2003

Shattered Glass

dir: Billy Ray
[img_assist|nid=996|title=Yes, I am mad at you, you lying hack|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=300|height=364]
When you hear about the plot of a movie focussing solely on the exploits of a journalist, you immediately think that it would have to be a rip-roaring extravaganza to match the likes of All the President’s Men, or Michael Mann’s The Insider. How else could one justify devoting all that time, money and celluloid to a profession big on typing and drinking? It doesn’t immediately lend itself to the action formula until they leave the office and start getting involved in gun fights and car chases.

As well, anyone who knows even the least amount about the notorious Stephen Glass whose rise and fall is charted in this film knows that the idea of devoting a film to his exploits isn’t meant in a complimentary fashion. It’s not meant as praise, or to lionise him for his good works for the ages. In fact it’s the magnitude of his ‘crimes’ that seemingly justifies such a study of events as they came to pass.

And what is his crime, ultimately? Did he molest children, sell secrets to the Russians, murder his mum or punch an umpire in the face? Of course not, though with a sociopath like Glass anything’s possible. Instead, he committed the gravest sin a journalist can ever consider: he made stuff up in his articles and then lied about it.

Rating: 
8 stars

House of Sand and Fog

dir: Vadim Perelman
[img_assist|nid=998|title=Bleak House|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=420|height=595]
Films with House in the title usually suck. Not only do they suck, but they generally suck very badly. I mentioned this recently in a review of House of 1000 Corpses, one of the dumbest movies to have the word in its title. If you think I’m lying, then allow me to retort: House Party, House on Haunted Hill (the remake), House, Houseguest, Life as a House, Cider House Rules, House of the Dead and who can forget (despite trying repeatedly) Big Momma’s House?

House of Sand and Fog is truly one of the better films with house in its title, but as I’ve shown that’s not saying much. This is an agonising emotional train-wreck of a movie that despite being in slow motion has none of its impact lessened, if anything it makes it even sadder. The characters feel like actual characters, and not caricatures, and are all flawed in their own ways. Perhaps it’s because of those flaws that they seem like real people. Far more attention is paid to issues of character than to plot, which makes for better drama but not necessarily ‘enjoyable’ viewing.

Rating: 
7 stars

Seabiscuit

dir: Gary Ross
[img_assist|nid=995|title=America's Phar Lap|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=404|height=408]
It’s a mediocre film masquerading as an Oscarbait ‘prestige’ contender. It’s flawed, obvious, cliché and hackneyed. The actors are mostly outacted by the horse. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t still find it sweet and enjoyable, damn my eyes.

Goddamn me it hurts to admit that. It makes me want to get liver-rupturingly drunk and binge on hard Class A drugs in order to regain my equilibrium after that admission. It wouldn’t change the fact that I genuinely enjoyed the film, despite its shallow nature and emotional manipulativeness. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a pic about horses, seeing as I have a weakness for the ponies. Not so much the gambling aspect, since the indentured servitude that passes for employment in my life doesn’t leave me a whole hell of a lot of money for wasting on beting. But there is just something that appeals to me about horse racing.

Rating: 
7 stars

Barbarian Invasions, The

(Les Invasions Barbares)
dir: Denys Arcand
[img_assist|nid=994|title=Bloody barbarians and their barbaric ways|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=450|height=338]
Death is the one universal human experience. I know people usually use
the combination phrase "death and taxes", but I know plenty of people
who have never paid a cent of tax in their entire lives. That includes
both social security slackers and the kind of wealthy fuckers that
could buy and sell your cheap arse. All the same, I can be sure that
they, like everyone else, one day will die. Unless they pay someone
else to do it for them. That fact is something we, depending on our
age and where we are in life, either try to desperately ignore or
embrace.

Rating: 
8 stars

In The Cut

dir: Jane Campion
[img_assist|nid=993|title=Amazing you made it this far|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=297|height=400]
In the Cut is a perfect example of a cinematic bait-and-switch. It pretends to be a conventional murder mystery / thriller, but is something somewhat more complex. It’s a pretty fucking bleak film, with oddles and oddles of subtext, overt text and enough tricks in the cinematography department for fifteen other films. It deliberately and with malice aforethought subverts the generally misogynist slasher genre, dulling it down, taking the scares and the suspense out of it, for the purpose of representing something darker and uglier than just shocking and gruesome death.

Rating: 
7 stars

Dreamers, The

dir: Bernardo Bertolucci
[img_assist|nid=115|title=Un Pie American, Bertolucci style|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=300|height=200]
Sure, Bernardo Bertolucci is an acclaimed director. But like every acclaimed director, he has a bunch of stinkers to his credit as well. In such a case, you greet the release of one of his new films thinking less "Great! Another film from a cinematic master!" and more "what have you done for me lately, prick?" And since my answer to him on that topic is "not much, chuckles", it's understandable that I'd have some trepidation walking into this film.

Also curiousity. I haven't liked a Bertolucci film since The Last Emperor. It's not that I've been avoiding his work, I haven't (much to my regret). It's just the only emotions that the films in between then and now inspire in me are boredom or downright irritation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I outright hated Besieged, Stealing Beauty, Little Buddha and especially The Sheltering Sky. In fact I would go so far as to say my greatest difficulty is in deciding which of those four I hate the most, because they all anger me on different levels and for different reasons.

Rating: 
6 stars

Raising Victor Vargas

Raising Victor Vargas

Love in a time of being a teenager

dir: Peter Sollett

2003

Raising Victor Vargas is an oddity and an anachronism in this day and age: it is a sweet, enjoyable film about teenagers which looks at the daily concerns of their urban lives as well as but not confined to looking at the complications that arise due to their burgeoning sexuality. But it does it without descending into idiocy, and remains honest and ‘truthful’ throughout.

Uh oh. Red flags go up immediately. No, this is neither the kind of film Larry Clark (of Kids, Bully and Ken Park fame) makes to masturbate over, nor is it the banal Porky’s wannabe that the American Pie trio of movies aspired to be (when they didn’t devolve into mawkish sentimentality). It’s a naturalistic (as ‘naturalistic’ as any film can be, without being a documentary) look at some people’s lives on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. The people the story focuses on are naturally welfare/working class Hispanic Americans, living in government housing.

It might seem from that vantage point that the focus of the film would be on poverty and crime but it isn’t. Those elements play no part except in framing the story: they’re not present as explicit elements but naturally can’t be completely disregarded as they play a substantial part of the urban environment that the characters inhabit. The film simply follows several days in the lives of various characters, taking its time, setting itself modest targets and achieving them beautifully.

The character of the title is the lynchpin around which the story revolves, as it follows his life and the lives of the people he is connected to. Being a teenager on the verge of manhood, naturally sex takes up a substantial proportion of his time and energy. So in a simplistic way the film’s main focus seems to be the fact that Victor would very much like to fuck a girl called Judy.

Rating: 
7 stars

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