thomas4cinema

What’s to be said? Solid. Could have been worse. No surprises, but – in the words of The Wittertainer – all good-looking and well-dressed, which seems to be the specialty (if one may deduce this) of Thron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski (“Thron” was so generically inoffensive that I even forgot to write about it on the blog, I just realise…). It is the sport of the week to count the references (politely expressed) to other, usually greater, cinematic achievements. It is kind of easy, because Oblivion covers them all. That does not really matter, because these days, it seems it takes quite a touch of genius to add something new to the genre (even the well-loved “Moon” was not exactly original in terms of plot, only better compiled than most).

So this film lives off its production design (quite clean, given the post-apocalyptic circumstances. Surprisingly, the film was not shot in 3D, so the white was actually white rather than grey, that’s another bonus point), the performances of one or two side characters (beloved Melissa Leo, Andrea Riseborough with her cute accent and some mean little drones – oh and Nicolaj Coster-Waldau grew a new hand since Sunday!). The film plays out the way it has to, and it plays it… well, solid.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oblivion_2013/

I have not read up on the production history, just found it initially somehow odd that “Lore” is an Australian-produced film directed by Aussie Cate Shortland, while looking like as German a film as you can get (I can only assume it has to do with grant schemes, tax loopholes and the like). Maybe even more so as the film takes the well-told story of the Allied forces closing in on Berlin from all sides, pushing back the German army, stirring hope in some of the citizens whose path they cross and fear, sometimes terror, in others. The end of World War II was a time of collapse and confusion in Germany, and “Lore” is very good at showing what this means in practice: not knowing where to go and how to get there, not knowing whether the next person you meet will feed, shelter, rape or kill you.

The titular girl does not only need to worry about her own fate, but having been abandoned by her parents and left with her siblings to take care of, she needs to pretend to be grown up enough to protect those little ones, as well. She is not a heroine, she is confused and frightened, she has no way of judging the intentions of the people around her, especially not as she has spent her life in a devoted Nazi family, and finds it hard to match the lessons her parents had taught her with the reality she is now thrown into on her quest to find the shelter of her grandmother’s home at the other end of the disintegrating country.

This quest is told in a dramatic, emotional, cruel, but almost always straightforward fashion, in a very (for lack of a better word) pleasant way the film does not (for lack of yet another better word) cinematize (i.e. over-dramatize) events. Stuff happens, people die, and you move on, because you have to. This is maybe the strength of the film and the key to its international success: that it maintains a casual position of observation, that it does not want to bring out the strings and trumpets to tell you when we are experiencing a sad or dramatic moment. Those many people lost in their previously own, now occupied country, with order breaking down and truths being turned on their heads, probably felt nothing more than lost and sad. And this maybe explains why bringing in a non-German filmmaker was a very good idea: she manages to assess the lives of these people with a fresh view, probably less burdened by the hundreds and thousands of hours of movie and tv footage on the topic the average German has been exposed to over time. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lore/

Richard Linklater is a director whom I find interesting rather than exciting. Like Michael Winterbottom (whose work I prefer) or Wes Anderson (whose in general I do not), I am usual keen on checking out his latest output, but I can never get myself  to be very enthusiastic about it. The “Sunset”/”Sunrise” trilogy (“Midnight” coming up) I liked a lot, while his recent “Me and Orson Welles” I found a bit dull and conventional in contrast. “Fast Food Nation” was enlightening, “A Scanner Darkly” visually interesting, but I could not conjure up love for any of these (exception “Before Sunset”, but that maybe had to do with me attending a premiere screening with Julie Delpy, who performed at the premiere after-party and got angry at the inattentive drinkers and chatters, well done, Mademoiselle!).

Jack Black is an actor who I shelved in my mental drawer of “Could be an extremely good actor, but why is he wasting his talent on all this nonsense ?”. I never saw a film with him that I loved, but that could not stop me believing in him, so to speak (I am sure he was grateful for my constant support through all these artistically barren, yet certainly lucrative  years…).

Matthew McGonagall (sorry, I did it again… just can’t write his name) by now has become an actor that does not deter me from watching a film. After “Killer Joe” and “Magic Mike”, I start wondering whether everything before was just a big prank, seeking to confuse critics and casting agents. He can be a great and intense actor, and he certainly has a nice Southern drawl.

Now these people of ambiguous record in my own book of appreciation come together and make… a very good film that defies categorization. It is a weird film, with a “hero” who is terribly boring and annoyingly nice in that way small-town middle-aged ladies love. Him being an undertaker with passion adds to the oddity of the film, but only slightly, as it seems to fit perfectly his calm and humble demeanor  he has the skill to soothe the mourning relatives, and he can sing like an angel at the funerals (Black’s singing and dancing in this film is nothing short of spectacular!).

Even the fact that he develops a somehow inappropriate relationship with one of the clients does not spoil his apparent integrity, they are all very nice about him courting an elderly lady (Shirley McLane) who seems to be bedded on gold and ill temper, raising only the slightest suspicion that his motives include digging that gold. The humiliation he has to endure in that relationship should, we (i.e. small-town community and myself) believe, certainly be worth a little compensation (or damages) in the end.

The trick of “Bernie” (to me) is that Bernie is presented as the utterly likable person, while at almost any moment I wanted to shout out what an annoying character he is. That works together well, especially when in a crucial twist of plot the audience is forced to decide whether to still hold Bernie’s candle even though he has done an altogether not very good thing. To me, that act humanized him to a point where I could finally really like him. At the same time, I could start despising all those fellow citizens that stubbornly claimed that either all the rumors are bogus, or that there must be an explanation, or that all these laws and regulations turning against Bernie are rubbish and should be ignored (the “Dick Cheney Negation”, you could call it, but maybe only after you’ve seen “The World According to Dick Cheney”, which I just have).

Jack Black smiles and trots through the film as if he has never been the loud and annoying comedy hardball that he was in so many roles. Low, high-pitched voice and soft, almost floating walk, trousers in general a bit too high on his bulging waistline, he makes a fascinating Bernie, in a fascinating change of style for himself.

Guardian interview with Jack Black 

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bernie_2011/

This was considerably more entertaining than it had any right to be! Of course you cannot go into a screening with lower expectations than those I brought to see this film (correction: If I go to see the next Transformers movie, those expectations will be rock bottom), but still. Yes, it’s too long, and yes, some of the (especially female) cast looks off. But James Franco is the accurately misplaced crook and charlatan that he needs to be, there’s some nice flying-monkey humour (not sophisticated, but funny), some standard flying ghouls, and an elaborate scheme to bring the wicked witch down.

While the effort to create links to the 1939 classic were not too subtle, either, I found myself enjoying the little details they created to make the fans of the old film happy, while never forgetting that probably a vast majority of the audience who went to the cinema to see James Franco has never seen that original one. Franco for the teenagers, the scarecrow for us old people. Jolly good entertainment all in all, with nice fireworks and some morale about sticking to your promise etc. What else do you expect? Promised and delivered by Sam Raimi, who seems to feel quite comfortable in family entertainment these days.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oz_the_great_and_powerful/

White Material

I would love to sit down with Claire Denis and ask her whether she wants her audience to like Maria Vial (Isabelle Hupppert, fabulous as ever). I hope the answer is “no”, because I thoroughly despised her.

My reading: Maria has plenty of guts but is completely devoid of brains upon deciding whether to abandon her coffee plantation when the civil war rebels in an unnamed African state are approaching. She is closing her eyes to the atrocities happening around her, pretending that she is basically a local and nothing can happen to her (ignoring the fate of the locals getting mutilated and killed all around her). She is, in this attitude, maybe the prototypical white settler in black Africa of the colonial/pot-colonial transition period, she is able to lie to herself to a degree that is astonishing, and whatever ill fate will come upon her and her family (by the way: if anyone ever wondered whether Christopher Lambert made another movie after Highlander – here comes the answer) she will blame it on somebody, to be sure, but she will not be able to understand that the only person to blame is herself. She does not understand that she is sacrificing her family and employees for the sake of some stolen property garnished with some principles. Almost everybody in this film is right, only she keeps being ignorant and wrong.

Alternative reading: a woman with big heart and love for the country she lives in and where her son was born is not afraid of the political turmoil, but firmly stands her ground, unwilling to leave those behind who have been entrusted upon her.

Now … whether this is a very good or an utterly ridiculous movie seems to almost completely depend on which of the narratives the author had in mind. I accept the proposition that both these readings can be part of the same story, but I had the slight feeling that I was supposed to accept the second one – which made me cringe. I hope it’s not the case, and the interpretation that Maria Vial is basically an out-of-control lunatic is not just one I am reading into it.

Independent of this, the film is very strong in depicting the stark brutality of rebels on the rampage in the African post-colonial states, taking back with force what they believe has been taken from them, in the process dehumanizing whole societies and bringing down the remaining pieces of social order and civilization their country has achieved. An unsettling movie experience, whichever way you lean in the reading of the story.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/white_material/