Change Your Image
ericm4
Reviews
Trash Humpers (2009)
superlative
This is an excellent film. I don't know very many people, even among my most artistically adventurous friends, who would be able to sit through this film, let alone enjoy it, and they don't have to. If you're reading this review, I'm guessing you won't like this film. However, this film is still great. I don't know how to put into words what's great about it, it has many layers.
It expresses some sort of truth, or maybe a mask of truth, or maybe expresses truth by not expressing truth, I'm not sure which. What I am sure of is that it is not from the point of view of upper middle class privilege romanticizing the poor and ugly for an unacknowledged and unrecognized self-serving purpose. It comes from somewhere else. It's also hilarious. Nor is it from the point of view of disdain or satire. Perhaps it doesn't have a point of view? I just watched it, so I'll have to think about it. What it does do, though, is inspire me to seek an aesthetic in my own art making that is true, whatever that means, at least for me.
And despite what some reviews say, there actually are many moments of cinematic beauty. The vivid color saturation of the medium is used to great effect, I am thinking in particular of a scene with two men in hospital gowns joined at the head with vivid greens. Also well used is the extreme low resolution in low light when the camera lens is zoomed. Sometimes a flashlight is involved here. Totally spontaneously created, I'm sure, and stunning.
Frances Ha (2012)
well worth watching, but flawed
This film explores the ways people fit themselves into social roles. The main character, oblivious of them, but with sincere feeling for life and others, ends up failing to read subtle cues within multiple spheres: work/networking, love, and friendship. The film looks indirectly at the elephant in the room in the arts: that everyone is actually quite weird, unique, and of value, but hide themselves behind multiple fronts out of fear, insecurity, and self-defense. At the same time, they often fail to appreciate the value of others due to ready-made assessments of their fitness to belong within a certain sphere. Sometimes a person is left behind because their resume/looks/social connections/aesthetic/whatever won't fit into that next rung of the social or career ladder. I suppose this process happens both in romance and work.
It's beautifully shot, and mostly well written, overall very enjoyable and worth taking the time to watch when the majority of films, even indie ones, are so poorly written and executed.
In Greta Gerwig's lead character, I sense a little Diane Keaton circa Annie Hall or Manhattan. Not the first to say so, but it's there in a wonderful way, though I don't think this film quite accomplishes what those films did. And here is the difference - Woody Allen didn't have happy endings.
My main critique is this Frances Ha's sugary-sweet ending. Every character returns for a final reunion at the end. It is heavy handed and negates the real sadness that would be more true to reality - that too often people are not permanent parts of one's life, and must make their exit never to return, no matter how much we wish they would stay, no matter how wrong or right their reasons may be. We can't cling.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Sad
Tolkien's works mean a great deal to me. I spent my childhood reading and rereading The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and whatever else I could get my hands on published posthumously. The Hobbit is a gentle story. Bilbo, with some help from Gandalf and the Dwarfs, is able to accomplish amazing things, despite his small size, because of his luck, wits, and strength of character. The other characteristic of the book is the vastness, diversity, and beauty of the world, filling one with curiosity for what is just around the corner, but also taking just enough time to linger a while in every place.
These Hobbit movies don't linger, characters and scenes are abridged in all the wrong places in order to make time for pervasive and repetitive chase scenes. Even where there isn't a chase scene, they are added. Jackson seems to have taken every scene in the book and asked the question "how can I make this into a battle/chase scene?" Bilbo's power and strengths, are greatly usurped in this film by the intervention of Legolas saving the day each time. Beorn is truncated. The magic and mystery of Mirkwood is particularly lacking. The gentle escape from the elves in the barrels is turned into a farce obviously designed to tie in with a future theme park ride.
Don't see the films nor allow children to see them before reading the books. You should exercise your brains and imagination, creating the images yourself, rather than letting someone else imagine for you, causing you to be stuck with the images from these mediocre films.
Jackson seems to know nothing of the poetry of the book, of mythological archetypes, language and history, nor the unique, gentle fantastic quality of Tolkien's work. Its very sad.
Tod für fünf Stimmen (1995)
good early music film compared to others
After suffering through Tous les Matins du Monde and Farinelli, both atrocious, over-romanticized films on "early music," Death for Five Voices is refreshing. Herzog's films walk the line between fiction and nonfiction, but always seek to express truth. I am a huge fan of his work, but do have some issues with this film.
Perhaps after directing a few Wagner operas, Herzog couldn't resist the temptation to go with the Wagner and Strauss comparisons many of the subjects in the film made, but this sort of romanticizing detracts from the film and misplaces the true context for why Gesualdo's music has a message valuable to contemporary society, in fact, a message that I think is quite in line with Herzog's approach to film making.
Herzog has said that all of his films are documentaries. I think this is evident when looking at his casting, for example. Could you imagine anyone else playing Stroszek or Kaspar Hauser besides Bruno S.? So many actors become the roles they are playing and work very hard to do so, but there's a certain emptiness to it. Someone like Bruno S. is a real person and the story is just an elaboration on his own humanity which shows through the films. I think Kinski, though more trained as an actor, expressed deep humanity in the films he was in with Herzog in the same way. This is to say that Herzog's films contain an element of subjectivity and individuality on a case by case basis, not a systematic basis.
Music composed in Gesualdo's time also contains this sort of subjective element. Vocal music was the ideal. Scores weren't reduced onto two staves like piano music, each vocal part had it's own staff. Each line was as important as any other. There was no system of tonal harmony to bind the music together. This is as true for Gesualdo's music as it was for his contemporaries - he wasn't alone in this as the film would otherwise lead you to think - only his chromaticism is a bit more extreme than most. In all actuality, the late romantics that Gesualdo is incessantly compared to in the film represent the ultimate fruition of the harmonic system that is antithetical to the height of renaissance polyphony.
Personally, I attribute the rise of instrumental music and equal temperament tuning to this shift in musical composition. If the piano had not become the dominant medium for music in the ensuing years, I suspect music would have developed very differently. Perhaps Gesualdo's music is a glimpse of what could have happened if western civilization had gone in a different direction.
There is a very obnoxious scene where the composer/prince plays the opening chords of Tristan and Isolde, something that obnoxious conductors and college music theory professors enjoy doing over and over again for some reason to demonstrate how amazing chromaticism is. I don't think Gesualdo's music has anything to do with Wagner.
It's not Herzog's fault (if you don't count his refusal to sing while a teenager). It is just his sometimes naive enthusiasm for things - this beautiful quality which makes his films so charming and extraordinary in other cases, particularly The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner and How Much Wood Would a Wood Chuck Chuck: he is able to look at things at face value without preconceptions.
Herzog can even be pardoned for stretching the truth in many cases. This time, though, I think his stretch of the truth which in other cases leads to a deeper truth, distracts from it. It's almost as if Herzog is trying to make the film about Wagner. Gesualdo's troubled story seems like an act from a tragic opera.
With that said, I loved the Italian feel of the film. I am sure Herzog would say he dislikes Fellini (if he's even watched any of it), but the pace of the film reminds me of the circus-like atmosphere of the typical Fellini film. One memorable scene in a kitchen with an elderly man and woman, both speaking exuberantly and constantly at the same time, going on and on, quite directly to the camera. What beautiful humanity Herzog captured in this shot. Another shot at a mental institution was very intriguing. The shots on location of the castles and locations haunted by the story were wonderful. This film is well worth watching as long as you don't let the Wagner thing bother you too much!
Death of a President (2006)
Not worth time.
I was not really sure what this film was trying to say. I did think that the script was rather predictable and unoriginal. The music was awful Hollywood nonsense.
A much better film that explores the purpose and consequences of violent political action in a human way is the The Weather Underground, and that documentary is real.
Last year in Chicago a man burned himself in view of one of the freeways during the day as political protest. On his website, he wrote that he had once walked past Donald Rumsfeld clutching a knife in his pocket and had done nothing but now wished he had. While the man's action was very disturbing, when reading his website, I found that he was very eloquent and seemed to feel a deep sense of humanity, thus casting his story in ambiguity. I think art should explore these ambiguities. Death of a President does not explore anything. It's like a Christopher guest film that isn't funny and had no interesting characters.
How to Draw a Bunny (2002)
that sounds too much like what they really are
I can imagine someone unsympathetic to this this particular scene of artists viewing this film about Ray Johnson and finding it slightly self-absorbed and immature, however, I enjoyed watching it.
The opening of the film runs like a prime time local news investigative report, right before the weather segment. As the film progressed, I found my mind sinking deeper into the story of this guy that I had initially never heard of. The music changed from straight ahead brush work by drummer Max Roach to more ambient music, somewhat across between Bill Frissel and John Cage as one was confronted with photographs of both the artist and his work.
Johnson, in photographs of his youth, contains a look of intense, loving, and innocent obsession, the realization of which is brought home towards the end of the film.
His work is a kaleidescope of colors and ideas, as varied as it is numerous. His method of putting his work out may appeal to an anarchist mentality as does the entire film which is also appreciated for its disclosure of beauty that one may not have known about otherwise, which is a shame. Overall, the subject sticks in one's mind more than the film itself, which I suppose is a credit to its craft. It is very fortunate that this film has been made and is readily available in many rental stores. I recommend taking advantage of it.
Hybrid (2000)
Midwestern living
I was attracted to this film after seeing the last five minutes on a friend's television at random (it aired on PBS at one point). The combination of animation and family history seemed somehow personal but dark. At the time, I had been reading about the economic impact of GMO corn and forming a support for organics and non-GMO crops, so the topic seemed relevant in many ways.
However, other than any personal interpretation of the imagery that one may construct in his own mind, this film has very little to do with environmental, health, or political issues. What is great about this film especially is a depiction of a life experience in relation to nature that is almost "Steinbeckian." This is especially seen in the mannerisms of the subjects and their slow, frank way of talking.
I consistently hear people in various religious groups on television and in churches stating that morality in our culture is decaying. I really disagree. I think that the things people see as examples of this are simply out in the open where fifty years ago they were repressed under strict rules of society.
At the same time, perhaps one may find that there is a different sort of moral decay going on in our current society that has nothing to do with supposed sexual or drug related immorality as we contemplate how much the subject of this film struggled for what he believed in; how hard he worked for his entire life. At one point in the film, the man, nearly 100, and still working the land cites a saying stating that if you move to the city, you die within two years.
Despite communication problems illustrated by family members, one cannot help but have admiration for this man that lived a life with so much durability and drive. Perhaps it is a lack of this earnestness, self sacrifice, and independent responsibility we can see in our politicians and large corporations that is the true moral decay of our time.
Despite my feelings on GMO seed, after seeing this film, I do not believe that the subject's desire to push his hybrid corn was fueled by a desire for money. This is illustrated in his statement that he used to drive all over Nebraska and Iowa, giving people his seeds for free, begging them to try them. He really believed that he was helping people by producing a superior crop.
As the film moves on, we learn that Beeghly also possesses a very whimsical, witty, and musical side. Perhaps this talent moved to his grandson, the maker of the film, who wrote and performed the music for the soundtrack. As an aspiring classical musician, I believe that this music is on par with much of the current scene in art music and added to the overall texture of the film.
On a farm in the middle of Iowa, away from large cities, we still see the same amount of alienation and nervousness that many in urban areas possess, but there is also a certain amount of independence and vitality. One of the lessons of the film is its reminder of man's often tortured but also beautiful connection to nature.
Schizopolis (1996)
not really worth much
I had passed over this title at the rental place several times and the week I decided to get through the entire Bergman Scenes from a Marriage TV version, I figured I'd need something lighter to turn off my brain for a while (I don't actually watch television). The box looked like perhaps it might be good, sadly, it was not, and after 45 minutes or so, I found my mind wandering.
Just because a film juxtaposes bizarre images and ironic situations with ironic reactions does not mean that the film is saying anything concrete or penetrating any depths of human understanding.
For example, one listens to the music which is a sort of modern counterpoint as it begins, which, as a musician, caught my attention. Sadly, the counterpoint that could have been interesting relied on that over used cliché, a female making noises of "enthusiasm" which can be found in lots of commercial piped music you find on your commercial radio stations today. It is not edgy. Nor is this movie.
They try to do a similar thing with the film itself, make a counterpoint of irony and situations, however, it fails. One reason is that they are trying to make the film seem like a vignette film visually and with the pacing, yet it is not. They do not compensate this lack of cohesion, which is fine, with anything substantial to make the format work.
I'm going to go read a book instead.
Gummo (1997)
much deeper than a few vignettes that shock
I wasn't a huge fan of "Kids" having seen it at the age of 14 everyone told me that I would find it shocking and disturbing whereas I thought it was rather superficial and predictable, so my expectations for this film weren't high.
What I found was a film that has impressed me more than any other since I first saw Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb." The film is very cohesive with a vastly complicated structure that serves the film and it's message rather than just trying to freak people out and screw with people's minds like many seem to think.
When watching it, one is struck by the animalistic behaviors displayed by all the characters, how instinctive everything is. The first gut reaction is disgust. As the film develops, one realizes that all these disgusting behaviors are natural and resonate only because we are looking at a mirror of sorts. These characters' desires and habits are very similar to one's own at an elemental level. I absolutely loved the scene where the boy was eating spaghetti in the bathtub and shoveling it into his mouth, eating the chocolate bar. The fact that he had food was a matter of course to him and eating it was just something he did without thinking.
Also, the scene where the bunny is shot and picked apart for every cliché. The characters are as bizarre and imperfect as they are bizarre and perfect in big budget Hollywood movies, it only seems fair.
Garden State (2004)
pretentious (spoilers maybe?)
An intelligent friend of mine that I thought good taste recommended this movie to me. It was only later that I would find out that she was a fan of the sitcom, Friends. If I had known, I would have taken her suggestion with a grain of salt.
With that said, this movie was awful. It was a capitalization on the success of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation (an actually great film). Where I felt that Eternal Sunshine was a movie that looked good and was well done, but lacked the mysteries of the universe, I felt that Garden State neither looked good, contained the mysteries of the universe, or was well done, and managed to make me question whether or not love is something real or just a farce because of horrible movies like this that bastardize it.
The dialogue was so cliché and predictable that I found myself laughing towards the end. "when I'm with you.....I'm home" comes to mind, and there is a scene where Braff and Portman kiss in the rain and then Braff contorts his face for several seconds in pained revaliation of the mysteries of the universe. The film also attempts to add artistic shots at arbitrary moments. In one scene they are standing in a pool and the camera focuses on a light that grows from under the pool eventually taking over the shot while Braff and Portman just kind of look towards the camera as if they're posing.
There were several repetitions of bad imagery and symbolism as well as thematic motives. One sickening one that comes to mind is the whole "do something unique, that you've never done before" that rears it's ugly head again at the end. "Oh!" the viewer thinks....."I've heard that before.....this movie is so deep!"
There is nothing profound about this movie. It is not honest. It is formulaic. It follows the Joseph Campbell model of the journey of the hero perfectly. A hero leaves the safe world, reluctantly, in search of the elixer. He sleeps with the mother figure, comes to the abyss (literally in this movie), and finds the actual elixer which is not the one he expects, than returns home, master of both worlds. The reason this is important is that all stories follow this model, if you adhere to the idea, however, it's the variations in the model that can make a story unique. This movie varies nothing. I almost wondered if the screen writer (Braff apparently) was laughing to himself as he wrote this cheesy typical script.
It's OK to make a film that doesn't have the mysteries of the universe in it, however, it's not OK to make one that pretends to.