Thursday, October 10, 2013

Three Outta New York

Doing a wee bit of catch-up here with my New York Film Festival screenings - I've got a lengthy review of 12 Years a Slave popping up at The Film Experience at some point in the nearish future, I'll let you know when that's live, but until then since there's no way I'm going to come up with much substantial to say on these couple of flicks so I'll just pop out a few thoughts them here. Oh and I'll probably do another one of these soon, since I am so behind.

The Immigrant - I will watch Marion Cotillard do anything, and making babushka suffering sexy is certainly no exception. I just wish the movie were the full-tilt melodrama it needs to be - it strains towards Sirk here and there (everything with Dagmara Dominczyk is golden) but nowhere near enough. Instead it's all very timid and brown. And I have no idea what wavelength Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner are vibing on but it is not the one the movie needs at all. There's just a limp incoherence to the whole thing tonally, and it ends up being woefully unmoving.

The Wind Rises - Small and lovely and heartfelt, with the usual dose of astonishingly rich images off the tip of Miyazaki's paintbrush - here it's all more grounded than we've come to expect, save a couple of tips of the hat towards the fantastical, but he still manages to tell a realistic story in a way only animation could render so magical in its execution. You'll be utterly hypnotized by talk of rivets! (You might even say you'll be RIVETED.) (Groan.)

All Is Lost - When you sit back and realize that hey, this movie is nothing but an hour and a half of Robert Redford all by himself and saying pretty much nothing, it feels impressive, especially since you don't really think about it while you're watching it. The film's so focused in laser-like on the practical matters at hand, just as his character is, that we're totally right there with him. It reminded me of one of my screenwriting classes in college where the professor talked about how detailing physical labor in its minutiae is an excellent way to suck the audience in. I always think of it in reference to the scene where Norman Bates is cleaning the shower after he's murdered Marion (spoiler!) - Hitchcock pretty much effortlessly converts us to Norman's point of view by stimulating our sense of A Job To Be Done; as we watch the blood get swabbed up we can't help but think hey, don't miss that spot! Anyway All Is Lost is kind of masterful in that sense - we're right there on the boat with him, trying to survive. As for Redford I'm never going to be convinced that he's much of an actor (I know, I know, I await your hate mail) but he mostly gets out of the way here, which is something very hard to do, it's true, and allows us to project ourselves in there onto him. That said, without spoiling it, the last minute or so really got on my nerves.
.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are totally correct about Immigrant. I'm surprised this one did not go straight to vid.