PunchB Reviews

Lily and Jim (1997)

Hertzfeldt's best

[26 October 2009]

I saw this short recently and thought it was great - both poignant and funny. And the part where they turn on the TV was actually so funny that I laughed out loud sitting alone. I thought, why haven't I heard of this Hertzfeldt guy before, he's great. Turns out I had, but had forgotten. I'd seen both Rejected and Genre and thought, meh - I see what he's trying to do but the humor is too juvenile and too obvious. Kinda like South Park, or most of Cartoon Swim.

So, I think Lily and Jim is brilliant. And the violence and mayhem in the TV scene is just perfect. It works as parody there, funny and to the point. The violence and randomness in his other shorts doesn't work for me. Just making something weird and/or overly violent doesn't cut it.

For weirdness (even gross and violent stuff) that actually works because there's something behind it, see Wonder Showzen or Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job.

The Best of Eddie Murphy: Saturday Night Live (1989 Video)

Full list of sketches

[3 September 2009]

IMDb now has the 1989 compilation and the 1998 compilation, but there's also a 2004 DVD out there. And they're all different. I have them all and I made a full sketch list. The previous comment from Rijswijk that talks about the 1998 is actually mistaken. The user is actually talking about the 2004 version.

See my post on the Message Board below for the full list. The formating in the comments don't really allow for lists.

The sketches themselves are mostly funny. I love 80s Eddie and I love SNL, especially the old stuff, even the dreaded 80s seasons. Sure, not all of it is great, but that's true of every season.

Atonement (2007)

Notable structural problems

[7/10 · 28 January 2008]

Very mild spoilers in this review.

This was sadly another movie that was lesser than the sum of its parts. I really loved the cinematography. I actually really liked all the scenes too. But the story as a whole didn't work, because of the ending.

It's the "but it was all a dream" ending again. Just one scene was a "dream" (i.e. fiction) of course, but a very important scene. I can't figure out why screenwriters think it works to trick the audience into thinking that one thing happens, and then yank the mat out from under them and say, "But that's not really what happened after all!" It's like the old Briony said, it wouldn't be a very good story if it had been told straight like it happened (i.e. showing what really happened to the two lovers and then ended it). The same applies to this movie, which means that the story, the "real" story, in itself is not a strong one. But it certainly didn't turn into a better story by adding a scene as a deceit and having the old Briony explain what it all meant in the end. This movie really showed me how incredibly difficult it is to write a good *story*.

Just to clarify, I don't mind dream sequences (or even fictitious scenes as told by a character) in movies if it fits with the tone, and the audience either knows it's a dream or isn't entirely sure. But don't use it in a movie where every other scene has shown reality and the tone doesn't begin to suggest that this scene wouldn't also be real. In Atonement it's clearly meant to deceive the audience into thinking it was real. In what world is that a clever or poetic trick to use? Well I guess it's "clever," in a calculating way.

Better to show a fictitious scene from Briony's book (and say that that's what it is) *after* we have seen what really happened. But that would be a totally different movie and the scene would have to be totally different. And I don't think it would have helped the story of what really happened; it still wouldn't have worked to show it straight before we get to the fiction.

I get that Atonement is about writing; maybe that's the problem. It's about writing all right, but at the expense of everything else: since the characters aren't real anymore (in certain key scenes), they're actually *characters*; their misery or sadness ultimately doesn't matter. It's all a conceit. There is a right way of doing it though; The comic book The Sandman was about storytelling without sacrificing the characters or any of the other themes.

Atonement still gets a 7, because many things about it were incredibly well done. I think it could've been a 10 if the story had worked.

Breakdown (I) (2006)

Pretty funny

[27 January 2008]

I saw this on Swedish TV. It was pretty funny, and a good parody of a typical disaster movie. The premise that it was all shots assembled from casting sessions was also pretty cool, and they utilized it well for comedic effect.

I wanted to make this short but sweet, but apparently it has to be 10 lines. There isn't that much to say about a 13 minute movie. As I said it was a parody so the whole point is, does the humor work? And it certainly does. I didn't expect a short made by unknowns to be funny, but it really was.

Catch it if you have the opportunity.

Boxes (2007)

Poetic, surreal, grounded, honest, real

[9/10 · 23 January 2008]

I really loved this movie. Initially I was intrigued but wasn't really getting into it. Maybe it took 15 to 30 minutes before I was really... immersed (and I very much was by the way). Thinking about it, it's often that way with challenging and intellectually stimulating movies that I end up really liking and wanting to see again. They often don't win me over right away. I watched Boxes at the Cinemateque in Oslo a few hours ago, and I feel like watching it again right away, to catch all the nuances of the dialog and the acting that I didn't the first time.

The film kind of balances between the banal and the profound, but the wonderful thing is that in the end it actually makes the banal profound by being totally genuine, and intelligent. I don't think banality survives honesty. What I'm trying to say, in a not very effortless way, is that the movie seems totally effortless in its genuine portrayal of characters, relationships and feelings. But it is in some ways theatrical too. I don't mean the performances but the way the characters themselves act in a way, and the events that transpire.

And I don't mean "events" like in a plot-heavy movie, because there isn't much of that. There isn't even much of characters having "arcs" - changing in the course of the movie; this is more of a exploration of relationships and characters, at once poetic and grounded. If you like Truffaut or Rohmer, I think you will like Boxes.

And unlike the other poster, I don't think you need to know Jane's life and map the characters to the real people in her life to enjoy this movie. At least I don't need to. I know very little about her life; I know she was married to Serge Gainsbourgh, and that she had three daughters with three different men, and not much else. Although of course the film is very inspired by her life, it's not meant to be totally about these people - it is ultimately a fiction and I found it to be very good as that.

Jane said at the screening that it took her twelve years to get financing and develop this movie. I hope it doesn't take another twelve years before she gets to make the next one.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Entertaining if you can ignore its insistence that it's profound

[5/10 · 5 November 2006]

This movie tries hard to be like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it doesn't succeed. The main problem is that the characters are very underdeveloped and don't really have personalities except for "freak-ish rebel-ish cute girl", "stuffy, obsessive, boring-but-not-really guy" etc. (the other characters have even less of a personality).

It's apparent in the performances too that the actors didn't have that much to work with. The actors aren't really investing much, it's pretty light and superficial stuff - which would be good if this was a straight comedy, but it isn't. The movie really wants to say something meaningful (it screams "MEANINGFUL" from the very first scene - a shot of the earth, then zooming closer and closer and into the protagonist's bedroom), and it also wants to be sad and for you to root for the main guy and all those things. You know, it wants to be realistic, it wants you to suspend disbelief. It halfway succeeds at that, because it's very competently made and briskly edited, and filled with jokes and funny situations, half of which semi-work or more. (The other half have already been done better in an average Seinfeld-episode.) The other problem (except for the flat characters and the fact that it isn't nearly as funny as it tries to be), is, as others have mentioned, the cringe-worthy plot contrivances. The clichéd and cringe-worthy scenes have to do with the same thing as the problematic characters, weak and unimaginative writing. What you think will happen between the two leads, happens, and in the most well-used way.

Lastly there's the absurd plot developments. The whole premise is absurd of course, like it was in Eternal Sunshine too. But the characters in Eternal Sunshine reacted to the absurd situations in a way consistent with their personalities and the world they occupied. The world in Stranger Than Fiction is neither-nor. Mostly it's clear that the movie attempts to convey a certain realism. I could give lots of examples of this but won't bore or spoil you. But then a character like Professor Jules Hilbert (Hoffman) suddenly accepts Harold Crick's (Ferrell) explanation without asking HOW or WHY this would happen, the same does Crick himself and two other characters. Suddenly we've entered fairytale-land. That Crick so readily accepts his final outcome (and the reason he does so) is also hard to buy, and not consistent at all with his character as presented. So the movie ends up being neither this nor that.

"Luckily" most of these revelations and plot developments don't happen before later in the movie, and we can't be sure where the whole thing is gonna go (metaphysically) before that. By then I'd already started to somewhat enjoy and be entertained by the movie (when I wasn't annoyed or cringing).

The actors are OK but nothing more, as I said they don't really convey a lot of emotional truth - Maggie Gyllenhaal being the possible exception. Emma Thompson is mugging too much, Dustin Hoffman plays Dustin Hoffman (nothing wrong with that), and... there's nothing to say about Queen Latifah or Will Ferrell.

In summation, a slight, but entertaining movie that tries to make you think it's very profound.

Les mercredis de l'histoire: CIA: Guerres secrètes (2003) Season Unknown, Episode Unknown

Please disregard comment by loleralacartelort7890

[9/10 · 6 October 2006]

loleralacartelort7890 dismisses CIA: Secret Wars on the basis that the previous documentary by the director (Opération lune/Dark Side of the Moon) uses manipulation to make it look like the Americans faked the moon landing. He totally missed the point of that documentary. The point was to show how easily the truth can be manipulated with. It wasn't supposed to be a real documentary - in the end you can see that the "experts" are actually actors and so on. I repeat, the point of that movie was not that the moon landing was faked - actually it wasn't about the moon landing at all, but about the media and control.

CIA: Secret Wars, on the other hand, IS a real documentary, and it certainly deserves to be seen.