I know that in my case I got a bit distracted by stuff marginally related to Projectorheads, such as the short film I’m trying to make, “Pineapple Face”. It’s related to Projectorheads in that Alex Tweedale and I have named our film production unit “Projectorheads Studios”, but the plan was always to implement this into the site. We always post film stuff we’ve done on the site, anyway (and that reminds me, I have something that I will post after this) Also, I started writing movie reviews for a local newspaper called “The Leader” (it has a circulation around Hamilton/Islington), though I’m still not sure how that works regarding copyright, if I can repost the reviews here. I’m sure there would be no problem scanning the newspaper clippings and posting them, but there might be complications if I publish the reviews verbatim.

Anyway, on the forum we’ve been doing “mini-reviews” for a fair while, but I thought it would be a good way of keeping the main page alive if we made weekly posts talking about movies we’d seen in that week. I might post a few from last week for the hell of it.

The Hole

I want to kiss Ming-liang Tsai’s feet. For me his films haven’t been immediate hits, but they’ve all lingered over me. Goodbye Dragon Inn was a grower but not as much as What Time Is It There, which haunted me for two solid weeks. It had some similarities with Goodbye Dragon Inn in terms of its humour (one bit felt straight out of it, or at least staged in the same cinema) and its melancholic feeling, but far stronger. With each movie I think Tsai fulfils that same astonishment I felt when I first watched Hidden, trying to figure out how a director could achieve so much while being so slight. I know I still have the “great” Hsiao-hsien Hou movies to go (City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, A Time To Live A Time To Die) but it irritates me a little that Hou can make movies that feel so empty and half-arsed (I’m thinking Millennium Mambo, which would have five minutes of genuine character development and then fifteen minutes of the girl smoking in her apartment) while Tsai puts out movies even more minimalistic but they also happen to be hilarious, memorable and heartbreaking. Hsiao-Kang is like a Taiwanese M. Hulot. Even though I still prefer Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day over the Tsai movies (not by much though, and I’ve said that I’ve found Edward Yang’s other stuff a LOT less interesting), I concede, Tsai is thus far the most gifted Taiwanese filmmaker I’ve come across. The Hole ROCKS. The musical interludes are so good and would really make the film suffer if they weren’t there. I can’t talk about it without getting all ecstatic about how fantastic Tsai’s ideas are. He is a god at shot composition and creating believable, otherworldly atmospheres, letting you drain in the details of his worlds. I’d say that from what I’ve seen, this would be the best Tsai to start with.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Ghost World

Two cooler-than-thou outsider girls brush off college and start planning what they’ll be doing with their lives after they graduate from high school. Seems like something that’d piss me off by design, but…it was really good. All the characters were compelling, well-written and well-acted (especially Steve Buscemi as the blues record collector), and the scariest part for me was how much Thora Birch reminded me of a girl I had a crush on in high school, right down to what she wore and how she acted and sounded. It’s true that the movie has a kind of self-awareness about it but for the first time ever I actually like that self-awareness. In a way, Ghost World feels like a live action Daria.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

The Wind Will Carry Us

I enjoyed bits of it, and Kiarostami again shows his talent for directing children, but a fair chunk seemed like Kiarostami was just trying too hard to be lyrical. It’s not like what he did in A Taste of Cherry, where the reflections on the world around him and driving through the sparse, beautiful hills just added to the character’s despair and confusion. Beautiful movie, but I didn’t find it nearly as emotional as some of his others.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The Wayward Cloud

It has the most intriguing synopsis of all the Tsais: Following What Time Is It There, Hsiao-Kang becomes a porn actor, Shiang-chyi arrives back from France and Taiwan suffers a drought so severe that everyone has to live off watermelons. I ended up watching this twice: first time I saw it I was shattered by the end, not necessarily in a good way, and I wasn’t sure that it added up to a solid whole by the end. I’m still not sure if it does, but it’s grown on me a lot. I find the musical sequences funnier than the ones in The Hole, in particular the one of Hsiao-Kang dancing around in a penis mask while a group of choreographed dancing girls thrust toilet plungers at him. The ending does work, and I’ve come to like it now, but for someone who was so enraptured and moved by What Time Is It There I was really taken aback by where the characters ended up. You pretty much see the high and low ends of the moral compass. I’d say it’s probably as inaccessible as Goodbye Dragon Inn, for non-Tsai fans.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Wings of Desire

The title was a bit of a misnomer, I was expecting some bird fucking on par with Pink Flamingos. This is the first Wim Wenders movie I’ve seen other than his short in the ensemble film 8 (although when I was a kid I watched my dad’s VHS copy of Buena Vista Social Club. My memories of it are too vague for me to have an opinion though). I loved the atmosphere of the first half, in fact I probably would’ve been satisfied if the movie had no plot and was simply of angels listening to people’s thoughts. It was good, but I did lose interest by the end, I’ve gotta admit. I think the “human” part of the film was maybe a little too off-kilter with the tone of the angel part. It was very consistent until then.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

A History of Violence

Cronenberg tapped into a formula with The Fly that reached its peak in Dead Ringers, and he’s pretty much continued to follow the formula since. It’s applied here: A subtle dynamic between dark, absurd humour and serious drama, Howard Shore’s brooding scores, and acting that’s solid as hell. It’s strange, the dialogue on paper seems really bland but it suits the acting so well. I think what attracts me (and simultaneously repels me) about his movies is that they’re so primal. A History of Violence is about survival of the fittest, which culminates in a great scene where we realise Tom’s deep-seeded violent tendencies have been genetically passed onto his son. His pre-Fly movies that I’ve seen (just Scanners, now I think about it) check-out with what Cronenberg himself says: he was great at directing special effects and giving them a kind of humanity, but not his actors. All that has changed. The whole cast is excellent but Viggo Mortensen suits the character perfectly. He’s got a real jutting, hard face that’s capable of softness, but he’s the very definition of masculinity.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Boy A

My timing is crazy. I went to Video Ezy with my dad and saw this, grabbed it on my teacher’s recommendation, and after I watched it I went on Google to read up on the case that inspired it to find that the guy had just been arrested for possession of child pornography that day. Even stranger is that I went to get American Splendour, thinking it was a Terry Zwigoff movie (I’m not that stupid for assuming that though, it looks like one), remembered it wasn’t, left it on the shelf and came home to find that the author of American Splendour had died. That day. The main actor in Boy A was incredible, and I mean, I know the movie deals with controversial subject matter but I found myself sympathising with him so deeply. It’s hard not to when you’re presented with the scenes of the two kids, and how his life was screwed up by something he was naively led into. You have to wonder if he was aware of what he was doing and what the consequences would be. I realise that the movie Boy A is a lot less disturbing than the actual events, and his grownup portrayal is nothing like his real life counterpart (otherwise it would have to be a very, VERY good movie to make me sympathise with him), but man, the IMDB discussion boards on the movie, talk about a lake of fire. People tell me that since I didn’t cry in Toy Story 3 and the Shawshank Redemption, I have no soul. Well, I found it in me to sympathise with Boy A, so boo-urns. Forgive me for feeling sympathy for people with complex, inescapable problems than toys afflicted with stockholm syndrome.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

On that note:

Toy Story 3

Yeah, I did like it, it’s hard to be offended by something so inoffensive. But it was literally 3 minutes before I was dealt the “you have no soul” card, which just makes me want to tear my pubic hair out. I admit that I haven’t had the emotional/nostalgic attachment to the characters as most people my age have. I was too busy with Miyazaki and other Ghibli animators (the Totoro cameo was kind of cool, thinking about it now). One criticism is that because of the enormous fanboy hype, the general consensus that it had an epic sweep to it and the length of time Pixar spent making the movie, I got to the end of the “escaping the nursery” bit and thought “Sweet, that’s the end of this plot, now Woody will make the journey to college to meet up with Andy”… but that was the end of the film. Was that really worth 10 years of production? I thought they could’ve taken it to a higher level.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

21 Grams

Completely unnecessary non-linear narrative, but I will admit that I found it effective a few times, mainly because we spend so much time putting together who the characters are, wondering how they end up where they do, and then suddenly a character will flat-out die and we feel the shock of that, but it’s not a story that requires this form of storytelling. Good performance from Del Toro though.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Barton Fink

I liked this a lot, though for the first half an hour I was dreading giving it a score because it shared so much in common with Naked Lunch, which I love to bits. I’m not kidding: the plot is very similar, with the writer in his apartment trying his hardest to write while the lines between reality and fiction blur; the surreal 50s setting; the release date (both were out in 1991) and the supporting actress (Judy Davis). I do prefer Naked Lunch but there were some sudden score-changing scenes that creeped up on me a couple of times. I’m specifically referring to “I’LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND” which was far and away the most impressive moment for me.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Inception

A character informs us early on that an hour in the dream world equates to five minutes in reality. Numerous events occur in their subconscious states as they strive to achieve their goal, their car plummets from a bridge into the river below while in the real world they sleep soundly on a plane bound for the US. It’s pretty darn effective as a thriller, but whether it’s an accurate depiction of how the subconscious works is up for discussion. It was difficult for me to accept the dream worlds as “dreams”, perhaps because of how they conformed to cinematic conventions, and I wasn’t sure I accepted how events in the real world influenced the subconscious. But if there are discrepancies they don’t really take away from the experience. You can argue that the level of immersion we reach when watching a great movie is similar to a dream state, we find ourselves suspending our belief system and perception of time, and while we might be sharing a journey with characters that spans over days, in our reality only hours pass. I’m not sure my belief system was completely suspended but Inception is well worth the ticket money. One of my criticisms seems to be part of a popular theory: a bunch of characters (Ellen Page particularly) are suspiciously undeveloped and get thrown into the movie suddenly. Some people think that’s intentional on Nolan’s part, after all, there’s a scene where DiCaprio runs his plans past Page and asks her to recall how she ended up at the cafe with him, to point out that she’s dreaming. This kind of thing leaves the film open to interpretation as to how many of the scenes are dreamt up. If we’re interpreting the lack of character development as intentional, well, it’s interesting but it’s the sort of thing that’s less impressive on screen than it is on paper. Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love is an example, it’s arguable that the stilted roboticness of the acting is a comment on the cold, unfeeling reality they inhabit, but it’s also arguable that it’s a terrible movie. Despite what I said though, DiCaprio’s subplot with his wife (Solaris in other words) gives an insight into his character and this provides his later scenes with an emotional wallop. Inception might’ve suffered if it wasn’t for this compensating subplot. I say these things as a pedantic viewer, despite its flaws it’s the kind of movie that makes me hope for a revival of quality prevalent in 70s Hollywood, the Hollywood of Scorsese, Lucas, Malick and Coppola. A large amount of acclaimed Hollywood movies of last decade (ignoring the Coens and Nolan himself) came from filmmakers of the 70s period. Hopefully films of this calibre lead the way to a new Hollywood.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

See you guys next week.

Todd Solondz’s films have always have this certain inimitable style – one I like to call “Solondzian”, but that nobody else in the world does. Not including the one I can’t remember the name of but that Liam will probably tell me once he reads this, his films have been famous for their sympathetic brand of dark comedy, and going further with it than most folks, especially Americans – what other American film asked you to feel sympathy for a pedophile (and an ACTIVE one at that) before Happiness, and how many have since? Being a big fan of Solondz, I sat down to watch his newest feature, a sequel to Happiness, with great anticipation. After it had finished, I was satisfied, but a little confused. It felt almost like Solondz, who had presented such a natural (if horrifying) style with his last four films, had become almost too self-aware.

It’s not there all the time, and it’s subtle, but I noticed it. With his earlier films, aside from maybe a brighter colour scheme than most, the visual style and cinematography didn’t seem to hint at anything out of the ordinary; a direct contrast to the disturbing events. There are a few times in Life During Wartime where Solondz almost seems to be saying “hey, this is a bit weird, huh?” One example is the opening scene, where Joy (the eldest sister from Happiness) and Allen (the guy who came on the wall in Happiness and was originally obsessed with Helen but is now married to Joy despite finding love with someone else at the end of Happiness I dunno) are eating at a restaurant. While the scene is very similar to the opening of the film’s predecessor, it feels very claustrophobic and closed-in, which stuck out to me straight away as being a little too…obvious, I suppose. There are moments like this throughout the rest of the film, and it’s so odd to see Solondz stylising his work in such a cliched manner.

The plot again revolves around the lives of the three sisters from Happiness and their families. Trish raises her children and finds a new boyfriend while her pedophile ex-husband Bill gets released from prison. Joy visits Trish to take a break from Allen, and is haunted by visions of a previous suitor who committed suicide. Helen is only in one scene but is as whiny as before; most of the film is about Trish and her young son, Timmy, as he deals with the news that his father isn’t dead, as he was told, and was locked up for abusing boys Timmy’s age. All the roles are recast from Happiness, but some work better than others – Alison Janney as Trish is great, but Ciaran Hinds as Bill isn’t suitable at all, unless you tell yourself that prison has made him think of himself as a monster or something. The oddest one is definitely Philip Seymour Hoffman being replaced by Michael K. Williams (aka Omar in The Wire) as Allen. Solondz said in interviews the movie was more “politically overt” than his previous films, but that seems to simply consist of a few characters talking about Iraq occasionally, and doesn’t really add anything to the proceedings.

The truth is, Life During Wartime is a good movie, and it has a lot of effective scenes that fit with Solondz’s usual standard. Unfortunately, it also has quite a few shortcomings. Firstly, it’s something that no Solondz movie has ever been; predictable. I saw one character, thought “I bet he kills himself later”, and he did. It’s almost like he’s fulfilling what audiences expect of him. The second, and possibly the biggest, fault of the movie revolves around the fact that it’s pretty much all despair, all the time. What made a film like Happiness work wasn’t the shocking moments as much as it was the way they suddenly showed up and interrupted these characters idyllic existences; we, the audience, were almost anticipating the next thing. Life During Wartime is the opposite, and it almost feels as if Solondz was throwing everything he could at the wall and hoping something fits. There’s very little joy in this film, which makes the big scenes feel more like “oh, okay” than anything else.

Before I saw this film, I didn’t think Solondz was capable of making a less-than-great movie. I still don’t think he’s capable of making a bad one, but it’s possible he needs to look back and see what made his previous flicks so fantastic. This isn’t relatable like Welcome To The Dollhouse, isn’t quietly devastating like Happiness and Palindromes, and doesn’t make you think like Storytelling. It’s just there, being interesting, being funny, but not being much else.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Said two elderly men behind us as Dom and I left the cinema, having just seen The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. While we were talking over the themes of the movie, female abuse being one of them (the original Swedish title is “Men Who Hate Women”), we walked past a bolted nightclub that had been abandoned for as long as I can remember. It’s usually on our path whenever we walk home from Film Society on Sundays. As we were a few metres away from it, we heard a girl yelling from inside. We stood rooted to the spot, put our heads against the bolted door and listened. There was a long pause which was broken by another scream. Both stunned by the coincidence, we walked out of earshot and rang the police. While we were letting our imaginations go crazy as to what was going on between those walls, a friendly asian man got out of a tour bus and walked up to us. He said “Hello, my friends” and asked us if we knew where “Newcastle Pot” was. After a few minutes we figured he wanted to get to a restaurant in Newcastle Port, Queen’s Wharf, directed him as best we could and said goodbye. He got back into the bus and drove off. In retrospect this was very comical, but at the time we were in a haze of disbelief and concern. Fifteen minutes later the police came around to tell us nothing was wrong, and that the noises were being made by some homeless men staying the wreckage of the club. We could’ve sworn the voice was female, but our imaginations were probably influenced by the movie we’d just seen. So we started walking home again through an empty car park. A single, wavering voice seranaded us through a PA system: Engelbert Humperdink singing “Please release me, let me go”.

It’s pretty awesome then that after these memorable events, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo lost none of its impact. It is intoxicating and compulsively watchable for its two and half hour runtime. I have a real penchant for movies that deal with unseen details and clues, like the blowing up of negatives to uncover secrets. It’s a source of endless intrigue for me, Michael Haneke’s Cache being another recent example. The frame by frame stills of Harriet looking across the road and making a face of recognition; the photos of the parade from different angles revealing new leads – it’s like Antonioni’s Blowup, that incredibly unsettling feeling of having accidentally photographed a murder or something in connection with murder. The repeated photo of Harriet and excerpts from her diary gave off a Laura Palmer vibe, too, which again is a point of interest for me.

But for this review I feel like I have to resurrect an age old argument, which I know won’t have any real effect but I do it in the hope that it will change at least one person’s attitude. If you’re forced out of your comfort zone by changes or cuts in an adaptation of your favourite book, you won’t like this movie. Cinema is a separate entity to literature and does not exist solely to visualise what you have read. That’s what the human imagination is for. Are there any fans of the Psycho novel who are disappointed with Hitchcock’s film? Coppola’s The Godfather? Tarkovsky’s Solaris? The two most inventive adaptations I can think of are 1) Adaptation, which you probably saw coming, for integrating Charlie Kaufman’s creative process and personal life into the book he was hired to adapt to screen, and 2) Naked Lunch, which only marginally adapts the novel while tying in William S Burroughs’ life story and past works. In doing this David Cronenberg evokes Burroughs’ style so well, somehow retaining the overall feeling of the novel. It is in this sense one of the most successful adaptations I have seen and goes to show that a director or a screenwriter’s interpretation should never be a 100% clean conversion. A more contemporary example is Alfonso Cuaron’s adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was a massive leap in quality from Chris Columbus’ previous two because Cuaron realised his own unique vision. Maybe the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film wasn’t the greatest adaptation ever, but compare it to the television series where the screenwriters attempted to cram in every single gag and observation. If it’s going to be literally the book in visual form, just read the goddamn book.

Regardless of any feelings you have regarding the changes, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a powerful movie and it smacks you about with force. Author Stieg Larsson was influenced by Val McDermid’s novels, and I have to wonder if this influence extends to director Niels Arden Oplev’s stylistic choices. One very pivotal scene has very similar lighting and photography to the first episode of the TV series Wire in the Blood, which is interesting because in the book, Mikael reads the Val McDermid novel “The Mermaids Singing” which the Wire in the Blood episode is based on. It shares a lot in common with the production of Wire in the Blood, employing similar techniques, though it never drops off into the schizophrenic, distracting editing of the later Wire in the Blood series. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is an impeccably made thriller that (to paraphrase Engelbert Humperdink again) holds onto you and doesn’t let you go.

The Vanger family history and the Swedish connections to Nazism are fascinating to learn of. It always seems strange, seeing these ultra right wing families in a nation that is arguably the most leftist nation in the world, but it’s easy to forget Sweden’s stance of the time, and other European countries, a time where a young Ingmar Bergman was enraptured by a Hitler speech, and as Roy Andersson hilariously reminds us in You, the Living, younger generations are so ashamed of their family’s Nazi heritage that they (literally) sweep it under the tablecloth. But after forty years of confusion, Mikael picks up from where the police left off and the secrets begin bubbling to the surface.

I hear there’s an American remake in the works. I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea, David Fincher is directing so we can guess that it’ll be a competently directed thriller, but things like the family’s allegience with the Nazis seems to make more sense within a Scandinavian context, or even just a European context. Let the Right One In, another recent Swedish hit had a similar thing going. The story is so appropriate for Sweden that you can’t really envision how an American version could function as well. Then again, I’m shooting myself in the foot after what I wrote regarding film adaptations, it’s not like Fincher should translate the book verbatim to screen. But if he did, not only would it fail to be interesting, it would not work. And even though Carey Mulligan’s acting has been impressive so far, I doubt that she’s chameleonic enough to pull off Lisbeth’s character, unlike Noomi Rapace who is utterly stunning and leaves a lasting impression. And Nyqvist is good. I like Nyqvist. Critics seem to think that he elicits nothing but phoniness but I got the right vibe from his performance. There’s a brilliant dynamic between their team.

It excites me greatly knowing that there are two more films coming, but until this morning I hadn’t realised that the trilogy has been shot, edited and screened overseas. We only have to wait a few months between each film in Australia, which is just fantastic.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. One of the biggest twists for us was discovering that Ewa Froling, notable for her role as Emilie Ekdahl in Fanny and Alexander played a character. We noticed the eyebrows first.

I was wondering, after seeing this – Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest, zany effort – whether this is “another Jeunet”; whether it’s a film you attend knowing that it’s the latest Jeunet film, instead of watching it with no prior knowledge of the director at all. Unlike Amelie, which was a surprisingly cheerful sideways turn in Jeunet’s career and a film that not only marked the “second phase” of his career and swept up potentially hundreds of thousands of casual filmgoers, Micmacs a tire-larigot is Jeunet speaking to his diehard, “film buff” audience, one already primed to react to his films in a particular way and to not expect anything revolutionary or even different. When Amelie smashed its way into the marketplace in its effortlessly charming way, it became almost everyone’s default “foreign film” that they see every five years. People went out of their way to see it. Will that happen with Micmacs? It’s possible, but highly unlikely.

Still, this isn’t a problem in the slightest. To expect a massive upheaval only two films after Amelie would be disingenuous. Further down the track, if Jeunet’s still mixing up the same ingredients over and over, his fans may get bored, but I’m not even sure that’s likely either. Whereas someone like Tim Burton routinely gets shtick for honing in on his personal habits and churning out gothic-dark film after gothic-dark film, Jeunet is unlikely to receive the same treatment, and there’s a few reasons for that. The first is that, despite his debut Delicatessan coming out nearly twenty years ago now, Jeunet still feels like a fresh young talent, chiefly because his career has spanned fewer films, and also because when most people think of Amelie they’d think “Ah, that movie with Audrey Tatou being cute” rather than “Ah, that excellent Jeunet film.” Burton’s name is entrenched in his films; he’s more well-known nowadays than the films he makes, which is a bizarre achievement. The second is that Jeunet’s more immediately likable a person – like Tatou in Amelie, he’s prone to winking at the camera in a deliberately eccentric but at least charming way. Whereas Burton is more likely to put on his snazzy blue glasses and pose as if he’s been cast in a waxwork factory, all brood and darkness. And thus, we have our final reason; Burton’s put-upon goth persona is so wearying because there’s no self-awareness to it whatsoever. But Jeunet… Jeunet is fun. Jeunet is charming. His films, and this is the most important point of all, are funny.

Sometimes too funny. I’m fully aware that Tatou’s winking at camera alone annoyed many who saw Amelie, and Jeunet’s films are always overladen with in-your-face whackiness. Were this an American indie film, this’d be a turn-off, but Jeunet gets away with it. In fact, to hell with it; the French always get away with it, which is odd in itself because the stereotypical Frenchman sits around intellectualising rather than being strange and kooky. They’re also portrayed as bloodthirsty, and to be fair, just listen to their national anthem. But “charm” is also part of France’s stereotypical mandate, as paradoxical as that may seem, and Jeunet loves nothing more than revelling in what “France” is.

The Cannes jury rejected Amelie in 2001, and probably still hold a huge grudge against it for excelling overseas instead of, say, The Piano Teacher, another excellent but morose and gritty film. For a group of French film enthusiasts, a film portraying their country in a cartoony, ridiculous way, again, was just too much to bear. But it’s always hard to enjoy the absurdities of one’s international perception. I don’t think anyone who sees a Jeunet film seriously believes that France is as he represents it; everyone just wishes it was as he represents it. It’s an idealistic, strange world, one that plays to the rules of a cartoon but is filmed in live action. That’s why, even when Micmacs occasionally feels like it’s hoarding too heavily every possible joke and sight gag it can, it doesn’t truly matter because it’s a cartoon-with-real people. Its effortless charm combats any irritating facets the jokes may have taken on in a different context.

The strangest thing about its humour, then, is the sheer darkness of the world presented to us. Those who have seen Delicatessan will know Jeunet can have a penchant for dark humour mixed amongst his overt zaniness, but for those who started with Amelie (which, at its basest, makes a hilarious orgasm joke) and continued with A Very Long Engagement (which never portrays its wartime scenes as being humorous) will probably be shocked at the opening of Micmacs, where Bazil’s father steps on a landmine, Bazil’s family grieves, and then Bazil’s charming interactive viewing of Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep is cut short when he’s shot in the head by accident. As the film continues, Bazil learns that the perpetrators were two weapons dealers, and he vows to destroy their operations. So to get this straight; there’s weapons manufacture, there’s distinct Iraq references, and there’s even a moment where one of the villains (who doesn’t even look particularly villainous, and instead is simply a spiff bloke in a suit) apologies to women raped in wartime. Can Jeunet really do this? Can he really construct a world as cartoonish as this, then intersperse real-life concerns, and very serious concerns at that, and play them for laughs as well?

I’d say he can, and the tone shifts worked for me, but I know others who were very nonplussed by this. And that in itself is interesting. Delicatessan is well-known to be the “darkest” of Jeunet’s films, but its themes of cannibalism and kidnap are shoved into a futuristic dystopia that doesn’t correspond to the world as we know it. Micmacs is the first time that Jeunet’s allowed such darkness to seep into the world that we recognise as ours – even if we recognise that it’s not ours anyway, since it’s set in cartoon-France. It’s a strange and daring balance to seek, but Jeunet makes it work. Liam and I used to joke about Jeunet’s France and Gaspar Noe’s France being the exact same France, but the former is scenes from the daytime and the latter scenes from the underground at night – but if Micmacs is anything to go by, we might one day see a Jeunet who could quite happily team up with Noe at some point. The thought excites and scares me.

Despite all this, though, Micmacs is business as usual. It’s outright funnier than his last two films, it’s subtly darker than his last two films, but it looks the same (you may be surprised to learn that Jeunet’s usual director of photography didn’t work on this film – could you tell?), it speaks the same, and at the end of the day it makes you feel the same. It is nothing more or less than another great film from this master of the oddball.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

She’s being hailed as the new Audrey Hepburn. Admittedly, critics love making this kind of rush judgment – Natalie Portman received the exact same accolade, and it’s a claim that holds up. I mean, Hepburn was ever so charming in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whilst Portman was ever so charming and not annoying in the slightest in Garden State*. Right? …right? – and it’s also a comparison that comes easily, considering one section of the film is a big nod to Hepburn: Mulligan not only dresses in Holly Golighty’s iconic garb, but she embarks upon a holiday in Italy. What’s unusual, though, is how often this comparison is being made, how much the comparison is being pushed by many, many critics. Many reviews have said she deserves a Best Actress Oscar.

Where did she come from?

The thing is, I can provide an answer to that question, because I’m a nerd. Before this international acclaim, Carey Mulligan’s biggest claim to fame was being fellated by Doctor Who nerds in the UK and abroad for playing Sally Sparrow in the popular episode ‘Blink’. I’ve got to admit that I went one further and watched a few other things she was in, including Bleak House, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice (yes, the Keira Knightley one), and even My Boy Jack, where she plays Daniel Radcliffe’s sister. So whilst she was an intense revelation for the critical community, her performance in An Education just felt like, funnily enough, another in a series of consistently good roles (and bizarrely this happened to me with another star in this film; Sally Hawkins, who I knew from Fingersmith, but the critical community knew afterwards from Happy-Go-Lucky).

The reason I dwell on this is not to express a feeling of being underwhelmed by her, but to note how Mulligan’s sudden propulsion into near-stardom echoes her character’s propulsion into high society. The film is set in 1961 and centres on Jenny, a gorgeous and hyper-intelligent girl who feels held back by her dull parents and her dull school. She’s a hipster intellectual, complete with smoking behind trees, glib statements on life, witty one-liners (“No, it just means you’re a cow”) and a penchant for sleazy French singers. In other words, she’s Liam O’Brien, but sexy.

Jenny’s life changes when she meets Peter Sarsgaard’s David, a man of culture and high status who loves nothing more than attending classical concerts and bidding on artworks at auctions (sorry, orrrctions). His desire to educate her into this new social circle is matched equally by his desire to deflower her. Jenny isn’t an idiot, though. She knows he wants sex. But she’s willing to give it to him, if he continues her education. She’s like a more cultured Lolita.

Nothing about the story is exactly unpredictable, and we can guess beforehand that

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*
Jenny isn’t David’s first conquered goods, and that Jenny will end up realising that her parents and teacher, stagnant as they may occasionally be (though charming), really do want the best for her and shouldn’t be completely ignored
*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

but what makes this film so excellent is how well its themes intertwine; Jenny’s education at the hands of her parents, her teacher, David, and ultimately herself. The film never loses sight of any of this, confidently juggling all of these elements. Its script is flawless, and not a single scene or line seems superfluous. We learn as much about Jenny from small moments – her excitable, nervous, stream-of-conscious apologetic gabbling when asked when she’s speaking French by Rosamund Pike’s Helen (Pike is excellent too, incidentally, and it’s funny how they effectively become their respective Bennett characters for this one scene) – as we do from dialogue-less montages such as her holiday with David to learn Italian for beginners.

Speaking of which! This is directed by Lone Scherfig, one of the original Dogme 95 directors who has used the movement as a platform to launch their careers (as opposed to someone like Thomas Vinterberg, who directed one standout Dogme film and then ruined his career thereafter). Like Mulligan, it feels as if she’s got an ever-rising future ahead of her. Oh, and while I’m at it, everyone else in this is pitch perfect too, especially Alfred Molina, and I’m unsure of why Sarsgaard’s icily charming performance has been criticised – hasn’t Edward Cullen proven that this mood is exactly what attracts teenagers**?

In the end, though, you’ll be seeing this film for Carey Mulligan. And see this film you really, really should.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I realise that my constant “fellating” metaphor may be a bit unsettling (and inaccurate at points, but there’s no verb for cunnilingus : ( ), but I decided that since the film effectively involves Jenny’s sexual awakening, it could be a metaphor for Mulligan’s awakening into the world of acting. Either that, or it’s just an image that really, really appeals to me. Take your pick.

I should also mention that there’s been a minor controversy about this film apparently having the message of “Beware of Jews bearing flowers”. Considering we’re supposed to hate the character’s stupid anti-Semitic statements (such as in the “Jesus wasn’t a Jew.” “Is that what he told you?” scene), I don’t agree at all with this, but it’s interesting to read regardless.

*Speaking of which, Peter Sarsgaard was in that film too. That tarnishes him far more than anything his character does in An Education.

**I’m being facetious, please don’t hurt me.

As one of the potentially-millions of children that read Where the Wild Things Are as a youth, learning of the upcoming release of this film – and of Spike Jonze’s attachment to the project – certainly piqued my interest. Where the Wild Things Are was, to me, one of the forgotten books of my childhood; I only remembered it when it was mentioned. All I remembered, when I thought about the plot, was a child becoming a king over some wild things. Searching on the net, I realised that, lo and behold, that was the entire plot. How on earth could this be fleshed out for a feature length?

I think what’s really admirable about this adaptation is its refusal to massively complicate the plot in the slightest. Instead of constructing an all-new backstory to the world of the wild things or anything similar, Jonze’s only complication is to make most of the wild things represent someone in Max’s real world; G.W. as his sister, Judith as his mother (she even looks like Catherine Keener), Ira as his mother’s boyfriend, and Carol as, well, him. This is effectively an extrapolation from the book, where the wild things represented Max’s wild side. The wild things are completely and utterly childish, charming but mindlessly destructive. They construct a fort to keep outsiders away (even though there aren’t really any outsiders) with secret entrances and then sabotage it, they throw dirt clods at each other, etc. It’s startling how easily Jonze recreates childhood here. I remember people complaining and saying “I QUIT” during war games, and being deliberately pelted for this. I remember enjoying tackling people, but being terrified when group tackled and suffering from minor claustrophobia. Admittedly, I don’t remember being terrified of the sun dying, but I’m sure Woody Allen does.

So what we have here is a film without any real plot. Good. Plot’s overrated, in my opinion. I’ve said before (see; my Transformers editorial) that I think summer blockbusters should probably attempt to communicate visuals and feelings and effectively eradicate plot as much as possible. As Carol would say, “Hey, this film gets it”. Earlier this year, I reviewed Up, and noted that the last half of the film wasn’t as strong as the first; it was, in fact, when the plot kicked in that things went a little awry. Where the Wild Things Are is a film about relationships, where all of its drama comes from the kind of spats children usually throw, where all of its excitement comes from pointless games that the wild things play.

The intriguing thing is that we know from the start the lesson that Max is going to learn (as the wild things also do). What sustains the film isn’t the lesson itself necessarily, but how they get there. It’s arguably a film that may be too dark for children, and certainly it can be terrifying (especially, as a fellow moviegoer pointed out, how Carol’s verbal spats are even more frightening when you realise he’s John damned Soprano), but it’s possibly an experience that would still benefit a child. I mean, Time Bandits ends with

*SPOILER*SPOILER*SPOILER*SPOILER*thehouseexplodingandhisparentsdying*SPOILER*SPOILER*

so I’m not sure how damaging this kind of film could be.

Either way, it’s a very cleverly constructed movie.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

(I managed to work the title of previous Spike Jonze films into this review. I am ever so cool)

One of my problems is that I’m prone to listening to hype and letting it build and multiply in my head. I blow all this hype up to proportions so massive that virtually nothing lives up to it. When a trailer emerges, I literally watch it hundreds of times, mulling over the details like a deep meditation. I avoid reviews like the plague for fear of spoilers, but out of a craving for information I have to fight the urge to go on Rotten Tomatoes and read every single critical review. Q&A sessions, IMDB user reviews… it just escalates until the point where the film is destined to disappoint. Considering my recent Haneke-fest I thought I’d be overhyping The White Ribbon, desperately seeking an untouchable, unquestionable masterpiece, but to be perfectly honest it was exactly as I imagined it’d be: freakin’ phenomenal.

I got into Michael Haneke’s work this year. Around the time I saw The White Ribbon I’d just completed his filmography (not including the Funny Games remake and his two television films) and Hidden had become one of my favourite films. So you can perhaps understand what I was going through when I say I convulsed during the opening credits. It might seem a bit strange, as the film’s credits consist of a black screen, no accompanying music and a small, white set of credits (not to mention that he’s used these same credits before in Code Unknown, Time of the Wolf and possibly The Piano Teacher, my memory fails me), but goddamnit, there was something indescribably epic about those silent, minimalistic credits. Then, with bated breath, the film began.

The White Ribbon takes place in a pre-WWI German village where a series of crimes occur. A doctor is injured while riding his horse; several children go missing and then are discovered, tortured and abused; there are acts of unexplained violence towards animals, and a whole other string of strange occurences. The children are brought up under strict discipline and religious dogma, and after one of the children confronts his father – a priest about a sin he has committed, he is forced to wear a white ribbon in public as a reminder to himself and to others of the concept of purity and innocence, and the importance of retaining this innocence for the good of the future.

I can say that The White Ribbon has been the most emotionally distressing film I’ve seen since Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, which I saw two years ago, a film that moved me so much I swear I cried out at least a quarter of my bodily fluids. It is especially sad, bearing in mind what Haneke said about the children being destined to become the seeds of Nazism. In typical Haneke fashion, the film is a psychological headache; the characters never seem to have clear motives for their actions, whether it be killing a little boy’s recovering parrot or suicidily balancing on a bridge’s rungs, the actions (and sometimes crimes) aren’t pre-meditated or even meditated, they just occur as naturally as cleaning your teeth or having a shower; purely run on an instinct twisted and torn from years of destructive, abusive discipline. The scene with the girl and the parrot is particularly perplexing as she doesn’t even seem consciously aware of her actions. It’s as if she’s hypnotised.

Although in the past his characters have been highly and disturbingly realistic, especially the more psychologically unsound characters, Haneke achieves something very rare for him in this film: a real human connection with the characters. There’s a touching, heartfelt romance between two of them, the School Teacher and Eva. Now that’s something I never thought I’d see in a Haneke movie, humanity portrayed in a positive, hopeful light. There were fleeting moments of this in Time of the Wolf but nowhere near as prominently.

The cinematography in this is just too beautiful for words. Shot originally in colour and in a HD digital format, it has been colour graded to black and white to fit in with the time period. The low-key, almost pitch black interior shots are incredibly haunting and constantly filled me with a sense of unease and fear. And speaking of digitally altered images… does anyone else find it strange that Haneke used a CGI horse instead of a real one, considering his track record? Fish flailing to death in The Seventh Continent, a tazered pig in Benny’s Video, a dog beaten with golf clubs in Funny Games, a horse shot dead in Time of the Wolf, a beheaded chicken in Hidden; it all seems very weird that Haneke would have a moral crisis going as far as replacing his flesh and blood animals with some delicately rendered ones. Perhaps that’s just the direction he’s heading in, making films for a new audience. Apart from the recent Funny Games remake, this is probably Haneke’s most accessible film.

The White Ribbon is by an indescribably long shot my favourite movie of 2009, and will certainly make my decade list. Go out of your way to see this.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The White Ribbon has won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

You can find more Haneke Haneke-nisms here:

http://www.projectorheads.com/2009/10/haneke-haneke-haneke-and-more-haneke/

I’ll start off by saying that this is hands down the greatest Australian film to come out in years, possibly ever, and that is seriously saying something considering the recent string of great films like Samson and Delilah, Balibo, The Last Ride, Van Diemen’s Land, Beautiful Kate, The Black Balloon, I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer, The Man from Hong Kong and Harvie Krumpet. Margaret Pomeranz never saw this movie, neither did David Stratton, but I can assure that they would weep openly at this visceral, intellectual delight. Even Tarantino had to concede that Rocket Man was the best Australian film since Turkey Shoot. Tim Kurschner is our generation’s Lisa McCune; he is a delightful young talent whose performance will certainly be remembered in years to come. I have faith in The Muscles’ future. He is truly a sight to behold.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

One of the common criticisms of Pixar’s 2008 offering, Wall-E, was that it began wonderfully and originally, and then turned into slightly more conventional fare. Arguably, this is the case with Up, too; the opening twenty-or-so minutes are perfection, and it’s probably one of the best openings to an animated film I’ve seen. Unfortunately this level of quality isn’t exactly reached, and you could indeed say that the film goes downward.

That’s not to say Up is ever bad. But it ends up with an action-packed finale that feels at odds with what the film originally set out to do.

The story of Carl, an old man desperate for adventure after his wife’s death, is fantastical enough once he propels his house by balloons into the sky. Incredibly, this isn’t in the slightest the weirdest part of the film. As the film continues, we are introduced to an improbably large bird, and dogs intelligent enough to talk through voice devices in their collars. Pixar loves anthropomorphising animals – and they’re really quite good at it – but never before have we been introduced to normal humans first and then shown talking animals. The dogs are very, very funny – particularly the stereotypically villainous one, whose key gimmicky joke never outstays its welcome – but it somehow seems to undercut the human drama of the story.

This may be intentional. When Carl finally lets go of the house and his departed wife, he becomes an action man in a bizarre scene atop a zeppelin. This is symbolic of him throwing away his past and dreams and living in the present instead. But it still jars considerably. Even the villain is quite stock, which is a shame considering that his motivations make perfect sense. He even represents an anti-Carl, another old man desperate to live out his dreams. Yet still, he is conventional. He’s got nothing on Syndrome, the spurned kid who got too big for his shoes (literally and metaphorically).

It’s a shame, too, that Carl is put through so much physical exercise, because it again threatens to destroy the logic of the world Pixar has created, even though it’s animated and artificial. At the beginning of the film, Carl is barely able to walk across his front porch even with his cane. Later he drags an entire house with his body, and, as I already said, becomes an action hero. There’s perseverance, and then there’s impossibility. It’s lucky this is animated, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to suspend my disbelief at all.

The really good bits, though, are indeed really good. I’ve already mentioned the opening, but I want to dwell on this further. It’s an incredibly bittersweet montage that genuinely convinces you that these characters have lived out an entire life, rather than it feeling purely like a montage. As well as that, there’s death. Many children were first introduced to death via Disney’s own Bambi, but this is, despite being quieter about it, even more educational (I struggled to think of another word but couldn’t. I apologise). We not only see death as the end to a life not lived as perhaps it was supposed to have been lived, but we also see death as the end to a life that has barely begun. It’s an incredible depth for Pixar to reach, and so subtly too.

And, for all that he may become a prototype hero towards the end, Carl is genuinely an excellent main character. Apart from immediately disproving that stupid notion that children only like watching children on screen, the character of Carl allows Pixar to examine what old age would be like. And this is what Pixar says it’s like: you spend your days doing very little, save for hanging on desperately to everything you once had, be it your house, a dream you had, or a picture hanging on the wall. Your death doesn’t concern you so much as the thought of losing everything that meant something to you while you were alive. I can imagine a child sitting and watching this, and suddenly feeling what it means to be alive, how precious life truly is. Or, they could be laughing at the funny doggies.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. Despite being a bit uneven, the good by far outweighs the bad, and it is, simply, excellent to see Pixar still willing to push envelopes and do things their own way.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars