Watchmen by Alan Moore (*****)

Yes, I know, you have heard it a trillion times before, but Watchmen really is the ultimate graphic novel; one of the first mature ones, it tackled deeper issues than its predecessors (excluding Moore’s Swamp Thing, see below). A story of all-too-real superheroes investigating a potential conspiracy, Watchmen grips from the first page with its uncompromising, “neon-noir” futuristic style and Moore’s trademark snappy dialogue, brimming with wit and intelligence. This guy knows what he’s doing. If recently the reclusive author has perhaps delved too deep into metaphysical explorations, this incredibly influential masterwork will forever serve as a perfect gateway to the world of intelligent, adult graphic novels.

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"You have 5 minutes to tell us whether or not we made the list..."

(Note: This article pertains to to stuff I watched/read in 2008, which doesn’t mean it necessarily came out in 2008)

Funny Games (brutal – Haneke makes a perfect case of what’s wrong with our addiction to violence on the silver screen… in his own words “if you didn’t walk out half-way through the film, there’s something wrong with you”);

Juno (”overrated but witty and boasting great performances all around… go Michael Cera!)

There Will Be Blood (love P.T. Anderson… “I drink your milkshake!”)

Iron Man (R.D.Jr is the man, and this comic adaptation flies, surpassing its source by a significant quotient)

Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog never disappoints… this is more than just about some crazy man living with the Grizzlies)

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"I think I sat on an anthill..."

[rating=3]

Tim Burton Lite…

The Plot: Ed Bloom (Albert Finney) is on his deathbed. Throughout his life Ed has had a tendency to neglect the world’s harsh reality and immerse himself into an imaginary world, full of idealized fantasies. His son Will (Billy Crudup) wants to hear the real story of his father’s life, without the lies. The film transports us to Ed’s past, when he was on a quest to conquer the world. On the way young Ed fights off jumping spiders, encounters the girl of his dreams, works in a circus, fights in the war….

It’s no secret that Tim Burton is not a great dramatic storyteller; he’s much more of a great visual artist. His plots – “Beetlejuice”, “Mars Attacks”, “Planet of the Apes” – are semi-intelligent at best, while the script and acting also come second to the one characteristic Tim Burton does not lack: visual creativity. Each one of the contemporary auteur’s films has a distinctive visual style. In “PeeWee’s Great Adventure” huge bicycles roam a wondrously colorful city. The original “Batman”‘s Gotham City never looked better – The Joker, and the sequel’s Catwoman and Mr. Penguin remain much more efficiently realized than the following character duds (Robin, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, so on…[review written before the ingenuous "Batman Begins" and "Dark Knight"]). Johnny Depp’s hands in “Edward Scissorhands”, the B-movie stylization of “Ed Wood”, the headless horseman in “Sleepy Hollow”, hell, even the apes in, ahem, “The Planet of the Apes” – all of Tim Burton’s films have an underlying visual creepiness to them, a little something that is both fascinating and disturbing.

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[rating=3]

The game of 'tag' got quite rowdy by the end...

A Group of Copenhagen Outcasts Act Like Idiots to Make a Point…

The Plot: Karen (Bodil Jorgensen) witnesses a mentally challenged man (Jens Albinus) attempt to eat in a restaurant, causing havoc. She feels sorry for him, helps him out, only to find out that he’s totally sane, his name is Stoffer, and he is part of a clan who act like they’re mentally challenged to embrace their ‘inner idiots’, and to oppose society. Their goal is to cause anarchy wherever they go, and to provoke people to react to them.

It’s funny that one of the rules of the Dogme vow of chastity is that the director’s name has to remain uncredited, considering Lars Von Trier, the Danish director who came up with the manifesto (along with Thomas Vinterberg) had his second project vainly titled “Lars Von Trier’s Epidemic”. Yet that was back in ’87, times have changed, and now the man came out with a set of very specific rules. Some projects ended up more successful than others; “The Idiots” is in the above-average category. It has a lot of potential, but sadly Von Trier wastes the opportunity to tie it all together into a coherent whole. That’s not to say that the film is bad -it’s so good, in fact, that it’s more of a shame it doesn’t live up to its five-star potential.

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[rating=2]

"Dad, I really gotta go now..."

Schizophrenia Through the Eyes of Harmony…

The Plot: Welcome to the world of schizophrenic Julien. His abusive father listens to blues in a gas mask, harassing him from time to time. His sister is pregnant with his child. Julien babbles, roams about, murders children…

Harmony Korine’s best work was his debut, screenwriting “Kids” for Larry Clark. Subtle and effective, it blows Korine’s amateurish directorial follow-up “Gummo” (in which actors blatantly look into the camera in some scenes) out of the water. With “julien donkey-boy” Korine has achieved a certain visual and stylistic confidence that he lacked in “Gummo”, yet still substitutes good storytelling with gritty ultra-realism.

This is portrayed most effectively (and somewhat gratuitously) in the opening scene, told from the perspective of a child, whom Julien unintentionally murders. From then on the audience gets to witness Julien babbling to himself in his basement bedroom, interacting with his vicious father and his sister who, by the way, is carrying his baby.  The film’s only plot highlight comes in its dramatic conclusion, when Julien’s sister goes through pregnancy complications.

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[rating=3]

"You know I'm married to Brad Pitt, right?"

Switch Your Brains Off and Enjoy…

Ask me why critics hated the Tomb Raider sequel, and I’ll honestly have no idea what to say. Although “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider II The Cradle of Life” isn’t a masterpiece by any standards (you’d be better off re-watching Indiana Jones’ adventures), it still is significantly better than its predecessor. The film boasts an ambitious female hero (Jolie rocks!), awe-inspiring stunts (she flies!), hot settings (England! China! Africa!), an involving plot which includes frightening creatures that leap at everything that moves, and a wonderful underwater shark-fighting sequence. Despite simple dialogue, a predictable structure and uneven editing, `Cradle…’ offers a harmlessly adventurous yarn, and by ‘harmless’ I mean it is not racist, feminist, or discriminatory in any other ways, which is a blessing, with the likes of “Rush Hour 2″, “Bulletproof Monk” and “2 Fast 2 Furious” stretching their forced PG-13 rating with dim-witted offensive material. Those movies’ inanity is an insult by itself – the only insult Jan De Bont’s audacious, enthused sequel presents to the viewer is the prospect of recollecting its ridiculously lengthy title.

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[rating=5]

The roofies worked instantly; Frodo did not remember a thing next morning

Grand Finale to an Epic Trilogy…

The Plot: Frodo and Sam continue their quest to Mount Doom; the film opens with a little prehistory of Gollum, revealing his origins. Back in the present the little bastard cunningly attempts to grasp hold of “the prec-c-cious”. In the meantime, as the former Fellowship of the Ring prepares for final battle, the power of the ring is taking hold of Frodo, who struggles to resist its evil, abandoning loyal Sam in the process.

Admittedly, I wasn’t really into that whole “Lord of the Rings” hype at first. J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” was one of my favorite childhood books, and though I haven’t read the “LOTR” trilogy, after watching Peter Jackson’s (“Bad Taste”, “The Frighteners”) first installment, “The Fellowship of the Ring”, I was mildly disappointed. I felt that the film, despite boasting some great performances, and spectacular special effects and cinematography, was a tad too self-indulgent and grim. In addition, the pace was lethargic – the film had too many ‘helicopter shots’ of the main characters striding towards their destination. Since two more chapters were yet to come, I felt that the film should have had more than just numerous close-ups of weepy Frodo’s (Elijah Wood) mug to compensate for the awareness that the ultimate goal, the apotheosis, would not be reached until the third part of the trilogy. After all, this was supposed to be a grand fantasy for both kids and adults to enjoy, and Peter Jackson failed to supplement the intermittent grandeur of impressive visual effects and mildly riveting suspense with the spine-tingling awe of, say, Wolfgang Petersen’s “NeverEnding Story”, or Bob Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” trilogy. “Fellowship of the Ring” was all impressive production value and epic scale, but no zest.The kid in me was not impressed.

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[rating=4]

The actors patiently waited for Godot...

Acting Can Be Stressful…

“Stress” – another Dogme entry from Belgian Vincent Lannoo – is an immensely appealing, well-acted and hilarious look at the absurdity of an acting studio. If you can handle a great deal of actors’ eccentricity and screaming, then dive right in, “Stress” won’t disappoint. Its main focus is, of course, the flamboyant acting teacher, Pierre Radowsky, played with exquisite precision by Pierre Lekeux, and the consequences of his actions. Allegedly possessing some sort of acting genius, Pierre speaks proudly of his special ‘open-door’ teaching style, which involves immature tantrums, major humiliation in front of the class, and sexual degradation of Pierre’s female students.

The film’s primary intention – exemplified in its intimacy, accentuated by its mock-documentary approach, and its risky, controversial subject matter – seems to be to both amuse and provoke feelings of awkwardness. Take the scene where Pierre exploits the devotion of one of his male students: he makes him ‘relax’ by having the two women in his group soothingly massage him, and kiss him (Pierre does some passionate kissing himself), yet when the man gets aroused, Pierre tells him to get the hell out of the class. It’s funny, yes, but one can’t help feeling a little uneasy.

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[rating=1]

Shampoo + spaghetti + dissected Barbie dolls = bliss

Teenagers Run Amok in This Artsy-Schmartsy “Art” Flick…

All art is pretentious, but true art transcends its pomposity, it justifies it by employing unique techniques to portray something or to make some sort of a statement. In a painting, for example, one wants to study the texture, the colors: the ‘how’ may be even more important than the ‘what’. Yet film’s primary goal first and foremost is to entertain the viewer for an allocated period of time; whether it’s a pretentious independent feature such as “Gummo”, or a big-budget picture, a film should keep the viewer’s attention with its imagery and/or plot. “Gummo”, with its pseudo-dogme approach, subjects its audience to an hour and a half of torturous images, and at the end, there’s nothing to interpret, no plot, no moral – nothing. It’s a clear-cut case of horrid pretentiousness.

Take the two skinheads beating the crap out of each other at a random point in the film for a continuous several minutes. Both of them blatantly look into the camera. The scene is amateurish, overlong, mean-spirited. It is in the film for no other reason but for its audience to think, “Wow, that Harmony Korine guy is real cuttin’ edge!” Consider also the scene where Korine himself (making a statement?) seduces a black dwarf – the scene is obnoxious, and seems to define the putrid sense of the whole film.

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[rating=4]

This is the last time I fly with Plymouth Air...

Knowing Your Critics…

Most of the times, the films that get mixed reviews prove to be the more interesting examples of filmmaking. The ones that divide opinions dramatically are generally the balls-out go-for-broke ones. When a film is uniformly well-reviewed, that sometimes insinuates that it panders to its critics, giving them exactly what they want – glossy, slick entertainment with a Hollywood stamp proudly emblazed on its sleeve (what “The Reader” strived so hard to achieve, but thankfully failed). And when a film is badly reviewed – well, it’s rare that it actually turns out to be any good (see (or rather don’t) the recent “Miss March”).

What I don’t get about “Knowing” is the fact that all the critics seemed to hate it – except one that happens to be my favorite: Roger Ebert. Ebert, especially recently, has been known to be a bit too kind on some films, but he always justifies his reviews, making them difficult – or interesting – to debate with. The man’s been around for a while, and agree or disagree – he knows film better than 99% of you out there. So how come he gave “Knowing” 4 stars, named it one of the best sci-fi films he’s ever seen, and got so inspired by it he went on to write a whole essay about determinism vs randomness, while every other critic seemed to hate the film?

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