Theatrical Film
Wings of Desire (1987) dir. Wim Wenders viewed: 02/09/04, The Red Vic Movie House, SF, CA / diary entry: 02/24/04 Great movie. Bad print. It was raining green spots throughout this largely black and white film, and while that was a sort of interesting effect, it wasn't really supposed to be that way. Aesthetically pleasing. Rich and interesting metaphors of observance and experience. Very much a film about Berlin. With beautiful, almost classic Hollywood cinematography. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Peter Falk. It's great. It's actually pretty funny to even begin to compare it to the god-awful American adaptation of it City of Angels (1998) because it is so incredibly bad and hilarious in comparison. Big Fish (2003) dir. Tim Burton viewed: 01/14/04, Loews Theatre at the Metreon, SF, CA / diary entry: 01/21/04 Tim Burton, at his worst, makes visually appealing and generally entertaining films. And, Big Fish is probably Tim Burton at his worst yet, because, while this is fairly visually appealing and mostly entertaining (or entertaining enough), it is a sappy attempt at making a more mature film, something whose subject matter is not superheroes or aliens or apes or ghosts, something that might be nominated for an Oscar or something. It's a heavy-handed, go-for-the-heartstrings act of sentiment, which is both overdone and feels insincere. Burton's greatest weakness is delivering narrative and genuine emotion, and that is this film's bread and butter. Despite an appealing cast including Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, and Billy Crudup, it just felt very false and contrived. This is a film that I could see Lasse Hallström directing and probably achieving a more effective emotional connection. I like Tim Burton's films and have seen almost all of them theatrically, but have felt that he's never really made a great film. Ed Wood (1994) is my personal favorite, but I've been increasingly less enthusiastic about each film that has come more recently. It was always clear that he has a great eye for design, and his films used to exude that to the Nth degree. Perhaps responding to a criticism that he was all visual design and no substance, he's seemingly cut back on such over-the-top stuff that marked in films from the 1980's. In more recent years, I have given up hope that Burton would ever make a great film. He has yet to prove me wrong. The Triplets of Belleville (2003) dir. Sylvain Chomet viewed: 01/12/04, Embarcadero Center Cinema, SF, CA / diary entry: 02/02/04 This is a pretty great film. I'd recommend it to any and all. I'd love to make this film overpower Finding Nemo (2003) and Shrek (2001) in terms of box office returns to encourage the world to realize that there is so much more potential in animation than is ever going to be explored in mainstream Hollywood productions. Not that this could ever happen. Still, it's heartening to see a feature-length film like this that is so rich and clever and different. The film is beautifully animated, with some wonderful character animation, and in that sense is very appealing and strong. More interesting is the emphasis that this film puts on the visual by telling its entire story with virtually no dialogue. For animated short films, this isn't anything new or radical. Animated shorts, like other filmic shorts, can afford to be more radical or unusual in their approaches to narrative and representation. Feature animation is so costly to produce that it almost always requires commercial viability. And in that sense, this film has some aspects of a straight-forward adventure sort of story, including a climactic car chase sequence (how un-radical is that?). But this film is different from most anything else at the feature-length animation level. It surely wouldn't be confused with any other film that I can think of. It represents a very personal vision, a world utterly unique and vivid. Everyone should see this film. It's totally great and fun and clever. Really. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) dir. Peter Jackson viewed: 01/07/04, Loews Theatre at the Metreon, SF, CA / diary entry: 01/09/04 The biggest epic battle of this film was the one that most people probably had with their bladders while trying to endure the full three and a half hours of this, the final segment in the much ballyhooed trilogy. It's long. Very long. Epic long. And even the ending is long. Overall, this series of films was very satisfying and is quite an accomplishment, bringing an enormous beast of a story to the screen and managing all of the storylines and viewer-expectations, visual thrills, characters, and everything. On the whole and even in many of the details, it's hard to fault director Peter Jackson, who has really pulled off something pretty amazing in this film series. And on the whole, his accomplishment has been well-acknowledged and though there are nay-sayers out there, the overall general reception to this series of films is largely well-deserved and recognized. There's virtually nothing to add to the litany of praise or even criticism of these films. All I can say is that I found them on the whole entertaining and pretty satisfying, which is by and far their primary goal. I think I found the second of these films the most satisfying, for whatever reason. It's been a year since I saw it and I can't say exactly what was better/more pleasing about it. This third and final segment felt a little slow to get going and then culminated in climax after climax and denoument after denoument where I was eagerly awaiting the credit roll. Ultimately, though, these films are part of a whole and would be interesting to see back to back, if one ever had the strength to endure such an undertaking. I mean, after all, put end to end and added with all the DVD additional footage and seen in total, this thing would outpace Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), which has been since its creation a joking comparison point for length in film (554 minutes). One from the Heart (1982) dir. Francis Ford Coppola viewed: 01/05/04, Castro Theater, SF, CA / diary entry: 01/09/04 The Monday Night Movie Club had been at the Castro for three or four weeks running prior to this film and after seeing the trailer for it, I was really on the fence about seeing it. It seemed like it might be ultra-stylish and cool or stupid and tacky, or both. Ultimately, one of our party tipped the choice, basing the interest in the Tom Waits soundtrack. Mixed-to-bad feelings were had by all of our party regarding this film, though I was definitely of the mixed variety. I had never seen this film before. I think it came out probably only a couple years before I started investigating films a little more seriously and when I was 13 (at the time of this film's initial release), I was far more interested in seeing the next Star Wars feature than something a little more off-beat. I have decidedly mixed-to-bad feelings about Coppola. Though his early films seem to reek of genius, his mid period and later films reek of something altogether different. If there are any other poor souls out there who saw Jack (1996), which I caught on a weird double feature in a drive-in with Escape From L.A. (1996), they too can attest to the film that I often cite as among my most personally hated. One from the Heart is often noted as one of the films that cost Coppola his studio and budding empire, so expensive and indulgent and so abysmally unsuccessful on its release that it nearly ruined him. The whole film reeks of hubris and conceit, with its lavish sets and stylized nature, stinking of the 1980's with neon jutting everywhere. The strange casting at the heart of the film (the otherwise appealing Teri Garr and the underused, but strangely compelling Frederic Forrest) really gives this film its off-beat character. What is it about them? Are they all too naturalistic and believable in this world of pure artifice? Does that contrast matter? But is it what grates at times? There are some charming scenes and sequences. And some of pure cheesiness. And in some ways they make the whole thing sort of appealing in a misshapen sort of way. It's hard to be utterly hard-hearted towards it. The lush Vegas of the soundstage, with the pre-digital backdrops, reckon somewhat of the genre of the musical, when artifice and extravagence seem well-married. And this film has a sensibility of a musical with a score that rides in the foreground throughout much of it. The homage is far from accidental. Who can figure Coppola out? Anyone? This film is a true transition for him, between his era of respectability and his later years of apparent idiocy. And here, in between, is this unique film that is quite engaging and not all at once. |