Birdman

"I just kept thinking, 'That's Mr. Mom, man!'" -Jon

This is a story about the internal dialog/struggles/petty drama of an actor, self-absorbed and exhausting to watch battle his inner-demons but...

...this guy's inner demons include not just a failed marriage, dried up career, mountains of self-doubt, and a just-out-of-rehab daughter (though, those are there); this guys biggest demon is a Birdman character he played 20 years ago...and some some magical realism...and some incredible meta-dialog wrap-around storyline gymnastics. I was engrossed in it from the first scene to the last.

Like all of director Alejandro González Iñárritu's work, this is painstaking, tense and beautiful. There are moments of comic relief, but always at the expense of someone. 

The camera work is fantastic...edited and cut as if it were one continuous shot (almost) which gives it a cinéma vérité look and feel (although this is certainly not), which is also a nod to how the play unfolds within the movie as real-life bashes its way onto the stage and stretching the boundaries of the fourth wall become the key to resolution of the story.

I'd love to talk to a theater person about this movie...it's been a LONG time since I was on the stage or behind it and I think that would add another dimension all together.

Michael Keaton is really, really good in this.  

Inherent Vice

Ahhhhh crap.  I fell off the wagon so quickly.  I vow to do better and write these damn  things up before I forget if I liked them or not.

So!  A couple things I loved about this:  Its very gritty /over-exposed look were super-reminiscent of late 60's early 70's sunbaked (baked) Southern California.  The costumes, the telephone, the cars...all spot on as P.T. Anderson can do. 

It was laugh-out-loud funny at times and had some great twists and surprises.

Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix were brilliant together in Walk the Line, so it was fun seeing them here too.

There is something Big Lebowski-ish and quotable in this missing person romp.  It's LA, it's a decade piece, it has fantastic characters (Martin Short absolutely steals the show about 2/3rds of the way in).

I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over.

Citizenfour

"I dunno" I shrugged at Jon. "Aren't these kinds of things more your thing?"  I was worried that I would need to know more about Edward Snowden than I did.  Not wanting the subtleties of the film (or even the greater meanings) to be lost on me because I don't read news with any regularity anymore. I was wrong. This movie was totally my thing.  It was exciting. Tense. Human. It made me mad. It made me appreciate that there are people in this world who will act when they see something that is wrong. It made me respect Snowden for his smarts and bravado and for choosing the right journalists to tell his story. 

Snowden was a high level computer engineer, contracted at the NSA, who had access to any level of classified of data. He wrote code and managed systems on which metadata is being captured on everyone (literally) and cataloged in searchable ways.  He knew this was wrong so he decided to reach out to two journalists who he knew would respect the story and its weight and told them what he knew and shared documents with them. The film unfolds mainly over a week or so and follows journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras as they meet with Snowden to hear what he has to say in a Hong Kong hotel room. It is informative and revealing, emotional and haunting.  

What I liked most about this documentary are the times that you see the person behind the story...Snowden's nervous tics and awkward phone conversations with the hotel staff . The long, steady shots of him thinking, looking out the hotel window or fussing with his hair. He's a person. You can feel his resolve even when he is clearly uncertain about what comes next.

The story is still unfolding and, truthfully, I felt helpless when the movie ended. We are still being listened to and watched. Drones, cell phones, search engines - the tools are in the hands of the watchers. It feels like it's too late.

Back in the Saddle!

After a five year hiatus, I am firing up the movieblog again!  I've got an unofficial goal of 26 movies in the theater this year.  Wish me luck!

Politist, adj. (Police, Adjective.)

I loved this movie. However, I have to admit that I fell asleep a couple times in the beginning, but it wasn't out of boredom or not wanting to see it. I am just freaking exhausted these days.

This film shouldn't be slept through, though. In my defense, the tempo of the first half is very slow and quiet. We watch as Dragos Bucur (of The Paper will be Blue "fame") goes about his slow, quiet life as a police officer on a case.

Dialog and action increase as we get a peek into his relationship with his new wife, who is a school teacher. We start to understand that he doesn't believe in what he is doing and, indeed is unclear on his role as police officer in a case such as the one he is working on.

Lots of great word play and discussion of words and metaphors, meanings of words and why we use them as symbols and rely on them to encompass ideas.

Engaging and well-acted. Every time I see a Romanian film, I am reminded how much I like Romanian cinema.

Learned: there is a sport called, "foot tennis" which is like soccer and tennis combined.

Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces)

Really enjoyed this as I do Almodóvar in general. He has this great way of telling engaging, unique stories purely though his fairly normal characters. His muse, Penelope Cruz, is pitch perfect as usual.

These are everyday people in their everyday lives and extraordinary things happen. Sometimes I feel like there are Almodóvar films happening all around us all, all the time.

After watching this I decided that Almodóvar is a version of Woody Allen. A gay, Spanish, Woody Allen.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Terry Gilliam has made some fantastic and extraordinary films - like this and this and this. The Imaginarium, isn't in the league of those, but it's close - it wants to be and I want it to be, but it's not.

The things I loved:
*Tom Waits, first and foremost, plays the perfect devil. He is spectacular and I was giddy with....giddiness?...whatever, so psyched whenever he was on screen.
*The four actors playing the role of Tony, I think worked great and added a bonus surreality to the movie that was fun and unexpected (even though I had read that it was coming.)
*The costumes, the props and the sets - even the CGI (is that what that is called?) stuff which I tend not to like inside the imaginarium - were gorgeous.

The things I didn't love: ...are harder to put into words.

*I was left feeling a little overworked to sort out all the plots at the end. I think things tied up clumsily and forgettably. I think Gilliam is capable of better and I wanted extraordinary.

*The premise of the film requires (as Gilliam often does) a HUGE amount just letting go and enjoying what's happening without worrying over the details. I am happy to do that, for sure, but it would be a better movie if Gilliam worked on those details and little more.

*Lily Cole's tiny chin made me nervous.

And last but not least - for the just effin' weird file: At one point in the Imaginarium, Heath Ledger's character sees a crying child on the side of a river and wonders aloud if this is where he must chose between good and evil. In response, Lily Cole's character, with whom we sympathize, exclaims, "That's not a choice, it's a child!" I audibly gasped and was distracted by it for the rest of the film. WTF? Is Gilliam anti-abortion?

I'm giving it a 3.5 out of 5 stars rating - go see it, but know that Gilliam could have (and has!) done better.

Our (pathetic) 2009 movie list

The Wrestler (3 stars)
Milk (4 stars)
Je suis Pierre Riviere (1 star? I fell asleep)
Gomorrah (2.5 stars)
Limits of Control (3 stars)
Tokyo! (3 stars)
Home (4 stars)
In the Loop (1 star)
Moon (4 stars)
Cold Souls (1.5 stars)
Informant! (3.5 stars)
Precious (2.5 stars)
The Road (4 stars)
A Serious Man (4 stars)
Where the Wild Things Are (2.5 stars)

Well, there you have it. I might have missed a few, but I stopped keeping my ticket stubs because I wasn't updating the blog at all. We averaged 1.2 movies a month, and my ratings averaged about 3 stars, which doesn't seem very good when you consider how many 4 stars ratings are up there. I put my top 5 in bold.

Here's to more movies in 2010.

2009 was not my movie year

I can't believe I haven't updated this since February. Actually, I can. I have a home business, a part time job and an 18 month old. So those are my excuses.

I won't even attempt to go back and write reviews for the movies we have seen in the theater this year, but I will make a list (maybe with star-ratings?) so that we can at least remember what we saw...

...this is pathetic. Here's to a more diligent movie blogging 2010!

The list will be posted next week.

I, Pierre Rivière, Having Butchered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother…

I have no place reviewing this film. I fell asleep. It wasn't that it was bad. I am just a sleep-deprived mom. The part I saw was tres francais and a little bit weird. Did I mention it was long? And dark and warm in the theater? And there was no baby crying or wanting to nurse? Pure heaven.

The Wrestler

I so appreciated that this movie didn't do anything it wasn't meant to do. It was just the right amounts of funny and sweet and weird and gross. Nothing drastic or shocking happens, it doesn't wrap things in a pretty bow, but it was touching and realistic. Micky Roarke is pretty incredible, albeit pretty horrific to look at. I think the surprise here is Marisa Tomei, who delivers an amazing performance for which she is nominated for an Oscar. (I CANNOT believe she is 43!)

Milk

I knew a little bit about Harvey Milk from my Queer Studies class at UC Santa Cruz. It certainly wasn't necessary to know anything about him to thoroughly enjoy this sad, inspiring biopic. Sean Penn, who does very little that I enjoy (except this and this) (and I didn't realize he did this, but I liked it a lot too), was phenomenal. Completely great. I loved the 70's vibe that Van Sant captured and I feel like Van Sant's approach to this movie was so much more accessible than most of his other movies, many of which I really enjoy, but I respect that he wanted this to reach more people. Nicely done.

Our 2008 Movie List

4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days)
A Casa de Alice (Alice's House)
Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias, O (The Year my Parents Went on Vacation)
Bab'Aziz
Be Kind Rewind
Beed-e majnoon (The Willow Tree)
Before the Rains
Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness
Burn After Reading
Cassandra's Dream
Chicago 10
Cidade dos Homens (City of Men)
Du Levande (You, the Living)
El Orfanto (The Orphanage)
Encounters at the End of the World
The Fall
Frozen River
Irina Palm
It's Fine! Everything is Fine
Man on Wire
Military Intelligence and You
Mio fratello è figlio unico (My Brother is an Only...
Mister Lonely
Monster Camp
OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies
Paranoid Park
Persepolis
Roman de gare
Sukkar banat (Caramel)
Surfwise
Synecdoche
There Will Be Blood
Va, vis et deviens (Live and Become)
The Visitor
Voyage du ballon rouge, Le (The Flight of the Red Balloon)
The Wackness
Young at Heart

Synecdoche

This movie was amazing...weird and convoluted and wonderful. And I saw it 3 months ago...so I have nothing valuable to add to anything that has been written here or here or here. I don't agree with all these reviews, but they are all good ones to read.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is an amazing actor.

I could talk about what happens in the film, but I have no idea what really happened.

This might have been the last movie we saw in 2008. I'm not sure which is more sad: the fact it might have been the last 2008 movie or the fact that I can't remember if it is...either way it is the baby's fault.

Burn After Reading

I think this is the Coen brothers' funniest since Lebowski. They are such amazing crafters of plot and dialog.

I saw this 4 months ago and am just posting about it now so I don't remember what else I was going to say

...ugh. Motherhood ate my blog.

I really liked this film and want to see it again.

Monster Camp

We watch as adults (mostly) play live-action role playing games and talk about how it is more an important part of their lives than all that reality stuff.

The filmakers appeared to be trying to capture these folks earnestly, but it amounts to the same -- they could have been trying to point their fingers and laugh.

I wished it was less of a freakshow and more of a comedy, but I guess in the end, people dressed up as butterfly warriors and cat-elfs banging each other with padded sticks and yelling out hit point losses is just not all that entertaining afterall.

Clunky as a documentary but it does have some very funny moments and it wasn't as bad as I am making it sound.

Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog is becoming my new hero. (As an aside, the trivia in his bio on IMDB is fascinating!)

Grizzly Man was weird and funny and tragic. He showed up in Mister Lonely for a bizarre small role, and now this.

Herzog sets out with his camera to find out about the people who go to Antarctica to work...it turns out there is some kind of weirdo magnet down there and pretty much all he had to do was turn the camera on and let it roll, but the results are stunning and not without the wonderful Herzog charm, brought to you in long still shots, hilarious overdubs and scenes of scientists laying face-down on the ice listening to seals.

From fork-lift driving philosophers to electric guitar playing scientists to a man who keeps a backpack packed at all times with everything he would need to pick up and go - including a kayak(!), the motley crew he encounters at the end of the world is quite entertaining, but the film is much more than that. It is gorgeous and sad and good in that way that keeps coming back to you for days after you've watched it.

The Wackness

I want to put on the record that this is the first movie we saw after Tilia was born.

It made me feel old.

Nothing more than a teen love story where the guy gets his heart broken, but the twist is that he sells pot out of an ice cream trolley. A lot of pot. And they show him having sex...imagine that in Ferris Bueller or The Breakfast Club.

My oh my how times have changed.

And yet, they haven't -- this, like the John Hughes movies of my time, was very conscious of its tragically hip self and as such shouldn't be expected to be any more than a Pretty in Pink for the Y Generation as they graduate from high school.

The main character's teacher (following the Hughes narrative again, all Hughes movies also had a wise teacher character) is played by Ben Kingsley who was amazing. He can play any character in the world masterfully. He made/saved this movie for me.

Speaking of Ferris Bueller -- Josh Peck who plays the main character kept looking so much like Alan Ruck who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, that I was convinced it was his son! Figuring out that that was possible made me really start feeling old. A quick IMDB search proved that they don't look anything like each other -- age takes its toll on the mind.

Frozen River

We picked this movie out of the SIFF lineup because it was on a day and time that we had free. This is not a good reason to see a movie...or is it? We knew very little going in, and were pleasantly surprised....sort of.

At first, I was completely put off by the dialog and storyline. It felt forced and contrived. But after about 30 minutes, I began to see another side of it: a creative tale of two women helping each other. Women doing what needs to be done to care for their children. Above all, I think the location was the best character in this film...bleak and cold and frustrating -- the environment really added to the feeling of hopelessness and desperation.

I wouldn't recommend this movie to everyone, but as a writing and directing debut it was solid and captivating.

Man on Wire

I was sure we were watching a mockumentary for most of this movie...there were such wonderfully silly moments that I would have bet money they were staged and I watched in delighted disbelief. Later, when I realized the events in the film were real, I felt these great touches of true whimsy lightened the mood in just the right way.

This is an inspirational and shocking and silly film and utterly delightful.