Sofia Coppola reteaming with Bill Murray after Lost in Translation for a Netflix funded good old fashioned Christmas holiday special with guest appearences by George Clooney, Chris Rock, Miley Cirus, Jason Schwartzman, Micheal Cerna, Phoenix, … sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately it isn’t. This 56 minute special will disappoint the hell out of a lot of people.
A snow storm has hit New York shutting down the entire city, no subway, no planes, trains or automobiles. No one will be able to attend Bill Murray’s live T.V. show for Christmas eve he fears, a Hollywood agent is desperately trying to sign him, and then suddenly there is a power failure. A wedding party without guests, some hotel staff and a few stranded hotel guests, there’s nothing left for them to do than singing some Christmas songs.
I’m a big Bill Murray fan but his and the talent of a lot of other people are wasted on this Christmas special. The film looks messy, badly shot and edited, it’s like a Robert Altman style film done extremely badly. It looks like it was shot in a couple of days time. The offbeat way the Christmas songs were brought is definitely a positive point and I was extremely charmed by Maya Rudolph and Jenny Lewis, but again, what a mess.
Nanni Moretti has never shied away from using autobiographical elements and his sociopolitical views in his films. Moretti’s mother died during post production of his previous film Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope, 2010) With his latest effort Mia Madre he’s made a film in which a female director has to come to terms with her mother’s failing health and potential imminent death while directing a film about a social conflict (an Elio Petri like drama about factory workers on strike against a new Italo American owner) and has to deal with her American lead star (John Torturro, histerically funny at times) who proves to be somewhat difficult.
Moretti has never been that interested in becoming a purely visual filmmaker, his style (or lack of it according to some) is rather modest and certainly not flashy. Interesting in this perspective is one of the earlier scenes in the film where the director Margherita (Margherita Buy playing a female version of Moretti who does appear in the film as the brother) is wondering why one of her camera operators seems to be more interested in/siding with the police beating up the strikers instead of being appalled by the violence he has to film.
Most of the scenes with Torturro as Barry Huggins -who can’t stop telling tall tales of his days on the set of a Stanley Kubrick film, a director everyone in the film knows he’s never worked with- tend to be very funny. He’s more of a tragicomic character who seems to be acting difficult to hide his insecurities and or frustrations he has dealing with the Italian languague/dialogue he does not master.
On the other hand you have very emotional scenes were Margherita does not seem to be willing to accept her mother can’t take a few steps to get to a nearby toilet, or when she realises that all her mother’s life long study and knowledge of the classical languages -which she does pass on to her granddaughter- will disappear with her.
And in yet another -more dreamlike- scene some protagonists are getting in a seemingly endless line around several blocks (little Italian alleys would be more accurate) to go and see Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987) in a revival arthouse cinema. ‘They say it’s a great film’ you can here coming from the queue.
It’s difficult to say if the film would have been better served by a purely dramatic approach as Moretti did with his Palme d’or winner La Stanza del Figlio (The Son’s Room, 2001).
The film opens with the FBI following and arresting Rudolf Abel, a sovjet spy in the late fifties, at the height of the Cold War. Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan a lawyer specialised in insurance cases who’s asked to defend Abel, a case nobody really wants to handle and which does not gain him any popularity.
The ensuing trial is more of a show trial, the outcome is known in advance, Abel is to be found guilty. Donovan is able to prevent Abel to go to the electric chair via some extra-legal arguments. One day the US may be able to use him to exhange him versus an American spy caught by the Ruskies. A first succesful showcasing of Donovan’s intelligence and backroom negociation skills
Slow disolve (classical, but not the most subtle direction by Spielberg) to a young American pilot Francis Gray Powers who’s about to be chosen to go an a secret mission with a U-2 spy plane equiped with the most advanced new cameras to take photographs over Russia where his plane is shot down and he’s captured.
A young American economic student Frederic Pryor is also detained by the east-Germans, literally amidst the buidling of the Berlin wall, the year is 1961.
The time has come to use Rudolf Abel as exchange for at least one of the 2 Americans held behind the iron curtain. The man for the Job, James Donovan in an unofficial capacity.
The direction of Spielberg is very solid, from the first shot he puts his visual mark on the film, no modern day fast cutting but instead a very classical well thought out style of directing. The problem however is that Spielberg cannot help being Spielberg and at times he has to hammer home the message eventhough it’s already been made clear in a more subtle way earlier.
In short the message of the film is: spies are spies and both sides use them, some have honor and are stand-up guys (standing men), others less so and the stand-up patriotic guys deserve our respect. Please note that both sides use coins, either to transport secret messages or to hide a suicide device in case one is caught.
The fim is very entertaining , well written (amongst others by the Coen brothers). The introduction scene of Tom Hanks as an insurance settlement lawyer sets the tone for some similar very crispy dialogue scenes. Mark Rylance (Intimacy and the upcoming Spielberg film The BFG) as Rudolf Abel really has the star part of the film and steals every scene he’s in, it must be the nicest depiction ever of a Russian spy in any movie, certainly one of the more original aspects of the film.
The original score for the film is by Thomas Newman which is somewhat of a rarity as John Williams has done every score for Spielberg starting with The Sugarland Express, Spielberg first studio picture except for The Color Purple which was scored by Quincy Jones who was also one of the producers on that film.
If you read my post and saw the video I prepared a couple of days ago regarding Martin Scorsese’s love for flashbulbs and camera clicks you’ll certainly notice Spielberg’s nod to Scorsese’s The Aviator with the floor of a courtroom hallway covered with used flashbulbs. I’ve prepared a new clip comparing both ‘The Aviator’ and the ‘Bridge of Spies’ scenes + featuring part of the ‘Bridge of Spies’ DGA Q&A Scorsese and Spielberg had and this scene comes up. And as the Coen brothers did some rewriting on the ‘Bridge of Spies’ script they can join in as well.
Below you can find the full interview on the Director’s Guild of America’s Youtube channel:
We start of with a shot from Shine a Light the Rolling Stones concert film that again shows some flashbulbs and ends with a New York vista (although I did not let the shot play to the end) and you can see Martin Scorsese urging the camera to go up.
Followed by a clip from the Mark Cousins interview with Scorsese for the BBC series Scene by Scene, the bit where Scorsese is referring to his personal lack of technical skills.
Next up, a short clip from After Hours, namely Scorsese director’s cameo. We end with a few seconds from Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to make clear this video was supposed to be funny, at least I think it is.
Another film which is being shown 6 times as part of the Scorsese retrospective at Flagey (http://www.cinematek.be/?node=17&event_id=100190101#sthash.3ag9ghCN.dpbs) is Bringing Out the Dead. I’ve prepared a video (a lot shorter than the previous one) featuring 2 clips from a sequence from Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, both preceded by a scene that he’s paying homage to.
We start of with a clip from Sweet Smell of Success, one of Scorsese’s favourite Alexander Mackendrick films. We see Burt Lancaster appear on a huge balcony of a private residence overlooking New York followed by Scorsese’s nod to this scene, this time with Nicholas Cage stepping on a balcony.
Next up, a clip from the opening of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, the fireworks/Gershwin sequence -a nice way for Back to the Cinema to pay tribute to Woody Allen on his 80th birthday- followed by the continuation of the scene from Bringing Out the Dead, Scorsese ending it with some fireworks of his own.
From 1 till 22 december 2015 a mini restropective of 6 Martin Scorsese films is being held at Flagey. There’s also a Rock Night on 02jan16 with screenings of The Last Waltz and Shine A Light , you can find the complete schedule below:
I’ve prepared the below video showcasing his love for flashbulbs and camera clicks. It shows a lot of examples from Scorsese’s films plus from the films that were a source of inspiration for him.
We start of with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Scorsese’s 9 and a half minute commercial The Key to Reserva which is one extended homage to the cinema of the British master of suspense. We single out the flashbulb and blinding effect Scorsese lovingly copied.
Next, a couple of scenes from Fellini’s Otto e Mezzo (8 1/2) and his segment Toby Dammit. (I could have included some scenes from La dolce Vita which features many papparazzi, after all this film invented the term) and some parts of Scorsese’s homage in his Bleu the Chanel commercial entitled The Film (in one minute Scorsese manages to pay tribute to both Fellini and Antonioni’s Blow-Up).
This segment ends with James Gray’s (Little Odessa, The Yards) Bleu the Chanel commercial paying homage to Scorsese’s tribute also using Gaspard Ulliel. Please pay close attention to the short freeze frame of a girl who puts 2 hands on the front windshield of the car mirroring the extended freeze frame with Sandra Bernhard’s hands from the opening of The King of Comedy which is shown later in the clip.
Followed by some more examples from Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Casino culminating in a highly baroque use of his and editor Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing techinques involving lightbulb flashes and camera clinking sounds in The Aviator. The Aviator is one of the six film you can (re)discover in the retrospective.
We end of the montage with P.T. Anderson’s nod to Scorsese in Boogie Nights, a similar use of the same techniques from an ISIS propaganda film and to end in style an extreme slomo of a lightbulb burnout.
You may notice in some parts the picture and sound are not in synch but there’s nothing I could do to prevent it. One day I’ll make a more professional looking version.
A completely black screen, and then in white letters appears: All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. Lincoln
A few images of what could be the Lincoln memorial but we never get to see the famous huge Lincoln statue of him sitting in his chair. In the film there’s a young boy called Abe.
The title The Better Angels (2014) refers to Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but friend. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
These are the only hints that you’re watching a film depicting several years of childhood of the future president.
I stumbled upon the trailer and after a few seconds I was convinced I was watching the trailer of a new Terrence Malick film. I was wrong but I was not far off.
The film is directed by A.J. Edwards who was camera operator on the making of of Malick’s The New World, and was one of the editors on that film and the subsequent Malick films, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups. One of the many producers on the film is none other than Terrence Malick himself.
Now, having seen the film, I can only confirm that the film is pure Malick. The look, feel, atmosphere, use of voice over, the importance nature is given in the film is all 100% identical to Malick. We see children play and a steadycam follows them and lingers on the shadows they leave behind, the camera films a house from the outside and from a little distance while it captures a few slices of life: the list of typical Malick shots and scenes is endless, or is basically the entire film. The only difference is that the film is in black and white.
The film is told via a voice over of the character cousin Dennis Hanks with a heavy southern accent very reminiscent of that of Sissy Spacek in Badlands, or Linda Manz in Days of Heaven or the soldiers in The Thin red Line.
There’s little or no plot, Lincoln’s mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln (Brit Marling) dies of milk sickness, we see the young Lincoln learn to plow and work the field, we see his father (Jason Clarke) a carpenter smooth some wood with a plane, the arrival of new a stepmother (Diane Kruger), some scenes in a classroom with Wes Bentley as the teacher, some slaves in chackels… mostly just little moments that somehow marked the young boy to become the president he went on to become.
The film is very impressive in it’s minimalism and the cinemascope black and white cinematography is great (perhaps there are too many wide angle lense shots as do the recent Malick films), but does not reach to the great heights of the early great Malick films, although it’s far superior to his hugely dissappointing recent efforts To the Wonder and Knight of Cups. The Better Angels is a very promising debut and has not been picked up by any of the local festivals and received a minimal multiplatform release in the US, so if you which to see it you’ll have to import a DVD. I hope I’ll have the chance to one day see it projected on a big screen to pass a more conclusive verdict.
Believe it or not but Our Little Sister the new film by Kore-eda Hirokazu (Air Doll, After Life) is based on a manga series called Umimachi Diary (meaning Seaside Town Diary) by Yoshida Akimi. Be it the kind that tries to appeal to (younger) women, so it’s more like a soap opera version of a manga.
Three sisters in their twenties attend the funeral of their father who’s left them 15 years ago and whom they haven’t seen since. They’re being picked up at the train station by a young teenager named Suzu who turns out to be their half sister.
In the spur of the moment, when they’re returning home and their train is just about to leave, they ask Suzu if she would like to come and live with them. With little hesitation she agrees to, her three new found half sisters are likely to be better companions to hang around with than her stepmother would be.
Suzu moves to the rural town where she joins here half sisters in the house of their grandparents who raised them after their mother died. Four orphans with the same biological father begin their life together and will have a lot of Late Springs, Early Summers and Late Afternoons with lots of Flavour Of Green Tea Over Rice and Ohayo’s (Good Morning) in the morning to use but a few of the international titles of Yasujiro Ozu films that many rightly feel Kore-eda is paying homage to.
What the movie lacks in plot (of which their is little) it more than makes up for with lovely family dinner scenes (with lots of mackerel) and delightful character moments. The bike ride through a tunnel of cherry blossoms trees will linger in your mind for quite some time. I had a great Autumn Afternoon at the cinema.
Tobey Maguire plays the notorious Bobby Fisher whose life revolved solely around chess. We do get to see a little of the young Bobby’s first steps into the world of chess but the movie centers on the World Chess Championship of 1972 held in Reykjavik, Iceland during the height of the Cold War when Russian players had been dominating the game for decades.
The legendary Russian chess Grandmaster and reigning world champion Boris Spassky is the only player Fisher had not been able to beat yet. Spassky is played by Liev Schreiber who reteams with director Edward Zwick after their collaboration on Defiance.
The excellent Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, Afterschool, Hugo and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire) plays a leading figure in the american world of chess who tries via the help of Father Bill Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard) to rein in the genius and the apparent madness of Bobby Fischer to help defeat the Soviet Empire. The game captured the imagination of the world and was a highly publicised (Cold War propaganda) event. Amongst chess connoisseurs game 6 of the ’72 world championship is still considered to be one of the greatest games of chess ever played.
If you’ve seen the 2011 Liz Garbus HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World there will be few surprises. If you wish to find out more on the rise and fall (into madness) of Bobby Fisher this doc is a must see.
But the film is definitely a well written (Steven Knight writer of Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises and the BBC series Peaky Blinders, and director of Locke), well photographed (Bradford Young, DoP of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and A Most Violent Year) and well acted dramatisation of these historical events that keeps you on the edge of your seat even if you are not well acquainted with the game of chess.
65 million years ago, a meteor is pushed towards earth. Instead of hitting it and making dinosaurs extinct the meteor has a close shave with our planet and flies past. The dinosaurs look up as they see the meteor pass by and casually continue eating plants. This is perhaps the only original idea the film has, the rest is a rehash of prior Disney movies.
Three dinosaurs are born, the biggest egg actually brings forth the smallest and physically weakest newly born Arlo. To prove his worth to the family he gets the task to protect the food supply for the winter. In a trap he finds a little caveman Spot. But as Arlo is ‘a good dinosaur’ he doesn’t kill him but lets him go.
When he accompagnies his father to hunt down the little caveman the father gets killed while saving his life (a combo of Bambi and The Lion King) during a sudden flood and he ends up alone far away from home (Finding Nemo and again The Lion King) but with his new found buddy Spot. Here starts the ‘coming of age’ and the ‘we need to get home’ storyline and off course there are the obligatory family values (the sentimental but purely visually told ‘family circle’ scene).
All the originality and the different levels for different ages that we usually associate with Pixar are absent. This one is just for the kids, all though certain scenes might be too scaring (the scenes with the velociraptors and the feeding scene in which some ‘animated’ animals do get killed) for the younger kids. There’s one scene in which some characters, refering to the famous ‘showing off scars’ scene from Jaws, are telling some tall tales of how they gathered their body scars, that perhaps adds something for accompanying parents. The wonderful voice of Sam Elliott gets to tell the tallest one.
The film is somewhat of a dissapointment, certainly compared with the excellent and highly original Inside Out Pixar gave us earlier this year.
Prioir to the main feature, as a bonus, you’ll be treated to the short film Sanjay’s Super Team directed by Sanjay Patel. Based on his childhood memories the short deals with the conflict between his love for super hero television programs of their newly adopted home country and the Hindu tradition of prayer and meditation with his father.
Back to the cinema 