I try
to be as open-minded as I can when it comes to art films, and
enthusiastic reviews for Leos Carax's absurdist genre mashup Holy
Motors had my hopes up, but I gotta confess: this film lost me.
It goes without saying that I just didn't get it, but, I guess for me
at least, it turns out there is such a thing “too weird”. It
seems like the sort of surrealist art film that a number of
high-minded critics will love defending simply because it's so
inexplicable. If you're able to turn off the rational part of your
brain and just enjoy its mad collage of sights and sounds, then more
power to you. If, like me, you're one of those people who like their
movies to be, y'know, about something, you'll find no
satisfaction here except for isolated amusements among its endless
parade of non sequitur film making. Does that make me a simpleton?
Probably, but I know what I like, and this one is not my cuppa tea.
Still, it's never a bad thing to intake a foreign oddity this time of
year merely as a break from the deluge of awards season candidates,
and indeed, you'd be hard pressed to find a less Oscar-friendly film
than this (although it's practically its own FYC ad for Best Makeup).
** out of ****
It
seems somewhat appropriate that Alfred Hitchcock's unmistakable
profile – as it appeared in silhouette form on his TV series
“Alfred Hitchcock Presents” – features so prominently in Sacha
Gervasi's Hitchcock,
because the film itself presents nothing more than a silhouette of
the man; a distinctive, iconic personality, but one without any depth
to it.
Taking
a lighthearted approach to backstage Hollywood drama, Gervasi's film
chronicles the making of Psycho,
the game-changing horror that forever silenced ponderings that the
master of suspense may have been losing his touch. Feeling the need
to stretch his creative limbs, Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is forced
to put it all on the line – his money, his reputation, and his
relationship with his wife and collaborator Alma Revel – for the
thrill of artistic risk-taking.
Gervasi
doesn't really do anything to offend the legendary status of
Hitchcock, but as a character, he doesn't give Hitchcock much more
motivation beyond obsession with completing his film. We don't feel
like we know much more about him as a person. When the picture fades
to black at the end, we've simply just spent an hour and a half with
the well publicized persona we're already familiar with. His imagined
conversations with real-life serial killer and Psycho-inspirer
Ed Gein proves as needless a gimmick as you (or Hitchcock, rather)
can imagine. It's his spouse and professional partner Alma, who
always stood in his enormous shadow despite heavy involvement in all
his pictures, that gets proper exposure here, as earnestly portrayed
by Helen Mirren. Special mention to supporting players James Darcy
and Scarlett Johansson for nailing their impersonations of Anthony
Perkins and Janet Leigh with almost eerie precision.
** out of ****
The Guardians (not
be confused with those of Zach Snyder's owl movie) work in secret to
preserve the innocence of childhood and instill wonder in kids all
over the world. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and
the Sandman all have their champions of youngsters who believe in
them sight unseen, but Jack Frost isn't getting the same love or
attention. He's learned to be content simply wreaking wintery hijinks
for 300 years, but he'll have to find his centre and learn some
responsibility when the Guardians ask him to join their ranks. They
need his help to protect the world's children from the wicked
nightmares of the Bogeyman (aka: Pitch Black), who wants a bit of
belief thrown his way too.
Rise of the Guardians
is the sort of movie which forces its audience to take the bad with
the good. The distinctive production and character designs (which
executive producer Guillermo Del Toro had a big hand in developing)
are wondrously creative, but also chaotically busy. The film is
technically accomplished, particularly in regards to Alexandre
Desplat's lovely score and DreamWorks' ever-improving animation, but
it feels so very imposed in the barrage of the sound mix and the
in-your-face storyboarding. The premise (from William Joyce's
childrens book) is imaginative and rings with valuable undertones of
faith and identity, but is somewhat wasted on a thin story that vexes
with its rushed pacing and hyperactivity. Still, I'll take an fresh
concept like this over any of the repetitive floats in DreamWorks'
endless parade of uninvited sequels.
**1/2 out of ****
The Invisible War is a
blood-boiling expose on the shamefully underexposed epidemic of rape
victims in U.S. military institutions. With straightforward,
journalistic sensibilities, director Kirby Dick assembles a series of
first account testimonials from servicemen and women who have
suffered not only sexual abuse, but the infuriating indifference of
the military legal system that seems to do nothing to protect them.
While the multitude of talking heads and the horrifying stories they
tell do kinda blur together at a point, that may indeed be the point.
*** out of ****
The Queen of Versailles tracks
the “riches to rags” story (although “rags” is a hell of an
exaggeration) of the Siegel family, one of America's wealthy elite,
as the recession challenges the ludicrously ostentatious lifestyle to
which they had become accustomed. The documentary does not attempt to
elicit our sympathy for the obscenely rich, but it does attempt to
humanize them, becoming a shrewd and ultimately sad dismantlement of
the American Dream.
The opening third of The Queen of
Versailles is infuriating and laughable in equal measure as it
presents the Siegels living within the vacuum of luxury and power,
seemingly oblivious or simply indifferent to how they must come
across to the other 99% of the world. We gape in outrage at the
decadent indulgences and frivolities on which they spend, including
the under-construction Versailles, the single largest private home in
America. And we laugh in disbelief because they virtually appear as
caricatures of themselves: David Siegel, founder of Westgate Resorts,
the world's biggest time-share enterprise, literally delivers his
interview while seated on a golden throne. His wife Jackie, a busty
former beauty queen nearly 30 years his junior, prattles on about
every vain extravagance that fills her life – and her soon-to-be
palace. One the eight Siegel children prophetically mentions, “you
don't have to worry about money, but at the same time you kinda do.”
Indeed, the ridiculous spending would
have to end. The economic crisis of 2008 meant that average Americans
could no longer afford to vacation at fancy time-shares, thus
stopping the flow of money that powered the Siegels' life. This
previously happy-looking couple begin to show their true colors when
they go from haves to have-lesses. What's dejecting is not that
they're suddenly less rich, but how emotionally dependent on money
these people have become. David Siegel confesses that business is the
only true love in his life, and becomes increasingly distant and
depressed as the film trudges on. Jackie continues to put on a
botox-induced smile, but one can't help but detect a sense of denial
about her new situation.
*** out of ****
Jacques Audiard shines a harsh,
unflinching light on human emotion in Rust and Bone, a
hard-edged love story conveyed by two outstanding lead performances
from Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard.
Ali (Schoenaerts) is a vagrant street
fighter who hardly seems an appropriate fit to raise his
five-year-old son Sam. He freeloads at his sister's place while
renting himself out for security services and winning cash in
organized fistfights. Stephanie (Cotillard) is a whale trainer at
Marineland until a fateful accident takes both her legs and plunges
her into depression. The two form a relationship that starts merely
as physical , but deepens as they discover in each other something
worth living for.
Rust and Bone is an unusual
romance in that there's nothing romantic about it. Audiard, in a
style similar to his merciless prison film A Prophet, bares
his characters' emotions without the slightest trace of sentiment or
melodrama. It's a tough way for his two leads to sell the love story,
but they're equal to the task. Schoenaerts (who was excellent in last
year's Bullhead) has clearly mastered the art of restraint; a boiler
of confused feelings simmering beneath masculine pride. Cotillard,
meanwhile, strips herself down to the essence of depression and
vulnerability. Hers is a difficult portrayal of a tough personality
reverted to tender fragility by cruel misfortune. She brilliantly
evokes empathy without asking us to warm up to her.
*** out of ****
In Seaching for Sugar Man,
director Malik Bendjelloul tells the fascinating human interest story
of the musical artist known as Rodriguez. Never heard of him? That's
because he never made it big here in North America. The Detroit based
songwriter produced one album in the 1970s (Cold Fact) that
quietly flopped, but over in Apartheid-era South Africa, the record
became an underground hit, and eventually snowballed into a full out
cultural phenomenon. And Rodriguez was blissfully unaware. The
documentary recounts how the musicologists and journalists in South
Africa miraculously tracked down the mysterious musician, living a
humble life in downtown Detroit, dispelling rumours of his suicide
and resurrecting the legend for a series of concerts in the one
country that embraced his work. It's a quaint sort of real-life
fairytale about dreams coming true, but one that may have better been
suited to a shorter format. Even at a brisk 86 minutes, the film is
heavily padded by musical interludes of Rodriguez's underexposed
songs.
**1/2 out of ****
Lee Hirsch's wrenching, powerful
documentary Bully brings its audience face to face with
cruelty and violence – psychological and physical – among
America's youth, and dares us not to look away. With a jumbled
structure that hops between a handful of character studies, we see an
array of impacts that bullying has on those children who lack the
strength to stand up for themselves: a misfit who grows acclimatized
to his oppressors just to have connection with other people; an outed
lesbian in Bible-belt America pressured into changing schools; a girl
who was driven to hold her tormentors at gunpoint; parents of victims
who took their own young lives after enduring one cruelty too many.
While it does not illuminate all perspectives of what is really a
complex and multi-sided issue, it is an important piece of social
activism that should be mandatory viewing for all students
preteen-and-up, despite its unsettling subject matter.
*** out of ****
For generations, the Palestinian
village of Bil'in had picked olives in the fertile valley below. When
Israeli bulldozers come in to develop the land for new building
settlements in 2004, the villagers begin what becomes a longstanding
siege of nonviolent protest, captured by the ever-recording camera
(five of them, to be exact) of video journalist Emad Burnat, director of 5 Broken Cameras.
At once epic and intimate, this
remarkable first-person account brings a refreshingly personal
perspective to a genre that frequently risks overly clinical
analysis. We're not just witnessing the unfolding of a complex
political issue, but the growth of a man's family and the evolution
of his perceptions as they are seen through his precious cameras.
More than just a meditation on the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict,
it is a testament to the very spirit of documentarianism.
***1/2 out of ****
The trials and tragedies of a child
soldier in Africa are laid bare for us in Kim Nguyen's War Witch.
Rachel Mwanza gives a devastating performance as a girl forced to
shoot her own parents and join a band of rebels fighting the
government. As the vignette-driven film unfolds, she elopes with
another young soldier to get married and leave their life of violence
behind. The film settles into a pace less powerful and disturbing as
the traumatic first act, but of course, their past always comes back,
ready to wallop us with more emotional weight.
*** out of ****
