Klown (2010)
This film is unapologetically inappropriate, and most definitely not for the faint of heart as it one-ups many of the recent raunchy American comedies. It also manages to be a good deal funnier than most if not all of them. The film is expertly performed and cast.
Kai Po Che!
I took a Bollywood film course which got my feet wet in the style of popular cinema that emerges from India in college. Since then I can’t say I’ve taken many forays back there again, though both Netflix and certain multiplexes make it a distinct possibility. However, what I’ve noticed in my last few forays (Namely Zokkomon and Chillar Party) is that there are stories that have featured aspects of subgenres and tales tied together by approximately a half dozen montages throughout a two-hour-plus film.
This film is about three friends who want to start a cricket supply store/training academy. The motivation for each to get involved is different and there are different narrative threads throughout. There is the assisting the underdog plot which leads into the sociopolitical commentary the film has to make, that eventually becomes a factor in the friendship. While there are not non-diegetic bursts of song there is source music during said montages. There is a romantic subplot, which links its way into the interaction of these friends and so on.
While the sports theme is always there, and as tends to happen I picked up a bit more about cricket through this film, it never becomes a sports film per se. It essentially remains a slice-of-life drama with much fenestration throughout that charts many years in the lives of this group of friends.
The film through judicious editing tells a lot of story in not a lot of time and handles its tonal shifts fairly well and it is very capably performed. It’s an entertaining film, and I hope to be able to catch some more recent titles from India before the year is out.
Hospitalité
Comedy just may be the most culturally specific genre of them all. In my experience, each culture has their own precepts it brings to comedy. Granted there are some things that are universally embraced as funny, but cinematic aesthetics, narrative constructs, and indigenous commonalities often color how these tropes are conveyed. Which is a very roundabout way of saying that certain films purported to be comedies have struck me with confusion, surprise, and consternation on occasion. American comedy being typically rather broad is rather accessible; British comedy being somewhat dry and witty I’ve always been drawn too and being Brazilian I have a grounding there in where the jokes are coming from.
Hospitalité is a Japanese film, which is quite funny at times simply because it relies almost wholly on situations, characters and the element of surprise to deliver its humor. Where it loses a bit of its steam is that it could use a bit of tightening up in length and towards the end. The power plays exhibited are necessary but perhaps a bit drawn out there too. In essence, the dramatic elements of the narrative are overplayed as there isn’t a lot of follow through.
You may find it more funny than I did, and to be fair there are effective dramatic elements and pieces of commentary being made, but as it is a situation that is seemingly simple and does follow the house-guest-from-hell mold rather there’s just a certain deliberateness and gravitas to it all that drains it a bit.
I Killed My Mother
At long last Xavier Dolan’s debut feature came to the US this year. While you can take your pick between either of his first two films, I preferred this one. As someone who does like to dabble in a bit of auteurist critique I would’ve preferred to have seen this film before Heartbeats. There is a bit of Dolan’s visual flair and editing sensibility on display, and a certain lack of orthodoxy in his approach, at least to start that tells and introspective, interesting tale of a combative mother-son relationship that avoid facile resolutions, or even conflicts; and furthermore doesn’t make either really in a hero mold but rather antagonistic to one another.
The Playroom
I will say that this is a film that requires just a touch of stick-to-it-ness. It builds a worlds of these siblings first, one where their parents seem to be at least on the periphery, if not absent altogether. It fractures chronology and starts the kids making up a story that you know will reflect on their life just not how. Then the parents are introduced, how they interact with the kids, then what’s beneath the facade it takes a bit. However, the film would have lesser or no impact, and would be cheap, underdeveloped melodrama otherwise.
The performances by parents and kids alike are quite strong and its a great chamber drama worth searching out.
Big Shot
Growing up in New York, but being a New York Ranger fan, I was only vaguely aware of the fiasco that was John Spano’s scam to try to purchase the New York Islanders. However, after being fully informed of all that went on here I can say that no team or its fans (no matter how big an arch-rival) deserves to go through this, especially when you consider that the league was at least partly to blame.
Actor-turned-director Kevin Connolly would’ve already scored in my book by not only giving appropriate background on what the Islanders were very early in their existence, but also how they declined, and that he had seen the best and worst of times. However, where the film transcends that is that he actually got to sit down with the man himself and not only faced him in as respectful a fashion as you could ask for, but allowed him to tell his story about how this all happened, and explain (to the extent possible) what he was thinking when things went down.
It’s the kind of story that could only be true and it’s a truly brilliantly rendered account of it quite-nearly blow-by-blow with many of the most concerned parties involved.
Spring Breakers
I first mentioned Spring Breakers on my site when I wrote a post about a Facebook actor game I partook in. This was my selection as a film of James Franco’s I’d not seen but wanted to I believe. And sure enough when the Dash started it was a fairly high priority.
Oddly enough after so long, and hearing so many things and, I was pleased by the film in some ways and terribly annoyed by it in other ways. Most were ways in which I was not expecting. Sure enough it’s not completely exploitative and devoid of any content. However, there’s a tremendous miscalculation inasmuch as it feels like that without fragmenting scenes, excess of montage and repetitive dialogue either spoken onscreen and in voice over, there would not be a feature film here. However, even omitting that and taking the film as is making more aesthetic statements than societal ones. The score and the montage do have an effect of washing over you, which would be nice if not for the incessant earworms: “This is not what I signed up for.” “I want to go home.” “Look at all my shit!” “Spring break fo’ever.”
Free Spirits
The difference this ESPN 30 for 30 doc and any other that this is the first to deal with one of the maverick sports leagues of the 1960s and 1970s. While there was already a USFL doc, the ABA and AFL had not been addressed. Of course, the USFL merging with the NFL was never a possibility. This film tells the tale of the Spirits of St. Louis, one of the two teams left out in the cold when the ill-fated league merged with the NBA.
The film mainly just traces the short, but significant two-year history of the team. The reason they were not absorbed, is not really a mystery. However, though there is an abrupt shift in gears late in the game (though the writing is on the wall throughout) the surprise this film has in store is the fallout and windfall from the non-merger.
It seems some of these docs thrive because of their running time and others could use a little more. This one would’ve been served by a little more of a lead-in, but it still tells its tale well.
Anna Karenina (2012)
This is one of the few films this year that has something I call the “Atom Bomb” effect, which means that it ‘mushroom clouds’ so to speak, it grows the further away from impact you are. It was a film I felt very strongly on a visceral level as I watched it, but as I reflected upon it I was further ravished by the conscious theatrical presentation, which seemed to me to represent the societal facade through which Anna fights. As she comes closer to embracing her emotions the set seem more filmic, when scenes are dealing with emotional contrivance, they are more theatrical. I haven’t had a chance to revisit the film and test the theory, but regardless of interpretation it works. The moving camera lends much of the feeling, but the lack of cuts in certain sequences forces the actors, especially Knightley, to convey many conflicting emotions all in sequence without the aid of the edit and they do so tremendously. The score is wonderful, there are few if any aspects of the production that are not first-rate, making it one of the best films of the year.
Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
As I’ve mentioned in the past, particularly with ESPN’s sports documentaries, it’s always fascinating to me to get perspective on things that were at the periphery of my awareness due to my young age in the 1980s. I love the decade in which I was born, and due to my own personal philosophy consider myself more a child of that decade than the one I came of age in. However, being so young there were some things I only had a passing knowledge of. The Morton Downey Jr. Show was something I was aware of either when it started on WWOR (living not far from Secaucus, NJ that network was on my TV) or on MTV, but I didn’t fully realize the meteoric nature of his ascendency on a wave of vitriol whose earnestness was questionable.
And therein lies the brilliance of this documentary’s approach: it goes forward and backward in time to chart certain catalytic factors in his life and chart changes, but he remains an intriguing enigma the film does not judge its subject but presents him with utmost showmanship, as he likely would have wanted, with opinions on him from those who knew him on either side and with impeccably timed revelations. It is highly recommended and only held back by its animated interludes and a rather soft landing in its very last moment.
The Movie Rat 