The Filmcake

May 10th – May 16th

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth — When evaluating documentary film, it is sometimes difficult to separate the subject matter from the filmmaking. If you have an affinity for the subject matter, it can sometimes cloud the evaluation of the filmmaking. Of course, you cannot separate the subject from the filmmaker. A great documentary film will often be able to draw the viewer in to the subject, even if they were initially indifferent.

This documentary left me frustrated. Harlan Ellison, the writer, provides an interesting subject. But ultimately, I thought that this film failed in drawing in a general audience. Sure, Ellison fans or a general science fiction literature fans would eat it up. But I didn’t feel like a general audience is going to get a lot from it.

Aside from several obtuse readings by Ellison himself along with the adoration of a younger generation of peers, I didn’t really get a sense of why his writing was so important and adored.

On several occasions, the filmmakers present an idea before abruptly dropping it. There are titles that inform the audience that Ellison stopped talking to his sister after the death of their parents, a title that suggests his stint in the Army was fraught with difficulty, and a title that suggests that he was quite the ladies man in the 70′s. But then those ideas are abruptly dropped. What happened with his sister? Why was his stint in the Army a difficult one? Who says he was a ladies man, besides himself? Then later on, we get a reading from a Star Trek episode that he wrote. But any footage of the actual episode is not to be seen. Towards the end, his wife is described as the person who makes his demons disappear. The notion that behind every great man is a great woman is introduced. This is just demeaning. All we see of her, in a very brief appearance, is someone who appears to a timid handmaiden. I don’t get that she is a hero for putting up with him–she just seems broken.

Ellison comes off as a self-consciously exhausting curmudgeon. He is like a precocious child performing for the camera. And, at this point, like a precocious child who has grown up, lost much of his youthful adorability, but still demands the attention. He is predictably contrarian…which isn’t all that contrarian at all. He even comes off as a bit of a Luddite–taking incongruous stances against special effects and television.

At least Neil Gaiman, who appears throughout and who turns out to be a more interesting figure in the doc, recognizes it for what it is. It’s a performance. It’s shtick. And that’s fine. The artist can be evaluated apart from his personality. But this documentary, which amounts to little more than a masturbatorial appraisal of the man, did nothing to draw me in to its subject.

Whip It — I really hate when I watch a movie and it starts skipping or freezing up. It’s one thing when it just won’t play. Then you can just move onto something else. It’s another thing when it plays, but only very roughly. I ended up missing only about 5 minutes of this one. Not the end of the world and probably not the most crucial 5 minutes of the film either, but still enough to really bring me out of it on a couple of occasions.

That being said, I still quite liked Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. A film like this really demonstrates the dearth of decent female-centric movies. It doesn’t come off as a feminist tract. But it also doesn’t try to elevate women to the level of angels. It presents its women as interesting people. It respects both a “girly” notion of femininity and a version that isn’t afraid to let the elbows fly. While it does make roller derby look pretty cool, it also doesn’t fall into the trap of hateful mockery in the beauty pageant segments. As Bliss Cavendar/Babe Ruthless, Ellen Page sincerely embodies this dichotomy.

I love the matter-of-fact way in which we learn that Bliss’s best friend is smart and headed to an Ivy League school. She’s not some brainy pariah. I love that Bliss’s mom (Marcia Gay Harden) enjoys beauty pageants but works as a mail carrier. And while it may be a little on the nose, I like that the roller derby team doesn’t care about winning nearly as much as having fun.

May 3rd – May 9th

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) — Two ditsy American girls on their way to a club in a foreign country get a flat tire on their rental car. It begins to rain. They stumble towards the nearest house to make a phone call. A deranged German scientist answers the door. Things will not turn out okay.

That’s the beginning of a standard horror/slasher plot. When things start getting surgical–when Dr. Heiter creates his monster–is where the movie veers off into new territory. Given the subject matter, the movie is surprisingly restrained and nice to look at.

The film is certainly better than I had expected. It was more than just a shocking, gross-out cinematic challenge. But what it was exactly, I still don’t know. After seeing it, I can totally see where Ebert was coming from when he said in his review:

I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine.

The Room — Another go at this one. This time for something much lighter than the previous film. While this still continues to be hilariously bad and eminently quotable, I must admit that I’m getting a little sick of it. It’s about time for another movie to make me laugh.

April 19th – April 25th

Good Hair — Chris Rock’s documentary about the hair of African American women. Certainly more compelling than I had expected. I had no idea of the lengths some women go to in order to achieve a particular look with their hair. From relaxer to weaves, black women (and some men) undergo painful and costly treatments to get rid of the kink–to achieve good hair. The documentary only takes a precursory look at the cultural implications of the desire for straighter (“whiter” or “more natural”) hair. I would have liked Rock to delve a little deeper. Instead, we get a little of this and a little of that. Another story arc that doesn’t quite get fleshed out is the Hair Battle Royale performance competition at the Bronner Brothers Hair Show. We are introduced to the contestants who all seem like interesting characters. We see some pre-competition preparation leading up to the Battle Royale itself. It feels like the featured competitors and the competition itself would have made for an interesting documentary all by themselves instead of being clumsily inserted into this one. While it lacks a real focus, I would still certainly recommend this documentary.

Gleaners and I — This is one that I decided to revisit upon last year’s release and critical acclaim surrounding Beaches of Agnes (which I still haven’t seen). This is actually the first and only Agnes Varda film that I’ve seen. On the surface it is a documentary about gleaners (ostensibly those who gather leftover crops), but at its core it is visual poetry. It’s about eking out an existence, about a respect for the land, about coming to terms with aging, and about the importance of art. That a 72-year-old woman can take a DV camera and make something that resonates with such truth and beauty makes my universe so much brighter.

April 5th – April 11th

Extract – Mostly underwhelmed with this one. I love, love, love Office Space. It probably gets quoted or referenced at least once a week in our house. And, as they say, Idiocracy is flawed but does have its moments. So, I was looking forward to Mike Judge’s latest. Despite an excellent cast, the film just flops around the factory floor like some gasping fish. There are some moments. David Koechner is annoyingly funny as the persistent neighbor. Ben Affleck’s druggie bartender was a pleasant respite. And Mila Kunis’ con-woman story had some potential. But in the end, a few laughs here and there don’t add up to a whole hell of a lot.

The Thing From Another World – The sixth and final installment of our Sci-Fi Horror Marathon. This one from 1951. A familiar premise that can be seen throughout the horror genre. A group of people take refuge from a monster-creature in an outpost of some type. In this case, a group of military men, scientists, and a newspaper man take refuge in an arctic outpost from an extraterrestrial “carrot-like” monster. The horror is less about the monster and more about the fear of being trapped and of the unknown intruder and the dark and mysterious outside.

While working my way through the first season of The X-Files which just showed up on Netflix Instant Viewing, I ended up watching the “Ice” episode right after The Thing From Another World. That episode featured Mulder and Scully (along with a couple of scientists and a pilot) trapped in an outpost in Alaska desperately trying to survive a potentially extraterrestrial intruder. The Thing certainly lives on.

March 22nd – March 28th

The Tin Drum — My expectations about this movie were way off. Or course I was aware that there were certain scenes which had been determined obscene my some. But it wasn’t those scenes, or any sort of unanticipated moral shock, that contradicted my expectations. I was simply anticipating both an older and duller film. Grainy black & white images out of some boring old war movie occupied the space in my brain reserved for The Tin Drum.

So I was genuinely surprised to see that it was made in 1979 and in color. And watching it, I was further surprised by how much humor it contained. Still, I thought of both Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke while watching this. The former for the loads of potential symbolism that maybe don’t add up to too much and the latter for the notion that evil clearly resides in children. But those are unfair parallels. I haven’t seen nearly enough of either to be able to say anything definitive about their work, nor have I read the Gunter Grass novel upon which this movie is based.

I’m not sure what I think. Better than expected, to be sure. Not worth banning, of course. And I can certainly say that it has piqued my interest in reading the original novel.

Whatever Works – Woody Allen’s most recent film, starring Larry David but originally written in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. This first half is a bit Curb-y, with David doing that misanthropic thing he does so well. It’s okay but you wonder why not just watch Curb Your Enthusiasm instead. And the radiant Evan Rachel Wood is just annoying as the stupid girl from Mississippi. But as the rest of the cast comes into the film–Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Jessica Hecht–it turns into something stronger. Unfortunately, it’s too little too late. Not enough to save the clunky beginning.

The Brother From Another Planet – Now this was a gem of a find–a movie I had frankly never heard of. It ended up on our Netflix Instant Viewing queue based on the title and cover art and the desire for a silly 80′s sci-fi movie. Turns out, this movie from 1984 was written and directed by John Sayles. And to further demonstrate my cinematic ignorance of the Godfather of Bootstrap Cinema, I had no idea the lengths Sayles has gone to finance his own movies. I had no idea that he wrote the 1978 film Piranha nor that his pen played a part in the scripts for Mimic, Apollo 13, and even an apparently ditched take on Jurassic Park IV.

Funded by a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant, The Brother From Another Planet stars Joe Morton (who would later go on to invent the neural net processor in Terminator 2 that led to Skynet) as a mute alien slave who appears on Earth as a black man. He is chased around Harlem by two alien Men in Black, played by Sayles and David Strathairn. This is not big budget sci-fi extravaganza. Instead, it is a more restrained take on the stranger in a strange land trope. An alien creature, who mostly looks like a black human, crash lands near Ellis Island and must navigate the streets of Harlem. It pretty much writes itself. Good stuff.

Zombieland — While not nearly as good as Shaun of the Dead, I still had a lot of fun with this zombie comedy. The integration of The Rules into the movie’s world was a clever touch. Sure, the movie plays a little video game-y. Perhaps an emotional attachment to the characters is lacking, but video games don’t need emotional ties to still be fun.

March 15th – March 21st

Coraline — The special effects were good, but they didn’t blow my mind. The stop-motion stuff wasn’t nearly as delicious as what Wes Anderson did with it in Fantastic Mr. Fox. It wasn’t as loved and lived in. And some of the CG effects just didn’t seem to mesh naturally with the more tactile stop-mo stuff. Good, but not special. The story was creepier than I expected. I think it would be scary for young children. And despite getting a little muddled at times and turning towards video game territory in the latter parts, it was still a refreshingly smart and interesting tale.

Phase IV – Last summer, we caught Brian Hearn’s live remix of this Saul Bass sci-fi film. That one was called Phase V and featured live actors dubbing new lines over an edited version of the film. I hadn’t seen the original work to that point. But I really enjoyed the remix. Well, now I’ve finally seen the inspiration which features some nicely filmed close-ups of ants. Unlike Them!, the other ant movie which I saw last week, these are real ants and aren’t shot to look bigger. Their size isn’t what is scary, it’s the evolving hive mentality that they develop which turns homicidal. The movie is a bit slow and veers off into 70′s sci-fi trippyland too much. But it’s still worth watching, if only for the fact that it’s the only feature that Bass directed. It also features an image that appears to be a direct homage to the Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali short Un Chien Andalou (see below).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) — Number five in our Sci-Fi Horror Marathon. Before this one and Them! last week, I expected the sci-fi horror of the 1950s to be nothing more than drive-in fluff. I was expecting mindless creature features, but in both of these I’m finding something more profound. In Body Snatchers particularly, it is science fiction that entertains with rising tension and thrills but also comments on the concerns of the times. It does not spell anything out and can be read in different ways, but fear (intentional or not) clearly transcends. I’m curious about the 1978 and 1993 remakes, but also a little wary. I really liked this one a bunch.

Aguirre, Wrath of God – Okay, I’m now officially a card-carrying member of The Church of Werner Herzog. After hearing his voice work in Ramin Bahrani’s Plastic Bag short last week and reading up Herzog in the AV Club, I had a Herzog itch. Plus, I needed to see what this Klaus Kinski was all about. I was not disappointed. Herzog, in five minutes, shows more passion and competency in filmmaking than many directors will demonstrate in their entire careers. And a crazed Kinski is quite definitely compelling in his own right. Kinski’s performance, the location shooting in the Peruvian rainforests and rivers, and Herzog’s direction add up to a truly gritty and dirty production. Herzog brilliantly immerses the viewer in the location. Watching this movie practically invites swatting away Amazonian insects from the comfort of your own couch.

That this movie was made with a stolen camera and stolen monkeys; that the dialogue was delivered in English, dubbed in German, to stand in for Spanish; that it has inspired cinematic legend (namely Kinski acting at Herzog’s gunpoint) and influenced Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Malick’s The New World–these all demonstrate the true brilliance of its maker. Keeping on the Herzog/Kinski track, I’m going to attempt a Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams, My Best Fiend triple-feature sometime very soon.

Un Chien Andalou – For some reason, it has taken me this long to get around to this one. It is, of course, the eye cutting scene that initially brought me to the movie. And having seen it, I’m just kind of shocked that it’s such a tiny piece of the film, albeit a very good shot. This Surrealist filmmaking is fun to watch, but admittedly leaves me a bit confused. I know that’s part of the point. But, I needs me some narrative, yo. Still, it was pretty damn cool noticing a shot in this one that was mimicked in Saul Bass’s Phase IV which we had just seen. The shots in question involved people with ants crawling out a hole in their hand. There is a shot in this one…and a roughly identical one in Phase IV. I assumed some Freudian connotation–of death or destruction, vaginal. But maybe Dali just really likes ants and Bass really likes Bunuel and Dali. Nevertheless, the unexpectedness of catching Bass quoting Bunuel and Dali quoting Dali was pretty cool.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist – Not a great teen comedy (very few are), but a pretty good one. For me, it was special for breaking out of the mold and introducing some new things to the genre, especially the gay guy friends (who aren’t there just to be made fun of) and the sex scene (which seemed to be all about getting her off). The fact that the leads are Michael Cera and Kat Dennings sort of instantly subverts the genre. Although at this point, neither Cera or Dennings can be described as weird or off-beat, they are the popular kids now.

Pineapple Express – James Franco is the man. We can all agree on that. Now I wonder if he can edit. Because that’s exactly what this movie needed. Like Apatow’s Funny People it was overly long. A tighter movie would have been better for everyone. In several sequences, I found myself wondering why I was getting bored in a movie full of gags and chase scenes. It’s time for this Apatow family of players to find someone who has the ability to reign them in on occasion.

March 8th – March 14th

Under Great White Northern Lights  — See review.

Academy Award Nominated Animated Short films – Managed to catch 4 of the 5 nominees in online videos (unfortunately missed out on the Wallace & Gromit short). The Oscar winner Logorama took a clever concept that ties pervasive marketing with cinematic conventions to create a cop chase turned ad-pocalypse. French Roast, Granny O’Grimms Sleeping Beauty, and The Lady and the Reaper were all adequate animated shorts. But none of them rose above my standard for animated shorts this year–the Ellie and Carl scene at the beginning of Pixar’s Up.

Paper Bag — As part of the FUTURESTATES project, Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Goodbye Solo) has created a brilliant short film about a plastic grocery bag. A comment on both excessive pollution and consumerism, the movie also manages to be something more. With his voice work contribution, Werner Herzog allows the film to also be a touching piece of existentialism.

The FUTURESTATES project has tasked “11 renowned and up-and-coming filmmakers to take the current state of affairs in the United States, and extrapolate them into stories of the nation in the not-so-distant future.” I can’t wait to check out the other ten.

The Breakfast Club – Another one of those movies that I could say I’ve seen countless times but in reality have not seen in an un-cut, from beginning to end, way in quite some time (at least since I last had a working VCR). It certainly inhabits a Hughesian world where the “criminal” can hook-up with the “princess” by the end credits. It’s all a bit hokey and stupid, but there are enough hints at honesty and genuine nostalgia to allow the film to hold up after twenty-five years.

Hamlet 2 – An okay movie with some genuinely hilarious moments that didn’t add up to much. Steve Coogan is great. And there are some really funny scenes. And a wonderful song–”Rock Me Sexy Jesus.” But, I was underwhelmed with the film as a whole. I was wanting it to be something that it was unable to live up to.

Them! – The fourth installment in our Sci-fi Horror Marathon. This one was released way back in 1954. New Mexico State Police are soon joined by the FBI after one of the Bureau’s own goes missing in a mysterious attack. The two agencies are joined by a father-daughter team of scientists from the Department of Agriculture. After pursuing the various leads, the investigators finally discover that the attacks have been perpetrated by giant ants which have mutated as a result of recent atomic weapons testing. Eventually supplemented with military firepower, the group tracks the giant ants to the Los Angeles storm sewer system where they are eventually destroyed.

This movie was surprisingly well paced and plotted. The eventual appearance of the giant ants does provoke a modern chuckle. By today’s standards, the thing looks a bit silly. After that initial appearance though, I did not have a problem with the ant monsters. They were photographed nicely and used sparingly enough to not be off-putting.

I thought the catatonic girl who starts screaming upon smelling the formic acid was particularly creepy and added to the initial suspense of the film. The female scientist, Pat Medford (Joan Weldon), was an interesting role. While it wasn’t a major role, the fact that this female character was both a doctor and scientist and not simply shoehorned in as a romantic foil was a true surprise. There was a sexist remark made her way (something along the lines of: if she’s the kind of doctor that makes house calls, I could develop a fever real fast). If anything, the line just makes the man saying them seem like a pig.

The film obviously plays against the very real fears of the atomic age. The giant ants suggest a scary outcome to this atomic tinkering.

When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we’ll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.

The ants also suggest the spread of communism in the age of McCarthyism. The monster ants suggest both a domestic spread of communism as well as the fear of a global march of communism. Destroy the queen, and you destroy the colony. It is the policy of Containment used to prevent the domino-like spread of communism. Bonus: an early Leonard Nimoy appearance.

The Princess Bride – A personal favorite that I haven’t seen in quite a while (also since I had a working VCR). It’s also one that my wife has never seen in its entirety. Now that it is available on Netflix Instant Viewing…she still hasn’t seen it in its entirety (falling asleep about two-thirds of the way through). Perhaps it’s one that you just have to fall for at a younger age.

I still have a great time with it. The movie has everything. Wallace Shawn. Andre the Giant. A six-fingered Christopher Guest. A princess. Romance. Sword fighting. Poison. Pirates. Torture.

March 1st – March 7th

Fireproof — So, so bad. Admittedly, I wasn’t surprised by this fact. I went into it knowing that it was going to be awful. The movie seemed like nothing more than some pastor had a sermon (How to Fireproof Your Marriage) that he thought he could turn into a movie in order to sell a book. And like so many Christian “rock” songs, its earnestness is unable to overcome its lack of guiding talent and artful subtlety. It’s predictable, preachy, and a little bit sexist. Surely this movie will be enjoyed by those people that eat up simplistic sermonizing, but one wonders why anyone requires Jesus in order to simply show respect towards another person.

(500) Days of Summer — I do like me some MPDGs. And Zooey Deschanel certainly leads the pack. But MPDGs are usually nothing more than some quirky eye candy. It’s male fantasy. It’s seeing only those parts that you want to see and ignoring the rest. It’s mistaking a fleeting Rene Magritte reference as an honest sign of character.

That being said, Deschanel as MPDG is not a total problem here. The movie is certainly from a man’s–Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)–point of view. The movie is precisely about him remembering what he wants. It’s not about a couple or a relationship; it’s about Tom. And the way the story is presented–in a non-linear fashion–works fine to illustrate the bumpy road of a relationship.

What puts me off about this movie was that one word in the opening credits. “Bitch.” It wasn’t immediate. Perhaps the character truly deserves to be called a bitch. There are bitches in this world after all. But after seeing the entire film, that word just seemed so incongruous. I was fine with the calling-out of the real girl for whom the film was based. It rooted the movie firmly in the personal. It was the bitch part that I had a problem with. It’s not what the movie ultimately ended up being about. For me, it was about Tom coming to terms with this relationship and its demise. Sure, it’s a rough moment when Tom finds out that Summer is engaged. Perhaps, to him, she is a bitch at that moment (in truth, Summer is not a bitch, she’s just not everything Tom wants her to be). The film concludes on a hopeful note with Tom seemingly putting this relationship behind him in favor of new experiences and relationships. In the end, it just makes director Marc Webb and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber seem mean, petty, insufferably immature, and incapable of moving on. It also dampens an otherwise enjoyable movie.

MPDG Zooey and M. Ward with “In The Sun”:

Where The Wild Things Are — I had ranked this movie as my second favorite movie of 2009 after seeing it only once. So going into it again I was worried that I may have somehow overvalued it the first time. Nope. It was just as amazing the second time around. That it didn’t garner a single Academy Award nomination is ridiculous. This movie is like a gigantic hug. It brilliantly captures Max coming to terms with his parents’ divorce and his own bad behavior. It is truly wonderful.

Dead Snow — A nice surprise. I mean, Nazi zombies pretty much guarantees cinematic awesomeness. But this movie was a solid entry into the slasher-zombie genre. It didn’t break any new ground, but it was a solidly enjoyable installment in the genre.

Sleeping Dogs Lie – After being pleasantly surprised with Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad, I wanted to check out some of his earlier stuff. Again, Goldthwait delivers. He takes a shocking moment (girl-on-dog love) and twists it into a movie with a heart. The production values here are low at times, but the talent level all around does not leave you disappointed. I still need to see Shakes the Clown and I certainly can’t wait to see what Bobcat has in store next.

February 22nd – February 28th

Hunger – The Troubles in Northern Ireland are a fascinating period of (ongoing) history that I admittedly have a very limited grasp over. It suggests the sometimes vague differences between activist and terrorist. It’s about religion–and then again it’s not. It’s on one hand so foreign and on the other hand so familiar. Director Steve McQueen depicts the 1981 hunger strike with Bobby Sands in way that is both violently brutal and fecally artful.

Invention of Lying – A good idea that was ultimately poorly executed. The premise is an interesting one, and an inspired Gervais-as-Moses scene almost makes the flawed movie worth watching, but it just finally falls flat. Jennifer Garner’s character is so flatly written that she comes of as a stereotype and the film comes of as a bit sexist. Ricky Gervais is certainly better than this.

Precious – You know, I actually ended up liking this one a lot more than I thought I would. I was expecting nothing but poverty porn, but I felt like I got something more than that. I admit that it was a bit of a struggle at first. But once I sort of gave in to the melodrama and the familiar Inspirational Teacher tropes, I felt myself going along with it more comfortably. But even that qualification seems qualified. I think there is probably a wide-spread tendency to view this film, and the monster that is Mo’Nique’s Mary Jones, and think of them as overly brutal and exaggerated. But after living with the movie for a little while, I am quite convinced that there are both Mary Jones’ and Precious’ out in the world everywhere.

A Single Man — The smell of a dog. A stiff drink. The beauty of another human being. Booker T’s “Green Onions.” Life is an island hop on the unpleasant ocean of existence. Tom Ford beautifully captures this sentiment. We’re bombarded every day with the notion that melancholy and depression are character flaws. Life is a big smile. But it just ain’t the truth. We live in a miserable world (see Precious). But it is a life worth living. The roses need smelling.

Colin Firth’s excellent performance is but another of those things that make life worth living. I may not be a fan of those movies in which his character is named Darcy and/or he sports a wet shirt, but I do love him here. That he is the one that transfixes me in a scene with Juliane Moore is a tribute to the charisma he brings to the role.

Groundhog Day, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, 10 Things I Hate About You — After Hunger, Precious, and A Single Man we just really needed something especially light and fun. These were three picks that fit the bill and would also allow us to test out our Roku player and Netflix Instant Viewing from the comfort of our bed. None of the three are great, but they’re all certainly re-watchable. Bill Murray alone makes Groundhog Day an instant classic and easily the best of the trio. And watching Murray only shows how much Ricky Gervais lacks.

February 16th – February 21st

Tyson – A compelling documentary from James Toback. Iron Mike is certainly a fascinating subject. That he is a more interesting figure than I had previously figured is still not enough to overcome the revulsion that I still possess towards him. A certain amount of innocent kindness towards pet pigeons is not enough for me to forgive the viciousness of his biting attack on Evander Holyfield nor his probable assault(s) on women. He will still always be a monster in my eyes.

Bright Star – A tragically romantic period piece from Jane Campion about John Keats and Fanny Brawne. A film about a poet would seem to be either excessively sweet or tragic. You expect either soft-focus romanticism or camera-shaken tragedy. While there is still love and death in this film, it avoids some of the most overt poet biopic cliches by devoting more attention on Fanny Brawne instead of the poet Keats. Abbie Cornish is wonderful as Brawne. In Stop-Loss and in this one, I just can’t seem to keep my eyes off of her. I am in agreement with A.O. Scott that she may just be the new Kate Winslet. Paul Schneider (Parks & Recreation) was also excellent as Keats’ smarmy yet protective best friend, Charles Armitage Brown.

Contact – A personal sc-fi favorite. After a long stretch with an unviewable VHS copy, it has re-entered our movie library in the form of the Blu-ray edition. while Contact broaches the relationship between religion and science, I ultimately don’t think the movie has much definitive to say about the topic. It presents the ideas, which make the movie a stronger piece of sci-fi, but it doesn’t pretend to be making an argument either way. I suppose it does say something about the dangers of fanaticism–both the religious and secular varieties. But, ultimately, the ideas don’t add up to anything particularly coherent. At least, not particularly preachy. That is a good thing–the movie remains quite satisfying to me. I still very much enjoy it. I was struck this time–perhaps because of the Blu-ray version I was watching for the first time–by all of the special effects that Zemeckis employs in the movie. For the most part, the fx is used competently and serves the story even if it is a bit conspicuous.

Sunshine – The third installment in our Sci-Fi Horror Marathon and one I’ve seen many times. This one is perhaps a little more overt than Contact in its atheism. It is, after all, the religiously fanatical Pinbacker who tries to destroy not only the crew of Icarus 2 but also all of Earth based on delusions he interprets to be the voice of god. Thankfully, the physicist saves the day. Yay, science! On this particular viewing, I was struck by the soundtrack. I adore it. And, I’m not sure why I don’t own it. Except that I might feel the urgent need to save mankind while listening to it. So that might be kind of awkward.

Mine; Home; P-Star Rising — Two docs and a short from PBS Independent Lens. Mine told the story of dogs left behind as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The documentary focuses on three or so dogs who were left behind as the result of the storm and eventually adopted to new families, but whose owners attempt to reunite with their pets after landing on terra firma. The doc is nicely balanced, putting its sympathies first and foremost behind the dogs caught in the middle. That Mine examined the uncharted territory between Katrina and the rightful home for its canine victims gives it a unique perspective. But, I sort of felt that a lot of this had been covered in previous documentaries, especially Tom McPhee’s An American Opera from 2007. Nevertheless, I’ll always watch a doc about dogs (and likely shed a tear or two as well).

Home was an excellent six-minute short by Matt Faust that morphed home videos and photographs into a personal and poignant memory of a home destroyed by Katrina.

P-Star Rising was a doc that admittedly I wasn’t too keen on sitting through. It purported to tell the successes and failures in the career of a 9-year-old rapper. I imagined that both the documentary and the child rapper would be too precious to bear. Ooh, it’s a kid! Ooh, she raps!! Too cute!!! Commence. Rolling. Eyes.

But, I was quite surprised by the documentary that I watched. It turns out that the child rapper, Priscilla Diaz (stage name, P-Star), is genuinely talented and not annoyingly precocious at all. That this child also seems to be the most level-headed, mature, and intelligent member of her family is what makes this documentary so compelling. The more I began to dislike her father, who comes off as a man-child in demeanor, actions, and dress, the more I began to like P-Star.

A Serious Man – I figured I’d like this one. It is a Coen Brothers movie after all. But, I ended up REALLY, REALLY liking it. It was so dark, ultimately, that it actually sort of ended up being kind of life affirming. Instead of worrying about other people and what they think, you have to take care of yourself first. And instead of worrying why things did or did not happen to you, you ultimately have to accept the mystery. You can’t blame the bad things that happen to you on anything else, nor can you credit the good things that happen to you on anything else. Things are what they are. For me, without a belief in God (and the corresponding evil), this is an oddly comforting thought even if I know that death is my ultimate reward. My only religion is film.

It did remind me of the questions A.O. Scott posed in his review:

So a question put before the congregation by A Serious Man is whether it makes the case for atheism or looks at the world from a divine point of view. Are the Coens mocking God, playing God or taking his side in a rigged cosmic game? What’s the difference?

Life sucks, and then you die. At least we have movies. What more is there to know?