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Reviews
Mistaken for Strangers (2013)
Terribly made beauty
Music docs have a checkered history. Dig! might be the best of the recent bunch, but nobody came out of that looking good, lest of all the people it was intended promote. Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind were at once far too farcical and far too realistic, and really the whole "rockumentary" genre wasn't left with much wiggle room.
This isn't a rockumentary. It certainly doesn't provide much of an insight into the National, although there are the odd interview with the lesser members who look, more often than not, drunk or confused or bored. No, this is about the Berninger boys. It's a study of how an overweight college dropout copes in the presence of his universally adored, alpha-male brother. It's very hard not to come out on Tom's side. Matt is aloof, pretentious and very egotistical (although at times he shows immense sensitivity to his brother's latent depression). Tom wants what Matt has. And this film is his personal journey into that. There's a deeply psychoanalytical element to this, which, intended or no, places it above say, Standing in the Shadows of Motown or Dig, which are straight up music profiles.
Two scenes stand out for me. One, a drunken conversation between Tom and Matt's wife, both of whom are drunk. She knows that in most battles the alpha male wins. Look who she picked. The second, when Tom screws up and leaves Werner Herzog locked outside an LA gig.
This film is terribly made; the director himself admits this. But in the end, for some reason, he's produced a profoundly moving portrayal of two brothers, and a world in which alpha males win. Fans of the National will be relieved to know that their favourites come across as nothing worse than somewhat humourless - a far cry from The Brian Jonestown Massacre. But fans of the National will appreciate the depressive undertones which are beautifully and subtly brought to the foreground.
Small Still Voice (2005)
Ego, misogyny and pretentiousness.
There was once a review of a Bob Dylan album - Down in the Groove, I think, which went "What the f**k is this s**t?" I'm tempted to stop there, but this film is the story of a whore who gets told what to do by a marionette. There's some kind of feminist story - that its okay to be a prostitute - but other than that, ten minutes of utter tripe and non stop tedium. As a result, you sit there thinking, "what kind of inane buffoon made this?" Who knows, is the answer, but clearly the director's ego masquerades as self acclaimed talent. This film looks as if it was made for a film competition, so it's full of in jokes and self reverence. Honestly, the tragedy is, this is a horrid film made by a horrid woman who holds no right to create art, other than attend, one presumes, a small liberal arts college. Please avoid this. Egos like Petagno's ought not to be supported in this way.
Revolver (2005)
A genuine stinker
I'd give this a zero rating if that were possible.
First, to address the comments that say "oh this is incredibly complex" and so-forth. No it isn't! It's about the dumbest thing ever made. Honestly, if you don't get it, it's because there is nothing to get. Guy Ritchie can bang on about how it's to do with the complexity of the human soul and an existentialist critique of modern society, but it patently isn't. It's like a thirteen year old attempting to write a suicide note, with all the subtlety of a year twelve English poem.
Essentially the story is about a gangster type Zoo reading bloke who wants to get some money back from another shifty Nuts reading gangster bloke who likes to walk around in his pants (Ray Liotta proving his career is dead). The reason for this is not specifically made clear (probably because the writers thought "ah, screw it, it doesn't matter") but rather we are given hints through the central character's inane voice-over.
Thus Jason Statham endlessly mumbles absolute garbage like "He is the bad guy, but how can you be responsible for all the evil in the world if you don't exist?" That's a genuine quote by the way.
And so continues the movie. Lots of superfluous swearing, lots of shooting, lots of stagger cuts (they've been done before, Ritchie!)and absolutely no plot or character development. Add to which some hilarious mis-casting and you are left with a genuinely brainless, often misogynist idiotic mess by the man-child Guy Ritchie. Go away you vile, odious, talentless little man! This movie will appeal to readers of The Sun or Nuts, and if you read The Sun or Nuts, you have absolutely no right to comment on anything at all.
This movie is a must watch, in the same sense as a Richard Littlejohn neo-fascist diatribe is a must read, for all the wrong reasons.
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
Stunningly Beautiful
If you don't like this film (and it is a film, not an anime or a cartoon or a child's movie) then I pity you for you have become so cynical, so deeply pretentious and portentous that you have lost the ability to feel or believe.
First of, from the opening DVD screen, you realize quite how stunningly beautiful Spirited Away is. I do not have the words to describe the pure majesty of the animation. If, at first, one feels a little out of place, this is soon conquered as Chihiro's tale grabs an enthralls.
The plot is entertaining enough for the adult viewer. The soundtrack is achingly gorgeous, and many of the characters deeply compelling. No-Face, the anonymous melancholy man child being one of the most vivid. There are also undertones of Dante's Inferno, as a series of ethereal spirits guide young Chihiro through her quest to save her parents.
Those expecting a linear narrative (most of the critics of this, it would seem) have obviously seen too many Disney cartoon, and know little of the eastern spirituality which pervades Spirited Away. Those with an open mind, a willingness to learn and to escape, will be utterly moved by the astonishingly beautiful, melancholy and captivating visual poetry.
To me, Spirited Away sits alongside Life Is Beautiful in the "happy section" of my DVD collection.
The Straight Story (1999)
Lynch does a Coen...
Brothers, rather than Leonard, that is.
Lynch here ditches the surrealism of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet for the beauty and melancholic Americana of, well, Fargo. And it works a beauty.
This is one of the slowest movies you are ever likely to see. Not a lot happens. Guy has stroke. Brother gets on lawn mower. Sad music plays. Nice sunsets. Duo meet. The end.
And therein lies the beauty of The Straight Story. It is a movie of reflection and tenderness (tenderness being a recurring feature in Twin Peaks oddly enough), rather than fear or evil or suspence and questioning. Just as Fargo - to my mind the brothers Cohen greatest work - hides and merges beauty with horror, hilarity with melancholia, so does David Lynch in this utterly gorgeous study of lost American relations.
I really love The Straight Story, it has happy bits and it has sad bits and the music is great. That'll do for me.
Down by Law (1986)
Tom Waits rules ok.
If you believe that the devil incarnate is a cross between Richard Nixon and Billy Rae Cirus, then logic states Tom Waits is christ reborn. For this weird looking, weird soundin tunesmith is in fact a terrific actor.
In by far and a way his most impressive role (he looks bored in Mystery Men, for example) Waits plays a free style jiving DJ, locked in a cell with an Italian lunatic and a middle American egomaniac (played brilliantly and adequately by Roberto Benigni and John Lurie respectively).
Like all of Jim Jarmusch's movies, it is part dream, part nonsensical comedy. It doesn't entirely make sense. There is not a linear narrative per se. Big gaps are left for you to use your imagination. Suffice to say, the dream is part nightmare, part epiphany, part prophecy.
Most people won't watch this movie, just as most people will never hear a Tom Waits record. No great shame, as the rest of us know that in Tom Waits we are in the presence of genius, and in Down By Law the genius is harnassed by a director of no little talent. Down By Law is, to use the beautiful parlance of boxing, pound for pound the greatest movie ever made.