Rapid Response: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday

“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” is a film Charlie Chaplin would’ve made in the ’30s. It’s essentially a silent film with minimal dialogue and sound only used in effects to underscore a gag. It’s charm and its set pieces are reminiscent of one of those silent era stragglers, and like Chaplin and the Tramp or Keaton and his stone-faced characters, its protagonist Mr. Hulot would become a more recognizable identity than the man and director who portrayed him in four films, Jacques Tati.

Tati only made five theatrical features in his career, and “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” his second film, was the one that introduced his alter-ego to the world, never to go back. But Tati’s legacy still lives on long after his death, now in the form of an unfilmed screenplay since made into the animated film “The Illusionist” (by the director of “The Triplets of Belleville”).

This film is famous because of it’s elegant charms. It’s laughs are simplistic in nature but still carefully constructed. We meet Hulot as he drives a sputtering, twirpy and slow car to reach his vacation destination, and when he steps out, he’s a tall, lanky, awkward man. Every step he takes seems deliberate, his hat is pulled down ever so slightly, and his quirks, like saluting an address over a radio, are all enough to make a great silent, French clown.

The film doesn’t attempt to thrill us with stunts the way Keaton would or move us with romance the way Chaplin would. In fact, he’s more like the everyman Harold Lloyd, the third great silent film star of the era. My favorite bit of Hulot’s is when he builds a boat, first painting it on the shore as the tide takes the paint can out to sea and then sends it back on his opposite side just as he reaches for more paint. He then gets in the boat on the ocean and has it collapse on him, sandwiching him in the middle to the point that as he flaps to escape, it resembles a shark approaching the beach.

It’s not precisely a laugh out loud moment, and nothing in the film is. But everything odd that seems to happen so smoothly is purposeful as its underscored by a playful jazz score and xylophone.

“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” is a cute movie without any complications or deeper meanings. I look forward to watching “Mon Oncle” or “Playtime” and revisiting Monsieur Hulot once more.

Oscars Best Picture nominees will range from 5-10

AMPAS announced a rule change to the Best Picture prize today, nominating anywhere from five to 10 films.

Photo courtesy of The New York Times and Associated Press

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences dropped a bombshell of Oscar news two years ago when the Best Picture field doubled from five to 10 films.

In a press release on Wednesday, AMPAS dropped yet another with the changed rule that the Best Picture field will now range anywhere from five to 10 films. This is based on the criteria that a movie must receive at least five percent of a first place vote to qualify for a nomination.

The Academy justified this decision by explaining that from 2000 to 2008, prior to the switch to 10 films, votes tabulated through this new method would have resulted in six, seven, eight or nine films. The idea is to find the middle ground of praising all of the highly loved films of the year without snubbing some and without padding out the field to include ones that aren’t worthy.

One other rule change affected the Best Animated Feature category. Originally, unless the list of eligible movies was 16 or above, nominees were limited to three films. Now if the list falls in between 13-16, there will be four nominees. Continue reading “Oscars Best Picture nominees will range from 5-10”

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel was nominated for Best Director for his work on this foreign film about a unique disability.

Julian Schnabel has an extreme fascination with the eye. This is necessary for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” because it becomes the sole tool of Jean Dominique Bauby. But it is an important correlation, the eye being a source of emotion and that which makes us human.

This is a brilliantly directed film, and it’s evident from the first frame. We look out the eyes of a man. The image is blurred, but we can see he is in a hospital. The doctors bend down to speak with him at eye level, but he looks not at their mouths or faces but directly into their eyes as if to say, “I couldn’t care less what your opinion is, but who the hell are you and where am I?” We can hear the man’s internal thoughts, and we can tell he is cynical, impatient, but within moments, both he and the audience will discover he has reason to be.

Jean Dominique Bouby (Mathieu Amalric), or Jean-Do, was the real life editor of Elle fashion magazine when in 1995 he suffered from a stroke that left his entire body, with the exception of his left eye, completely paralyzed. His mind was perfectly intact, but he became trapped in this vegetated state. Within time, Jean-Do learned to communicate by blinking his eye as the alphabet was read to him. Using this process, Jean-Do dictates his memoirs in what is an inspirational beauty each time he begins to communicate.

I was so touched by Jean-Do’s sudden change of heart about his situation and his commitment to preserve his life in the only way he can. In the beginning of the film, Jean-Do is pessimistic, and who wouldn’t be? But Henrietta (Marie Josee Croze), his speech therapist, is such a warming presence, demonstrating care and love for this hopeless man. She serves as a catalyst to his communication, making life possible for him. His other motivation is an old friend that was taken hostage in Beirut for four years. He tells Jean-Do, “Don’t lose what it is that makes you human.” Jean-Do lives by this mantra, but it is his own inner strength that allows him to accomplish such a feat.

And that is the ultimate question “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” proves: What makes a man? As Jean-Do says, he still possesses his imagination and his memories. Only the human mind can accomplish a feat such as Jean-Do’s, but the boundaries of Jean-Do’s mind are no different than an able person. Perhaps a film like this answers the questions for many who live in a vegetated state. Even a man who cannot communicate still possesses the abilities of his mind. So does that make him any less of a man?

The performances are truly something special. Amalric can demonstrate emotion and expression with just a shift of his eye. But similar characters have been portrayed better. The reason behind such a powerful connection to the protagonist is the internal perspective Schnabel provides the audience. We are given a window into the mind of an ordinary man, and the attachment that brews inside you for this person is unlike any other. We see the people he sees, the objects he gazes upon and the brief moment of darkness when he blinks his eye. We don’t just understand this man; we are this man. We admire the same subtleties in his nurses’ facial expressions, like Henrietta’s soft skin or her quaint smile.

Admittedly, Schnabel was given good material. There aren’t many stories that are this heartbreaking and heroic at the same time. But in using the full stretch of his imagination, Schnabel allows us to better understand ourselves.

4 stars

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece didn’t win the Oscar but is one of the best films of the last decade.

We get the idea that Daniel Plainview has been working his entire life to get to the thrilling conclusion of “There Will Be Blood.” And we also get the idea that Daniel Day-Lewis has been searching his entire career for a role such as this. And all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have prepared him for this masterpiece.

Nothing prepared me for this amazing, harrowing, difficult film about greed and the people consumed by it. The opening shot is of a mountain range in the desert, and the chilling orchestral crescendo to accompany it makes the moment reminiscent of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a mine shaft behind these mountains is Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), working all by himself looking for precious stones. It’s 1898, but to get as deep as he is, he must have been working a long time. After an explosion inside the shaft, Daniel falls and breaks his leg, but he manages to pull himself out of the shaft and drag himself miles over the mountains. The first place he goes is to sell his diamonds.

By 1902, he’s beginning his own company, mining deeper in the same spot. In it he finds oil, and the Daniel Plainview we will follow throughout the rest of the film finally comes to light. A coworker with a baby boy is killed as they mine, and Daniel takes the boy, raises him as his own and uses him on his sales pitches. Continue reading “There Will Be Blood”

Rapid Response: My Left Foot

Daniel Day-Lewis goes way too overboard in Jim Sheridan’s melodramatic biopic about Christy Brown.

My friend has told me how bothered he was when he first read that Daniel Day-Lewis did extreme method acting for Jim Sheridan’s “My Left Foot,” going as far as making cast and crew actually carry him around as he struggled to live his entire life while shooting the movie as a cripple. His work led him to an Oscar in 1989, but his performance as Christy Brown, the genius with cerebral palsy, is constantly on and in actuality crippling to the movie.

Day-Lewis is never not performing in this movie. Even when off screen, we hear Christy’s moans and flailing from the other room over. It’s kind of like Colin Firth recently in “The King’s Speech.” You can see all the work he did right up there on the screen, although even that film had a little more subtlety and charm to it than “My Left Foot” does.

Sheridan’s film is a strict melodrama charting the difficulties Christy had to overcome to become the less-than-a-saint genius he is. We see none of the more peaceful moments of his life where he grew as a painter and a writer, and there are few moments of comedy or laughter that would make Christy’s situation feel less like it was being exploited. Continue reading “Rapid Response: My Left Foot”

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” had its share of sentimental imperfections that for this critic subsequently made it the best movie of 2008. “Black Swan,” a film so wholly different from “The Wrestler’s” gritty documentary realism compared to this film’s psychological phantasms, is Aronofsky’s companion piece to “The Wrestler,” examining the price of performance, pain and perfection.

Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the demanding instructor and director of a prestigious ballet company in New York, announces forthright that their company will be doing a new take on Tchaikovsky’s classic “Swan Lake” for the opening of the new season. But for those unfamiliar with the story, it may not be initially clear that Aronofsky and the film’s three screenwriters are doing their own adaptation on the ballet, harnessing its dark and morbid undertones beneath the elegant beauty of the dance.

Aronofsky’s opening scene establishes this tone; with Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), the film’s and the new production’s Swan Queen, he stages an enchanting yet ultimately haunting dance of physical talent by Portman, cinematic finesse by cinematographer Matthew Libatique and special effects wizardry.

Watching such a classy performance initially made me wonder how Aronofsky would do directing a musical, but his style is all in the right place for what becomes an almost psychological horror story. Continue reading “Black Swan”

The Wrestler

“The Wrestler” is the story of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up wrestler from the 80’s. But it is also the story of a stripper with a heart of gold, Mickey Rourke with his amazing comeback to acting, and all of us, focusing on the pain and suffering we endure to be loved and accepted, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Mickey Rourke plays Randy, and with the pain he’s had to face until now, this story may as well be autobiographical. With that said, Rourke puts his heart and soul into this performance, creating one of the most identifiable characters of the year. Randy is lonely and defeated, and he knows he deserves to be nothing more, but he is so dedicated to the people he loves including his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), Cassidy the stripper (Marisa Tomei) and most importantly his fans as “The Ram.” We can’t help but return his kindness. Continue reading “The Wrestler”

Super 8 Review

J.J. Abrams’s “Super 8” is a thrilling sci-fi that uses Steven Spielberg’s classics as inspiration.

Some kids in a small town in the late ‘70s are making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera. The director Charlie says his movie needs to have a story, characters we care about and real production value. So he gets his middle school friends to read lines like “I love you too,” to paint themselves in zombie makeup and to blow up model trains with real explosives.

To think there was a time when kids actually knew what a movie needed to make a memorable summer thrill.

J.J. Abrams, the director of the spirited and exciting monster movie mystery and adventure “Super 8,” is still one of the new kids on the block in the movie world. He’s a household name on television, but as somewhat of a director-for-hire on franchise pictures like “Mission: Impossible III” and “Star Trek,” he’s been waiting for an original story like this one to show he looks up to the big boys still making movies, specifically Steven Spielberg.

Continue reading “Super 8 Review”

Rapid Response: The Hustler

It occurred to me as I was watching “The Hustler” that you could never make a pool/billiards movie today. Not that you couldn’t make a sports movie with its similar structure, but 2011 in America is the wrong time and place for a movie about pool. How many people actually watch it, play it professionally, go to pool halls (is that even a thing anymore?) and least of all attempt to make a living by going around hustling other people through gambling?

That’s not to say “The Hustler” is dated, but the gravitas Robert Rossen’s film pays it seemed a bit much to me. Think of what are intended to be staggeringly dramatic shocks when Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson gets his thumbs broken or realizes that he won’t be playing the rich gentleman in straight pool but in billiards (who knew there was a difference?).

The film was nominated for nine Oscars, won two, put Paul Newman on the map as not just a movie star but a genuine A-lister (for that I am thankful as he is one of my favorite all-time actors) and inspired a quasi-sequel over 20 years later starring Newman, Tom Cruise and directed by Martin Scorsese. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Hustler”

The Tree of Life

“The Tree of Life” is a purely cinematic experience. Terrence Malick has made a film that speaks life lessons and evokes fundamental human emotions through visuals and style above all else. In doing so, his film worships the gift of life itself.

The purpose of existence, as seen through Malick’s eyes, is to simply love life, and every part of it. Beauty, pain, sadness, joy and all else that encompasses our being are necessary to live and reach the afterlife, which Malick envisions as a place to cherish the life we came from.

Such a view may seem overly optimistic and unpractical to some, if not most, but this is Malick’s film first before anyone else’s, and its message appears utterly sincere to the environmental and natural themes evoked throughout the four other films in his nearly four decade career.

With messages as life fulfilling as these and a film as operatic and grand in scope as this, “The Tree of Life” preaches lessons that one could live by and has aspirations to be one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a bit far from that benchmark, but the intentions are sure and true, and the experience is still wholly enriching. Continue reading “The Tree of Life”