This Week In Cinema: February 20-26, 2011

I would have preferred a screen shot of Mark Wahlberg’s face from The Happening as the image for this post, but I’m lazy, so this is what you get!

A handful of movies this week, all of which I felt were good, some of which were great. But, whatever man, on with the movies…

The Happening (2008, M. Night Shyamalan, France/India/United States Of America) *

There’s no way that M. Night Shyamalan intended for this movie to be as bad as it is, but this currently ranks as the best unintentionally bad movie I have ever seen. There’s so much in it that is just awesome. There’s a soldier who’s reaction to stress is to say cheese and crackers. Mark Wahlberg actually delivers a pretty darn good performance, but good lord the things he does with his facial expressions are hilarious. He’s constantly confused, and/or constipated, and there’s one particular moment when Mr. Shyamalan zooms in on his face that features the funniest look on a man’s face I’ve seen in some time.

There are some elements that are just bad period, such as the attempts by Zooey Deschanel to act. I know she has a throng of fans, but even her most die hard of supporters has to realize this is one of the all-time worst performances, right? It’s also near impossible to make plants a threat in the way that Mr. Shyamalan wants to, but damn does he keep trying. Still, there are moments that are genuinely good. The isolated scenes that involve discovering dead people or people killing themselves are suitably eerie and filmed in great style. While the films eco friendly message is heavy handed and obvious on the whole there are a few shots, such as the beautiful framing of smoke stacks in the background on a country house and nursery, that look gorgeous. On the whole though the movie is laughably bad, but it ends up being laughably bad in a good way and that is why anyone who has not seen The Happening owes it to themselves to seek it out.

Pierrot Le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy) ***

Style abounds in this auditory and visual delight from Jean-Luc Godard. Yes, I said delight even though I was less than pleased with the final product that was Pierrot Le Fou. Mr. Godard falls into a bit too much repetition, in his desire to craft an anarchists dream of a movie he repeats himself often and that does get tiresome. The music is splendid however, and so are Jean-Paul Belmondo’s attempts at acting American. The movie looks gorgeous, it’s so colorful, open and engaging in the way it welcomes the viewer into its world. The anarchy theme is covered pretty well in the first thirty or so minutes though, and after that it feels like more of the same until we reach the end. But, as far as movies about a mid life crisis goes, this is a pretty darn good one.

His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks, United States Of America) ***

Somewhere in between Twentieth Century and Bringing Up Baby as far as Howard Hawks comedies go. Sadly this one leans more towards Bringing Up Baby than the stellar Twentieth Century. Just like Bringing Up Baby there are long stretches of time in His Girl Friday that aren’t funny at all, I’d go so far as to say those stretches are unfunny for some specific reason that escapes me. It’s not an issue of timing or anything like that, or even focus, it’s simply that the jokes they try to use, whether in spoken form or in the set-up of a scenario, fall flat, really flat. That’s not always the case, there are moments that are quite funny. Most of those involve Cary Grant however, and he disappears for far too long during the movie. The entire murderer subplot/distraction really didn’t work for me, and that was a big chunk of the film. I kept waiting for the movie to really kick into gear and bring the funny that I know Mr. Hawks is capable of. That never really happened, instead I got a film that was kind of funny with long stretches of unfunny boredom.

Une Femme Est Une Femme (A Woman Is A Woman, 1961, Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy) ****

This is great comedy, it’s also quite tragic, melancholy and silly. Jean-Luc Godard throws the usual comedy standards to the wayside with Une Femme Est Une Femme, but he keeps his penchant for fourth wall trickery intact. I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t so enamored with what Mr. Godard was doing with the fourth wall in this film. But, as the film progressed I became very interested in how he wasn’t so much doing fourth wall as he was using traditional comedy beats integrated with the fourth wall stuff to create something new and interesting. All the main players are excellent, Jean-Paul Belmondo continues to amaze me, but damn, not only is Anna Karina gorgeous, she has great comedic timing and knows how to use her eyes to bring the audience into her frame of mind. I didn’t really expect this from Mr. Godard. It’s not that I’ve seen a lot of his films or really know what he is capable of, but I wasn’t expecting this for some reason. Une Femme Est Une Femme has some laugh out loud moments, and it made me chuckle knowingly throughout. It’s a wonderful film about love and the stupidity that emotion brings about, but most of all there is a lot of excellent film making on display from Mr. Godard that I had a great time taking in.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Roman Polanski, United States Of America) ***1/2

There isn’t much to be scared of in Rosemary’s Baby, but maybe I’m not the best person to comment on that aspect of the film since as you all know horror movies don’t scare me. Roman Polanski has crafted a gripping tale though, one that I was engaged in throughout. That’s really the strength of Rosemary’s Baby, because this isn’t a movie with jump scares or any real surprises. At each turn it’s clear where the film is going, except for the final actions of Rosemary. But, besides her actions, there isn’t much in the way of surprise horror to be found in this film. Thus it becomes about atmosphere and its ability to engage the audience in its tale. On those two accounts Mr. Polanski succeeds in high fashion. Where he stumbles is in some of the bad dialogue and in the supposed shift in the demeanor of the husband, Guy. Mr. Polanski never takes the time to set him up as a nice guy, thus Rosemary’s complaints about his sudden distance and coldness were news to me.

There was one element of Rosemary’s Baby that didn’t sit well with me. I don’t drag Mr. Polanski’s personal life into his films, yes I think he is scum but that doesn’t affect what I see on the screen. However, there is one scene in Rosemary’s Baby that is very unsettling when the past of Mr. Polanski is taken into account. When Rosemary wakes up after she’s been impregnated and her husband casually remarks that he had sex with her while she was unconscious and that he marked her up while doing it, I literally had to stop the film because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing. The rape Mr. Polanski would commit in real life was almost ten years away, but here in one of his films he has a man admit to raping his own wife, shrug at that fact and the film never does anything with it. I’m still very unsettled by that scene and am struggling with how to process it.

L’Appartement (The Apartment, 1996, Gilles Mimouni, France/Italy/Spain) ****

I was completely taken by this, and I’m not quite sure if I should have been. I truly can not explain why I ended up loving this so much, I know why I liked it but not why I ended up loving it. It’s very well acted, this is the first time Vincent Cassel has ever really stood out to me in anything. Monica Bellucci was actually a much more minor player than I initially thought, but she was still good. Romane Bohringer & Jean-Philippe Écoffey were like revelations, I had no idea who they were but they pretty much floored me with what they did with their characters, and they never did anything flashy. Unlike say, a Quentin Tarantino film, here the fractured narrative fit the story and made sense, it actually worked. I was keenly interested throughout and despite not liking anyone but maybe Lucien, Mr. Écoffey, I found myself engaged in the actions of every character. Those are the reasons I liked it, but like I’ve said a few times I ended up absolutely loving this, I guess it’s a case of everything in a film clicking, but I’ll be damned if I can pinpoint the reasons why I loved L’Appartement.

Play It Again, Sam (1972, Herbert Ross, United States Of Ameria) ***1/2

There are a few scenes where your good friend and mine, Woody Allen, goes a bit too neurotic. The first date he goes on is especially hard to watch because of this, and that’s surprising seeing as how there was someone else behind the wheel of this film who should have recognized how out of control Allen was in that scene and reeled him in. Still, it’s only every once in a while that Allen goes too neurotic. Otherwise this is a fine comedy, the Humphrey Bogart idea works and is a lot of fun for the most part. But, most of all Allen and Diane Keaton, as well as Tony Roberts, have a lot of chemistry. This was like settling into some comfortable loafers, I knew exactly what I was going to get from them and they delivered. Not the best comedy ever made, but I laughed a lot, and that’s more than enough for me.

Das Experiment (The Experiment, 2011, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany) ***

This is a hard one to quantify. On the one hand it’s far too obvious where it will end up, and the journey isn’t quite worth it until at about the halfway point. From that point on however, Das Experiment developed a way of drawing me in to what was happening on screen. I was still kept at arms distance simply because I never felt like I knew or understood the motivations behind some of the more important characters. There’s a lot of craft on display, there’s no doubt about that, but somewhere along the way Oliver Hirschbiegel dropped the ball. I’m not sure where he dropped the ball exactly, but the final product is too much of a mixed bag for my liking.

Wrap-Up:

Pretty good week I would say, although I’m completely knackered as I type this so you can give up hoping for some final witty comments. I’ll be back next week, provided I watch some movies, you never know.

Cheers,
Bill