BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD ******

It has been two weeks since we saw Beasts of the Southern Wild.  After a long satisfying visit to The Visions of Arcadia show at the art museum showcasing master canvases by Matisse, Gaugin and Cezanne, we strolled through town to see the movie on a whim. It was almost too much to handle in one weekend. The giant canvases of the bathers representing heaven on earth juxtaposed with the primal life of Hushpuppy and her band of outcasts in the wilds of Louisiana threw me over. The movie is gorgeous, and the intense beauty of the Eden that the characters inhabit is almost hard to watch--when I am reading, I can take the intensity a small dose at a time, my choice. But with this movie, I found myself wanting to replay bits to savor the lush cinematography, to get a better look at Hushpuppy, her dad, her school, her trailer, the aurochs. At the same time, the harshness of the environment--socially, physically-is impossible to absorb from my upper middle class perch, and I spent half of the film wanting to look away. The power of the hurricane reminded me of Katrina, of course, but I also found myself remembering the terrible storm of Their Eyes Were Watching God that propels Janie's life into a new chapter in the most terrifying ways. We are each of us beasts, after all. Hushpuppy knows that instinctively.

Hushpuppy lives on an outlaw island-the "bathtub"- in the bayou outside the levee's protection with her sickly father and a ragtag band of independent souls. Their days are spent scavenging for what they need, jimmying with the garbage that surrounds them to accomplish simple everyday tasks. But there is a nobility and power in their lives, which sets the viewer up to believe that Hushpuppy lives to understand life the way all animals do--she searches for her momma and she unconsciously knows that her father is sick and might leave her. As a deadly hurricane approaches, her dreams become nightmares of ancient aurochs who threaten to destroy her fragile world. There is an epic journey, and a hero's pyre. Hushpuppy will triumph?

TOTAL RECALL *** stars

   Just saw the remake of TOTAL RECALL with Colin Farrell. I have been a big fan of the 1990 movie with Ah-nold for years, and I am a bigger fan of Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer of the source material for both movies ("we can remember it for you wholesale"). This was a good action movie, and fans of Len Wiseman's effects obsession will not be disappointed-- it looks like a cross between Blade Runner, which came from another Dick story,  and the Underworld movies--Wiseman directed his wife Kate Beckinsale in 2 of those.  All the actors are pretty and the guns are big.
   Colin Farrell might be a better Doug Quaid than Ah-nold: he can act, and because of his wiry Irish frame, the fight scenes were tighter and more exciting. Oh, and he is handsome in a might-just-be-crazy kind of way. Always good for a double agent type, I think.  It was also fun to see Beckinsale (Sharon Stone role) and Jessica Biel (in the Rachel Ticotin role) let it all go in their fights. Their fight scene was filmed as if two strong fearless women were determined to do permanent damage to their opponent. That's how women would fight if really in that position. Most film fights between women seem choreographed to appeal to some 22-year-old guy's imagination of how women would fight before they prepare to jump into bed with said 22-year-old directly after--and love it. Yuck. (But if you really are a fan of women characters kicking butt the right way, nobody beats Gina Carano in 2011's Haywire. Check that one out too.)

   Back to Total Recall. As I said, the film's imagery is stylish and engaging. The look of the Colony is depressing enough to imply the inequality of the classes, a critical motif in both the short story and original movie. But then the film breaks the first rule of storytelling: instead of showing us the conflict and the characters, they tell us through news broadcasts and even a narrator, I think.  Even when we got specific details, they did not seem to add up to a coherent vision. Everyone in the Colony is vaguely Asian, though the map shows up Australia. And seriously, only two places left on earth to live and  they choose Great Britain and Australia? Really? That 's what you come up with in 2012??? Not the time to stick to Dick's vision.
And car chases in the future will NOT include big clunky metal cars, either, I am pretty sure. The audience groaned when we saw that even in the post apocalyptic world, we still HAVE TO GO THE BANK. The synthetic police officers look like Star Wars stormtroopers, but are way easier to kill. What I love about the 1990 movie was the concept: everyone poor or uneducated or deformed or not white went to the Mars ghettos, and fabulously cheesy ghettos they were. The revolutionary hero Kuato is a mutant, he deviates from the norm and creates a new kind of hero. And Mars itself has a secret: the solution to the problem of enough air to breathe and food to eat is hidden in the core of the planet. Quaid is only the catalyst for the new Martians to find the solution to their own future: that's what makes good science fiction.  Replacing Kuato with Matthias, played by Wiseman staple Bill Nighy, just does not work. Wiseman gives Nighy a game inspirational speech as Kuato has in the first movie, but it is incomprehensible because there is no clearly defined issue except poverty in this version. I know the story does not go to Mars, but it was a great METAPHOR.
   So if you like this kind of science fiction movie, watch Total Recall 1990,  Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, or Star Wars Episode 3. None of them ends with a gratuitous kiss.

N.B. regarding the conclusion of The Fifth Element, there is never anything gratuitous about Bruce Willis kissing anyone. He is middle aged, bald and short and he still acts as if he deserves Milla Jovovich. He earned that kiss. It meant that the world would go on, that we get back into the Garden of Eden.

Is Vertigo the greatest movie of all time??

http://www.flavorwire.com/314912/open-thread-is-vertigo-really-the-greatest-movie-ever-made







not even the best Hitchcock!



Kurosawa?

PROMETHEUS June 8

can't wait for this movie...Ridley Scott is a great storyteller, pays attention to details, has an open mind.

What Makes a Moviemaker Great?

Watch this.

Terry Gilliam makes a good point, but it has been made before--by Aristotle, among others. Great tragedy requires the author to take the story all the way to the correct ending, according to Aristotle, who uses Sophocles as his example of a perfect playwright. No one wants Oedipus to pay for his accident, but his mistake cannot be undone. There is no going back after you kill your father, marry your mother and raise 4 children with her. Not even the legacy of a good kingship can do that. Tragedy is pre-freudian, I think. Not what you meant to do, not why you might have done it, just what you did. The gods judge us on what we do.

So back to Gilliam: happy endings feel good in the moment, but if art imitates life (and you can argue this if you want), then we have all felt the sting of reality at the end of one of our episodes, when the fear and doubt of the Chorus in the stasimon is indeed played out in the denouement. Having the guts to write it that way may be what separates the good filmmakers from the great ones.

And I still don't know what the end of 2001 means. I feel better about that knowing Terry Gilliam does not either/

for more on Gilliam:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/11/27/terry-gilliam-the-heir-of-fellini-and-the-enemy-of-god/

my review of 12 Monkeys:

http://leslielovesmovies.blogspot.com/2011/08/twelve-monkeys-four-times.html

MOVIES ABOUT BEGINNINGS

I have been a fan of Tavi's for a couple of years. Could not resist re-blogging this movie review post. Enjoy.

http://rookiemag.com/2011/09/eyes-on-this/

And for more Tavi meta-cool, see her style blog:

http://www.thestylerookie.com/

A FAVORITE SCENE from A FAVORITE MOVIE

Homage to Peter Falk, who died this past summer.
We saw Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire* in 1987. Back then, Columbo was famous in the States, so this role was a revelation to us. Falk's character was world-weary, had seen it all--not unlike Detective Columbo. But this character had seen it all, so he knew to believe it all. We found ourselves hoping for an ingenuous nature 25 year later. Almost there.
*remade as City of Angels in the US. no art at all, just plot.