"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
Helen Keller
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
MOVIES TO RENT
Dancer in the DarkLars von Trier rarely escapes a review without the word “provocateur” having been slapped onto his work like an expiry date onto a bag of lunchmeat. Like most labels, this one is misleading because it fails to account for the notion that someone like von Trier genuinely cares about anything but scandalizing his audience. With Dancer in the Dark, he surpassed his critics’ expectations, however, with the unlikely help of singer Björk, who performs her heart out as the pitiable Selma, a mother faced with an ever-worsening illness and the desperate need to care for her child. The end of the film may find Von Trier at his most merciless—who doesn’t know someone who has been permanently traumatized by this film?—but Björk’s commitment and the sprightly genre-play give us something that, in the end, rises above bald exhibitionism.
Crouching Tiger Hidden DragonForget simple suspension: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon basically asked audiences to obliterate their disbelief, to buy into a world of moon-walking, Matrix-aping samurais. If it feels like Lee’s playing a video game here, that because he basically is—the gorgeous backdrops feel like levels, the epic battle sequences like end-bosses. Don’t lie—your thumb reached for the “jump” button more than once. Amidst all the high-fantasy, old-world swordplay, it’s easy to forget that Lee is milking the oldest tricks in the book—revenge, honor, love—for an honest-to-goodness plot. No reason to get fancy with the themes, though: They’re just fodder for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s psychedelia, a bunch of deadly warriors pogoing around a trippy McDonalds playscape.
Million Dollar BabyThanks to heavyweight stars and rather wacky criticism from conservative pundits, Million Dollar Baby became a genuine water-cooler movie. As is the case with many controversial films, the event that becomes to focus of discussion is secondary to the themes presented. In the case of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), euthanasia is the extreme continuation of a relationship based on deep love and unconditional loyalty. The subject of redemption receives special treatment as well. Spectacular acting and Eastwood’s more-than-capable direction produce a personal air in which the audience grows genuinely attached to the film’s characters. It’s a shame how Million Dollar Baby has been discussed in its infancy. Years from now hopefully it will be seen in a different light, as a film far more remarkable for its gravity than its supposedly devious message.
Amores PerrosPETA members beware: Though a disclaimer in the opening credits states that no animals were harmed during the production of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2000 art-house hit, it would, nevertheless, be understandable to feel a tad skeptical when watching the grittily depicted dog-fights staged in the three-part film’s first segment. If you can stomach the canine-on-canine violence, however, there are some interesting ideas about love, in various forms and facets, scattered throughout here, as well as a vibrant portrait of life in contemporary Mexico City. Innaritu’s film, along with Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, also represents a significant U.S. breakthrough for Mexican cinema. Just ask Hollywood: Flash forward a few years’ time, and Innaritu’s directing Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in an Oscar-nominated studio release, while Cuaron is at the helm for a Harry Potter sequel.
Best In Show“And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.” The secret to Fred Willard’s hilarious turn as dog show commentator Buck Laughlin is that he doesn’t stray far from what most audience members want to say while watching dog shows. Best In Show, however, revels in the comedic possibilities inherent in the obsession necessary to reach the heights of a national dog show, torquing the quirks of dog lovers to a heightened state of situational insanity. Guest’s usual cast of improvisers is here, tweaking the formula established in 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, but here it simply works better, perhaps because the targets are far wider ranging, even though they share the same obsessive characteristics. Luckily, unlike the contest there’s no need to pick one over the other.
Almost FamousIt was unlikely that the unincredibly glamorous world of music criticism would ever be immortalized on film, much less in one as exquisite as Almost Famous. Did the fantastic, boundary-expanding, state-trotting journey of Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous set up unrealistic expectations of life as a teenage music critic? I don't think any of us at Stylus are on Franz Ferdinand's speed-dial yet, and I doubt too many of us are holding our breath for any Faruzia Balk-Anna Paquin three-ways in the immediate future either. But the love and enthusiasm (for music, among other things) that's evident in every frame of Almost Famous, against reason and against better sense and in spite of everything—that's for real. That's us. So is Philip Seymour Hoffman, thankfully on the other end of Patrick Fugit's panicked phone call—"Of course I'm here, I'm uncool." That's us too. We're there for you. We're uncool.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron BurgundyRon Burgundy is no Charles Foster Kane and Will Ferrell is no Orson Welles . . . we got it. However, everyone needs an easy laugh once in a while, and if a single dumb comedy can fulfill that need repeatedly, it deserves to be considered a great movie. Many of our readers probably expected Old School to occupy the “token-mainstream-comedy-that-gets-included-to-prove-how-not-stuffy-we-are” slot, but the unabashed silliness of Anchorman won over enough of our hearts. Dreamworks’s thought process behind Anchorman probably got no further than the, “Will Ferrell is funny, let’s see if he can carry a movie,” stage, but thankfully that was enough. Ferrell and his writing partner/director Adam McKay surrounded the project with a ton of talent and simply let funny people be funny. Yes it’s stupid, yes it’s barely coherent, but Ferrell and co.’s willingness to “go for it” at the expense of keeping the movie together is precisely what makes Anchorman so endearing.
Memento
It was the Viz Profanisaurus that first defined the term "Tarantino Hangover" as being when the various humourous incidents that occurred on the prior night's drinking come to you in a series of random flashbacks that don't make any sense until you've sat through them all. Taking that into consideration, a "Christopher Nolan hangover" must be one received after a three-day period constantly hooked up to a Poteen drip. Memento may have caused word of mouth based on that non-linear narrative gimmick, but you came for the time-frame shifts, and stayed for the top line editing, assured noir direction, proof that Guy Pearce is actually an actor to bother with, and Joe Pantoliano proving that nobody on this planet can play an asshole quite like he can.
Spellbound
The most suspenseful thriller of 2003 was a movie whose plot description would probably put people to sleep. But yes, believe it or not, this documentary (strike one) that follows a group of precocious and/or annoying kids (strike two) at the national spelling bee (do I even need to say it?) is as totally spellbinding as the title would have you believe. Like any great movie about a totally nerdy subject, you don't have to be a vocab obsessive to enjoy Spellbound—in other words, you might not care about how to spell the word "autochtonous," but I guarantee that you will care about whether or not that poor Neil kid is going to disappoint not only his parents but countless families in India, or whether that snotty Emily girl is gonna get her come-uppance, and of course WHO'S GOING TO WIN DAMMIT. And regardless of who you're rooting for to win, whenever that wrong answer-indicating bell is rung, if your heart isn't in your throat then congratulations at being the first person to ever skip youth entirely.
The PianistWith The Pianist, it finally felt like Roman Polanski was getting closer to acknowledging that the manifest horrors of some of his films had anything at all to do with the manifest horrors of his childhood. No one could fault him for trying to avoid the Holocaust throughout his career, instead allowing for his subconscious to attempt the unenviable task of exorcising the trauma that lay bristling below the surface. But in this film, the anxiety that made Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant so unsettling is dug out at the root. As the musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, Adrien Brody will never be this good again, while Polanski finally gets to enjoy the kind of adult life befitting a cinematic elder statesman of his talent—at last, peace.
About SchmidtI realize the whole “playing a real-life schlub instead of your sickeningly glamorous self” gimmick’s a well-worn path to easy Hollywood cred (take a bow Nic Cage, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston and Sly Stallone), but since I didn’t have much truck with Mad Jack before (especially with him being the world’s most insufferable sports fan and all), it was nice to see Nicholson defiantly, indisputably not playing Nicholson for a change. As an Alexander Payne primer on shiftless white men past their sexual peak, Schmidt’s better than Sideways if not quite as squirmingly truthful and tragically desperate as Election. All this, and Kathy Bates’ best work since Waterboy!
Traffic
There's nothing particularly innovative or even that decade-definitive about Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, and I'd be foolish to pretend like I knew if it was a truly accurate look at the drug trade in America at the moment. More importantly, though, the movie is thoroughly engrossing for every minute it plays (which, though you might not notice, is actually a lot of minutes)--from Erika Christensen cooking up for the first time to Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman swapping virginity-losing stories, from Catherine Zeta-Jones being surprisingly level-headed at her first big coke deal to Topher Grace explaining the reality of street drug dealing to idealist Michael Douglas, it's extremely unlikely that something won't resonate with you personally and even more unlikely that all of it won't entertain you thoroughly. It's Goodfellas with a heart, at 45 instead of 78 RPM.
Requiem for a DreamFamous before its release for containing more cuts than any film in history (approximately 3-4 times that of an average feature), Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to Pi took drug related cautionary-tales to another plane. The subject matter and events of Requiem for a Dream take a back seat to Aronofsky’s manic style and the lead performances. Jared Leto proved more than competent (who knew?), Jennifer Connelly initiated her ascendance to A-List female lead, and Ellen Burstyn’s portrayal of aging widow Sara Goldfarb proves easily the strongest aspect of the film. While the drug scenes and consequences can be nearly cartoonish, Aronofsky’s success in depicting the motivation behind and desperation resulting from addiction makes Requiem for a Dream one of the better films of the decade.
Capturing the Friedmans If the documentary was the filmic genre to watch over the last five years, then Capturing the Friedmans is the masterpiece that made good on the promise. Who knew that the proliferation of home video cameras—technology intended to document the special occasions of any family—would lead to such a heartbreaking look at the dissolution of one? There are so many things going on in Capturing the Friedmans that defy easy synopsis, from the unflinching look at the hysteria surrounding pedophilia that afflicts Arnold Friedman’s “victims,” to the bilious relationship between the Friedman boys and their mother. This isn’t your family, but, for better or for worse, it is a family, and the evenhandedness with which director Andrew Jarecki conducts these proceedings could teach any Supreme Court Judge a thing or two.
Helen Keller
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
MOVIES TO RENT
Dancer in the DarkLars von Trier rarely escapes a review without the word “provocateur” having been slapped onto his work like an expiry date onto a bag of lunchmeat. Like most labels, this one is misleading because it fails to account for the notion that someone like von Trier genuinely cares about anything but scandalizing his audience. With Dancer in the Dark, he surpassed his critics’ expectations, however, with the unlikely help of singer Björk, who performs her heart out as the pitiable Selma, a mother faced with an ever-worsening illness and the desperate need to care for her child. The end of the film may find Von Trier at his most merciless—who doesn’t know someone who has been permanently traumatized by this film?—but Björk’s commitment and the sprightly genre-play give us something that, in the end, rises above bald exhibitionism.
Crouching Tiger Hidden DragonForget simple suspension: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon basically asked audiences to obliterate their disbelief, to buy into a world of moon-walking, Matrix-aping samurais. If it feels like Lee’s playing a video game here, that because he basically is—the gorgeous backdrops feel like levels, the epic battle sequences like end-bosses. Don’t lie—your thumb reached for the “jump” button more than once. Amidst all the high-fantasy, old-world swordplay, it’s easy to forget that Lee is milking the oldest tricks in the book—revenge, honor, love—for an honest-to-goodness plot. No reason to get fancy with the themes, though: They’re just fodder for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s psychedelia, a bunch of deadly warriors pogoing around a trippy McDonalds playscape.
Million Dollar BabyThanks to heavyweight stars and rather wacky criticism from conservative pundits, Million Dollar Baby became a genuine water-cooler movie. As is the case with many controversial films, the event that becomes to focus of discussion is secondary to the themes presented. In the case of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), euthanasia is the extreme continuation of a relationship based on deep love and unconditional loyalty. The subject of redemption receives special treatment as well. Spectacular acting and Eastwood’s more-than-capable direction produce a personal air in which the audience grows genuinely attached to the film’s characters. It’s a shame how Million Dollar Baby has been discussed in its infancy. Years from now hopefully it will be seen in a different light, as a film far more remarkable for its gravity than its supposedly devious message.
Amores PerrosPETA members beware: Though a disclaimer in the opening credits states that no animals were harmed during the production of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2000 art-house hit, it would, nevertheless, be understandable to feel a tad skeptical when watching the grittily depicted dog-fights staged in the three-part film’s first segment. If you can stomach the canine-on-canine violence, however, there are some interesting ideas about love, in various forms and facets, scattered throughout here, as well as a vibrant portrait of life in contemporary Mexico City. Innaritu’s film, along with Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, also represents a significant U.S. breakthrough for Mexican cinema. Just ask Hollywood: Flash forward a few years’ time, and Innaritu’s directing Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in an Oscar-nominated studio release, while Cuaron is at the helm for a Harry Potter sequel.
Best In Show“And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.” The secret to Fred Willard’s hilarious turn as dog show commentator Buck Laughlin is that he doesn’t stray far from what most audience members want to say while watching dog shows. Best In Show, however, revels in the comedic possibilities inherent in the obsession necessary to reach the heights of a national dog show, torquing the quirks of dog lovers to a heightened state of situational insanity. Guest’s usual cast of improvisers is here, tweaking the formula established in 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, but here it simply works better, perhaps because the targets are far wider ranging, even though they share the same obsessive characteristics. Luckily, unlike the contest there’s no need to pick one over the other.
Almost FamousIt was unlikely that the unincredibly glamorous world of music criticism would ever be immortalized on film, much less in one as exquisite as Almost Famous. Did the fantastic, boundary-expanding, state-trotting journey of Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous set up unrealistic expectations of life as a teenage music critic? I don't think any of us at Stylus are on Franz Ferdinand's speed-dial yet, and I doubt too many of us are holding our breath for any Faruzia Balk-Anna Paquin three-ways in the immediate future either. But the love and enthusiasm (for music, among other things) that's evident in every frame of Almost Famous, against reason and against better sense and in spite of everything—that's for real. That's us. So is Philip Seymour Hoffman, thankfully on the other end of Patrick Fugit's panicked phone call—"Of course I'm here, I'm uncool." That's us too. We're there for you. We're uncool.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron BurgundyRon Burgundy is no Charles Foster Kane and Will Ferrell is no Orson Welles . . . we got it. However, everyone needs an easy laugh once in a while, and if a single dumb comedy can fulfill that need repeatedly, it deserves to be considered a great movie. Many of our readers probably expected Old School to occupy the “token-mainstream-comedy-that-gets-included-to-prove-how-not-stuffy-we-are” slot, but the unabashed silliness of Anchorman won over enough of our hearts. Dreamworks’s thought process behind Anchorman probably got no further than the, “Will Ferrell is funny, let’s see if he can carry a movie,” stage, but thankfully that was enough. Ferrell and his writing partner/director Adam McKay surrounded the project with a ton of talent and simply let funny people be funny. Yes it’s stupid, yes it’s barely coherent, but Ferrell and co.’s willingness to “go for it” at the expense of keeping the movie together is precisely what makes Anchorman so endearing.
Memento
It was the Viz Profanisaurus that first defined the term "Tarantino Hangover" as being when the various humourous incidents that occurred on the prior night's drinking come to you in a series of random flashbacks that don't make any sense until you've sat through them all. Taking that into consideration, a "Christopher Nolan hangover" must be one received after a three-day period constantly hooked up to a Poteen drip. Memento may have caused word of mouth based on that non-linear narrative gimmick, but you came for the time-frame shifts, and stayed for the top line editing, assured noir direction, proof that Guy Pearce is actually an actor to bother with, and Joe Pantoliano proving that nobody on this planet can play an asshole quite like he can.
Spellbound
The most suspenseful thriller of 2003 was a movie whose plot description would probably put people to sleep. But yes, believe it or not, this documentary (strike one) that follows a group of precocious and/or annoying kids (strike two) at the national spelling bee (do I even need to say it?) is as totally spellbinding as the title would have you believe. Like any great movie about a totally nerdy subject, you don't have to be a vocab obsessive to enjoy Spellbound—in other words, you might not care about how to spell the word "autochtonous," but I guarantee that you will care about whether or not that poor Neil kid is going to disappoint not only his parents but countless families in India, or whether that snotty Emily girl is gonna get her come-uppance, and of course WHO'S GOING TO WIN DAMMIT. And regardless of who you're rooting for to win, whenever that wrong answer-indicating bell is rung, if your heart isn't in your throat then congratulations at being the first person to ever skip youth entirely.
The PianistWith The Pianist, it finally felt like Roman Polanski was getting closer to acknowledging that the manifest horrors of some of his films had anything at all to do with the manifest horrors of his childhood. No one could fault him for trying to avoid the Holocaust throughout his career, instead allowing for his subconscious to attempt the unenviable task of exorcising the trauma that lay bristling below the surface. But in this film, the anxiety that made Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant so unsettling is dug out at the root. As the musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, Adrien Brody will never be this good again, while Polanski finally gets to enjoy the kind of adult life befitting a cinematic elder statesman of his talent—at last, peace.
About SchmidtI realize the whole “playing a real-life schlub instead of your sickeningly glamorous self” gimmick’s a well-worn path to easy Hollywood cred (take a bow Nic Cage, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston and Sly Stallone), but since I didn’t have much truck with Mad Jack before (especially with him being the world’s most insufferable sports fan and all), it was nice to see Nicholson defiantly, indisputably not playing Nicholson for a change. As an Alexander Payne primer on shiftless white men past their sexual peak, Schmidt’s better than Sideways if not quite as squirmingly truthful and tragically desperate as Election. All this, and Kathy Bates’ best work since Waterboy!
Traffic
There's nothing particularly innovative or even that decade-definitive about Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, and I'd be foolish to pretend like I knew if it was a truly accurate look at the drug trade in America at the moment. More importantly, though, the movie is thoroughly engrossing for every minute it plays (which, though you might not notice, is actually a lot of minutes)--from Erika Christensen cooking up for the first time to Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman swapping virginity-losing stories, from Catherine Zeta-Jones being surprisingly level-headed at her first big coke deal to Topher Grace explaining the reality of street drug dealing to idealist Michael Douglas, it's extremely unlikely that something won't resonate with you personally and even more unlikely that all of it won't entertain you thoroughly. It's Goodfellas with a heart, at 45 instead of 78 RPM.
Requiem for a DreamFamous before its release for containing more cuts than any film in history (approximately 3-4 times that of an average feature), Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to Pi took drug related cautionary-tales to another plane. The subject matter and events of Requiem for a Dream take a back seat to Aronofsky’s manic style and the lead performances. Jared Leto proved more than competent (who knew?), Jennifer Connelly initiated her ascendance to A-List female lead, and Ellen Burstyn’s portrayal of aging widow Sara Goldfarb proves easily the strongest aspect of the film. While the drug scenes and consequences can be nearly cartoonish, Aronofsky’s success in depicting the motivation behind and desperation resulting from addiction makes Requiem for a Dream one of the better films of the decade.
Capturing the Friedmans If the documentary was the filmic genre to watch over the last five years, then Capturing the Friedmans is the masterpiece that made good on the promise. Who knew that the proliferation of home video cameras—technology intended to document the special occasions of any family—would lead to such a heartbreaking look at the dissolution of one? There are so many things going on in Capturing the Friedmans that defy easy synopsis, from the unflinching look at the hysteria surrounding pedophilia that afflicts Arnold Friedman’s “victims,” to the bilious relationship between the Friedman boys and their mother. This isn’t your family, but, for better or for worse, it is a family, and the evenhandedness with which director Andrew Jarecki conducts these proceedings could teach any Supreme Court Judge a thing or two.
posted by D @ 8:06 AM
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