For the weekend of 16 November, here are the films in focus:
No Country for Old Men [rating: 9]
Shockingly effective and incomprehensibly great, No Country for Old Men proves that the Coen Brothers are America’s reigning motion picture Gods.
Somehow, you get the impression they are doing it on purpose. After a pair of underperforming efforts (the tame Intolerable Cruelty and the way too reverent remake of The Ladykillers) Joel and Ethan Coen are back – and they’re trading on their unmitigated masterpieces from the past to achieve something quite startling. As with any great artist, the threads of their genius are laced throughout all facets of their work. And in the case of the majestic No Country for Old Men, the brothers have fashioned a clever combination of everything they’ve tackled before – the Southwestern dread of Blood Simple, the cruel criminality of Miller’s Crossing, etc. – and wound it up into a tight little ball of cinematic razor wire. And as viewers, we are lucky enough to traipse through the stealthy steel death trappings of what is instantly 2007’s best film.read full review…
I’m Not There [rating: 8]
This is not Walk the Line, or even Ray. It’s more like Lisztomania, and other outrageous biographical freak shows created by that cinematic savant Ken Russell.
When it was first announced that Todd Haynes, the idiosyncratic mind behind the deconstructionist dramas Safe and Far from Heaven, was tackling the life and times of one Bob “Zimmerman” Dylan, few balked. Sure the protest poet laureate and last legitimate link to the more idealistic and inventive elements of the ‘60s seemed like an unusual choice for the filmmaker, but this was a man who had previously tackled the days and death of Karen Carpenter, and a revisionist view of Iggy/Bowie glam rock. So a musician, even one of his import, wasn’t out of the question. No, what raised many eyebrows was Haynes’ decision to cast five different actors as Dylan, including a young black boy and a woman (actress Cate Blanchett). Again, few should have stirred. This is the man, after all, who used Barbie dolls to tell the tragic story of the anorexic AOR star. A little invention should have been anticipated.read full review…
Beowulf [rating: 8]
Beowulf brays and boasts, it overwhelms and it soars. Like the tendency to exaggerate inherent in its hero, it’s a majestic movie that doesn’t quite add up to the epic we anticipate.
The reason we respond to myth is simple. The epic paints the plainest of universal pronouncements – good vs. evil, right vs. wrong – in images so stunning that we can’t help but embrace the message. It simultaneously taps into our philosophical and faith-based pleasure centers while manipulating our impressions along massive moralistic lines. Still, this doesn’t mean that all legend makes great cinema. For every Lord of the Rings, there are dozens of preachy period pieces. Indeed, one of the main reason the classics avoid motion picture manipulation is that what sounded good as spoken history frequently plays as stodgy and almost inert on screen. Such is the case with Beowulf. Like a Woody Allen joke gone awry, anyone attempting to bring the story to life has had to overcome a litany of high school literature lessons. Luckily Oscar winner Robert Zemeckis was up to the challenge. read full review…
Mr.Magorium’s Wonder Emporium [rating: 6]
Featuring one of those Method actor turns that gives the post-modern movement a ridiculous, rose-colored bruise and just enough imagination to keep the protests at bay, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is a lighthearted and less noxious Night at the Museum.
Whimsy is a tenuous cinematic element. Apply it too thickly, and audiences recoil under its treaclely tenets. Not enough, and viewers will wonder what the puff and stuff is about. Few filmmakers have actually managed the shaky aesthetic quality – and all of them are named Tim Burton. For all others, the quixotic or idealized becomes a motion picture burden that they are ill-prepared to bear. It takes the skills of a surgeon and the metal acuity of a genius to avoid the sappy, the sentimental, the predictable or the ditzy. Manage everything well and you have a lasting work of visionary art. Mess it up, however, and you’re stuck scrambling for significance. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium suffers from some of whimsy’s generic blight. When it’s good, it glows. When it fails, it’s almost fatal. read full review…