by Dean | Nov 8, 2012 | General
L’Auberge Espagnole (2003), from France, is a coming-of-age story concerning Xavier (Romain Duris), an amiable French fool who moves to Barcelona for a year to study global economics. The first proof that he is a fool, however inexperienced in life he is, is his willingness to cheat on lovely Audrey Tautou, his Parisian girlfriend—and to do so with a married woman!
In the great Catalan city, Xavier is selected for tenancy in a modest apartment by the other, European inhabitants of the apartment: a German, a Spaniard, an Italian, a Dane. There are also a Belgian lesbian and an English girl, Wendy, who like Xavier ends up cheating on a lover back home. If you suspect that the apartment is a metaphor for the European Union, you know French thinking, and possibly the thinking of writer-director Cedric Klapisch.
For a long time Klapisch’s film is a good one. What’s finally wrong with it is that nearly all the vicissitudes and infidelity are followed by easy resolutions, quick reconciliations. Xavier even gets to be not the businessman he didn’t wish to become but (oh dear) the professional writer he does. Regarding the political point, Klapisch lets go of art and pushes pro-EU propaganda. The bouncy pleasures of L’Auberge come to a screeching halt with the way Klapisch wraps it all up, even tossing in a jot of meaningless anti-Americanism. If the dear man wants to be anti-American, that is his right; but meaninglessness is meaninglessness.
Klapisch’s directing is lively and loose but not too loose. He concentrates on getting as much out of a scene or sequence as he can, without blatancy. So slapdash is his screenplay, however, that most of the European students Xavier lives with are stick figures; only Wendy, her visiting brother, and the lesbian are not. I’m surprised the diversity-loving Klapisch didn’t do more with them. His deficiencies as an artist—and, yes, he is an artist—are many.
(Mostly in French with English subtitles.)
Pot Luck (2002 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Nov 5, 2012 | General
The fifth season of the TV series, Mad Men, is on DVD now, and I’ve been watching it.
The writing is still solid, and so far I’ve detected very little nonsense. What’s more, the first eight episodes—the totality of what I’ve seen—provide an excellent depiction of a marriage in well-to-do America, that between Don Draper and Megan. Don remains a disturbing man but not a complete heel, for he’s intent to love Megan and avoid cheating on her. Then again, he’s still a newlywed. His sexual hunger for Megan, running parallel with sexual madness (such as that of Pete Campbell) in other quarters, contributes greatly to the marriage’s palatability. No surprise there. Yet Don’s selfishness too easily interferes, and Megan reacts to it with imprudent emotion. That she rather fears Don is evinced when she runs in alarm from him, half-comically, inside the couple’s home in a very good episode called “Far Away Places.”
I hope Season 5 continues to be worthy. The marriage stuff has been memorable. Mad Men is a minor work of art with clever dialogue. Jon Hamm needs to loosen up a bit as Don, but his acting is largely honest and his presence impressive. Jessica Pare does loosen up as Megan and is engaging as well as character-probing.
Mad Men (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 25, 2012 | General
Wal-Mart is a morally imperfect corporation.
Robert Greenwald’s 2005 film about it—Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price—is morally imperfect propaganda.
Propaganda in itself is not bad, but Greenwald’s film could use a little smart analysis and some evenhandedness. Let it glorify labor unions all it wants. Let it approve of the interviewed man who asserts, “I think the government should have more control” over the company owing to Wal-Mart’s being a “monopoly.” What spells trouble for the film is Byron York’s charge in National Review magazine (Dec. 5, ’05) that the doc’s information is deceptive. The above comment about government control issues from a citizen of Middlefield, Ohio, where the family-owned H & H Hardware was ostensibly driven out of business by a newly built Wal-Mart store. Not so, says York: “H & H closed before Wal-Mart even opened in Middlefield”—three months before. And ineffective business decisions had a lot, if not everything, to do with it.
I don’t entirely trust the words of the Wal-Mart CEO and conference speaker whom Greenwald repeatedly shows us, but even less do I trust a knee-jerk propagandist. “Wal-Mart Drives Down Retail Wages $3 Billion Every Year” we read on the screen. Actually, it just might be illegal immigrants who are doing that—or will in the near future. In any case, I’m skeptical. York’s article tells us “there is . . . serious disagreement among economists about Wal-Mart’s effect on wages.” The High Cost of Low Price, however, is not interested in that. . .
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 23, 2012 | General
Remember the name of the genre—horror—because images very unsettling keep meeting the eye in Scott Derrickson’s Sinister (2012). It’ll remind you of real life—existential terrors. The movie begins, after all, with a grainy old film shot of four members of a family being hanged.
Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a writer who, though he loves his family, loves even more the thought of writing another true-crime bestseller. He seeks to discover what happened to the fifth, and missing, member of the murdered family, but unwittingly he must begin to mingle with supernatural dark forces.
Yes, there are spooky children here, which has long been old hat, but committed work has been done in Sinister, with agreeable plotting and visual expertise. A few years ago Derrickson directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a film I didn’t like, but there I could at least see traces of talent. Even more talent is evident in the current movie. An occasional lack of freshness does not diminish the gripping nature of the technical effects—or the energy and depth of Hawke’s performance.
English: Director Scott Derricson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 18, 2012 | General
Some of the lame stuff Amy Grant has given us many moons ago is almost nonexistent on her 1991 recording, Heart in Motion, a worthy achievement. It isn’t overtly Christian except in the gospel-pop song at the end, “Hope Set High,” but implications of belief plainly abound.
“Good For Me” is a walking-on-sunshine ditty with no-nonsense percussion. “Baby Baby” is as feisty as it is pleasant. The charming “Galileo” is sort of a grade-school song with midtempo hooks (and it’s a love song: “You are starlight / I’m Galileo”). A heartfelt item with verve, “Ask Me” is not so much about the sexual abuse of a child—although it is—as spiritual deliverance through conversion.
The hit track, “Every Heartbeat”, is a good tune but vocally Grant can’t quite manage it. (She’s an imperfect singer.) Unlike “I Will Remember You,” which satisfies, “You’re Not Alone” is a bore, and a couple of others don’t cut it either. Still, this may be Amy’s best album. The finest cut on it is “That’s What Love Is For,” whose melody and harmony Gershwin and Irving Berlin would have envied. It comes on strong but not ill-fittingly so, and it boasts a decent lyric: “Sometimes I wonder if we really feel the same / Why we can be unkind.” It is only in the mind of a genuine and concerned Lover that such a thought springs up.
Heart in Motion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
