2005 Film List - Page 8

Adam_S · 02-13-2006, 01:37 PM

I agree with Edwin, the strip club sequence made me smirk and grimace. and I think it takes a certain amount of balls to actually show the nudity in a serious documentary rather than using 'tease only' B-roll.

And I seem to remember more nudity or at least sexual activity in Inside Deep Throat.

like Seth, I didn't follow Enron too closely, wasn't even aware really of Jeff Skilling because I'd only really heard headlines and maybe read one or two initial articles. Ken Lay = bad man in charge (but best buddy of Bush) was about the extent of my knowledge of the case. I didn't feel it was tabloid at all, relentless yes, but it seemed more See it Now than 60 minutes or 20/20, journalism rather than sensationalism.

Why do they call strip clubs gentleman's club? No person could reasonably, in my estimation, call themselves a gentleman if they attended one.

Edwin Pereyra · 02-13-2006, 04:24 PM

I also think that if Alex Gibney was going for something gratuitous that first shot dramatizing the suicide would have been more violent than necessary.

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the strip club sequence made me smirk and grimace. and I think it takes a certain amount of balls to actually show the nudity in a serious documentary rather than using 'tease only' B-roll.

When you have the Sean Hannity's and Rush Limbaugh's of the world proclaiming they don't know what a lap dance is, Gibney telling us just like it is and what actually goes on at these strip clubs was all the more appropriate. After all, this is a serious and educational documentary aimed at adults so why try and hide or sugarcoat what actually goes in these places, in light of the actual expenses that was spent and approved by Enron for entertainment purposes. Let's face it, guys don't go to strip clubs to drink their overpriced $5 Budweisers.

Enron is the most comprehensive, most telling and most concise documentaries I’ve seen last year. While others would prefer their documentaries to be one sided (Fahrenheit 9/11), or have the filmmaker inject themselves (Grizzly Man) or their own views, or narrated by a well-known person such as Morgan Freeman (March Of The Penguins), I’m glad Enron did not have any of those ancillaries and just stuck with presenting the details of its subject matter culled from voluminous and extensive resources that are available in public domain and others that were obtained through investigative work.

This type of journalism sets it apart from the 60 Minutes or 20/20s of the world.

~Edwin

Brook K · 02-13-2006, 05:24 PM

Enron reports on known events and is a well-known story in the public consciousness. There was little in the film not in newspaper articles, magazines, and news shows of the time when the scandal broke. Yes, it pulls everything together in easy-to-digest bits for people who aren't that informed about what happened, but I maintain it lacks insight and revelatory information. If these filmmakers didn't make this movie someone else would have and likely would have made a film of reasonable quality too.

And I've been in strip clubs and virtually every guy I know has too, and I've seen plenty of women in the crowds at the clubs. Strippers are part of popular culture seen in zillions of sitcoms, films, and other media. Cinemax has a programming strategy built around the concept. If you say "stripper" virtually every person has a mental image without having to be shown one.

It wasn't even a major point in the film, it was a 2 second aside just to show some boobies. An E! True Hollywood Stories moment.

Back to my 1st paragraph point, I want the voice of the artist, the filmmaker. I want a human story that illuminates some facet of the human condition I was either unaware of or knew about but am shown in a way I'd never considered.

Werner Herzog provides that in his films, Steve James provides that in his films, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Mad Hot Ballroom, Murderball are these sorts of films.

If you're going to make a journalistic/reporting type documentary film, than I expect more than just a laying out of the facts if I'm going to think of it as outstanding.

Like Waco: Rules of Engagement that calls into question what the media reported about the events and provides, rightly or wrongly, new ways of thinking about what happened. Hearts & Minds attacks the very foundations of how we think and feel about war.

Enron is certainly not a bad film, it just resides on a lower tier for me because it never challenges the viewer.

Brook K · 02-13-2006, 06:26 PM

Dark Water (2005) - As a drama about a woman trying to hold her life together and take care of her daughter while going through a divorce, Dark Water is not bad. Jennifer Connelly is convincing as a mother who will do what it takes even if it means settling for a crappy apartment. I also liked John C. Reilly's brief comic turn as a sleezy apartment manager.

However, Dark Water is ostensibly a horror film, and here it fails horribly. From the "desaturated color = atmosphere" school of modern horror, it has no suspense, scares, dread, nothing. It falls completely flat. It is also the umpteenth "scary ghost kid" film to come out of Japan. Top it off with a ending of sheer "only in the movies" stupidity and you have a film that I can only hope doesn't linger long in my memory. - D

Edwin Pereyra · 02-13-2006, 06:40 PM

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There was little in the film not in newspaper articles, magazines, and news shows of the time...

Given the appropriate amount of research one can invest, the same can be said for most documentaries that are released these days with information being readily available on the internet and other media. If that's one criteria, then many documentaries fail in this regard.

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...it never challenges the viewer.

Just what exactly do you mean by challenging? Is Fahrenheit 9/11 more challenging than Enron because it challenges the viewer to either refute or believe the position it's author takes? If that's the criteria then F9/11 scores one in that area.

Does a documentary have to provoke to make it better?

The subject matter in Enron is, for the most part, a one-sided affair, for which it should not be penalized. The other films you mentioned contain the elements that provide for presenting the arguments for both sides of the issue. It doesn't go into the psyche of an individual as to why he/she did what they did unlike Grizzly Man. But in some ways, Enron does provide its own insights.

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I want the voice of the artist, the filmmaker. I want a human story that illuminates some facet of the human condition I was either unaware of or knew about but am shown in a way I'd never considered.

For me and for this film, the voice of the filmmaker was not necessary. Some documentaries become too clouded or one-sided when one injects their own opinion when none was called for. It is simply amazing how one's view can be readily affected by one's opinion. On the other hand, just give me the facts and I'll decide for myself.

The human element is certainly there amidst the complex web of characters and events leading to its downfall.

~Edwin

Adam_S · 02-14-2006, 02:10 AM

Quote:

I want the voice of the artist, the filmmaker. I want a human story that illuminates some facet of the human condition I was either unaware of or knew about but am shown in a way I'd never considered.

This is all well and good, but it's also problematic. Proselytizing is not necessarily the best tact for informative documentaries, and deliberate injection of voice, be it Sweet Misery, Super Size Me or Fahrenheit 9/11 can be fascinating and can be the reason to watch or keep watching or it can be fatally crippling.

The NYT just had a brilliant article on Aspartame, but the documentary on it, Sweet Misery is just pathetically made piece of preaching to the choir. The NYT article suceeds because of journalistic and clear presentation of the facts and acknowledges the complexity of the issue and presents both sides fairly, the documentary made up its mind long ago and it just becomes a journey of repetition and tedium, with a series of interesting facts) because of the individual voice of the documentarian.

I would not be surprised to be severely depressed by Michael Moore's take on the health care paradigm simply because I've done so much of my own reading on the subject that I'll probably just be frustrated at editorializing created by his voice. I'd much rather see a documentary on the health care paradigm in America by the team that put together Enron Smartest Guys in the Room. Moore will only succeed in sensationalize some issues and completely suspend constructive discussion and debate on most of them because of his personality and the tendancy his voice has to polarize people into spitting irrationality.

Adam

Brook K · 02-14-2006, 05:45 PM

I don't have much time to debate this today without seeking a divorce...

Certainly there are good and bad documentaries of either type. I was stating my preference and what I feel makes for a better film, but obviously it isn't a method that works for every film or filmmaker. Not to give George Kaplan too much credit

, but there is a beauty to the simplicity of his "do I want to watch this again" ratings system. And for a film like Enron, once I've seen it, there isn't really a reason to watch it again. I've digested what it has to offer. Whereas I could watch Hoop Dreams every day for a week and not exhaust my desire to see it again. It doesn't make Enron a bad film, but it is one reason why Hoop Dreams is a great one.

The Baxter - A "baxter" (presumably named for The Aparment's C.C. Baxter) is a nice guy that finishes last. In this romantic comedy, Elliot the nice guy accountant has an attractive fiance he is about to marry. Their relationship is threatened when an old boyfriend shows up who is everything Elliot isn't. At the same time he develops a friendship with his plainer and quirky temp secretary (played by Michelle Williams). Antics ensue as he begins to act out of character to try and save his impending marriage.

This film offers a few chuckles, a charming performance by Michele Williams and a funny appearance by Peter Dinklage as a wedding planner. However, the writing and other characters are as bland as the titular baxter. The film is never as clever as it thinks it is (Dinklage's character is named "Benson Hedges" ha ha) and fails the basic tests of both comedy and romance. - C+

Transporter 2 - The Transporter returns, this time as a driver for a wealthy family. When their child is kidnapped while in his care, it's up to him to track down the perpetrators and deliver some butt whuppin.

This sequel doesn't live up to the quality of the original. It has a solid car chase and a couple of good action sequences, but lacks the tightness, energy, and inventive stunts of the first film. Transporter 2 also deletes almost all character moments in favor of buddy comedy schtick. That said, I still enjoyed the film because I really like Jason Statham in this role. He's believable in the action scenes, can handle the dramatic moments, and he is comfortable with comedy. Statham is one of the very few action stars today who can project that Marvin-Bronson old school toughness, instead of merely acting tough. Give him some of The Rock and Vin Diesel's roles and I might actually want to watch those movies. - B-

Café Lumière (2003, 2005 US Theatrical Release) - Japanese studio Shochiku commissioned Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsia-Hsien to make a tribute to Yasujiro Ozu for the Ozu Centenary. He created this film which reflects the changes in Japanese society since Ozu was making his 1950's family dramas. Centering around a young woman involved in researching the career of a Taiwanese composer, we see her relationship with her family, a bookshop owner secretly in love with her, and how she relates to the world around her.

While it includes such Ozu signatures as laundry on the line and repeated shots of trains, it doesn't attempt to ape Ozu, and is stylistically of a piece with other Hou films. Often shown in discrete long shots, its characters communicate but never really connect with one another. An event like the daughter's pregnancy, which would be a family crisis in an Ozu film, is here taken with resignation and no fireworks. The film is thematically interesting, includes some beautiful images and expresses sadness for a more intimate family life lost in modern Japan. But the distance from the characters and lack of drama make for problematic viewing. Another problem is Hou's overuse of extended shots of landscape. Whereas Ozu used "pillow shot" interludes, Hou almost reverses this to the point that delivering lines and doing something beyond walking and looking becomes the interlude. For all of Ozu's formal aesthetics, he never failed to tell a compelling, humanistic story. - C+

Brook K · 02-16-2006, 05:55 PM

Ma Mère (2005) - Taking the phrase A boy's best friend should be his mother. to the extreme, Ma Mère sets up a devout young man (The Dreamer's Louis Garrel) home for the summer from Catholic school at his parent's Riviera chateau. After the sudden death of the father, the wild child mother (Isabelle Huppert) takes her son on a journey of sexual exploration, including incest.

The film is generally a frightful bore. It offers some pretty images (like Bill McA's current sig pic), but is otherwise a slow-moving exercize in watching bored people trying to find meaning in their lives through mechanical sex and S&M. It isn't that their behavior is particularly repulsive, nobody's being raped here, it's that unlike Barbet Schroeder's Maitresse, the characters and story aren't interesting enough to merit watching what they do to one another. Garrel's main character is completely amoral and unsympathetic. The film spends a long time setting him up an almost monk-like character, a man of faith lost in a sea of immorality, and yet he drops all his pretensions as quickly as one of the women drops her clothes. Then he proceeds to shift back and forth between extremes two more times. None of the characters are consistently drawn, they act whichever way the script requires them to for a scene, then their personality may completely shift for the next one. Top it off with an ending of such utter mindlessness; a cheap shock tactic I can't imagine any human being actually performing, it left me dumbfounded. - D-

Elizabethtown (2005) - As I said somewhere else, I gave this film 35 minutes of my life and that was as generous as I could be. I've seen many a terrible film, but I just couldn't force myself to stick this one out. It just has nothing to offer, I was annoyed and bored within the first minute. Seemed like Crowe was trying to write like Wes Anderson and doing a really, really poor job of it. Plus Kirsen Dunst was just accepted for membership in the Renee Zellweger Club for Actresses who Annoy the Hell Out of Me. - BOMB/Incomplete

Adam_S · 02-19-2006, 04:38 AM

Me And You and Everyone We Know - 0
It's been about five weeks since I looked at this but I didn't know just what to say until I saw Brook's post on Elizabethtown, perfect summation of my