"A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" (1982) - Directed By Woody Allen

I was looking through Allen's filmography recently and I discovered that A) the man has made an absurd number of films and B) there are a lot of them I haven't seen. So I plan to try and go through and fill in as many of the gaps as I can. My first stop (because it was on Netflix) is his 1982 ensemble comedy "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy."

The film takes place around the turn of the last century at a house in the country where 3 couples are staying for a weekend of fun and relaxation. One couple (the one that lives at the country house) is played by Mary Steenburgen and Woody Allen himself. They are having marital problems, more specifically problems in the bedroom. As a result of this, Andrew (Allen) has been throwing all his energy and attention into his inventions. He has designed a flying bicycle and a device which will supposedly bring us into contact with the astral plane? I think? Something like that, I don't think it is really supposed to make sense. Andrew and Adrian are joined by 2 other couples: Maxwell (played by Tony Roberst) and Dulcy (Julie Hagarty); a womanizing doctor and the nurse he picked up for the weekend; and Leopole (Jose Ferrer) and Ariel (Mia Farrow); a pompous but brilliant university professor and the woman he is marrying at the end of the weekend. It turns out Andrew and Ariel had an unfinished affair 20 years prior.

I'm not going to go into a lengthy plot recap because you should just watch it yourself, but basically there are a bunch of twists and trysts (never gotten to use the word tryst in something before!) and it all gets very farcical and silly but it always stays fun. There are a lot of very memorable and quotable lines and scenes and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. He even manages to work in some interesting thematic stuff about how people and their perceptions of things can change so much over 20 years. Andrew and Ariel have been imagining "what if" scenarios about how their lives would be different if they'd gotten together when they were younger and had the chance and then 20 years later when they finally get the chance they discover that they're very disappointed with the whole thing and not very interested in each other after all. I thought that was the most effective part of the film.

I expect most Woody Allen fans probably don't rate this one among his greater works, but I think it was still worth seeing if only for those great scenes and bits of dialogue I mentioned. Also Allen, Farrar, and Hagarty are all very funny in the movie. So if you're looking for some light, funny Allen fun this is a good one to check out.

Brazil - Directed by Terry Gilliam

I was planning on posting a review of Terry Gilliam's 1985 masterpiece "Brazil" but I think that every clever thing that could be said about it has been said better by smarter people already. So instead I present a transcription of my conversation with my friend Michael about it. Pretty much sums up my feelings on one of my favorite films of all time.




Me: So, you liked Brazil?

Michael: yeah brah
shit was tight

Me: word.






So there you go. If you have seen Brazil and agree or disagree with this review post your thoughts in the comments. If you haven't seen Brazil just go watch it now and call your friends and have similar conversations.

Blind Spots or: Why I'm unqualified to have a blog writing about films.

Inspired by the most recent episode of the excellent IFC News Podcast wherein hosts Matthew Singer and Allison Willmore discussed 5 films each that they had only recently seen that not seeing them can be called "a gaping hole in one's film education" I've decided to get some stuff off my chest.

I'm going to talk about 5 films that I've never gotten around to watching that I really have no good excuse for why I haven't seen them. I'm hoping this public shaming will provide me with the motivation to finally watch these films.

The list of movies I'm drawing from is quite a bit longer than the 5 movies I'm going to talk about here and there are in fact even more embarrassing holes in my film education that I just wasn't comfortable admitting (mostly because I think there are some that I've pretended to have seen around people to look clever... what a douche eh?) but these are 5 renowned films that I've never seen and am going to try to get around to in the next few weeks. As I complete them I'll try to post a little bit about them here.

#1 - 8 1/2 - Directed By Federico Fellini




For shame. I'm pretty sure I've told people that I actually have seen this several times. I'm such a dick. I've started this film several times but for some reason always seem to choose to start watching it when I'm already falling asleep and seem to nod off in the first 10 minutes every time. Well no more lies, no more doucheyness. I even own the criterion edition of the DVD so there is NO good excuse for not having seen this. It is time.

#2 - Infernal Affairs - Directed By Wai-keung Lau & Alan Mak

The Departed was one of my favorite movies of 2006 and ever since I saw it I've been meaning to catch up with the original film that it was based on.













#3 - Barry Lyndon - Directed By Stanley Kubrick



I think Stanley Kubrick was one of the most amazing filmmakers of all time. I'm always blown away each time I watch one of his films. Visually stunning, thematically compelling and always entertaining. For some reason this is one of the few Kubrick films I've not acquired on DVD yet (possibly because of how long I know it is.)









#4 - Once Upon a Time in the West - Directed By Sergio Leone



The Dollars Trilogy are three of my favorite films and some of my favorite filmmaking. The visual style of those movies is just captivating. Once again, I think the length of this one is what has prevented me from catching up with it so far.











#5 - Metropolis - Directed By Fritz Lang




Going old-school for this pick. I did once see the anime adaptation of this film a long time ago before I knew of the original films existence. The Calgary Cinematheque is screening this film in November (with a recently discovered 20 minutes of footage that was missing until now) with live orchestra providing the music for this silent classic. Looking forward to getting a chance to finally see such a well-regarded classic movie.






So there are 5 blind-spots for me. Not sure exactly when or in what order I'll get to them, but I do plan to watch them all sooner rather than later.

What's the score here? (PUN!)

I was thinking more about the complaints I had about the score to "Let Me In" and how it was such cliche "OMGSCARY!" music that could have been in any horror movie. Got me thinking about what makes a film score good or bad and whether a good score can be used poorly etc. I thought I might do a top 5 film scores post here but it occurred to me that my list would be somewhat uninspired as I have done no preparation or research and would probably just end up throwing things on the list just so I'd have something there. Rather than doing that I'm just going to talk about one. It's one of my all-time favorites.


Spirited Away - Score by Joe Hisaishi


This is one of the greatest film scores I've ever heard, which is appropriate since it's also one of the greatest films of all time. I'd put it in my all-time top 5 without any hesitation. The music is at times energetic and celebratory, dark and sinister and always haunting beautiful, just like the film. For me the best film scores also work because when you listen to them they conjure up the memory of scene from the film they're used in. The images improve the music and certainly vice versa. There are times when I find the music in a lot of films pretty cliche and generic, like they could have been pumped out for any film. There's nothing generic about any of the music from Spirited Away (or indeed any of the other films Hisaishi has scored.) Every note is adds so much to the style and tone of the film.

"Sanjuro" (1962) - Directed By Akira Kurosawa

After each Kurosawa film I watch I always have conflicting emotions. On one hand I'm been extremely exhilarated for having seen a film that I enjoyed so much, or gave me so much to think about or inspired me in some way or another. On the other I find myself a little sad, not because the subject matter made me so (although there certainly are moments in the films I've seen that can be that can be upsetting) but rather because I know I'll never get to see that film for the first time ever again. With each film of his I see I understand more and more why he's looked on as such a master.

"Sanjuro" is the sequel to Kurosawa's 1961 film "Yojimbo" about the wandering Ronin played by Toshiro Mifune, and along with its predecessor was the basis for Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" which I also love very much. When the film opens we see 9 samurai discussing their displeasure with the corruption that has swept through their clan. They are deciding what to do and who to trust. I won't reveal much because of how much I loved the scene wherein Mifune first arrives and begins speaking to these samurai, suffice to say he ends up agreeing to help them to rescue one of clansmens uncle and defeat the corrupted superintendent and his men.

One thing that struck me while watching the film was just how "cool" Mifune is. He's a perfect example of the badass antihero that we see in so many films and shows today. He's tough, smart, rude but ultimately fair. He sides with the underdog samurai despite their relative incompetence and the fact that the other side would have gladly paid him and given him power because he believes they were in the right.

His encounter with the wife of the man they're trying to rescue forces him to face the fact that his is a life of intense violence. He's a wild cannon, cocked and ready to go off at any moment. (She calls him an unsheathed sword, but I've always wanted to use the wild cannon metaphor.) You can see the anguish in him as he struggles with that fact throughout the film. He wishes to be at peace, but all he knows is violence. This violence comes to a huge crescendo at the end of the film with the final eruption (literally) of violence between Mifune and his nemesis. It's quite a shock when it happens.

The film is also at times very funny. One of the superintendents men is captured and taken prisoner by the heroes. They keep him in the cupboard at their home base. Throughout the film he emerges to make several comments about what's going on and each time after being stared down by the other samurai returns to his cupboard. It's as if he's remembering "oh, that's right. I'm a prisoner aren't I? Well I guess I'll just head back to my cupboard now..." The two women they rescue are also quite funny. The way they stay so calm and peaceful despite all the craziness going on around them. In fact they try to take a nap in a barn during the rescue!

It's a simple and fairly straightforward story. The hero helps the underdogs defeat the villains. It's certainly much more light-hearted than it's older brother, and for that reason I think many people might dismiss it too quickly. It's also hugely entertaining and I thought it had interesting things to say about violence and the men who become so proficient at it, and the ending is quite bittersweet. The hero heads off into the sunset, but he's not better off than he was at the beginning, he may in fact be worse off. He's been forced to face himself and he sees what fate has in store for the men like him. He is haunted by the legacy of violence he leaves and no doubt faces in his future: "an unsheathed sword, poised to strike at any time."

Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies

It's time for my top 10 most anticipated movies for the remainder of 2010! Before we get to the list I will point out that I realize that 1 of these is already out and another comes out in a week, but I haven't seen them yet and so I am still anticipating them so hush.

NUMBER 10


"The Fighter" directed by David O. Russell



I like David O. Russell's films and I like formulaic sports movies. This appears to be both (though I suspect with O. Russell at the helm it won't be as formulaic as the trailer makes it appear. The cast looks great (and I have an enormous crush on Amy Adams) especially Christian Bale as Marky Mark's brother.






NUMBER 9


"Jackass 3D" Directed by Jeff Tremaine




I don't really have to explain this do I? I'm a sucker for these fools.










NUMBER 8


"Hereafter" Directed by Clint Eastwood




Clint Eastwood has directed very few movies that I don't at least sort of like (*cough* Mystic River *cough*) and I really like Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard so this should be an interesting flick.







NUMBER 7


"Monsters" Directed by Gareth Roberts




I don't know a lot about this film, but I love a good sci-fi monster flick and this sounds like exactly that.









NUMBER 6


"Tamara Drewe" Directed by Stephen Frears



I love Stephen Frears movies. I've yet to see one that was disappointing (I haven't seen ALL of them) but even if I had I'm always going to be curious to see what the director of and The Queen and High Fidelity is up to. I also have really enjoyed Gemma Arterton in everything I've seen her in (she was the only thing about Clash of the Titans that I enjoyed)






NUMBER 5


"The Company Men" - Directed By John Wells




This movie looks like it is sort of in the territory of Up In The Air, a film I really dug last year. I also love Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Affleck so I think this could be very good.








NUMBER 4


"Never Let Me Go" Directed by Mark Romanek



Some of my favorite film critics have been excited about this film and some of their enthusiams seems to have rubbed off on me. I've heard a lot of good things about the novel on which it's based and I think Carey Mulligan is one of the most talented young actresses working today.







NUMBER 3


"The Town" Directed By Ben Affleck





I know this movie is already out, but I haven't had time to go see it yet. I think Ben Affleck is a very good director and am excited to see anything he creates and it's a heist movie.







Before I get to the top 2 I want to mention that they're pretty much tied for first in my mind with one edging out the other depending on my mood.

NUMBER 2


"True Grit" Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen




The Coen Brothers are in my top 5 favorite directors in the world. They are responsible for my all-time favorite film (The Big Lebowski) and have been on a roll for the past few years. I imagine this will be a contender for best film of the year.







NUMBER 1


"Black Swan" Directed By Darren Arronofsky




Darren Arronofsky is one of the best filmmakers working today. The Wrestler was my favorite film of 2008 and that alone shoots this film up the list. No matter what I am sure Arronofsky will present something interesting and compelling. Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman starring doesn't hurt either.






HONORABLE MENTIONS:
These films almost made the top 10.

"Stone" Directed By John Curran
"You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" Directed By Woody Allen
"The King's Speech" Directed By Tom Hooper.

"Let Me In" (2010) - Matt Reeves

Here we go! My first review of this new blog. I always have so many thoughts after I watch movies and the 140 character limit on twitter doesn't allow me to express them adequately. Hence, this blog. There likely won't be any sort of schedule for updates. Just whenever I watch a flick and want to comment on it. I don't have a lot of experience writing movie reviews so I'm not sure how well they'll read, they may be kind of rambling at first until I figure out what I'm doing so bare with me. I love discussing movies whether we agree or not so please leave comments and tell me how incredibly wrong I am about the movies I review! Anyway, on with the show

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WARNING: Here there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.

I'm going to preface this review by saying that I am a very big fan of the original 2008 Norweigan film "Let The Right One In" of which this film is a remake of so a lot of what I have to say about it will be in comparison with the original. At first I was troubled about so much of my thoughts on this film being coloured by my reaction to the original, but I think that the two films are so similar (even sharing a lot of dialogue) that it's not unreasonable or unfair to compare the two as much as I'm going to.

"Let Me In" is the story of Owen (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee); a young boy tormented at school by a pack of bullies (more about them later) and largely ignored at home by a mother in the midst of a messy divorce (more about this later also.) Owen meets and befriends Abby (played by Chloe Moretz) a "12 year old... more or less" girl who moves in next door. As the two grow closer eventually Owen discovers that she is not a little girl after all, or rather she is, but that's not all she is. She's also a vampire. Spooky. There is also a police detective (played by Ellas Kotteas) investigating the murders that have been committed by the man who lives with Abby (played by Richard Jenkins) in order to supply her with the blood she needs to survive.

This is one of the better remakes of a horror film that I've seen done. Matt Reeves should be commended for "not fixing what isn't broken" for the most part. He maintains much of the atmosphere of the original and makes only very minor changes to the script (he changes 2 characters from the original and creates the character of the policeman who fills the role of one of the absent characters). A great deal of the dialogue is word for word (except for it being in english) the same as the original, as are a lot of the camera shots. They look good. Unfortunately whenever Reeves is doing something different from the original the results aren't quite so good, in fact they are often downright lousy. (A scene in a car is a good example of this.)

I really love that this film wasn't afraid of maintaining the slow pace of the original. My biggest fear going in was that we would lose so much by adding a bunch of ACTION, but Reeves doesn't really do that... ok he does it once or twice and both times it completely fails for me, but apart from two sequences I was very pleased with how restrained it was. Although there are a couple OHMYGODSOMETHINGSCARYJUMPEDOUTATMEANDMADEALOUDNOISE!!! moments (it's a modern american horror flick, of course there is...) for the most part the eerie silence of the original is maintained.

At first I wasn't sure what I thought about the addition of the police officer character replacing the neighbourhood guy in the original. Ellas Kotteas is very good in the role, he's just not given a lot to do.

Chloe Moretz is a excellent. She's almost as good as Lina Leanderson was in the original, which if you've seen the original you'll know is very high praise indeed. She's been the strongest aspect of both movies I've seen her in now (although this is a WAAAAAAYYYYYY better film that Kick Ass. Just sayin) Unfortunately, the movie goes out of its way to remove a lot of the "innocence" the character has in the original by removing a great deal of the ambiguity about her motivation in befriending Owen that there was in the original. The film really goes out of its way to show that she has somewhat ulterior motives for doing so. The beauty of that aspect in the original was how subtle it was, it was much more open to interpretation, this version it gets laid out for you a little too clearly. I was a little disappointed by Smit-McPhee as Owen. He lacked the naive sweetness of the original. He was always either looking mad or just staring with a blank expression, and he really has to carry a lot of the film because it's about him! I found I didn't really care that much about what happened to him (had I not seen Kare Hedebrant in the original I may have been much more impressed).

I worry it sounds like I didn't enjoy this film. That is SO not the case. It's a good movie to be sure, the problem is when you remake a truly great film good doesn't seem as good you know? The majority of my gripes with this version are small nitpicks, however there are a couple things that I think really fall flat that I feel I need to mention.

First, THE SCORE. So much of the atmosphere gets killed when the score starts to swell up to remind us "THIS PART IS SCARY!" It just sounds SO cliche and generic that it really annoyed me. It's just so intrusive and distracting.

Next, THE BULLIES. They are incredibly cliched over the top bad guys. I have trouble believing them for a second. Well at least the lead bully (and his older brother who shows up later) the other two are just props. They do NOTHING in the whole film. They add nothing to any scene that they're in. They just stand there. In the original the two sidekick bullies have limited screen time, and yet they are still interesting characters! These ones aren't characters at all.

Reeves does a good job of showing us how lonely and troubled poor Owen is (even though Smit-McPhee doesn't really) he does such a good job of this with the atmosphere and mood of the movie that the 5 or so minutes he spends showing us what his parents are like feels like an afterthought that is SO unnecessary. We see that the mother is quite emotionally absent from Owen's life (and I LOVE the way Reeves never shows her face clearly. That just worked SO well for me) so the moments where he calls attention to the fact that he's given her an problem with alcohol just feel unnecessary. Then there's a scene where Owen calls his father on the phone and the whole thing just FAILS. The conversation isn't believable to me for a moment. They just feel like really superfluous scenes that weren't needed.

My last major gripe comes at the climax of the film, it really falls into modern horror traps. The music is intense, the lighting is dark and everything is really kinetic (which is SO out of place in a film where much of the action is so static). It completely misses the point of that scene for me. It goes for OMGSCARY and I think it fails at that too.

It feels like there's 2 movies here. One is a slavish remake of the original, the other is standard modern american horror fare. It's quite troubling to me that when Reeves copies the original it works and when he tries something of his own it falls flat.

Overall, I liked this movie. It's quite good. But, if you're only going to watch one of them stick with the original which is great.

I debated whether or not I would bother assigning grades to my reviews on this site, but I think I will if only because after rereading this review it seems pretty negative and I did really like it. So, I will be using a letter grade system here and they will appear at the end of each review.

RATING: B- (and A for the original)