film

Film 2009

By Lionina - 11:27 AM

Gomorrah has a hard, broad eye for the kinds of havoc organized crime unleashes on the world around it. People trying to make a better life for themselves, like the tailor who finds ome dignity working for Chinese competitors, are caught in a very tight trap. Garrione's very unglamorized depiction of crime and violence is not a comfortable one, but absolutely worth watching.

Watching Like You Know It All is like being at a dysfunctional family reunion (or office party and what have you) and watching everyone participate in their ugly little demons under a facade of banal self-generalizations, caroming about in their poorly publicized preconceptions and megalomania. On the whole, the film is a sort of meta-explanation of the director himself, his auteur handwork a kind of reminder of authorial culpability at every scene. But, by doing a Woody Allen and marking human foibles as comedic gestures, the dangerousness of emotional destitution is highlighted quite explicitly. Are we men or are we inchworms? The almost-but-not-quite unhinged force that drives Hong's pathetic male characters is more shameless then before, yet even more baffling because of it, and that spirit of contingency is shared, not only by his entire cast but anyone, which is to mean, most everyone, who has to make it up as they go along. 

At his most mature, for better or worse, Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino digging into his most elegant references, moderating the usual pulp fiction with some new s**t, to whit, the diabolically tense construction of practically any scene including Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), the foreplay leading to the shootout in that German bar, and the outlandish nihilistic ending. Quentin's familiar pastiche is more chunky in the working than usual. At times, the Pitt/Roth slaptick feels like pure Quentin-ism style gremlins sneaking, in spite of itself, into the theatre (or vs. versa, if that's the high you're after). Pitt's bumbling, cartoonish buffoon and his over the top compatriots are so overblown, they are no match for the insidious, carefully cultivated and absolutely chilling malevolence of the German SS, which makes the signature Tarantino ending, emotionally resolved, a shade more complicated than usual. Insert thesis here.

Added late to the list is The Serious Man, the new Coen bros effort which puts Burn After Reading to shame and topples No Country for Old Men in my estimation at least.

My favorite selection from the decent crop of sci-fi this year, was the relatively modest Moon. Glacial and expressive, director Duncan Jones meditates on the small physical details and emotional textures of one man's lonely existence on a lunar base, where his only daily contact is a robot named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Sam Rockwell (wonderfully off type) plays astronaut Sam Bell whose anticipation of returning home to his wife and child is on the verge of psychotic desperation. Surprisingly straight and more like Apollo 13 than Alien or THX, the film delicately extends tendrils into the sci-fi tropes yet keeps a careful distance from atomic bombast or brain scratching.  Instead of epic showdowns, Bell's story is drawn out in succinct and compact images that linger with a Ray Bradbury tenderness over very fundamental human doubts. An ode of sorts to NASA's golden age of space travel, the allure of Moon is that it takes the premise very seriously, and as that helium-3 rocket jettisons into the void of space and arcs towards earth, the sight makes me hold my breath and remember the elation of possibility, just how close the moon can be.

RUNNERS UP: 

Making my movie list this year was difficult. Seemed like the ones I enjoyed most were marred in some way by a lingering deal breaker, deteriorating in my memory over time. So below, are my picks with some reservations.

No not Julie & Julia is just Tilda Swinton in a downward spiral of shiny bangles and alcohol. The movie itself is an uncomfortable mess, not that I have anything against messy films in particular, but this flick just felt unwieldy. Probably the biggest caveat in this list.
The beginning of Up, as most everyone can agree, is particularly good: poignant, humorous, wistful and absolutely endearing, plus the little asian boy is a nice touch.  But the last half, with the ack-ack dogs in tiny airplanes is much less riveting. Wall-E was better.  Still... "See It".

Kathryn Bigelow also directed Point Break, that lasting adrenalin high of my teenage Keanu Reeves rhapsodies, but in The Hurt Locker she hones that romanticized-bad-boy sensibility to a keen edge to produce what is my favorite recent (Iraq) war movie. The pressure-cooker action runs in tandem with character development - remember Bodhi? The last scene almost broke the experience, but the rest of the movie is much better than fine. "Vaya con Dios" William James.

Based on the events that inspired Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Cliff is about four hours long but doesn't ever feel like it.  At times the storyline is a little foregone (which it is, being historical and all), but like the Beijing Olympics before it, the movie is pitch perfect for the sentiments of new China.  John Woo in epic mode!
I was pleasantly relieved by Abrams' Star Trek, which handled the characters rather deftly, my initial trepidation quickly dissipating as Karl Urban's neurotic McCoy (Wow, wish he was my doctor), Quinto's saucy Spock, and Pine's every-American Kirk came into their own. However, I missed the philosophical noodling of the original. Plus, the comedic sequences, Scotty caroming inside a giant hamster maze, were really unnecessary. Despite those hang ups, the movie was just a blast to watch, lens flares and all.
Under the hoo-haa of the Star Trek juggernaut, I nearly missed District 9, also a really fun movie. Director Blomkamp worked the ubiquitous and oft abused shaky cam-tv clips to great affect here, combining it with judicious yet effective sprinklings of slick CGI.  The film is sometimes clever in a knowy modern way, but not overly so, and the main character, who resembles Michael from the office, is engagingly self serving.  The story itself is serviceable, but Blomkamp's strength is harnessing the offbeat energy.
Cons: The basic plot of Avatar has been done a million times. Really terrible dialogue.  The script itself is often painful, awkward, clunky, and overly polemic. Between exploring and the big battle there's a draggy bit.  Awkward-ass kissy scenes with blue fairies that didn't show the tendril sex. Boo.

Pro: Strange premise of Humans going up against Aliens and then Humans losing in an expensive fit of hubris. There's no saving grace of human-transcendent-evolution either. Nice inquiry on the bio-sci-fi trend. A Hollywood craftsman doing a good job with the usual technical suspects. Love or hate it, 3-D effects enhance the story. Wonderful attention to detail re. the undersea phantasmagoria of Pandora (divers rejoice), Baraka raising of the dead, and Alien Planet-esque naked vampire chicken type creatures. Sigourney Weaver, Giovani Ribisi, and Stephen Lang = Iconic sci-fi stereotypes, if not absolutely fleshed out at least made, like, uber-iconic. 12 foot tall Blue Fairies!

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