Listening Post - Late October/Early November

Still trying to get caught up with all the new releases before attempting to assemble my end of the year best-of.

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Brightblack Morning Light - Motion to Rejoin
Ray Lamontagne - Gossip In the Grain
Racheal Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Blitzen Trapper - Furr

La Chinoise

La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) [7]

Not as radical in form as Weekend, La Chinoise does share the same radical political sensibility that defines Godard's work of the late 60s. Both as an examination and critique of the Maoist influenced left in France, the is certainly stamped in its place and time. That doesn't mean it's an excruciating bore to watch; in fact, it was a much more enjoyable film than I imagined. The film centers on a group of student radicals, left alone in a Paris apartment for the summer, as they talk and plan revolution. There's a constant argument about the "true communists", the Maoists and Soviet revisionists. It boils down to a lot of bluster and very little action, which could be take as a dig against the radical movement, but I really don't believe it is. The group decides to attempt to shut down the universities by a campaign of fear and bombing. This leads to a fantastic scene with one of the students and her professor, on a train, discussing the merits of the plot. The film ends with the summer gone, parents back, and nothing accomplished. While Godard does send up some of the pompous navel-gazing done that characterizes the left, he and the film seem more emboldened by the student's earnest thoughts and actions more than trying to demean it. He uses this fixed place, the confined walls of the apartment, to concentrate on the arguments and dissection of Maoist ideas and to a more general extent, the ideas of the radical Left in general. It could have been nothing more than some actors shouting political rhetoric, but Gordard elevates it by breaking down form to an extent. Through vignettes, music, and breaking down the forth wall, the film mixes itself up enough not to make just a recital of works. I happened to like the use of color in the film, a lot of contrast of stark white and red. While I'm sure a lot of people will find the film stuck in its place in time, I happen to see it as an interesting document in history.

Standard Operating Procedure/Taxi to the Dark Side

Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, 2008) [5]/Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007) [6]

Both of these documentaries deal with the issue of interrogation and torture in regards to the War on Terror with varying degrees of effectiveness. Morris's film leaves some serious questions left hanging in the wind and Gibney's film needs to focus.

Standard Operating Procedure deals exclusively with the scandal that erupted out of Abu Gharaib and the now famous pictures that leaked out. Morris employs his trademark style and questions those directly involved in the situations involved in the pictures. The problem is that Morris doesn't get any deeper than where the situation already is. Everyone involved says they were just following orders but the film never manages to pinpoint the culprits beyond the low ranking MPs in the pictures. What did we learn from this? That Lyndie England is a country bumpkin? That her rationale was she was in love with a man who appears to be a borderline sadist seems like the perfect explanation. The real problem hinges on Sabrina Harman, who is meant to be the voice of reason in Morris's construction. That Harman had private misgiving about the prisoner abuse but never raised her voice and was the main photographer/documenter of the instances of abuse don't add up to what Morris wants us to believe. Sure, what happened at Abu Gharaib was beyond just a bunch of "schmuck MPs" acting foolishly but by never being an attack dog, Morris slips off the high ground and ultimately, SOP holds no one sufficiently accountable.

While Taxi to the Dark Side definitely has more partisan bite in it, it suffers from a lack of focus that definitely lessens the blow it should have had. Gibney uses the instance of a Afghani taxi driver imprisoned and ultimately murdered in U.S. military custody as a springboard to venture in the Abu Gharaib mess and the overall issue of "enhanced interrigation techniques." If Gibney would just stick to the story of Dilawar, the cab driver and how the military's own death certificate listed his death as murder, and stuck to it, it would be much more effective. Instead, he uses that one scenario to make a case against the entire system the U.S. has set up in this war on terror when this specific case make all his points for him. But at least unlike Morris, he lets his partisan outrage show, something that SOP tries all too hard to supress. While not perfect, at least these films push the issue of the Bush Administration's gross overstepping of the law and morality in general in their conduct of these wars.

Wings of Desire

Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) [8]

Wings of Desire is, more than anything else, a love letter to the city of Berlin. For a city that has had much made of it through cinema (Berlin: Symphony of a City, Berlin Alexanderplatz), Wenders still manages to find unique and visually arresting images of Berlin on the verge of reunification. There really is no plot to speak of as the film follows the path of two angels as they move about the people and the city. It is an ideal premise to allow a meditation on the city and its inhabitants, as the is able to weave in and out of people's minds and thoughts. It creates a Berlin as these angels see it, but it is also able to create an incredibly poetic, lyrical film. The black and white cinematography is terrific, and the looming crane shots, obviously from the angel's point of view create a very fluid, meandering pace to the film. Eventually, one of the angels (played by Bruno Ganz) falls in love with a trapeze artist and yearns to become human. As the film progresses into the angel's transformation, it looses a little bit of its luster. Essentially, when story and plot progression become too up front in the film, it looses the poetic qualities that make the film what it is. Add to that the unexplainable Peter Falk scenes and Wings of Desire falls a bit out of rhythm. Yet despite any issues the latter part of the film raise, it never fully takes the viewer completely out of the film. It's too good of a film overall not to appreciate what Wenders wanted to say about Berlin.

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008) [6]

Be Kind Rewind certainly is whimsical and slight on its appearance but it does go beyond its somewhat goofy premise to attempt to say something about the movies and what they mean to us. That is falls a little short is a summation for the film as a whole. Jack Black and Mos Def play two guys who work/hang around a thrift and video store on a corner in Passaic, New Jersey. After becoming magnetized, Jerry (Black) accidentally erases the information off of all the tapes in the store. The two's plan to remedy the situation is to recreate films such as Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2 among others using an old VHS camcorder. Jerry and Mike's versions somehow become favorites in the neighborhood, and the store has a new way to attempt to ward off gentrifying developers. Gondry is one of the few people that could take this offbeat, halfway believable idea and at least make it passable. His whimsical nature (see The Science of Sleep) make what's going on here believable and endearing. There's something in these crummy VHS re-creations that is oddly appealing. It has a certain pure joy of cinema; that it's not really about how a film looks, it's more about what's behind it. It's this idea that cinema is important in the memories it makes in our minds. It's not that important if Mike and Jerry get the story right; what's more important, for the film and Gondry, is the DIY aesthetic and the personal experience of it. It doesn't hurt that there are some genuinely funny moments that come out of those recreations either. The end of the film gets a little bogged down by being too Capraesque and a Fats Waller subplot/film that while impressive, is a little too disjointed from the rest of the film. The film stretches its theme of 'film as interpretation of memories' a bit too much at the end. And yet, it still manages to have some endearing qualities out of ideas that seem slight.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller, 2008) [5]

The Apatow factory seems to be cranking out the same movie over and over again and this is the point where it starts to get a little old. Once again, another arrested development man-child is the focus of a story that goes for ribald humor but also has a heart of gold. The problem with this film is that is does nothing to make it any better or different than The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, or Superbad. Nor is it consistently funnier than any of those. Jason Segel, who also wrote the screenplay, play Peter, the above mentioned man-child. Peter, heartbroken over his girlfriend (played flatly by Kristen Bell) decides to take a vacation to Hawaii only to find Sarah there with her new Lothario boyfriend, played by Russell Brand. Peter is the main problem of the film because his constant whining, crying, and neediness are a little pathetic. But then again, Segel is playing off the pathetic nature of the character for laughs, using embarrassment as the main form of humor. Say what you will about the other Apatow films but the main characters of those other films were never there to be laughed at. Segel tempers this by making Peter harmless and ultimately sympathetic, but to me, it's still a character that feels lazy and cheap in a lot of ways. The plot of the film is never really that important as it bounces from one situation to the next, getting enough laughs out of it to make it passable. Peter becomes involved with another girl, a receptionist at the hotel, played by Mila Kunis about as forgettable as Bell plays Sarah Marshall. (It's no surprise that all these Apatow films have women's roles as essentially filler). The only character that makes a somewhat memorable performance is Brand, mostly because he's doing what amounts to his stand up act. Like any Apatow film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is basically harmless but I think it's time for these guys to slow down a little bit or else any positives of these films will be washed away by the same tired jokes and characters.

Plus, stop giving Jonah Hill a reason to be in movies. The guy's not funny. At all. Period.

Amandla

Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (Lee Hirsch, 2003) [4]

If this wasn't so scatter shot, it might have actually made a pretty interesting documentary. Instead, its lack of focus makes it a complete disappointment. In attempting to tell the story of how song helped in the anti-apartheid movement, Hirsch creates a film that has no real focal point and instead it drifts from idea to idea and never gives enough information from said ideas. The problem isn't in the ideas themselves; it's in the execution, or lack thereof that hampers the film. The main idea here, that since a majority of black South Africans could not read or write, that song became the main way to get the ideas of the protest movement heard and understood, is rock solid. That the film only gives cursory glimpses into the larger sociological impacts of Apartheid is a big let down to me. Instead, a lot of time is spent of people talking or performing after the fact. The film would have been much more effective if historical footage would have been used and explained more. The film's strongest moments are in fact those times. While it no doubt has good intentions, Amandla! is far from a perfect document on a story that could be better told.

Snow Angels

Snow Angels (David Gordon Green, 2008) [9]
As a director, David Gordon Green has always been more about images and atmosphere than story. Snow Angels is really the first film of his that put story and characters in the forefront, and it works. What could have easily teetered into overblown melodrama or a disjointed mess, with Green's direction becomes a dark yet captivating film. The film tells two story lines, one of a teenage boy's (Michael Angaran0) family and love life, the other of his former babysitter (Kate Beckinsdale) and her estranged husband (Sam Rockwell). The two plots converge with a tragic event that propel the film to an even more tragic end. This really is a character drama and the performances, especially those of Beckinsdale and Rockwell, are exceptional. They're both deeply flawed characters, likable on one level, unlikeable on another. They could have very easily slipped into over the top performances but Green and his actors know how to handle the material. This focus on story and character doesn't repress the atmospheric touches of the film, as they help to underline each character and their emotional impact to the viewer. Some could say the story lines as too disjointed but I don't think that's really important in the overall scheme of the film. They are used to paint a broader picture, not just of the lives of these characters but as a mood for the film. The film's visual touch accents the bleak nature of it by capturing the nuances of the winter setting. Green does everything right in getting the best out of the actors' performances and his stylistic touches create a cold, dreary setting that gets the most emotional impact out of the story.

The Band's Visit

The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2007) [7]

What could have very easily been a one-joke premise film, The Band's Visit is injected with enough filmmaking skill and understanding of character to actually make it funny, endearing, and smart. It would have been all too easy to milk the overall premise of the film, an Egyptian Police band becoming stranded in the Israeli hinterlands, into a film with a lot of cheap fish-out-of-water jokes. Or it easily could have boiled down to simplified ideas about Arabs and Israelis. Instead, Kolirin goes beyond the surface and uses the stranding of the band to get deep into his characters. There isn't much political hand wringing and no greater social message Kolirin is trying to squeeze out of the situation and his characters. He tells the story of his characters regardless of who they are, and the film works because of it. What comes out of it is a story of loneliness, of two characters, the uptight band conductor (Sasson Gabai) and a Israeli restaurant owner (Ronit Elkabetz) who find camaraderie in their shared experiences. There are some peripheral story lines but none really capture the mood of the film and what it's trying to say more than the interaction of these two. It all comes across as not trying to say too much about larger issues but instead uses the personal story to create sympathetic characters. The film, shot in a static, deadpan way, helps accent the stark emptiness of the setting, which in turn emphasizes the traits of the two main characters. It all creates a film that works in not taking itself that serious but still saying something about its characters.

Listening Post - September 2008

This past Tuesday saw a huge amount of intriguing new releases but since I haven't been able to hear all of them yet, I feel I should get what I have been listening to out of the way.

The Walkmen - You & Me
Okkervil River - The Stand Ins
Loudon Wainwright III - Recovery
The Broken West - Now or Heaven

Coming Home

Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978) [8]

By eschewing a heavily polemic view of the Vietnam era, and instead focusing on a love story, Coming Home is a film that is much more thoughtful and accessible than if you were to look who made it. It's a thoughtful, earnest film that's never preachy and while it doesn't want to tell you how to think, it really reinforces that the conflict in Vietnam hurt more than it helped. Jane Fonda plays Sally Hyde, a wife of a Marine captain (Bruce Dern) that decides to volunteer at a VA hospital in her husband's absence. She meets Luke (Jon Voight), a former high school classmate and veteran who became a paraplegic. The two form a romantic relationship as both Sally and Luke have to come to terms with how the war is/has changed them. Sally, always the obedient wife in the shadows, really comes to grips with how many men are coming back from the war scarred, physically and psychologically. Luke has to adjust to a world where everyone is trying their best to ignore that a war even happened. Looking back on this and knowing Fonda and some of the other actors' political history, the film is remarkably rational and thoughtful. Even though the war may have been wrong, the film still shows compassion for those who fought it. Conservatives may not agree but their idea of a accurate portrayal of Vietnam would be The Green Berets. A lot of credit has to go to Hal Ashby to recognize that the personal story in these characters still takes precedent over making a political point. The film is an anti-war movie but it attempts to address and understand veteran's issues that not many at the time would want to hear about. Ashby knows how to get the best out of the actors, to make them well thought out people with earned problems and emotions rather than a series of symbols. It leads to an ending that is incredibly effective as well as a right way to end. While it has no battle sequences or military analysis, Coming Home is still one of the more honest portrayals of the Vietnam era put on film.

The Last Detail

The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973) [6]

The Last Detail is an alright film, but I find nothing about it that's very exceptional. It's not flashy stylistically, and Ashby gives his actors plenty of room to go where they want to go; while normally positives in Ashby's work, the film seems slight. The film feels to go along at one steady pace the entire time, never ratcheting or relieving the tone of it. It makes sense to be this way, since the film is documenting the mundane, strangling existence of Navy life but it doesn't resonate with me for whatever reason. Jack Nicholson and Otis Young play two Navy lifers assigned a duty to transport a young sailor (Randy Quaid) to Portsmouth Naval Prison. They find out Meadows (Quaid) is going to do 8 years for stealing a collection box for a Polio charity. That crime is where the film takes an anti-authoritarian voice as the trio drink it up and try to give Meadows some fun before his imprisonment. Nicholson plays the type of character that screams 'Jack Nicholson character' and that may be an unintentional consequence of history seeing the film thirty-five years later. Quaid is good at playing a green young man that ended up in a bad situation. The real saving factor of the film is Robert Towne's script. It's profanity and moments of freewheeling anarchy add an anti-authoritarian undertone to the film. All three characters bristle at some of the domineering aspects of being in the Navy. The one thing that the film does recognize is that as much as these characters have their problems with Navy life, there's no way they can really fight it. The really do have no where else to go. Perhaps that's what makes The Last Detail a little disappointing. No matter how much you think or want these characters to do something, to show they wont take this drudgery, they are completely incapable.

Putney Swope

Putney Swope (Robert Downey, 1969) [5]

Putney Swope certainly hasn't aged that well and I'm never quite sure how effective a piece of satire it really was to begin with. There are moments in the film's take no prisoners approach that work successfully, most notably the advertising sequences, but the larger issue of race and late 60s radicalism don't feel that fleshed out and are there to be taken advantage because they can. Downey may get some credit for addressing the issue at the time but his execution, while barbed, comes off as too superficial and amateurish to be called great satire. Some of this can't be faulted too much because the film is a low budget indie but the execution leaves something to be desired. The story centers on the title character, the token black man at an advertising agency. When the president of the agency dies, and with the other board members unable to vote for themselves, Swope accidentally gets voted in because the others think that no one else will vote him in. Swope proceeds to fire everyone except one token white and replace the board with black radicals. Swope vows a new form of advertising, to get truth and soul out. This is where we get the commercials featuring an orgy used to sell airlines and a limbless man praising an insurance company. The faux ads are by far the cleverest satire in the film, as the stiff and unoriginal portrayal of Swope and his radical counterparts falls flat. Swope eventually becomes no better than the men he replaced, being consumed with the greed and hubris that come with his "remarkable" ideas. That Swope's comeuppance is never really earned fuels the uneven nature of the film.

The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2008) [6]

When I was in film school, one of my professors was the noted experimental filmmaker Martin Arnold, who was from Austria. He once told a story that Austrian feature filmmaking was one of the most incompetent and awful bodies of cinema in the world. That really has nothing to do with The Counterfeiters but the thought ran through my mind the entire time watching this and perhaps clouding my judgement about this. After all, this was the first Austrian film to win a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, which says something about Arnold's theory. Ruzowitzky creates a fast-paced, tightly constructed film that unfortunately, doesn't do anything film wise or plot wise to make it rise above "been there, seen that" material in regards to Holocaust material. The only difference here is the story, based on Operation Bernhard, a operation by the Nazis using Jewish prisoners to counterfeit British and American currency to help fund their last ditch efforts at the end of WWII. The film is filtered through the character of Sally (Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter and Jew brought to the operation to be the quality control man. Once the Sally the character is established, a lot of what happens next is to be expected. We get the moral quandaries of the ones working on the project, spared by their skills while others are dying among them. There's the archetypal martyr character, determined to let principle stand above all else. There's also the ambiguous nature of the SS man in charge of the camp (played with pitch perfect smarm and sleaze by Devid Striesow), more concerned with his own personal well-being than any ideology. While it all makes for an intriguing story, the film still falls short in being great. Ruzowitzky handles the material enough to make it work, but his direction falls into too may telegraphed shots and scenes. The film never raises itself above the middlebrow standard of films that usually win the Foreign Language Oscar. Despite its taut nature, The Counterfeiters still has a way making me feel less than enthused about it.

3 Marx Brothers Films

Prolonged sickness has put me behind on my viewing and writing. These Marx Brothers films have been gestating for a while but am now just getting out.

The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey & Joseph Santley, 1929)/A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)/A Day at the Races (Sam Wood, 1937) [4]/[7]/[6]

The only other Marx Brothers film I had seen up until these three was Duck Soup, the critical pinnacle of their film career but a film also notable for being a commercial flop. That film is almost straight front to back comic anarchy, with jokes and gags flying haphazardly all over. The three film being reviewed here all pale in comparison because there are too many elements present in them that take away that anarchistic spirit or take the brothers out of certain films completely. It may have been what audiences at the time would have wanted to see but it seen through these eyes, almost pointless in its misdirection.

The Cocoanuts is pretty much a complete mess with the exception of a couple of scenes involving Groucho and Chico. The film is just poorly structured with too many pointless, overlong musical numbers that have not much to do with the film's plot. Granted that plot has not a lot to do with any Marx Brothers film, but this one is even more frivolous than most. The transfer leaves a lot to be desired in spots but that's a bit of nitpicking. This one does deserve a pass because it was the brothers' first film.

After the commercial flop of Duck Soup, the brothers headed to MGM and made their two most commercially successful films, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. While the improvement in production values is certainly a plus, once again the ability of pointless musical numbers to suck the life out of the film at moments is no less present here. A Night at the Opera is a little bit better overall, mostly because it can have these musical moments a bit more plausible. Each film has its share of memorable scenes and gags but I feel that A Day at the Races is a bit better in terms of Groucho's one-liners and scenes that go closer to careening out of control. It would have been the better film except that it has an inexplicable, racially insensitive and stereotyping musical number with African-Americans that is wholly unnecessary.

All in all, you don't go to Marx Brothers films looking for classic cinema. What these films offer are moments of comic brilliance and that's all you can really ask out of comedy: to give you a laugh for that brief moment. The Marx brothers' film history is cemented not in the overall quality of their work but in moments of inspired comic anarchy.

Chicago 10

Chicago 10 (Brett Morgan, 2008) [6]

Morgan's documentary takes footage of the chaos at the1968 Democratic Convention and the subsequent trial of those accused of inciting the riots and violence with the hopes of enlivening history. In theory it's all well and good and I can see Morgan using the trial of these radicals in hopes of inspiring today's younger generation. The problem for me is he creates a film that works in its standard mode but trivializes the material (the trial) that he updates. I see this as more of a personal view, since I'm one who has had nothing but positive reviews for the Ken Burns, stodgy and historically reverential. You can't blame Morgan for at least trying, but his idea creates two distinct elements that don't quite work in harmony. If this was a film using solely found footage, it would be a very good one and it already does most of the work of the film. It lays out what was happening in Chicago in August 1968, who was there, who led the radical protests, and what ultimately happened. What the film lays out is that Mayor Daley and his police force set up a quasi police state and treated the protesters in a way that a confrontation was inevitable. That the footage shows that the police were the ones who started the violence only re-inforce Daley's culpability. All of it is highly fascinating in its own regard and could stand alone (just don't try to use Eminem to make it feel up to date). Morgan then tacks on the trial of those the government accused of inciting those riots, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale among them. Since no footage of the trial exists, Morgan takes transcripts and re-creates the events with rotoscope animation. I've never been a fan of rotoscoping to begin with so visually, it plays out in is swirling miasma. The bigger problem is that Morgan doesn't know how to treat the trial. It plays out as a Yippie exercise, politics as theatre, no doubt helped by Hoffman and Rubin's presence. There is a point that the trial itself was a kind of absurd theatre, but it was because of what the actions of the court, not of the defendants. The film equates the trial as just another showpiece, a platform to raise the absurdity of just what the government was trying to prove. It's a bit dangerous because there was certainly more to it than that. Also, it trivializes it and the defendants to an extent that for me, is too easy to explain. You can take liberties with history to an extent, to broaden an appeal but there's a point where the air just gets too cloudy. Chicago 10 does that enough to where it's just not effective enough as a historical piece of work.

Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007) [6]

A lot of praise has gone onto Affleck the director since probably most critics didn't see anything in his persona that would have made it possible for him to make a film that was any good. While I happen to agree that Gone Baby Gone is above average, it's never really does anything to raise it above a standard crime thriller. Its greatest attribute is its sense of propriety, that Affleck nails down the lower-class Boston existence of the characters in the film, and imbues the film with the knowledge of the city the same that Dennis Lehane's novel does. Even so, I find the film's plot straining credibility at times and Affleck never handles the material with anymore than a middle-of-the-road style. Casey Affleck and Bridget Monahan play a pair of P.I.s hired to investigate a missing child case. Affleck's character is one of these guys who has risen out of his rough neighborhood only to have to be brought back into it only to have it become an all-consuming obsession. The story weaves itself through a number of twists and turns, the standard operating procedure of any crime thriller (I won't give anything more away for those who haven't seen it). The plot does its job dutifully but its two other elements in the story that are somewhat secondary that have the most interest for me. The film has moments where it captures the media feeding frenzy a story like a missing child creates. Affleck shows the viewer how the media chews up and spits out the people involved in events that are much more beyond quick sound bites. The other interesting question is the moral one raised by the film's ending. The film asks what should the role of parenting be and when should the welfare of a child overrule the bonds of family. Amy Ryan's character (overrated by the way) as the drug-addicted mother is present to play this friction point. The answer is left unanswered as it should be but it holds much more interest to me than any plot twists involving cops and drug dealers. If Affleck had concentrated on these themes just a bit more, this had the potential to be a really good film. Even in its current form, it's a fairly good, safe picture.

The Times of Harvey Milk

The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984) [7]

While not quite an overall biography of Milk, who rose to prominence as one of the first openly gay elected members of government in the U.S., Epstein's film does a good job of covering the most influential times of Milk's life. The isn't simply about Milk being a gay man who got elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors; it serves as that, but it also as a rallying point, that Milk stood not just for gay rights for equal treatment for all downtrodden minorities. The way the film does this makes it an effective piece of work if you're sympathetic to Milk's ideals but could also be considered the weakest link in the picture's narrative thread. Epstein chooses to interview only those close to Milk and while this isn't necessarily bad, it treads into that territory of lionizing Milk instead of just praising the man and his causes. The film gives a little of that with the union mechanic won over by Milk's values but it would have been nice to see a little bit more of that. There are times when the film raises the points that Milk was a shrewd, media savvy politician but once again, there's not enough as the film centers on the greater issue of Milk fighting for the gay community's rights in San Francisco. There's nothing wrong with that but it all fits too easily into the film's latter conflict, the dichotomy/rivalry of Milk and fellow supervisor Dan White, the man who shot Milk and mayor George Moscone. White's persona serves as the counterpoint to Milk's and it almost backfires, as White and his ridiculous defense for his actions threaten to take over the film. Smartly, Epstein knows to hold back just enough to the greater ideas of Milk up front. All in all, the film works because it's an honest, heartfelt portrayal of a man who needed to have his story told.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) [5]

I think that this will need a second viewing after some time but for whatever reason, at the present moment, I don't particularly care for this film. It's not that I think it's horrible because it's not; it is effective at times but for whatever reason I never got into it. I understand Resnais's rationale for the film, that the only way to make a film about an event like Hiroshima is to not make a film about it, but I don't necessarily agree with that. The first ten minutes or so of the film is much more direct in addressing the atomic attack on the city and is the most effective part of the film. The juxtaposition of the images of the museum with the audio of the more personal relationship that takes over the film is a fantastic contrast of themes. It would work so well on its own as a short film. The rest of the film centers more on the relationship of a French actress (the striking Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) as they reconcile with their own histories of the tragic event. Once again, I understand that Resnais feels this is the best way to deal with the bigger ideas of nuclear destruction, guilt, and peace but the two characters' actions are too obtuse for me. If the film were about these two and their relationship without a bigger issue hanging over their head, perhaps it would be successful. Here, it feels too removed in its own "arty" (for lack of a better word) way. I am one who appreciates art film but this film really pushes it into that territory ripe for parody. These characters and their story border so much on such self-absorbed behavior so distant from the viewer that it's hard to like them. Again, I may have just caught this film on an off night for me but it feels too pretentious in its execution to really make me empathize or fully understand it. And I happen to like self-absorption and a pretentious attitude in my cinema. For whatever reason, Resnais's direction here doesn't sit well with me.

Persepolis

Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, 2007) [7]

In the Pixar age, when we come to expect almost lifelike qualities in animation, it's refreshing to see something a little simpler and unique. That isn't meant to mean the new age of computer animation is cookie cutter like but there's a romantic tinge to hand-drawn animation that scores some points in my book. I feel the same way about 16mm compared to DV but that's irrelevant here. In regards to this film, Persepolis is a charming, endearing film mostly because it stands out so much stylistically. An adaptation of Satrapi's graphic novels about growing up in revolutionary Iran, the film has its stronger moments when it focuses more on history and culture than on personal memoir. Maybe because it seems so foreign to someone like me, the first part of the film, going more into a historical background and examination of the state of Iran politically is the most intriguing. The thought that the overthrow of the Shah wouldn't and directly lead to the Islamic Revolution is a fact that often gets overlooked but is a focal point to Marjane's story. When the film discusses Iranian history and culture, it is a great film. The second half bleeds into a more personal memoir, where we have to deal with Marjane and her obnoxious adolescence, with only brief moments to take us back to the culture clash which is infinitely more interesting than Marjane's all too predictable rebellion. Still, all that is not enough to keep me from recommending the film and that the film's positives really outweigh any negatives I have about it. The animation style, done mostly in black and white, is such a contrast to what is seen now that it keeps Persepolis from being just another animated film.