About Chocolate Parfaits

Shadows and Fog

There is this rule of thumb that I like Woody Allen films with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton the most, followed by the 2000’s Woody Allen movies without any of his favorite actresses, followed by older films without Woody Allen. That leaves only one category of his films, which is those that include him and Mia Farrow. Normally, I rather dislike those, but “Shadows and Fog” presents a rather surprising exception even though it did not reach my favorites.

I didn’t know from the beginning that Woody Allen was the type who pays homages to other movie-makers in his films a lot. It was also no surprise that I came to appreciate his films the most which were mostly his own, like “Manhattan” or “Match Point”. Luckily, I ended up seeing “Wild Strawberries” before “Deconstructing Harry”, “8 1/2” before “Stardust Memories” and, in this case, a few Pabst, Murnau and Lang movies before I saw “Shadows and Fog”. Pip stated quite aptly that an homage can only be a good movie if it can stand on its own feet and be enjoyable to somebody who does not know the original. If my memory doesn’t fail me, Woody Allen’s tendency to “copy” other filmmakers and make references both to himself as well as to others is something critics have disliked about him, saying he isn’t creative enough on his own. As for me, since I always saw the originals first, I must admit that I cannot judge upon these films separated from the homages anymore. I love homages, and considering Woody Allen’s yearly output, I’d say he is amazingly creative.

For me, “Shadows and Fog” was a wonderful nod to 1920’s silent film, and has almost all its elements. A lady in distress, dark streets, a circus, dirty bars, a doctor who can do strange things, prostitutes, killers, a little bit of supernatural phenomena and finally a mob chasing the protagonist at the end of the film. This imagery is so complete that Woody Allen’s character almost feels a little out of place here – his typical exasperated, complaining little man who is cowardly and hypocritical, yet honest about himself. But then again, Mia Farrow is even worse here – who would ever want to believe that somebody would pay 700 dollars to sleep with her? Ignoring the mildly unpleasant clash between the atmosphere of the film, which is almost as intense as in “Stardust Memories” and Woody Allen’s openly sexual trademark humor, this film was mostly an enjoyable story, and not too much more. My favorite was the “I don’t know what I am supposed to do” joke, which I thought was almost as memorable as “the product of my loins” from “Scoop”.

Miller’s Crossing

This film was a little bit of a surprise. When Loris told me about “Miller’s Crossing”, he mentioned it with “Barton Fink” which he really liked and “Fargo” which he didn’t. I have never been a great fan of “Fargo” and thought that “Barton Fink” had quite a few lovely scenes I am still talking about – in fact I just quoted the film today. Nevertheless, “Barton Fink” did not really excite me, so I started “Miller’s Crossing” with relatively low expectations. Boy was I wrong. Usually, films by the Coen brothers are interesting to me on a rather intellectual level, but “Miller’s Crossing” hit a nerve somewhere, and I have no idea where it is.

On Wikipedia, it was stated that the Coens produced “Barton Fink” in a somewhat quick and dirty way because they were stuck on “Miller’s Crossing”. Indeed, the film has an intricate plot, but it’s not like it’s hard to follow it. There is this aspect of this film which I felt a surprising excitement for, yet on the other hand I seem to hit the same writer’s block in the process of reviewing it like the Coens did when they wrote it.

Overcoming aforementioned writer’s block was hard, and I am still not sure whether I did at all. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was mostly mesmerized with the plot. The premise started off somewhat similar to “Blood Simple”, at least when it concerns the quasi-love-triangles, and then proceeded to becoming a complicated fight between the many characters who all have different interests and plans. I can totally see how it can be hard for such a plot to make sense, and I thought it was almost as gripping as “L.A. Confidential”, the film I consider the unattainable benchmark for a great, intricate thriller. Perhaps it was also the form – the meaning of the title “Miller’s Crossing” was only revealed halfway through the film, and it was perhaps the most brilliant scene, thanks to John Turturro’s wimpy sobbing. “Miller’s Crossing” did not have a single extraordinary scene like “No Country for Old Men” did, but the story itself had many more interesting elements. Everything about the film is a double-entendre, and every character has a second face – of course I loved that.

On a side note, I think the femme fatale of the story looks like Hilary Swank, and Hilary Swank probably wins the prize for being the least attractive actress I know. Then again I am kind of used to femme fatales in film noirs who are not attractive in a traditional sense, so Marcia Gay Harden did quite a great job with Verna in my opinion. She seemed believable despite her lack of pleasing character to my eye – that should be a compliment to her acting. Everybody else is pure brilliance. I loved John Turturro as the crying, pleading coward and laughed out loud when he begged for his life for the second time. I thought he was almost better than as Barton Fink even. Maybe the only thing this film lacks is John Goodman, but there was no rule suited for him so it is all forgiven.

I wrote this posting with the attempt of defending the film in my mind, but I found myself incapable of doing so. But all in all, “Miller’s Crossing” was an entertaining Coen for me, with pseudo-philosophical gangsters, a mysterious protagonist, a rather vicious femme fatale and other characters who are all, in their own way, very human. The fact that it is only no.4 in my Coen brothers ranking right now is already an indication that I really, really love their films, almost with no exception.

Walk the Line

Many years ago, my parents got the film with Chinese subtitles and saw it without me. Afterwards they told me that they really loved the film. That was a time when I had no idea who Johnny Cash is and why I should care about him. In fact, the last film I saw about a country singer, namely “Crazy Heart” didn’t impress me all that much. But now that I have been in the city of country, Nashville, and learned a few things about Johnny Cash, I naturally became interested in seeing the film. Incidentally, I also have not seen Altman’s “Nashville”, but maybe I’ll see that one soon. This trip has been adequately accompanied with music and movies, by rewatching “Mystery Train” and seeing “Walk the Line”, and I think that’s a way of travelling I should pursue in the future as well.

As a film, there really is nothing special. Direction is pretty average and the storywriting is typical at best. Even the ending annoyed me a little bit, because parts of the characters were just not that believable. Johnny Cash is something like a legend, and it is obviously impossible to tell his entire story crammed into a film. Nevertheless, I thought the film did a good job, mostly thanks to Joaquin Phoenix’ and Reese Witherspoon’s impressive acting. Especially June’s character came to life here, and Joaquin Phoenix reminded me of Philip Seymour Hoffmann whose marvelous treatment of Truman Capote’s strange way of talking is the benchmark for these kinds of performances.

“Divorce is an abomination” is going to become a winged word for me. The film, despite its blandness, is especially strong in these kinds of elements which are so true to life in their simplicity. I thought it was great to learn about Cash’s life, and the film felt very believable depicting the respective characters. They even turned Ginnifer Goodwin into a southern belle, which I thought is quite surprising after I saw her looking like a silly country bum in Mona Lisa Smile.

I think my parents mostly saw “Walk the Line” as a good love story, or rather as a realistic story about a relationship which had to overcome 13-year-long hurdles for them to finally get together happily. For me, there was the added bonus of all the country music and the Johnny Cash persona. But the film is no more than that, and perhaps that is perfectly enough for a Hollywood love drama/biopic.

The Ides of March

As my 2011 ranking indicates, I actually saw this film last year. “The Ides of March” is one of those films which I wanted to see because people were talking about it, very differently from “Dick” which I saw based on, well, gut feeling. I haven’t seen all that many George Clooney films, and I was curious about his first directional attempt. After all, this is the guy who is soon going to make a movie based on a script by the Coen brothers.

Somehow my feeling that random choices can be better than watching well-known films did not let me down. I liked “The Ides of March” but while I thought it was quite interesting and rather enjoyable, I can’t say that I feel like I learned anything from it, or that I gained all that much in life by having seen the film. Compared to “Dick” which is a film I still think about, “The Ides of March” is a more or less interesting story wrapped in pretty gift paper.

I do think that George Clooney did a good job. There are some details I like, for example how the main character does the same thing at the beginning and at the end of the film, but his voice and his expression have changed, an evidence to how he gradually has stepped into the darkness of politics during the film. I also thought that pacing and dramaturgy were pretty well-handled, and I am pretty much a fan of everybody in the film. I think that George Clooney is good, Ryan Gosling is brilliant, I love love love Philip Seymour Hoffmann and I got a great impression of Marisa Tomei ever since “The Wrestler”. The star in my heart is Rachel Evan Wood, who got a rather bland role here and did the best you could with it. Unfortunately, this stellar cast cannot hide the fact that the film itself fails to contribute, somehow.

Maybe my expectations were just too high, maybe I just want films dabbling in the realms of politics to be more dramatic or more realistic or more sophisticated. It’s not like “The Ides of March” is a bad film, it’s just not a particularly good film and it leaves me wondering why all these great people could not have spent their time working on something greater. So I am looking forward to what George Clooney is going to do next.

Dick

“Movies in Frames” is one of my favorite sources for movies. By just seeing screenshots, I might not get a good idea for what the film is really going to be about, but I got intrigued by something showing up in these screenshots which does not come from somebody else’s opinion. At most, it is somebody else’s random choice to use these screenshots to describe a film, but it is largely the film itself which has drawn me to it. In the case of Dick, it was obviously Michelle Williams’ and Kirsten Dunst’s girlish faces in American flag fashion. Words cannot possibly describe how awesome that looks, only a screenshot can do that.

It turns out that “Dick” was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The political incorrectness of the film seems to touch a nerve both for the audience as well as for the critics. They probably failed to find an audience – cult films only become cult amongst young people but these young people seem to not really care about those old Nixon stories anymore. For the people old enough to remember Nixon, “Dick” is probably too stupid and based on jokes for kids. The result is that this film will probably become forgotten within any audience I can imagine.

Not for me. I was looking forward to seeing “Dick” for a long time, and now that I finally saw it, I thought it was an incredibly enjoyable ride. It might have a bunch of silly jokes, but which film does not? As long as I have had a good laughter, I don’t care. I even thought the film was educational, it prompted me to find out about all those details about Watergate which the film has care- and playfully worked into the story. Detail is something that, in my opinion, this film does marvelously. The two girls might never really gotten much character development, and remain oblivious and ditzy throughout the entire film, but their character seemed wonderfully fleshed out to me. Each girl has their own trashy clothing style, which changes towards a more mature style in the case of Michelle Williams’ character because she, uh, fell for Nixon, and everything down to the design of their rooms is full of color and energy. Personally I think this should be more appreciated.

“Dick” might not be a masterpiece of film-making, and it will never make it into the history books. But it’s a great 2 hours spent on a film which I totally loved.

Observations on film art is normally too sophisticated for me, for the same reason as Jonathan Rosenbaum’s is, because I have barely seen any of those films they are looking at. And for those that I have seen, I never got the impression they were that interesting (“Shutter Island” is a prime example). But they released these incredibly nice looking 10 best movies of past years, all of it being from the silent era.

I dug them up here, followed by the films mentioned in the posts I have actually seen (films in parenthesis are those which are not actually in the top 10s):
1917 – Straight Shooting
1918 – (Die Bergkatze)
1919 – Blind Husbands, (J’accuse – yup DB dislikes it like I do, albeit for somewhat different reasons than me)
1920 – Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
1921

I totally think that they are partial to certain filmmakers (DeMille, Lubitsch, Dreyer) but I suppose there is a good reason for that. Anyways, I want to see much much more.

Ace in the Hole

These days I actually have to write a lot, and when I am not in a writing mood I run havoc. I fear that it shows in the e-mails I wrote in the recent past, but oh well, such is life. Watching movies is different from writing about them though, so the Hanukkah candles are still in full progression.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about “Ace in the Hole”. On the one hand, this is totally not your typical Wilder movie. It is not as funny but at the same time also less dramatic than “Double Indemnity” or “Sunset Boulevard”. I wouldn’t even say the story is bad, but the whole film just feels less rounded than his others. Obviously every character in the film is questionable, and ultimately the film leaves you with a rather depressed feeling, which is totally not Wilder’s forte. I have to admit I didn’t quite enjoy seeing the film.

At the same time, “Ace in the Hole” also has no reason to hide. Some of the criticism against the film makes me rage and heightens my desire to defend the movie. I have to quote this one: “nothing more than a brazen, uncalled-for slap in the face of two respected and frequently effective American institutions – democratic government and the free press”. HAHAHA. I don’t know what I have more disdain for – the “democratic” American government or the “free” press. “Ace in the Hole” is depicting both in a quite a witty manner. I can’t believe somebody has ever gotten the Pulitzer prize for covering the event of some dude being trapped in a cave – how worthless are journalism prizes really? (This might apply to almost everything else, but I feel like in the case of literature/journalism it’s extremely bad.) “Ace in the Hole” mirrors certain rotten aspects of society in a way films rarely do, and I have to give it that.

Normally I’d say this is a film to see if you are a Wilder fan. In this case I don’t think that necessarily applies – this is nothing like “Some like it hot”. But it’s a solid film which turns an acceptable plot into something that is almost educational than just a story.

Trading Places

I consider the possibility that some John Landis movies could potentially be bad (though the premise to “Coming to America” sounds pretty awesome), considering how incredibly pointless his movies are. Some of those films are probably stupid and badly written, and consequently no fun at all. But right now, I have no idea whether this is the case because both “Blues Brothers” and “Trading Places” were awesome.

As far as I remember, my comment on “Blues Brothers” was pretty short, and so will be the posting on “Trading Places”. While a short blog posting is typically an indication for a bad movie, in this case it just means that “Trading Places” is a film you have to see, not really write about. The film is fast and funny, and had an amazing cast. But where is the point in detailing out how Aykroyd works perfectly as likable elitist schmuck and Eddie Murphy as random dude turned likable elitist schmuck? The film shows you everything you could want to see about the film. Everything else (like the comparison to Figaro using Mozart’s overture) can be found on Wikipedia. “Trading Places” scratches some socio-economical themes, but I wouldn’t take them too seriously – most of all, this is a light-hearted comedy. All I could add is that this is probably one of Jamie Lee Curtis’ most likable roles, and I was incredibly happy to see Ralph Bellamy (an old favorite) and Don Ameche paired together as evil amusing brothers. Just like “Blues Brothers”, this is an impressive feel good movie, the kind of thing I would suggest to be watched at the PIFF.

It is not too surprising that the Hanukkah movies this year have all been comedies so far, and they are all the laughing out loud types too. I won’t be able to keep that up, but so far it has been a great ride. I have seen quite a few great movies lately, but “Trading Places” is probably something like a personal favorite.