novel. It's about a three hundred page effort, but all the true character detail about Bukowski the person amounts only to a page. At the end the novel tries a rectification project by setting up a plot that truly pains Bukowski to his core and makes him re-examine himself, but it is too weak to have any conviction. It is closer to the wind down period of a drunk going through withdrawals and remorse before he sobers up. Whose to say the drunk won't just get drink again the next night? Bukowski makes an effort to correct his problems, but his self centered nature still exists. The attempt at redemption is a blow job attempt for anyone put off by how ridiculous the rest of the novel is. The people that hate it should hate it. They should because those who love it only do so because Bukowski is their prophet. No comment about that.

Caesar and Cleopatra - Bernard Shaw

Shaw mainly writes comedies so most of his plays are light, but Caesar and Cleopatra has to be one of his lightest and most fanciful plays. It's easy to say this because he takes two monuments of historical respectability in Julius Caesar and Cleopatra and makes a light farce of their story together. The play is still thick with ideas and objectives, but is the first work I know to imagine Cleopatra as a bratty child controlled by handlers and without a clue of how to rule. Shaw takes this step by noticing her age and the lack of intelligence and dignity in her father so there is a reason to exhibit Cleopatra in such an ungrateful light. Caesar is portrayed respectfully, but isn't considered a man in the play. He is part lion, woman and God. This combination of different traits allows Shaw to imagine Caesar as the dignitary he wants him to be. When Shaw creates a character that may have little recognition of the real character, it means Shaw has found the character in which to portray himself in the play. His works are always running commentaries. It makes for an impressive work because a large part of popular history is given a refreshing new look in Caesar and Cleopatra. The story is silly and some of the jokes even sillier, but there is true logic behind this play.

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich - William L. Shirer

Years ago, I read that Napoleon Bonaparte was the most written about man in history until Adolf Hitler took his place. It means any book about Hitler or his era will be specialized instead of generalized. There is no book that encompasses the life and times of Adolf Hitler. William L. Shirer was witness to many activities during Hitler's reign and he does an excellent job to give the best overview of the era. This book is around 1500 pages, but has such a grace to the detail and storytelling that reading it once isn't enough. Years after the first read one usually always go back for a second dip. My father did and had to reward himself with a brand new edition to make the experience worthwhile. I recently got a new edition in anticipation of my second go around. I've read deeper and more thorough books about both Hitler and the Nazi revolution, but the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is an account of its popular history. The book makes the point that the Third Reich was never the empire it claimed to be, but public fascination made it to be bigger than it was. That explains the appeal of this book.

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project) - Chalmers Johnson

I found this book to be inspiring. I say that because it is poorly argued, poorly schemed and terribly repetitive but yet was published and went on to certain fame. Who says my half wit excuse for writing can't accomplish the same? Joking aside, this is another naive book about the place of a United States Empire. Johnson takes long enough trying to convince the reader the United States is an empire (a 'duh' fact in my book) and projects the eventual fall of the United States by comparing current problems to ones that took down the Roman Empire. I was not convinced the situation of an Empire hundreds of years ago has much relevancy to one today. Johnson may speak some basic theoretical truth, but he has no more insight over the course of his book than an essayist does in just ten pages. Johnson focuses so much on the general nature of Empire that basic points he makes are often repeated. The author figures a sympathetic audience to his concern will be able to accept the mediocrity. Agreeability isn’t enough for me to recommend this book. The United States is an Empire, but that’s the basis, not the extent, of analytical discussion.

Ran

Throne of Blood is considered to be the best adaptation of Shakespeare for another culture. There is support to the claim that Kurosawa does bridge a Western play to have an Eastern connotation, but Kurosawa doesn't do it to the degree that he does it in Ran. The film is an adaptation of King Lear. Shaw called this play the height of Shakespearean tragedy. Kurosawa adapts it to fit the heights of Japanese tragedy. The film starts out by showing the clouds in the sky. The film transitions into every shot of the action being from high above and afar. Shinto beliefs in Japan say that there are numerous Gods and they actively watch over people. Kurosawa's objective of the camera is to see the story from the viewpoint of a God. If this idea seems questionable, remember Ozu filmed the entire bulk of Tokyo Story from the level someone would see the world if kneeling down and praying. Kurosawa always admired Ozu and strived to make peaceful films like he did. Ran is his final hurrah with the war epic. The filmmaking could be said to be an imitation of other filmmakers like Ozu and Tarkovsky, but because of the themes and focus of the story and Kurosawa's majesty in filming battle scenes, Ran is also a filmic progression. You cannot compare Seven Samurai to Ran because both films had different filmmaking structures, but for me, Ran is Kurosawa's finest work.

Spirited Away

Review for the Japanese version. Miyazaki knows the girl of Chihiro well. He hasn't written exactly about her before, but he has written about characters like her for his entire life. His career has been an evolution to this film. He's done stories large and small, but Spirited Away is a transcending of the mold. The story is an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Miyazaki makes it a large epic, but does so to the pacing and effect of an art film. Meanings between characters are allowed to linger and meditate instead of be spelled out. Miyazaki also takes full advantage of excellent computer animation to marry his hand done drawing to modern effects. It makes the world radiate with visual wonder. Gene Siskel once said the best thing about Star Wars is that the corners of the screen were interesting to look at. That's a silly statement because Lucas was dealing patterns with space and the Death Star. The middle was suppose to resemble all the corners. In Spirited Away there is true diversity and depth to the images. The film is a never ending joy to the eye. Also one of the best aspects of this film is the structure. It not only keeps the story unpredictable, but keeps the situations out of easy identity and moods. Even if people do not know the history of the three act play structure in movies, they recognize it in everything. Spirited Away is closer to a symphony. Many moments are touching and the build up of a scenario, but these scenarios are molded together to keep us in awe instead of being done to formula to remind us of another film we've seen. It also makes the film do better as experience. The film I do not recommend is the American version. It takes away the mystery and satisfies the audience by answering questions in the story that shouldn't be answered.

City of God

It's understandable why Roger Ebert claimed this was one of the best films ever made. After years of indepedent cinema and gitty stories that appeased violence for exploitive means, City of God was the biggest and best film of them all. Scorsese and Tarantino gave violent films a critical acceptance so its obvious that City of God would be compared next to the giants of the film world. Technically, the praise is justified. The film has a very large story in 20 years to tell, but wraps it within an array of camera innovations and stylized storytelling. The effects never become redudant or repititive. The film has a lot to offer and shows that Meirelles had a lot of years in television work before tackling this story. His technical handling is never questioned. The story and depth of the themes are. City of God is in the vein of Goodfellas and other trendy violent films where depth is unseen or rationalized in awful ways. City of God offers very little new by way of characterization. The success is in the filmmaking. The good thing about Meirelles is that he did move on with his next feature and extend the talent of his camera abilities to an organic story. The praise here is for the pure talent within the film.

Waitress

I dare someone to find me a more pleasant movie to be released this year. The story is simple but the charm is great. Keri Russell plays a waitress who has found her passion and love in baking pies but has to live under the roof of a domineering husband and he always manages to ruin her day. Unexpectedly she finds out she is pregnant and has to decide what her fate will be with more responsibility on the way. A fling with a doctor occurs, but through it all, she comes out truly able to smile the way she did when she was a child. The movie is fantastic for making small situations the meat of the story. There isn't a large conflict or terrible accident. Everything happens in a small town fashion. That's the air the film breathes and every moment is peaceful and makes you smile. You're suppose to have afternoon books to read in a park to enjoy a beautiful Saturday. I'll take this movie for the time being.

Masculin Feminin

There is no doubt that Godard changed the structural basis a film could have. Breathless was deft in challenges to norms of editing and story. I have issue with his later approaches of criticism to larger subjects. Each film he did seemed to have no bounds to what is referenced. The Vietnam War and gender studies are on display here. The story isn't a story as it is a march through different topics and situations. The relationship it has to a normal story is that the same characters appear through out. Godard handles numerous subjects with little focus on one situation or subject. Everything is a reference and it makes the material appear too thin. Richard Lester criticized the subject of World War II and atomic annihilation with an even lighter tone than Godard in How I Won the War, but because he really focused on those subjects he was able to be successful. Godard is in another realm of critical thinking. As Susan Sontag said in her defense of him in the 60s, everything in the world of Godard is worth referencing and equivalent to any high cultured reference. Thus the meaning of a flower is equatable to the meaning of a real war. These ideas died out in cinema, but it's ironic that critics like Roger Ebert will call films by Richard Lester outdated and films by Godard not even though much of his critical process is now truly extinct. Some say it lead to essay cinema, but it's a moot point even if his ideas are long gone. Susan Sontag went back on them and even Godard said his work in the 60s was "bourgeoise".

Full Metal Jacket

It's admirable what Stanley Kubrick tries to do in Full Metal Jacket. The first half is a pronoucement of the horrors of war we come to expect with Kubrick fufilling the idea of boot camp being as rigorous as possible. The simple soldier, Joker, is supposebly "born to kill" afterwards. His experience in Vietnam shows he isn't ready. It shows it takes a lot more than boot camp to unconnect the nerves that keep us from killing. Kubrick paints the life a soldier in Vietnam to go against expectation. It's filled with a lot of down time and the talk of heroics instead of being shown it. Joker finally gets his brush with combat when his company is assigned to take out a sniper. The sniper turns out to be a woman and Joker has to shoot her straight on and watch her die. The experience humbles Joker to realize how tough it is to kill. The theoretical nature of Joker's experience into Vietnam is provoking, but Kubrick's art is too readable and artificial. Every portion of the story is aimed at one conceptual idea. It starts to reduce the scenes to have little significance. Also Kubrick's theoretical idea is too slim. The nature of killing has been brandied about in numerous works. The only difference is that the subject is about Vietnam. Kubrick distinguishes the place of war with just a few scenes of television cameras following the soldiers. There isn't enough depth into the situation of Vietnam or in the ideas Kubrick is interested in. When this was released, the only notable fictional films made about Vietnam was Apocalypse Now and Go Tell the Spartans! Platoon arrived at the same time, but wasn't around long enough to influence Kubrick to take the realities more serious. The other two films were either generic or fantastic.