Change Your Image
FilmWhinge
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Here Be Dragons (2013)
Here Be Dragons
Mark Cousins continues his work on the essay film with what may play to some like an extended and more specialist episode of The Story of Film: An Odyssey, in which Cousins bares out his belief in that documentary series that the history of cinema is full of 'omission.' Here Be Dragons is a short history of one of the least known countries in Europe, an examination of its cinema and a rumination on the importance of cinema as a form of national memory.
The film's own material describes it best: Filmmaker Mark Cousins goes to Albania for five days, and films what he sees. He discovers that the movie prints in the country's film archive are decaying. In investigating this, Cousins begins to encounter bigger questions about the history and memory of a place. Perhaps a country whose 20th Century, dominated by its authoritarian ruler Enver Hoxha, was so traumatic, should allow its film heritage to fade away? Perhaps a national forgetting should be welcomed? Influenced by the films of Chris Marker, Cousins' film broadens to consider the architecture of dictators and the great icon paintings of Onufri. In the past, when cartographers knew little about a country, they wrote on it Here be Dragons. Albania was, for decades, one of the least well know countries in the world. Cousins' road movie meditation takes the advice of Goethe: "If you would understand the poet, you must go to the poet's land."
Here Be Dragons then is as much about the importance of history and memory and an attempt to bring to cinema a new kind of activism and improvisational style. The film is both personal and factual. One six- minute sequence in which Cousins, furious with what he sees as the economic destruction and stagnancy and pain of Albania, writes a letter to Enver Hoxha – just as he wrote letters to Sergei Eisenstein in What Is This Film Called Love? – an angry, verbose and rather moving rant against a vicious dictator. It is personal since it is the response of a traveller who has been there for only five days (Cousins insists that the rant was written as the camera was filming) and contains several sweeping generalizations, which many who are more familiar with the history of the place may wish to dispute. For instance, Cousins states that Hoxha believed in the equality of women though his only evidence for this seems to be Hoxha's abolition of a husband's right to murder his new wife if she turns out not to be a virgin. One does not necessarily suggest the other and we are forced to wonder if Cousins is using facts or just assumption. Another instance of this is Cousins' claim that it is memory that is keeping division alive in Northern Ireland and not the segregation in housing and education – amongst many other things – which precludes a closer existence and a more meaningful dialogue. Cousins' film, as fascinating as it is as a film of the moment, a 'present tense' examination of the feelings of travel and the exploration of the unknown, is nevertheless possibly a naive work, an artist's look at political and psychological scars that does not contain the weight of proper examination.
Nevertheless, the above is ultimately a minor gripe, since the film is not intended as a work of authority – few essays films are. The greatness of F For Fake is in its freewheeling fondness for ideas and opinions, but also its trickiness. Welles seems to love the idea that his audience may not trust him as their guide. The essay film asks questions, challenges presumptions and draws parallels; it does not need to give answers. Indeed, the film is best when it is based on ideas and opinions. He muses on the importance on preserving Albania's cinematic heritage, despite the propagandist intent behind its production. Showing some clips, Cousins brilliantly repurposes some of these films, questioning them and altering them.
Here Be Dragons works best, however, as a kind of alternative The Story of Film, where Cousins examines the work of Albania's cinematic past, finding two great filmmakers and showing clips from their work. These are Xhanfize Keko, who made Tomka and His Friends and The Newest City in the World and 27 other films between 1949 and 1984, and Viktor Stratobërdha, who made only three shorts between 1955 and 1956, including We Laugh Because We Cannot Cry, before he was imprisoned for twenty years for making a derisive joke about Hoxha during a stage show. This is where Here Be Dragons really works well, as a reminder that there are still mysteries, an Unknown out there – in cinema, in art, in literature and in the world. Where The Story of Film: An Odyssey mainly stuck to the facts and reminded you of how much you already knew of the history of film, Here Be Dragons infectiously delights in discovery.
Your own appreciation of Here Be Dragons will depend on your own fondness for Cousins' style of cinema. Cousins can be irritating – the footage of children at play that finds a way into all of his work, close-ups of himself which are meant to be impromptu but don't look it at all, some less successful digressions in his narration – but his films are nevertheless important and fascinating works of art. There are films about ideas, containing a breadth of reference that can be intriguing, challenging and thoroughly absorbing. For everything that doesn't work, there will be a moment, an insight, an idea that will be beautiful, powerful or will change the way you look at and think about life, art and the world. Here Be Dragons is ultimately about exploration and its lasting effect is to make you want to read and watch and explore more.
The Hangover Part II (2011)
Don't bother, you've seen it already.
The Hangover Part II is the inevitable sequel to a film, which proved that comedies that were unfunny, unlikeable and thoroughly boring could be both commercial and critical hits. This one proves that they can have equally unfunny, unlikeable and thoroughly boring sequels.
The film picks up two years after the events of the first film, with Stu (Ed Helms) preparing to fly over to Thailand for his wedding. Along comes Phil (Bradley Cooper) and, to everyone's dismay, Alan (Zack Galifianakis). Finally, they all wake up in a sleazy hotel room in inner city Bangkok with someone missing and a wedding to get to.
One of the main problems with The Hangover Part II is that it follows the exact structure of the first one, almost scene by scene, making it about as worthwhile as one of Haneke's or Van Sant's shot-for-shot remakes. There are no changes beyond the location and the species of animal that they have to deal with. Smugness pervades as we are dragged from one tired set piece to another without any improvements made to the equally tired formula of the first film. The lack of character development isn't a shock, however, as it has been clearly shown before that these are not characters; these are loud, screaming, incredibly irritating voids. Alan is still weird, Stu is still having trouble asserting himself, Phil is still a child, Mr. Chow (a grating Ken Joeng) jumps out of something and everything stops for another terrible musical number. The idea seems to be that people will be happy to pay to see the first film again if you alter some slight details.
It took three writers to string all of this together, an incoherent film filled with bits and pieces held together by a structure that has proved entirely unsuccessful. It's a mystery film in which people look back at things that have already happened. We know the outcome and we can guess the reason, so why bother showing us. For example, Stu wakes up with the much-litigated Tyson tattoo. Why did he get it? Because he was drunk. Do we really need the film to get bogged down in the intricacies of how he got it?
It is worth pointing out that none of this would particularly matter if the film was funny. Comedy is probably the only genre which can be gravely terrible in every way, but which can get away with it if it is funny. These films aren't funny, because the characters aren't well drawn and the situations they get into just aren't believable. They aim for outlandish but manage only to become fantasy. At least Dude, Where's My Car? was clever enough to become complete science fiction, rather than trying to convince the audience that all this could happen. Ultimately, however, the film just isn't funny because it lacks any conceivable wit, uses only tried-and-tested jokes and repeats them again and again. And then a couple more times after that.
If you like The Hangover then just watch it again. If you don't, then pay for something worthwhile.
True Grit (2010)
A Disappointment
True Grit is the new film from the Coen Brothers, not a remake of the 1969 classic starring John Wayne as "Rooster" Cogburn, but a new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel. A new Coen film is always of interest, but does their version of True Grit cut the mustard?
The film follows 14-year old Mattie Ross (an impressive feature film debut from Hailee Steinfield), who sets out to avenge the death of her father at the hands of hired man Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She enlists the help of the aging and mostly drunken Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a US Marshall who has, as she sees it, 'true grit.' Accompanying them is Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is also in search of Chaney.
True Grit is not really a surprising film for the Coens to have made. After all, they have done straight thrillers before, most recently with No Country For Old Men, and most of their films are in fact period films set in the past. However, whilst No Country For Old Men managed to be an intensely affective thriller, its real achievement was its outlook on life, which lent the film a depth and a resonance that was there if you wanted to see it, and gone if you just wanted thrills. The main problem with True Grit is that it has very little depth and no resonance.
Excitement it does have, with plenty of nasty characters and several bloody shoot-outs. It is full of good performances that give real dramatic weight to the outlandish characters. The central relationship between Mattie and Cogburn is well handled, as is Damon's secondary role. The Western landscapes are fantastically well shot and the period is skilfully imbued with a sense of eerie danger and reckless cruelty. However, as a whole, the film doesn't hold together. Many scenes feel like comical interludes from other films and many more serious sequences are handled as if they have much more import than they really do. The writer-directors approach these scenes as if they are key to the film as a whole, but it always remains unclear exactly how. In the end, the film feels completely lackadaisical, almost as if the Coens made it up as they went along and only permitted one draft.
The characterisation of Tom Chaney is one of the film's more obvious problems and is an indicator of what is wrong with the whole film. Absent for most of the film, his entrance is long anticipated but ultimately rather forced. He is neither the chief villain in the film nor is he a concrete character. He appears neither evil and pitiable, a non-character who is presented in an unfocused and poorly judged light. The lasting impression is that he, like the film, doesn't make any sense.
True Grit goes for dark and, for the most part, achieves it. But the typical Coen humour seems forced, clichéd and not very funny. Many of the scenes set a palpably sinister and brooding tone, but nothing is ever made of it. It feels like the Coens did a lot of research to get a powerful level of authenticity into the film but then, when the time came to write the script, opted to prioritise making good use of the research than writing a coherent story.
To a big fan of the Coen's, this film was something of a disappointment. Perhaps the problem lay in the tackling of a time that they knew little about, or maybe it is evidence that Hollywood just can't figure out exactly how to make a proper old-fashioned Western anymore. As good as the trio of lead characters are, True Grit feels like a film that was considered much too highly by the talented but momentarily lost duo. A step down from A Serious Man, maybe the film would have been better if they had taken a little more time in pre-production.
For more reviews for latest releases, check out filmwhinge at blogger.
127 Hours (2010)
Another film with a lot of potential marred by Danny Boyle
127 Hours is the new film by Danny Boyle, made of the back of the success of Slumdog Millionaire, starring James Franco as Aron Ralston, an extreme sports obsessive, who gets his arm trapped under a boulder for 127 hours. Having gone alone and without having told anyone where he was going, he is stranded. Facing a lack of rations and severe weather conditions, Ralston muses on his relationships with his family and friends, realising that he has foolishly kept everyone at a distance. In the end, he resorts to desperate measures in order to survive.
Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as numerous other accolades, 127 Hours has become something of a surprise hit. However, it has a good many flaws, particularly from a directorial standpoint. Danny Boyle looks and sounds like an absolute chancer. His previous work has been varied at best, with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting being very uneven films that don't work the way they should and Sunshine degenerating from a film with a lot of potential into a stupid and crass slasher film. To put it simply, Danny Boyle's films would be good if someone else made them.
127 Hours sees Boyle back to his old tricks. The opening ten minutes employ all sorts of flashy editing tricks, from split-screens to jump cuts. This is done presumably to show how vacuous Ralston's adrenaline fuelled lifestyle is, a form of extroverted misanthropic loneliness. But Boyle doesn't quit. Even when Ralston is trapped to the canyon and largely immobile, the camera jumps all over the place, shooting in and out of the canyon and filming him from inside a water bottle (more of which later). An attempt at creating a mood of isolation and helplessness is constantly undercut by Boyle's prancing and dancing camera. For a proper film about a character stuck alone in a small space see Buried.
What's worse is that Boyle's apparent showboating tarnishes everything else in the film. James Franco is very impressive, delivering a performance that is entirely convincing and a genuine step up for the actor. However, Boyle's impatient and jittery film cannot hold a shot long enough for us to feel properly introduced to Franco's character. We rarely even get to have a good view of him, as the shots used prioritise extreme close-ups and shots from behind Franco. We are never given the chance to watch a performance and by the end it doesn't even seem like he has changed all that much. A case in point, the previously mentioned shot from inside Ralston's water bottle. At this point in the film, Ralston decides to just finish his water and be done with it. Here, what is of interest is Franco's performance, playing a man completely at the end of his tether. Instead, Boyle shows us what a water bottle would see when someone is drinking out of it. The shot does not look good and it does not further the drama, it is just ridiculous. And, as such, it is incredibly annoying.
Because the final sequence fails to be life affirming and joyous, largely due to the fact that Boyle shoots it like a typically terrible "X Factor" human-interest montage (as well as this, the apparently vacuous split-screen sequence returns, destroying any sense that Ralston has been changed for the better by his experience), the end result is a film that feels like it has been sabotaged by a director desperate to be noticed. Every good thing about the film, from its performances to its cinematography to its general theme, is undermined by a camera in constant search of a cool, new angle to shoot from and frenetic editing that won't let you get a good look at anything. A real pity.