The Hip Opinion

Since I am displeased with the review I wrote for the 2008 French film, The Class (or Entre les Murs), I wish to supplant it with the following:

During the Aughts, Laurence Cantet adapted a French novel titled Entre les Murs for the screen.  Called in the United States The Class, it’s a gem of a picture, set in a Paris inner-city school, which has no faith whatsoever in multiculturalism and very little in urban public education.  The novel was written by the schoolteacher, Francois Begaudeau, who plays the lead role–that of schoolteacher Francois Marin–in this film.  Though dedicated, Marin is not nearly as effectual as a pedagogue should be:  the school is a multiracial semi-horror.  There is constant disrespect and constant egalitarian sensibility.  Absurdity involving meetings and student representatives paves the way for Marin’s losing his temper and telling two misbehaving girls, the student reps, that they behave like “skanks.” He never apologizes.

The movie invites us to wonder just what kind of country France will be in the future.  The liberalism underlying multiculturalism seems unsustainable.  Yes, you can get a student expelled from Marin’s school, but can you get a satisfactory education re-admitted?

Cover of The Class (Entre Les Murs)

Obviously there are severe limitations in the Paranormal Activity-videocam mode of moviemaking, and I wish never to see a picture made in this mode again.  In Chronicle (2012), however, for all the severe limitations, it’s fairly free of hokiness.

Written by Max Landis, the son of John, and directed by Josh Trank, the film centers on three teens who unexpectedly receive a talent for moving things with their minds–telekinesis–and proceed to have a lot of fun with it.  The top dog with this power is Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a friendless boy with a horrid home life, who nevertheless decides to stick a camcorder in other people’s faces (whether he knows them or not) and who finds it offensive that his nice cousin used to consider Andrew hard to talk to.  Presented without pathos, the lad becomes desperate and hostile.  Telekinesis gets very dangerous;  it’s now a weapon.

The film avoids all blandness and predictability, and is somewhat more than a middlebrow indie curio.  Like so many other entertainment movies these days, it finally exhibits way too much destruction and mayhem, but it’s not without smarts and thrills.  It’s recommendable–more so, I think, than Paranormal Activity.

Now, no more camcorders.

Image via Wikipedia

David Mamet turned into a very interesting (if not always good) film artist, but his Heist has one of the worst plots of any movie in 2001.  Amoral and almost a potboiler, it revolves around the machinations of thieves acted by Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito and Delroy Lindo.  It boasts some excellent dialogue, however:  “She could talk herself out of a sunburn.”  The first words out of Hackman’s mouth when he and Rebecca Pidgeon are ready to pull a job are “Nobody lives forever.”  “Frank Sinatra gave it a shot,” replies Pidgeon coolly.  Peculiar language for a caper movie–which is good.  Perhaps the film should be seen just for its dialogue.

Alas, it has flaws besides plot problems, though, such as a clumsily directed sequence in which Lindo gets tough with a couple of  cheatin’ fellow robbers.

Stick with Mamet’s The Winslow Boy and even State and Main.  You’ll do better.

Cover of Heist

I decided to watch I Know Who Killed Me (2007) on DVD because a critic, Jim Ridley, at the Village Voice liked it and opined that moviegoers shouldn’t have overlooked it. 

He’s nearly right.  For over an hour this horror film by Scott Sivertson, starring Lindsay Lohan, is an intriguing bundle of nasty realism, and it does have the damaged Lohan’s magnetism.  It’s unfortunate, then, that this flick which Ridley says was “sold as torture porn” ends up as weak as contemporary torture porn.  The last one-third is rushed and ludicrous, with Sivertson’s flashy, gimmicky style always present.  It could have achieved a gory marriage of Hitchcock and David Lynch, but no.  I know what killed it.

I Know Who Killed Me (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

The heroes of Western novels sure have a lot of problems.  Martin Kelso, for example, is buried in difficulties and turmoil in Lewis B. Patten’s The Tarnished Star (1963), another sapid oater by the author of A Killing in Kiowa.

But . . . no problems, no drama.  Once again, a conflict between homesteaders and cattlemen proceeds apace, but Patten usually avoids predictable action and even boring, tiresome characterization.  E.g., Kelso’s father is a sheriff and a legendary man, but Kelso has to painstakingly push him to enforce the law against the hostile cattlemen.

Star is short and not actually conclusive, but it’s likable.  Just as fun as Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. 

Image via Wikipedia