nicorama

A meditative film written, produced, and directed by one of the few filmmakers who can find financing and distribution deals (Warner Bros.) to make experimental, non-linear love stories costing $35 million. An incredible artistic, filmic, and business achievement. The question for me is when will Aronofsky make another film? He, like David O. Russel, Wes Anderson, and P.T. Anderson, is a filmmaker who needs and must produce more films at a faster rate. This is the kind of film that advances film as a medium and provides the energy for filmmakers to continue to have faith in the narrative possibilities of cinema. Wonderful, mesmerizing, a strong, confident filmmaker!

(DVD)

Recommend: For its experimental form, and highly ambituous filmmaker, its visuals, and its narrative.

A film with some potential — interesting characters, setting (initially) — but a far cry from Kids and Bully.

(DVD)

Recommend:

Estimated budget: $7,000.
16 mm. stock.
Winner Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize.

(DVD)

Recommend:

A man, his life, his family, his love.
A wonderful ending — the shot, the story, the town, the colors — it just all works / realistic and relatable.

(DVD)

Recommend:

Some of the lines and statements in this film would not be possible to use today, unless it was a comedy. This film is serious yet gets away with it — it’s 1971.

He does what everyone wishes someone did, but no one wants to do or dares do. He’s dirty since he does our dirty work — but who are we in this film? That’s the question.

He takes the law into his own hands since the law cannot and does not provide him the means to fulfill his perceived job function which is to provide justice. We see what the killer has done throughout the film so we know that Harry is right. This is how powerful film can be. We know that what he is doing is right since we see the killer commit the crimes — we have a privileged position as spectators. The omniscient camera allows us to see the evidence that a court does not have so we believe as audience members that the police and the justice department, particularly the mayor, are corrupt for following rules and regulations. This is clearly emphasized at the end of the film when Harry kills the killer then takes his badge and throws it into the pond in front of him. He is disgusted with the law as we are supposed to feel in the end. He knew who the killer was but the court didn’t — we trust him here since we have had a privileged position to see the action of the film, but what if we didn’t? Could we trust this “Harry” like detective? At least that’s what the film is telling us. Trust a detective to provide justice for all. But what if he makes a mistake, what if he’s wrong, what if you’re the person he’s after accidentally? How does that work? The film doesn’t provide that. it just tells in the end that the individual is more trustworthy that the institution in which s/he is in.

(DVD)

Recommend: for its iconic imagery, character, lines, and themes — a classic.

What a transition from Badlands to this — a film in which the passing of time is central to the experience and another which does not give you the option to experience time > the film forces you to try to catch the time that seems to always be out of reach. One of the ways that Greegrass tries to make the action more exciting than it is, particularly towards the beginning of the film, is through a technique that is a bit overly used initially: the frame and zoom. The camera in close-up frames a document for example that has some importance to the plot. The shot stays on the document for a split second before it zooms into an extreme close-up, then cut to another shot. This creates a forced kinetic feeling in the audience, unnecessary.

A film with no emotion — the characters are in distress for two hours — no smiles, no hint at a feeling. This is just one long chase with impossible stunts, incredible abilities, which in the end turn what is identified as action, adventure, drama, mystery into just comedy — it becomes laughable when Bourne is able to pickpocket motorcycle keys so easily, when he drives off a roof, crashes, and gets out and starts to run, when he uses an NYPD car to play bumper cars in NY — the film has no bearing on reality at all, much like the latest James Bond, Casino Royale — the acting is not smooth, smart, charming — it’s just fast, acton oriented, with nothing for the audience to latch on to.

Oh, and of course Bourne can hot wire a motorcycle which is sufficiently light weight for him to ride the “casbah” of Tangiers as if he were competing in a motorcycle trial competition. He jumps, hops over walls, and races through windy, narrow streets — Bourne can do it all except make a worthwhile film.

(Riviera Theater in Santa Barbara > Cinema Society of the SB Film Festival)

Low Recommendation: for its chaotic film direction, as an example of style over substance, of how films have lost any kind of intellectual interest / pure, mindless roller coaster.

In the tradition of Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950), Bonnie and Clyde (Arhur Penn, 1967), and later films like Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) — even Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971) and Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman, 1974)

(DVD)

Highly Recommend: for its mood, its atmosphere, the way in which the story glides from beginning to ending, for the images, the landscapes, the music — the references.

Very tough film — watching people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and hearing firends, family members, and othes talking about the person, their difficulties, their emotional turmoil. A difficult film to make, as the camera crew testifies on the DVD extras and unsettling film to experience for an hour and a half. Worth watching but a definite downer — and what is the result of this film?

(DVD)

Recommend: for its unusual subject matter and gripping images.

The story of a young, attractive art teacher having an affair with a 15 year old boy is already material for a dramatic film, but adding a secondary plot about a manipulative older “jealous, longing (?)” teacher using the affair for blackmail and to create a scandal is very bold — wonderful performances but understandably too taboo for a mainstream audience — there is no way this film could have had box office success in the US.

Glass’ score is much too prominent here — it takes over and sounds much like the score of The Thin Blue Line — not impressed at all by this score — if anything, it detracts from the film.

(DVD)

Recommend: for its interesting narrative — a double plot 1) teacher having an affair with a 15-year old, 2) other teacher blackmailing for her own disturbed pleasure. / and for the acting.

This film has a fantastic look — much like Sin City — but the problem, as of all animation, is that the acting is always stiff. There are characters or moments when the movements of characters glide in a realistic manner, but more often than not, the characters feel like cartoons.

Although the environments, the setting, the ligjhting, basically the whole mise-en-scene looks superb — fantastic stylistics.

(DVD)

Recommend: for it imagery — and that it’s a French animation of this sort.