News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Italy: Dario Argento, 1977

IMDB reference

USA/Canada: Jason Reitman, 2007

IMDB reference

USA: David Fincher, 2008

A couple of nights back, we watched the BD release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and I must confess that I found it a real disappointment, considering that I've enjoyed everything else David Fincher has signed his name to. This is his first true misfire, a bloated, overlong and fundamentally insincere fictional biopic based on a premise that simply can't sustain itself for its duration. The film, which was stuck in development hell for years, is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Eric "Forrest Gump" Roth's script plods lethargically from scene to scene, failing to give us anything noteworthy beyond the central gimmick that the protagonist ages backwards. I haven't read Fitzgerald's short story, but I assume it must have played better in that form, because there's nothing in the material to justify the film's running time of almost three hours. At times, it seems more like a tech demo for digital de-ageing technology than anything else. It actually pains me to see a director of Fincher's calibre wasting his time with a sluggish, maudlin biopic such as this. I know a lot of people felt that Panic Room was beneath him, but at least it was well-paced, engaging and, most importantly, entertaining. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will make you go "Wow, how did they do that?" a couple of times, but that's about it.

IMDB reference

Spain/USA: Woody Allen, 2008

When the lights came up at the end of Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (a review copy of which I received on Friday), I was very much left with the impression that not a lot had actually transpired in its 96-minute duration. The film is pleasant, but incredibly insubstantial. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work as a comedy, as it's not particularly funny ("You tried to kill me... with a chair!" notwithstanding), nor as a drama, as there's no real depth to the characterisation and Allen's observations about relationships rarely get more complicated than "love's a bitch". Penélope Cruz undoubtedly steals the show and, in many respects, saves it from being completely pedestrian. The rest of the cast try valiantly, but something about this film feels amazingly indifferent in its writing and direction. And, let's face it, when it comes to giving characters distinctive voices, Woody Allen is every bit as bad as Quentin Tarantino.

IMDB reference

France/Liechtenstein/Switzerland: Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Emmanuel Behbihy, Gurinder Chadha, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela Thomas, Tom Tykwer, Gus Van Sant, 2006

As a love letter to Paris with a romantic theme, Paris, je t'aime, consisting of eighteen short films about the French capital, is very much a mixed bag. Gathering together a variety of top-notch directors and actors from around the globe (ranging from the Coen brothers to Gus Van Sant to Sylvain Chomet and Bob Hoskins to Juliette Binoche to Maggie Gyllenhaal), it lurches from segment to segment with a decidedly uneven quality, transporting the audience from the very good to the spectacularly tedious in a matter of seconds. The most common failing of the weaker shorts is a tendency towards navel-gazing, a criticism often levelled against French cinema as a whole - although it's worth pointing out that less than half of the filmmakers involved are actually French in origin. This is at its most tedious with the piece by Frédéric Auburtin and Gérard Depardieu, and the one by Richard LaGravenese, both of which languish in the sort of middle-aged cod-philosophising that is almost guaranteed to have me reaching for the fast-forward button.

These scenes of tedium mingle with the obnoxious (Gurinder Chadha's patronising celebration of the hijab), the bafflingly incompetent (Wes Craven's poorly written and acted Oscar Wilde piece), and even the sheer what-the-fuckery of Christopher Doyle's downright batty piece. At the other end of the spectrum, Sylvain Chomet's Tour Eiffel features more imagination than any of the other shorts put together (and he actually makes it entertaining, something that most of the other directors seemed to forget to do), while Vincenzo Natali's vampire flick is stylistically and tonally so removed from the rest that I can't help but love it. Tom Tykwer creates a superb sense of rhythm with his Natalie Portman-starring piece, evoking much of the same feel as his earlier Run Lola Run, while Alexander Payne's closing piece just about perfectly encapsulates the bitter-sweet "happy-sad" feeling it aims for.

It's a nice idea, but it ultimately outstays its welcome. The running time could have been tightened up significantly by excising some of the weaker pieces, which would have gone a long way towards improving my overriding impression of the film. There's some very good stuff in there, but a lot of self-indulgent piffle too, which muddies the waters and ultimately left me feeling rather frustrated. There's a thread on IMDB where members are listing the shorts in order of preferences, so I thought I'd do one of my own:

1. 14ème Arrondisement (Alexander Payne)
2. Tour Eiffel (Sylvain Chomet)
3. Quartier de la Madeleine (Vincenzo Natali)
4. Faubourg Saint-Denis (Tom Tykwer)
5. Tuilieres (Joel & Ethan Coen)
6. Quartier des Enfants Rouges (Olivier Assayas)
7. Parc Monceau (Anfonso Cuarón)
8. Place des Victoires (Nobuhiro Suwa)
9. Place des Fêtes (Oliver Schmitz)
10. Loin du 16ème (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas)
11. Le Marais (Gus Van Sant)
12. Bastille (Isabel Coixet)
13. Montmartre (Bruno Podalydes)
14. Porte de Choisy (Christopher Doyle)
15. Père-Lachaise (Wes Craven)
16. Quais de Seine (Gurinder Chadha)
17. Quartier Latin (Frédéric Auburtin and Gérard Depardieu)
18. Pigalle (Richard LaGravenese)

IMDB reference

Australia/USA: Baz Luhrmann, 2008

Original title: Vals Im Bashir
Israel/Germany/France/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008

When it comes to animation, I'm pretty much a snob and I make no apologies for it. I think it's a marvellous medium and one with almost limitless untapped potential, which is why when I watch films like Waltz with Bashir, hamstrung by the constraints of live action, I always feel a bit let down. For those who don't know, this film is about an Israeli soldier's repressed memories of his involvement in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese by Christian militia. That soldier is the writer/director himself, Ari Folman, and the dramatised sections are intercut with actual interviews conducted by Folman of fellow soldiers recounting their own memories of the events. The bulk of the material, therefore, appears to have been live action originally, but everything was ultimately overlaid with Adobe Flash cut-outs (barring some horrific real life news footage at the very end). Although the technique appears to have been slightly different, it looks very similar to Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly in practice. I hated the look in that film and it's just as grating here. My brother, I think, hit the nail on the head when he described it as "floaty toilet paper", in that it has no real consistency or weight to it. It reeks of stylisation for stylisation's sake and, while there are some undeniably arresting images on display, the overall effect is to distance the viewer from the reality of what is being portrayed on screen.

At least Waltz with Bashir is a somewhat better film than A Scanner Darkly, though in my opinion far from the masterpiece some have claimed. It strikes me as being rather too aware of itself as an "issue film" for its own good, leaving this viewer at least with the impression that he was being preached to, while the "animation" style is on the whole an eyesore. It also suffers from a degree of tunnel vision: very few of the on-screen events are set in context. You could argue that this is appropriate given the confusion and mindlessness of the carnage being depicted, but on several occasions I found myself somewhat lost and wishing I had a better idea of what was supposed to be happening.

By the way, Hillel Halkin, who fought in the war himself, has written an extremely interesting account of the events which is in part a response to Waltz with Bashir. I must confess to finding it infinitely more enlightening, and more eloquently expressed, than anything in Ari Folman's film. I'll say one thing, though: I admire Folman immensely for having the balls to paint such a damning portrait of his country of origin and its involvement in the horrific events that occurred in Lebanon in 1982. In doing so, it has predictably attracted accusations of anti-Semitism, which I must say I fail to understand... unless you're of the belief that any criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, a notion that I find incalculably asinine.

IMDB reference

USA: Raja Gosnell, 1997

IMDB reference

UK: Alfred Hitchcock, 1935

IMDB reference

USA: Clint Eastwood, 2004

IMDB reference