2004 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films - Page 7

David Lawson · 10-01-2004, 07:16 AM

Quote:

I liked Code 46 quite a bit - apparently a lot more than Jason or David. I thought Robbins & Morton generated real chemistry and found the sexual obsession quite believable. If I get time, I'll have more to say on Code 46.

There's sexual obsession, and then there's...

Spoiler:

No thanks.

**HTF Ads**

Jason Seaver · 10-01-2004, 07:58 AM

No, David, that was

Spoiler:

I repeat, ick.

Holadem · 10-01-2004, 11:25 AM

Ditto on reading this thread but not participating. It has become more difficult for me lately (time and other issues) to go out of my way to watch indie releases, yet I am an avid reader of this thread, it allows me to decide what do watch when I do get a chance to.

--
H

Jason Seaver · 10-04-2004, 12:16 AM

Incident at Loch Ness -

Let's get something out of the way: This isn't a documentary. Normally, I try to avoid giving too much away, and I'll play cute to try to avoid blabbing plot developments that, truthfully, would only annoy me if I saw them in someone else's. But go that route with Incident of Loch Ness, and you've got a review that's nothing but playing cute, and I don't know how useful that would be.

So, this is a comedy, a satire of the Hollywood machine. It happily blurs fact and ficiton by purporting to be culled from the footage of "Herzog in Wonderland", a film about director Werner Herzog (playing himself, like most of the cast). As this documentary's director John Bailey starts shooting, Herzog is about to start shooting a movie of his own, a documentary called "The Enigma of Loch Ness", where he proposes to examine "the difference between Truth and Fact". Producer Zak Penn, however, doesn't want to leave anything to chance.

The movie does a great build, starting by just tweaking documentary conventions and goofing on Hollywood parties, working its way into cryptozoology and filmmaking itself. The cryptozoologist, Michael Karnow, is particularly funny in his apparent fervor to believe anything, the more ridiculous the better, wanting to be shown the "non-evidence". The rest of the cast of characters have a delightful willingness to be laughed at, whether it's Herzog for being considered crazy, or difficult, or pretentious, or cinematographer Gabriel Beristain and soundman Russell Williams making the shoot difficult with their demands even as the crew shooting the Herzog documentary on digital video apparently is able to do just fine with their digital video cameras. Truth be told, it's the obviously augmented centerfold, Kitana Baker, who comes off as the most down-to-earth and reasonable. And while Herzog is billed as the "star", he is most often the straight man who makes Penn seem even more craven and insane.

And maybe that's part of the point. The audience can come into this movie, not knowing who Herzog is (I personally feel ignorant, considering how many Harvard Film Archive screenings of his work I've passed on) and get a funny mockumentary about the making of a movie gone horribly and hilariously wrong. But the more they look at it, and the more they examine the details, the more facets it reveals. You notice how inflexible even a great filmmaker like Herzog has become over the years, how tied down he is, and how even his choice of subject - the Loch Ness Monster - is a tired cliché that everybody knows by heart, while the new breed is able to adapt, put together a totally different movie than they started out with.

There are a lot of movies that reward close viewing - often, with comedies, it's hidden jokes in the background that emerge. Incident at Loch Ness, though, is a bit more ambitious - it's a very funny comedy that has themes emerge as one examines it more strenuously, that becomes a commentary on its medium and itself. The Zak Penn behind the camera has put together a movie which the Zak Penn in front of the camera couldn't conceive.

Brook K · 10-04-2004, 03:15 AM

I skipped your review because I'm dying to see this movie and don't want it spoiled. Glad to hear some very positive news on it. Unfortunately I don't think it hits Atlanta until late November.

Jason Seaver · 10-10-2004, 06:44 PM

Rick -

¼

Rick O'Lette (Bill Pullman) is a bastard, and not a lovable one, when the movie that bears his name starts. And that's fine. This movie's gleeful amorality is perhaps its best feature, and when the more savory elements of Rick's personality come to the fore, the movie loses a bit of its zing.

But not all. This is, after all, an adaptation of an opera (Rigoletto, if the name isn't a complete giveaway) written by Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, and as such features broad storytelling and dark, absurdist humor. There are moments of delightful surrealism, such as when Buck (Dylan Baker), who says he's an old acquaintance of Rick's, introduces himself in a surveillance-themed bar and says he has his own business - and then produces a card that says "BUCK - My Own Business". I'd also love to know exactly what the parallel in the opera is for a couple of Rick's daughter Eve (Agnes Brucker) giggling while engaging in "adult chat" with Duke (Aaron Stanford).

Alas, all too soon, we see Rick's human side, as he's shaken by the tongue-lashing (and curse) he receives from Michelle (Sandra Oh), a woman he had berated in an interview in the morning and encountered by chance at night (costing her her job); he also gets sentimental with his daughter about the loss of her mother. It's not that Pullman is bad here - although he does seem out of place in a white-collar role, as usual. The movie just seems to contract a little, not going as completely over-the-top as it had before.

The cast is rather good. This sort of role isn't Pullman's forte, but he handles the back-and-forth well, and when he has to appeared cowed by his much younger boss, he gives off a great sense of embarassment by it. As that boss, Stanford is appropriately weasel-like and pathetic. Dylan Baker, of course, gets the most entertaining bits. It must fun to play the morality-free character.

The story is generally good, and the back-and-forth dialogue is fun, although it occasionally shows its origins. Not having seen Rigoletto, I can't say this for sure, but I'm willing to bet that the company Christmas party at the end was originally some sort of masquerade ball, since the denoument apparently involves someone confusing two characters who can't possibly be mistaken for each other. Considering the research Buck claims to have done on Rick beforehand... well, how hard would a photograph been to procure? A simple picture! Even in this often-surreal movie, Handler and director Curtiss Clayton should have stood back and said, no, people won't buy that. I'm not quite sure what I think

That is, though, a somewhat minor complaint - the movie brings the funny for its first half and the basic story is strong enough to carry the second, even if the details aren't quite as juicy.

Tarnation -

I used to joke about how you could predict the documentary Oscars fairly easily because the movie about the Holocaust was a shoo-in. That's not so much the case now, but there is still a tendency to grade documentaries as much on the subject matter as on the actual quality of the film, which is why a film like Tarnation gets much more attention than something like, say, Word Wars. The latter is a much more well-constructed movie, but a look at a family's mental disorders brought upon in part by attempts to treat them is more important than wacky people playing Scrabble.

One of the biggest issues Tarnation has is that its subject (and writer/director/producer/editor), Jonathan Caouette, is an actor by trade and the very first images we see of him, from home movies when he was about nine years old, is of him performing. I don't doubt the veracity of what he's saying, but I can't help but be aware of how much artifice he puts into the telling of his and his mother's story.

Caouette's movie is culled from various sources - family pictures, home movies, recorded messages, video diaries, "underground" films he made as a teenager. He then edited it with iMovie, and he went nuts with that. The effect is strikingly egocentric, in many ways more like an edited blog than an actual movie.

Not that I can completely mock that without hypocrisy - before my blog became "Jay's Movie Blog", it was about my daily life, although that soon fell by the wayside because my life is relatively boring and I never got the knack of thinking of myself as a character - or refering to myself in the third person, which Caouette does in peculiar fashion. We've sat through the opening credits and seen his name four times, and yet all the captions (save, I think, one, which may have been subtitling) refer to "Jonathan".

The quick cutting, captioning, and certain repeated effects tricks serve to help tell the story when there's not necessarily a lot of footage to do so, but the aggressive style of the editing occasionally makes it feel like a ninety-minute short film. The film also seems very staged in the begining and end, which take place in 2002 or 2003. I imagine Caouette had been accumulating this footage for twenty years, but the idea of making it into a movie is of more recent vintage... but early enough that he was more self-conscious about where he put the camera and what he captured. There's a creepy scene toward the end, for instance, where Jonathan's mother Renee Leblanc is dancing around her apartment, acting manic and kind of nuts (she'd been brain-damaged by a lithium overdose), that goes on long enough for me to start wondering what kind of son sees his mother acting like this and makes sure he gets it on tape, rather than putting the camera down and dealing with her.

It looks like Caouette mostly turned out all right, despite what looks like a severe lack of quality parenting he got from his parents and (especially) grandparents. It makes Tarnation an odd little relic, though - it remains almost silent on the morality of what his mother was put through (two years of electroshock as a child and 100 stays in mental hospitals over the years) and winds up being a chronicle of Cauoette's life. There's nothing wrong with that, but the audience may have some expectation of more than just self-examination. Any relevence to the world at large, though, is up to the audience to find.

Jason Seaver · 10-16-2004, 01:13 PM

I wasn't planning on posting everything boutique-ish from the Boston Fantastic Film Festival here, but what's the interest? It's all in the blog or on eFilmCritic, but those of course aren't indexed here. Anyway, this is one playing the festival that actually is (barely) making its way into the boutique houses (and has just grabbed the #1 spot on my 2004 Film List:

Infernal Affairs -

I'll admit it - the first time I heard the name "Infernal Affairs", I thought it was going to be a movie about demons possessing cops or something like that. I did know better by the time it played at the Boston Fantastic Film Festival - it's a crime movie, and one of the best you'll have a chance to see.

The concept is deliciously simple - in 1992, an up-and-coming crime boss has several of the younger members of his gang with clean records enroll in the police academy. At the same time, one of the more promising students at the academy is apparently tossed out, but is in fact being sent undercover with the triads; only two people know about this mission. Flash-forward ten years, and now Lau (Andy Lau) is a rising star in the Hong Kong vice squad, and Yan (Tony Leung) is burning out as a triad soldier, still undercover even though the original mission was to be for three years. As luck would have it, Lau is working under SP Wong (Anthony Wong), the man who sent Yan undercover, while Yan is the right-hand man of Sam (Eric Tsang), the gangster who sent Lau to the police academy.

Things come to a head when, during a meeting with Sam's Thai suppliers that Wong has targeted for a bust, both sides are able to anticipate the others' moves too quickly. Both Sam and Wong realize they've got a mole in their teams, and they know that the other guy knows. So it's a race, and both moles will be pressed into service to help find the identity of their opposite number.

Infernal Affairs isn't John Woo flashy, it's not filled with a whole lot of crazy gun or martial arts battles, and though it gets you inside the characters' heads, it never loses sight of its purpose: To create a desperate need to know what's going to happen next. The screenplay is a suspense machine as four very capable opponents square off, with every new discovery bringing a plot twist that sends it off in a new direction. It's like watching a game of chess where both sides can move at the same time.

This is a sure-handed movie, with good performances turned in by all the principal actors, along with likable supporting turns by Kelly Chen as a psychiatrist Yan becomes smitten with and Sammi Cheng as Lau's girlfriend, a novelist writing a story about a man with multiple personalities. The script by Felix Chong and Siu Fai Mak is pretty tight (though you might wonder why a man in a compromised unit would be promoted to Internal Affairs), and the direction by Siu and Wai Keung Lau is up to the same standard. The movie zips forward relentlessly, barely even slowing down for that Hong Kong movie tradition, the flashback-laden music video.

Infernal Affairs is, quite simply, a fantastic crime drama, one of the best in years. Miramax is allegedly giving it a theatrical release, as they try to figure out how to get revenue from the original without inviting too many comparisons when they release a Martin Scorcese/Matt Damon/Leonardo DiCaprio remake in a couple years. If you get the chance to see it, pounce.

Dave Hackman · 10-24-2004, 04:37 PM

Code 46

Tim Robbins character William is Lost in Code 46 Violation after a couple of sexual encounters with Maria mother of Grace. She performs movements of freedom for those willing to risk their lives to travel without question. Robins utilizes technology by accepting a virus of empathy to help him weed out violators, which it does but he is unable to portray this through his character effectively, unlike Gary Oldman in the Professional. Robbins attempt was repetitive and sad to see, tell me something about yourself anything he spouted, then guess what? He spits out the answer, oh boy. Maria was fine but she was just there to be Tim’s sexual indiscretion. The cities were unimpressive and overall settings seemed pretty dull. Panhandlers are always a nice touch, not. Tim’s family life is out of place and shown with little emotion, especially for a person with such a virus. Didn’t see any coworkers or real command structure in his job or society. Huge gaps in the story left me not caring very much for the quick sad ending.

Memory altering has got to be the hottest way to get your movie approved nowadays.

I am more disappointed with this type of movie because it evokes sparks of interest that ultimately fizzle into the abyss of movie crap.

D

Jason Seaver · 10-24-2004, 11:00 PM

Goodbye, Dragon Inn -

½

There have been a great number of films about the process of making movies, focusing on the studio politics and the fiery personalities of the filmmakers. Relatively few, though, have focused on the places where we see movies - the movie theaters which take on personalities of their own. Certainly, there are fewer of those now, as more people get their movies on video or in newly-built multiplexes.

This film may not resonate as well for people who don't get as attached to theaters as I do; I worked at a now-shut-down theater in college, and I always try to note the theater before the reviews in my blog, because I think that the environment does make a difference. The screening at the Brattle included the theater's directors and a few others who had worked in small theaters. We were able to note all the little things about this type of theater that Goodbye Dragon Inn gets right - the strange architecture that sometimes requires you to climb one set of stairs and then down another to get between two rooms on the same level, the sweltering heat of the projection room, or how painfully understaffed the theater can be when things are heading downhill.

Additionally, this is a Tsai Ming-liang film - actually featuring the same movie theater as his What Time Is It There? - which may make it tough sledding for some. Though short - just a bit over eighty minutes long - it can seem longer, as Tsai tneds to hold certain static shots for what seems like an eternity. Excepting the soundtrack from Dragon Inn on the screen, there are less than ten lines of dialogue in the film, in two exchanges, the first of which doesn't occur until halfway through the movie.

I still recommend the movie. Tsai's static compositions are chosen with purpose, and there's enough on the screen to study, and holding the camera on an ordinary or banal scene for an almost painful period serves to magnify the humor value of something unusual happening. And despite the lack of words, there are some characters you get to know very well.

Take, for instance, the woman played by Chen Shiang-chyi, working the ticket counter and as the usher. She's got a metal brace on her leg, which means those familiar with Tsai will sardonically note that those static scenes of someone walking across a room will take even longer. But it also makes her a human representation of the theater itself - she's damaged, but still beautiful, even if she is taken for granted by the projectionist she clearly pines for (frequent Tsai Ming-liang collaborator Lee Kang-sheng), just as the city of Taipei has ignored the Fa-So Grand Theater.

The theater is on its last night, showing Dragon Inn to a mere double handful of people, many of whom are more interested in cruising than actually watching the movie. It seemed a little odd to me, as this part was outside my experience as both a theatergoer and employee. Other bits will be more universal, like the guy who sits down in the seat right next to you despite there being eight hundred other empty seats in the theater. There's also an older gentleman watching the movie, and as we cut between the theater and Dragon Inn, we see that he is one of the actors from that 1966 movie, and he's mourning his lost youth along with how his movies, which once filled theaters, are now playing to an almost empty and indifferent house.

Goodbye Dragon Inn is sad and melancholy, but also beautiful. It's a love letter to the old movie houses in all their imperfect glory. Not everyone is attached to these old theaters with their accumulated history, or to Tsai Ming-liang's ultra-minimalist mood pieces, but for those of us who are, a movie like Goodbye Dragon Inn is extremely worthwhile.

Jason Seaver · 10-25-2004, 10:09 AM

Huh... After updating the index, it's odd that Code 46 would tie Control Room and Touching The Void for most-commented-on movie in the thread. Not just because it's not getting particularly good marks, but indie science fiction doesn't have a history of getting great distribution (witness the almost-invisible The Final Cut or Robot Stories without Greg Pak making an appearance).

I really can't wait for Edwin to see Goodbye Dragon Inn, though, considering what he thought of What Time Is It There?

Even less happens (we're almost talking Gerry-like amounts of plot), but it's strangely fulfilling.