7 posts tagged “movies”
Conservatives can be funny people. I'm not talking humorous. They can be that too. But, in this case, I'm talking unintentionally, of course.
The National Review has a list of the 25 best Conservative movies.
But perusing the list one would have to conclude that many of the films on the list are not Conservative movies but rather movies that Conservatives may like.
You see, they are not all made by Conservatives or really have Conservative values.
#22 is Brazil directed by Terry Gilliam who is on record saying that the film was meant to be fictional but came to life when the Bush Administration unveiled the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.
#20 is Gattaca about how a man in the future learns how to jig the system so he can succeed against genetically modified humans. The review on the National Review site says that by extension it has something to say against abortion. [No, it doesn't - unless you are reading into it].
#11 The Lord of The Rings [trilogy]. Okay, so little guys succeed against evil. How is this Conservative? Oh, okay J.R.R. Tolkein was 'conservative'. But his story is really not so much conservative as universal. I recall Star Wars deals with similar themes of good and evil yet it doesn't make the list.
#10 Ghostbusters. They base this primary on one line that Dan Aykroyd says about the private sector. The same Aykroyd who just mocked the Republicans on a SNL skit. [Yes, he is acting and saying lines in both instances]. [Okay, so the film says something negative about the EPA. I'll grant conservatives that. But they are still reading into the overall message of the movie].
#8 Juno. You know, the film written by a feminist pro-choice liberal. Again, a movie that is not Conservative but one that Conservatives loved because of the pro-choice angle. Errr, I mean pro-life angle. See what I mean? I see it as choice. But that doesn't make it a 'liberal' movie.
#6 Groundhog Day. This is a film about a man who must redo his daily routine again, and again and again until he gets it right. Sound slightly religious? Yes, reincarnation via Hinduism or Buddism. Not sure how this is Conservative [or at least of the right wing American variation].
#1 The Lives of Others. A German film that shows two things. One is how bad the German totalitarian [communist] state makes the people who worked for it as spies. Two is how one spy finds a humanitarian streak in himself and learns to do the right thing while spying on the resistance movement. How this is specifically Conservative is beyond me. Watching it one realizes how fundamentally good people can be. Fighting against totalitarian regimes [whether in East Germany or Chile] is about human rights not about a political ideology. That's something all of us [liberal or conservative] can learn from.
Many of the films on the list are indeed Conservative.
But what this list shows is that some Conservatives see these movies through the lens of their own conservatism. I've been told that Conservatives see things as they are, with no lens and no embellishments and that only Liberals do that. Well, looking at this list I would conclude that is not the case. Conservatives are just as ready to bend a story to their point of view.
In fact, I did a Google search and found Daily Kos had a list of Liberal movies. You be the judge. Any films on this list you consider not Liberal? I'd argue that they are more Liberal than not.
But, really, can we all just go to the movies without politics getting in the way?
[Confession, I'm a Jean Luc Godard fan - but it's not his politics that keep me watching his films.]
Before George the Cyclists bikes off across Europe he has one last wrap-up review of the Cannes Film Festival.
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With all the good films this year there weren't enough awards to go around to recognize them all. As expected, the Palm d'Or went to the Romanian abortion film "Four months, Three Weeks and Two Days."
Also expected, Do-Yeon Jeon from the South Korean film "Secret Sunshine" won best actress. The early favorite from the Russian film "Alexandra" dropped off the map after this film screened. And it was no surprise that Fatih Akin won best screenplay for his intricately plotted German/Turkish film "The Edge of Heaven."
The rest of the awards were not exactly what was anticipated. The biggest shocker of all was the lead from the Russian film "The Banishment" winning the best actor award. Few expected that film to receive any recognition from the jury. Best director going to Julian Schnabel for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was a surprise, even to him.
Of the 19 films I've seen, not a one was a dud.
Not all were universally embraced, but even those that were reviled by some had others calling them masterpieces, as with the Bela Tarr, Ulrich Seidl and Tarantino films. Half the films in Competition were by veteran, established directors, none of whom stumbled, each delivering another work in their distinctive styles that will at least please their devotees.
Do-Yeon Jeon in "Secret Sunshine" plays a recently widowed 25-year old who moves to the city where her husband was raised with their five year old son. The city is small enough that everyone seems to know who she is, but think it odd that she would move to a city she had never been to. As one woman says, "She looks fine, but I don't think she's normal." She gives piano lessons and is pursued by a nerdy, never-married, semi-repugnant 39-year old. She suffers a traumatic event that leads to her embracing Christianity. She becomes supremely devoted and seems saved, but she suffers another traumatic event giving her doubts. As with the other film in competition, this movie has a prison scene that is the crux of the story. The range and depth of her performance was profoundly moving.
"Promise Me This," by Serbian Emir Kusturica, two-time Palm d'Or winner. This rollicking, frenzied, sometimes farcical story of a teen-aged peasant who is sent to the city to find a wife for himself by his grandfather will delight all of Kusturica's fans and others as well. Kusturica's exuberant imagination shows no signs of diminishing. Guys are clobbered left and right by falling and flying and flung objects. A guy fired from a cannon is glimpsed throughout the duration of the movie above the mayhem below. When he lands he wants to know what's happened in the Italian soccer league.
The Japanese "The Mourning Forest" put us back on the "film as art" track. Panoromic and aeriel shots of lush green forests and precisely trimmed rows of hedges that made for good hiding complemented the story of an elderly Japanese man approaching death and his relationship with a young woman. They go off into the forest for a couple day trek that has moments sweet and poignant.
George the Cyclist has just a few days left in Cannes before the festival wraps up. Here are two more reviews.
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Russian master Alexander Sokurov’s film "Alexandra" is a fully comprehensible and accessible film of universal appeal that leaps right up there with "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days" as a front-runner for the Palm d'Or. Its lead, opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya, as Alexandra, an elderly woman who goes to visit her officer grandson at his isolated outpost in , is a shoe-in for best actress.
The incongruity of a doddering grandmother among a small corps of weary, hardened soldiers at a rustic encampment of tents provides a captivating premise for a commentary on the insanity and inhumanity of armed conflict where "good guys collude with bad guys and saints become devils," as she says.
Though her grandson is a veteran soldier, who kills matter-of-factly as a job, there isn't a single shot or act of violence in this film. He has moments of astounding tenderness with his grandmother, hugging her as if she is the most valuable thing in the world, braiding her hair, speaking from the heart. This is a movie that speaks to our times and all times--a truly remarkable movie-going experience. One poignant scene follows another. It could go down as one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever.
"You, the Living" by Swedish director Roy Andersson, whose "Songs from the Second Floor" won an award here a few years ago, was a lark of a movie whose host of characters might have been caffeinated escapees from a Kaurasmaki film. Many start out mopish and droll but explode into unexpected acts of zaniness in this series of hardly connected vignettes. A suicidal woman on a park bench suddenly breaks into song, a barber sheers a strip down the middle of the head of a customer who makes a disrespectful comment, a guy is sentenced to the electric chair by a trio of beer-guzzling judges for ruining a two hundred year old tea set when his table cloth pulling stunt fails, a naked guy on his back complains about his investments as his wife in a Viking helmet….
George the Cyclist continues to watch all kinds of cool movies in what seems to be a better than average year at Cannes.
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A Mennonite father of six in northern having an affair is the unlikely subject of Carlos Reygadas "Silent Light." Reygades proves he can make a remarkable film even without graphic sex, as riled audiences and marked his two previous films "Japon" and " in Heaven." Like those, this is another understated portrayal of a character with painful inner turmoil. The father treats his attraction to another woman like a disease and asks others, including his father, what he should do about it. Everyone remains even-tempered and sympathetic. The film is also highlighted with a ravishing sun rise opening and sunset close and vistas of the countryside.
"The Edge of Heaven" by the German/Turkish director Fatih Akin splits its time between and following six characters (two sets of mothers and daughters and a father and son--four Turks and two Germans). The spellbinding, continually evolving plot includes the unfortunate, accidental deaths of two of them.
The linear plot, which doesn’t try to interweave multiple stories simultaneously, but just proceeds relentlessly ahead, follows a Turkish/German professor of German to , where he tries to track down the daughter of his father's live-in prostitute. Ironically, the daughter has come to to track down her mother. The daughter is involved with a militant group in and seeks asylum in . She is befriended by a good-hearted young woman who has recently returned from several months in . This was another exceptional film in the Competition category.
Hungarian Bela Tarr's "The Man From London," wasn't quite as well-received. It was by far the most walked-out upon movie to play so far. His fans, however, will be delighted with this moody, murky, black-and-white affair that begins with a signature, snail-paced, 12-minute pan of a ship in harbor at night. It takes all one's powers of concentration to figure out what is going on. A night watchman at the ship yard recovers a suitcase full of money that a man from has come to retrieve.
George the Cyclist gives us more Cannes reviews.
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When "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" opened with the blurred vision seen thru the eyes of someone waking from a 20-day coma, totally paralyzed including the ability to speak, only able to blink, and begins a narrative peering out at the doctors and nurses trying to communicate with him, I kept a sharp lookout on the audience in the packed 3000 seat Palais theatre anticipating the most walked out upon movie of the festival.
But this French feature quickly becomes stunningly captivating, keeping just about everyone glued to their seats. Mathieu Amalric's performance as the 43-year old stroke victim could easily win him the best actor award here, even though the bulk of his performance is spent lying in bed with the single facial expression of a lop-sided, contorted lip, peering about and blinking his lone healthy eye. The film is interspersed with flashbacks of his life as the editor of Elle magazine and father of two with a mistress. His therapist is exceptional too, teaching him to express himself by blinking when she speaks the letter of the word he wishes to express.
Harmony Korine's much anticipated "Mr. Lonely” begins with a Scottish castle inhabited by celebrity impersonators, including the Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, the Pope, Madonna, Sammie Davis Jr. and Michael Jackson, along with nuns jumping out of airplanes prodded by Werner Herzog over the jungles of Panama, promised great hilarity that could rival Korine's masterpiece "Gummo" from ten years ago. The movie's opening number of a helmeted character in a bird suit on a mini-bike to the tune of Mr. Lonely brought resounding applause from the audience, as did two more early-on bizarre sequences that only Korine could have devised. Danger signs appear, however… [it is] shockingly dull. Korine admits to having been in rehab and holed up in a apartment, as well as wandering around the Amazon, these past years when he has been notably absent. Could he possibly have suffered a lobotomy somewhere along the way? Although "Mr. Lonely" painfully fails to come close to "Gummo's" freshness and spontaneity, and can be considered a flop to a degree, it certainly isn’t one of the proportions of last year's "Southland Tales". Most everyone stayed to the end and gave him a fairly prolonged applause. The film does have its moments, but it’s mostly a huge missed opportunity.
George the Cyclist continues to watch movies, movies and more movies at Cannes.
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Gus Van Sant proves once again that he understands teens in "Paranoid Park" based on a novel about a high school skateboarder who accidentally kills a railroad security guard as he attempts to pull him off a freight train he's hopped aboard as a lark. He's a marginal suspect, but manages to keep his cool, tho he's driven to do things out of character, such as read the newspaper. The movie, with an array of well-drawn, sensitive, fully-realized characters, including a few parents, is more a portrayal of teens struggling to deal with life than about the crime. This is a hopeful picture and not without Van Sant's usual dazzling flourishes.
Michael Winterbottom's "A Mighty Heart" is another incisive, spot-on portrayal of real people -and these are really real. This movie is about the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal journalist Danny Pearl in in 2002. It is based on his wife's book. Angelina Jolie gives a most credible performance in the role. Winterbottom brilliantly captures the frenzy of and the search for .
A shot of a woman's posterior from Ulrich Seidl's "Import/Export" graces the cover of the festival program. Today we finally learned why she was in that pose. She is one of a handful of characters who are the focus of this movie reduced to desperate measures trying to cope with life. She sits in a room with a camera upon her doing whatever some Internet client asks her to do. It would be hard to say which of the cast of woeful characters is mired in the most humiliating of circumstances. Seidl, a sometime documentarian, is known for his confrontational, disturbing films and this is no exception, although this is more uneven than some of his other work. He could make it more riveting by trimming some of its 135 minutes.
George the Cyclist, after biking across France, is again reporting from the front lines of the Cannes Film Festival
Here are excerpts from his weekend emails.
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The highlight of the day by far was "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days," a Romanian film depicting the anguish and terror of getting an abortion to a greater depth than it probably ever has been. It takes place in l987 when it was a serious crime with heavy prison time to get or give an abortion. The college student seeking the abortion is 4 months, three weeks and two days pregnant. The film spans the day she goes for her abortion. She is accompanied by her roommate. The abortion is arranged thru an intermediary and they meet the abortionist that day. He is extremely cold and insensitive and makes a shocking demand on the both of them before he will perform the abortion. It is all portrayed with such staggering, gut-wrenching realism it is hard to believe that the two women hadn't been thru such a horrific experience. There isn’t a false note to this powerful film that will make Top Ten lists around the world come December.
Juliette Binoche added some zest to Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flight of the Red Balloon," but otherwise this film, which takes place in , would have been just a little more than tedium. The hook is a red balloon that bobs and drifts about at the beginning of the film and a couple times later and then at the end. Otherwise its Binoche's nanny making pancakes for her son, listening to his wretched piano lessons, hearing the piano tuned. Hou Hsiao-hsein said he wanted to examine what life is like for a single parent and child -- pretty boring.
There was some semi-commercial fare in Competition today as well--the Coen brothers "No Country for Old Men" based on a Cormac McCartbhy novel and starring Tommie Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson. They all give sterling performances in this tale of a drug deal gone bad. Brolin comes into possession of a suitcase with a couple million dollars in. Bardem, as a most sinister bad guy, is in hot pursuit. Harrelson is in pursuit as well. Tommie Lee Jones is the local sheriff in the same countryside that was featured in his film "The Three Burials of...," which won him a best actor award here two years ago. Bardem and Harrelson have an impossibly incredible ability to remain on the trail, but overlooking that, the multiple confrontations and verbal jousting are extremely well-written and entertaining. They offered a good jolt compared too much of what has played so far. Unfortunately, it is undermined by a not very satisfying conclusion.
