Happy new year (best of blogsophere goes up next week)

Thanks to everyone for the enthusiastic response (see last post). Keep 'em coming, too - especially since I've pushed back the round-up post until after the weekend. I simply haven't had any time to work on it yet. All of you have made this a great year for my online endeavors - despite their infrequency. Happy New Year & see you next week...

Best of the blogosphere

Last year, I posted a year-end round-up of my favorite entries from my "fellow travelers." This was much easier to do in 2008 for several reasons. For one thing, there were fewer sites on my blogroll and as I myself had only been blogging for half the year, I only included entries written after July. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly (and shamefully, from the '09 perspective) I was not a very good member of the blogosphere this year. In terms of my own output - which was sporadic - but also in terms of my participation on other sites.

Certainly, I established a presence at Wonders in the Dark, enjoying the suspense of the countdowns, participating in the lively back-and-forths, and contributing my own pieces from time to time. Otherwise, however, I found myself falling away from following most other blogs with any regularity, and a lot of great writing got lost in the shuffle. Sporadically, I would pop up to read and perhaps comment on individual posts but as such my reading of whole sites was hardly comprehensive. (Since I saw few new movies in theaters this year, I also tended not to check out the applicable reviews, which also played a part in cutting off my reading.)

As a result, combing through the past year's volumes of prose, in order to select my favorite pieces from my "followers" and "fellow travelers" on The Dancing Image and The Sun's Not Yellow has proved difficult. So I've reached a compromise which I think is not only fair, but perhaps better than my original idea. Lazy, perhaps, but also honest and, honestly, more beneficial in the end. I would like to solicit your choices for your own best writing of the year, and I will link it up on my both blogs, same as last year. As a "thank you" there will be three exceptions to the rule: Sam Juliano of the aforementioned blog, Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder, and Ibetolis of Film for the Soul. All of them published some of my work this year and in return, "above the fold" so to speak (the rest of the submissions will be listed alphabetically) I will post my favorite piece of theirs that I have read (though of course they are invited to highlight their own favorites as well).

So please feel free to propose a piece below - I will also be visiting all the sites on my blogroll to solicit submissions. And, though I said no resolutions, I can say that I hope next year I will be able to repay my gratitude for your readership and thoughtful commentary with a more active presence online - I'm even hoping to set aside some time during the busy week specifically for that purpose. Until then, I hope you will consider participating in the round-up - among other things, I am looking forward to seeing the work everyone's most proud of.

A Christmas Tale (& other stuff)

My review of A Christmas Tale is up in time for the holidays at Wonders in the Dark. So head over there to share your own thoughts on the film. Here's some more entries which have gone up recently:

Syndromes and a Century

Kings and Queens (from the director of A Christmas Tale)

Merry Christmas to all applicable...(and a happy new year to all & sundry...)

...enin rebmun, enin rebmuN

And the record rotates full circle: when 2009 was fresh, I posted "Number Nine, Number Nine" on The Dancing Image in response to a meme (remember those?) about nine New Years resolutions. Now I'm ready to take a deep gulp and a look back, to see where I succeeded and where I fell short.

But first, a mea culpa: early this week I "promised" to finally review many of the films I'd been seeing, mentioning, but begging off writing about. Now, a few days later, I've punted a couple times, reviving some old unread pieces, and have to face the fact that now's not the time to tackle a bevy of fresh reviews on The Sun's Not Yellow. For a few reasons: my plate is already full with upcoming Examiner pieces (which will continue to be linked here as well as, in some cases, on Sam Juliano's blog Wonders in the Dark); the films are no longer so fresh in memory (though I still might tackle them anyway in the new year); decreasing traffic (due in part, no doubt, to the looming holidays and also, probably, my own lax posting of fresh non-linkage content); and because I've been reneging on or delaying announced projects all year, so why break the habit now? Which brings me to my "tenth" resolution, one shrouded in an air of finality while soaked with a sense of supreme paradox.

My last resolution? No more resolutions! At least no more public ones. (I believe the contradiction inherent in that statement may have just breached a hole in the space-time continuum, but there you have it.) I'll endeavor to announce upcoming pieces only when they are locked in as part of an ongoing series (which, with the exception of my aborted Auteurs - I'm usually pretty good at keeping up), or when they are already written and hence neither fatigue nor obstruction can stop their onward march. Believe it or not, I mentally was going to segue from this firm statement into a preview of unwritten pieces on The Dancing Image but lest that breach turn into a yawning black hole which sucks all of us up with one last cry of "Great Scott!", I metaphorically bite my tongue.

Well, then, without further ado (not to say as much of shame), the "Nine":

1. Keep blogging.
Well, this I did - intermittently, in increasingly scattered fashion (something this blog has attempted to rectify, even while perhaps exacerbating it). But at year's end I can safely say I carried the torch onwards for twelve months. It may have flickered dimly at some points - just look at my post counts on Dancing Image over the summer and early fall compared to last year - but it never went out, and is burning pretty strongly right now.

2. Look forward.
Sort of. I put up at least one "state of cinema" musing, and addressed the concerns of the medium's future in scattered asides and subtexts elsewhere, but my eye was still too focused on catching up with the past (especially in light of an ongoing canonical undertaking) to really focus on the future.

3. See more movies from the 21st century.
Yes, especially in recent months, and especially with the pursuit-in-earnest of my "Best of the 21st Century?" series. Still have a lot of catching-up to do, however.

4. Read more novels.
Oops. I had a spurt of fiction-reading in spring, mostly to finish books I'd left off in previous years, and then lost myself in the massive David Copperfield late in the summer (it's a pleasant read, but not really a gripping one, especially compared to my favorite Dickens, Great Expectations - at any rate, I've let myself be led astray numerous times but have now tackled it with renewed gusto). I read a whole lot of nonfiction early in the year, and a whole lot of nothing in recent months, which have admittedly been consumed by movie-watching and, when on the subway, music-listening (though lately the text-on-the-T habit has resumed). Better luck next year. I always get such satisfaction out of sinking into a good novel, but am so frequently distracted by the more ephemeral enjoyment of factual prose...

5. See more classics on the big screen.
Compared to last year, sure, but still holds no candle to the New York years. Different cities are partly to blame, but to be fair Boston has plenty of great retro screenings every week. Time has been one issue, economics another (though the free "press pass" privileges have been one of the few tangible perks of my online ramblings...) That said, this summer, there was a great series in my hometown, however, which spurred my first run of Examiner pieces, all of which were quite popular on Wonders in the Dark.

6. Investigate more off-the-beaten path movies.
No, not really. There's too many classics I've yet to see, and that's been made my priority, which I don't regret. Sure, it would be nice to "discover" more films on my own, but that can wait a few years.

7. Evangelize.
Nope - at least not to the outside world, which is what this resolution/commandment was meant to imply. My friends and family remain largely in blissful ignorance of my cinematic pursuits, but perhaps that's for the better, at least for now...

8. See at least one modern masterpiece on its initial run - preferably an unhyped one that sneaks up on us.
Welll...I saw so few new releases in theaters this year that this would appear to be a no-brainer no. But Antichrist - while not necessarily a modern masterpiece - was certainly a modern something. And in its opening minutes I was astonished - viscerally, intellectually, aesthetically - in a way I have not been by most recent films. It certainly had the element of greatness in it (along with some flaws), whether in enough quantities to merit the term "masterpiece" only time will tell. Synecdoche, NY was also another somewhat messy but rewarding experience which left me in a bit of a glow as I departed the cinema. In both cases, the experience was not shared with a moviegoing mass. In fact, with Antichrist, after purchasing my ticket from a teller who informed she would never be seeing this movie (after I asked her if I should go in after missing the first five minutes - though, luckily, the previews turned out to still be running), I entered an empty theater and sat alone in the dark for two hours while von Trier unleashed his demons on my fragile mind. Which might have been better, come to think of it, than having some other random person sitting silently on the other side of the small room... At any rate, Antichrist was not "unhyped" (though I read nothing about it before seeing, and later writing about, it). So it can't quite have been said to "sneak up on me"...still, it comes close to fitting the first half of my above prescription.

9. Make a movie.
Big, resounding no. I could blame conditions, which were not ideal, but truthfully I believe - particularly in this day and age - if one wants to make a feature, one can, even if on a shoestring if necessary. I made a conscious decision not to venture forth into this undertaking, not yet - and to focus my energy on writing about movies rather than making them for now. Which means that, sadly, I have been tripped up by the Orson Welles must-make-first-feature-by-25 gauntlet. Luckily, the Truffaut and Godard hurdles remain safely on the horizon - and if worse comes to worse, I can always take comfort in the example of Jean Cocteau (41) or Vittorio De Sica (39) among others, though both had accomplished quite a bit more than blogging by 30...

So there they are, by my reckoning three successfully achieved resolutions, two partially achieved resolutions, and four out-and-out failures. As for the success of my one, single (anti-?)resolution for 2010, we'll wait and see how that's faring a year from now.

If you too participated in this exercise (initiated by Piper of Lazy Eye Theatre), please feel free to link up your own updates below...

Annie Hall

(Another day, another delay. But not to fear, there's more where yesterday's Manhattan came from: here's a passage on Annie Hall from that same essay. Hopefully tomorrow, or the day after, I'll discuss a film mentioned by characters in both movies.

Incidentally, I don't think I can stand by the claim that Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, and Stardust Memories represented the "high point" of the Woodster's career, except perhaps on the strength of the two most popular films. However, I do still think this period may have been the most interesting point in Allen's development as an artist and entertainer.)

Annie Hall is introduced through a monologue by the main character, Alvy Singer, played (of course) by Allen. He tells the joke about the old women in the lousy restaurant and then bemoans the fact that he and his girlfriend Annie Hall broke up; it’s something he just can’t get his mind around. The rest of the movie is flashback; after they meet at a sports club Annie invites Alvy up to his rooftop where they exchange pretentious banalities, hilariously subtitled to show what they’re really thinking as they speak. Somehow they hit it off, with the neurotic, Jewish Alvy trying to shape the nervous, daffy WASP Annie. Whenever she’s in over her head, she simply recites, “La-di-da. La-di-da. La la…” Its her way of resigning herself to fate and forces out of her control, going with the flow. But Alvy won’t accept this passivity; he gets her to see a shrink, tries to convince her not to rely on drugs for refuge, and encourages her further education and singing career. In the end she leaves him, but as a result of their relationship she is more confident and independent than before.

Along the way there’s animation, characters addressing one another across time and space, characters addressing the audience, fantasy sequences galore, split screen, indeed every device one could imagine. But the effect is not surreal because we know Alvy is a comedian and he’s telling the story as he knows how; there is no doubt that he (and by extension Allen, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Alvy) is the storyteller here. At least Alvy doesn’t cop out with us the way he does with his first play, which echoes a fateful meeting between Annie and Alvy in California, but ends the scene with the two reuniting. “What can I say; it was my first play,” Alvy shrugs to the audience.

But the end of Annie Hall does not provide any easy happy endings. Instead, Annie and Alvy run into each other in New York after she has spent some time on the West Coast. She is now more confident, due in part to Alvy’s encouragement (which came hand-in-hand with his deprecation), but also independent and the two are merely friends instead of lovers. Their relationship ended when Annie chose L.A., with its sun and freedom, over Manhattan, which Alvy could never dream of leaving and to which he is even compared to by Annie. “Alvy, you’re incapable of enjoying life,” she tells him. “I mean you’re like New York City. You’re just this person. You’re like this island unto yourself.” Indeed, Allen’s working title for the film was Anhedonia, which is a psychological condition in which one is incapable of feeling pleasure. That’s somewhat unfair to Alvy, who can experience pleasure; the problem is that he can’t hold onto it. And yet he keeps coming back for more. Allen closes the film with a long shot out of a restaurant window as Alvy narrates another old joke, about a man who says his brother is crazy and thinks he’s a chicken. I’d turn him in, the brother says, “but we need the eggs.” And, Alvy says, relationships are “totally irrational and crazy and absurd…but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

Critics and audiences needed the eggs as well, and Allen was soon churning them out. But each film was decorated in a new Easter coating so that one could never be sure just what form his meditations on love, art, and death would take next. For four years from 1977 to 1980, Allen came out with a new film that expanded his boundaries and showed what a deep and truly talented artist he was. These four films, Annie Hall in 1977, Interiors in 1978, Manhattan in 1979, and Stardust Memories in 1980 form the high point of his career. And Allen followed his Academy Award for Annie Hall with an enigmatic, ultra-serious motion picture in which he didn’t even appear as an actor.

Manhattan

I promised some new posts for this blog, but I was just stuck on the T for about 40 minutes longer than necessary, I already have a bit to write tonight and I'm not quite feeling up to it. So here's a compromise, on my end at least: a piece new to you, but not to me. It's a selection from an unpublished essay I wrote on Woody Allen years ago, revived in honor of seeing Manhattan on the big screen recently, with Gordon Willis in attendance. Even with the cinematographer on hand to speak after the show, it was hard to focus exclusively on the photography: the image, the performances, the story all blend seamlessly together in one of Woody's finest pictures. Here, then, in a moment of frustration with my own city let me turn my gaze towards Allen's idealized metropolis...

(P.S. The time it took me to actually dig up this old piece made this not so economical after all, but at least it didn't take much mental energy...)

[Following Interiors, Allen's] next picture was just right for the times, a last summation of the seventies spirit before it was swallowed by the feel-good comforts of the Reagan era. In 1979’s Manhattan, Allen returned to the combination of seriousness and comedy that had worked so well with Annie Hall, but without the hectic and buzzing style. In fact, the director made a very interesting stylistic choice with Manhattan: instead of using the form to reinforce the content, he does the reverse, letting the look and feel of the film offset and balance the story and characters. While analyzing the struggles and flaws of a few Manhattan love affairs he glorifies the city around them. Manhattan’s uplift derives from the romantic possibilities provided by the beautiful city, photographed in black-and-white Panoramic widescreen.

The film’s most famous sequence is its opening, which features a gorgeous montage of New York City’s skyline, streets, and people, in all seasons, scored to “Rhapsody in Blue.” On the soundtrack, Isaac (Woody Allen) crisply revises the opening lines of his new novel, finally settling on: “Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of jungle cat. (I love this.) New York was his town, and it always would be…” Cue the transcendent finale to “Rhapsody,” bring on the wide shot of the fireworks in Central Park, and you’ve got a grand prelude. It has little to do with the rest of the film, but perfectly sets the background mood, so that we can move on to the more intimate stuff. This opening sequence is Manhattan in a nutshell: admittedly pretentious but technically brilliant, with an enthusiasm that washes away any lingering tastes of self-importance.

Formally, Manhattan is like a finely-tuned instrument that never misses a beat, sharing its perfectly modulated outpouring of joy with the George Gershwin soundtrack. The final scene of the movie is a masterpiece of measured dialogue, camerawork, and music; and the closing expression on Isaac’s face speaks volumes. This formal maturity, however, is a double-edged sword. If the movie has a flaw it is that it may be too self-assured, the confidence of the style seeping into the characters as well; it lacks the frenetic goofiness of Annie Hall that made that film so fresh, honest, and endearing. The bourgeois smugness of many of the characters signals an artistic impulse that will come to envelop much of Allen’s work. Here it is redeemed somewhat by the vulnerability of its central characters.

For example, Mary (Diane Keaton) is not as arrogant as she first appears; when they first meet (she’s having an affair with his married best friend) Isaac can’t stand her. But after they run into each other again and begin to talk, he discovers she actually has very low self-esteem. As for Allen’s character, any smugness he may suffer has to be a defense mechanism. His self-assured balloon is constantly being pierced: by his lesbian ex-wife (Meryl Streep) who writes a tell-all book about their marriage; by his guilt over sleeping with Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a 17-year-old who thinks they’ll spend the rest of their life together; and by the weakness of his friend Yale (Michael Murphy), who ends up stealing Mary back after setting her up with Isaac.

Isaac’s quest in this movie is for stability and some sort of moral structure. While Yale ends up whining “we’re only human” to justify his own behavior, Isaac tries to hold himself to a higher moral standard. That is why he is always telling Tracy that she shouldn’t waste all her love on him; he tries to remind her that she’s still in high school and has her whole future ahead of her and she should pursue an opportunity to study acting in England rather than keep dating him. In the end, when he realizes his love for Tracy and tries to stop her from going overseas, it’s a moral lapse; he’s abandoned his better judgment to his emotions, the same way that Yale did. But Isaac is lucky; his high standards have rubbed off on Tracy, who gently rebuffs him with the same advice he gave her. It’s Isaac’s realization that finally his morals have paid off—albeit in a bittersweet way—which gives the story it’s redemptive, ever-so-optimistic resolution.

The Girlfriend Experience

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience was shot quickly and cheaply in the fall of 2008, as a historic election loomed and the entire economy collapsed. The film, which leaves a bitter aftertaste, is a perfect statement of the Bush era zeitgeist right at the moment it all came undone. References to current events (which already feel a little dated, like yesterday's front page) pop up perpetually throughout the film, but in a way they are unnecessary. Soderbergh captures the time and place just as well through the hideousness of his characters and his setting - New York in the throes of a yuppiedom so impeccable yet inert, it makes one long for the tackiness of the 1980s. No tackiness here - porn star Sacha Grey is cool as an Apple-designed cucumber in her "straight" debut as high-class call girl Chelsea. Just as the title suggests, Chelsea is there to look good on her john's arm, to discuss movies intelligently (or rather, superficially but with a veneer of intelligence), to eat at the finest restaurants and listen to her "dates" whine about how they're only going to make a few million this year. And to sleep with them, of course, but the sex is almost an afterthought, and sometimes - in peeved tones - she complains in her meticulously recorded bookkeeping about the lack of intercourse. She's a pro, then, in every sense of the word, and what she sells is not so much her body as her image. What the men are buying is the faux "experience" of having her as a girlfriend; she's just one more accessory in the age of the iPod.

Soderbergh perfectly conveys this disgusting scenario through his fragmented screenplay and coolly detached but stylish direction. Really, the paid sex is not what's offensive here (that's probably the most honest transaction on display); it's the smug pretense of the whole thing, the effortless glib glide of their existence through chic lofts, trendy restaurants, expensive gyms, corporate jets. It's the staged intimacy of Chelsea's gimmick, as if the distinction between signifier and signified no longer even existed. Thus it's hard to distinguish Chelsea's symbolically cozy but empty relationship with her vapid boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) from her "relationships" with the random men who pay for her company. And it's even harder to distinguish the chic shallowness with which the characters engage their soulless surroundings from the alternately intimate (without feeling) and removed (with perspective) style that Soderbergh brings from the material. In other words, his (presumed) satire is so subtle - in essence, he simply displays this ugly demimonde in its own wretched terms and assuming we'll be repulsed, which we are - that we can't even tell if he's repulsed too.

In short, The Girlfriend Experience is an unpleasant, sneakily acerbic little movie because it so perfectly embodies its very subject. It knows all the right moves, has an eye for the au courant classiness of a locale, and balances its various modes with such superficial "good taste" that you want to throw up. Soderbergh's clever facility and acute nose for visual trends (there's more than a bit of mumblecore in the photography and dialogue here) add up to an end product which is both facile and irreproachable on its own terms - it's glib but in an ahead-of-the-curve way; probably facile tomorrow, but still vaguely impressive today. That mixture of freshness and sterility may very well be the point - but would a better point have been to give us something, anything, to hold onto as spiritual refuge? Any sign that beneath these well-dressed mannequins there was a beating heart? To be fair, Soderbergh attempts to do just that when Chelsea irrationally dumps her lover and attempts to establish a real, passionate romance with a customer. Soderbergh's jumbled narrative is a mixed blessing in this regard; on the one hand, it scatters our attention and thus dilutes whatever residual sympathy we might be able to muster for our protagonist. On the other hand, this approach allows for neat and occasionally effective juxtapositions, such as following Chelsea's crushing realization that she's been stood up with her first, emotionally vulnerable meeting with that same man who'll later break her pint-size heart.

Even so, this climax may be too little, too late, as we're already quite disenchanted with the heroine (whose supposedly redeeming affair is compromised by the banality of her astrological quirks and the smug indifference with which she dumps her suddenly almost sympathetic boyfriend). And how can we accept this intimation of soul in the story when the style still has none to spare? Soderbergh's camera ducks and weaves behind the glitzy decor, hovers around Grey's vaguely pleased visage in the back of a limousine, sets itself up to take in the entirety of the couple's well-groomed apartment, all the while letting us know that it's comfortable in its swanky surroundings even as it leaves just enough distance so that it won't be confused with them (kind of like the witty satirist at the cocktail party who puts everyone down but keeps accepting his much-maligned guests' invitations). At one point a character pops up who could disrupt this very self-pleased aloofness: movie critic and blogger Glenn Kenny plays a sleazy impresario who tries to talk Chelsea into a decadent and quite possibly hazardous orgy in Dubai. The man is so slimy, and Kenny's performance nowhere near as polished as that of the other actors (which is part of the charm), that we breathe a sigh of relief - yet Soderbergh shoots the whole scene from across the room, keeping a distance so great that the grotesque pimp's subversive presence is never allowed to register. It's as if the director's afraid of this kind of primal energy, that it will unsettle his perfectly tasteful mise en scene, and so quickly we retreat to one of those crowded Manhattan bistros, pretending to be coolly disdainful even as we settle in.

Many moons ago, when the cinematic landscape was at once more romantic and more rigorous, Jean-Luc Godard crafted his own prostitute's tale, the sad, serious My Life to Live - his wife Anna Karina playing a hooker whose professionalism masked her pain; at times, she wears her good looks like a mask, while at others she engages in long inquiries with a philosopher and weeps at screenings of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Above all, while Godard is just as concerned as Soderbergh with documenting the economic realities of prostitution, encompassing a critique of capitalist society, and hinting at his heroine's emotions behind an occasional inscrutable exterior, the French director also never silences his own perspective (if any filmmaker was incapable of that, it's Godard). My Life to Live is always bold even as it's alienating, mixing raw documentary with overtly stylized set pieces. The Girlfriend Experience is much harder to read, even if it's less obscure, and it does not seem to have the same stream of barely suppressed emotion shimmering under the surface. Even the titles of the two films offer a marked contrast, with the wounded ferocity of Godard's Life standing tall next to the slinking Soderbergh's muted, snarky Experience. They're different films; fair enough. And both do an excellent job capturing the spirit of a certain time and place. After all, despite my reservations, it's hard to make criticism of Soderbergh's film stick, precisely because its smugness and superficiality so cunningly mirror that of its subject.

Indeed, The Girlfriend Experience is exactly what its epoch deserves - and that may be the saddest statement of them all.

Catching up

As the end of the year approaches, I've a number of things on my plate. Among others, I'd like to finally put up some fresh material on this site, in addition to the usual links to the Examiner. So I'll be writing some short, in some cases very short, pieces on films I've seen over the past month. Back in the summer, I compiled a short list of movies I wanted to see before making my own top 150. Most of these movies were great director's movies I'd missed out on (including four Godards). Some were iconic popular hits like Saturday Night Fever, others were the movies I most wanted to see from Allan Fish's countdown, and still others were just acclaimed movies I had an inclination to rent (Open Your Eyes). I'm on target to finish these movies by Christmastime, and I already wrote about three of their number - When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Accattone, and The Exterminating Angel - on this blog. Now I'm going to catch up with all the ones I've seen since then with a variety of capsules, brief reactions, short reviews and other forms of tribute. I'll also write a bit about other movies I saw but did not write about in November or December. And, of course, I'll continue to post Examiner updates (I've started linking to my "Best of the 21st Century?" pieces on Wonders in the Dark; visit there if you're looking for more discussion on the posts).

There should also be one or two big pieces - one essay, one round-up (knock on wood) - presented on The Dancing Image before year, and decade, are out.

The Tracey Fragments

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

The title is quite literal, as this film - the story of a sullen girl in love with the cool new outsider boy, and guilty over the disappearance of her brother, for which her parents blame her - is told in fragments. Not just fragments of narrative, but fragments of the screen, with multiple views popping up and down, left and right, all over our monitor (and this seems a film much more suited for the small screen than the big one, lest its cacophony become overwhelming). This is a risky formal gambit, but surprisingly both story and action remain easy enough to follow, however mixed up the chronology and mise en scene. What's more, the style - while not exactly as expressive of adolescent confusion and mental exhaustion as the authors may hope - does indeed complement the subject and add to the delivery. Unfortunately, none of this cannot compensate for a perfunctory screenplay; in comparison to its potential, The Tracey Fragments adds up to less than the sum of said fragments.

Tracey (Ellen Page, just pre-Juno) is a fifteen-year-old high schooler. She's angsty, mopey, and self-aware. So self-aware that she knows her angst and mopeyness are teenage cliches - or as she puts it, "Just a normal girl who hates herself." Page plays Tracey with the same straight-ahead commitment she invested in Juno, sullen this time rather than vaguely bemused, but no less talkative. Tracey gets teased at school, called "It" and "No Tits," while at home her parents argue and sulk, only taking a break from their misery to ground her for three months. Her only companion is her little brother, whom she teaches to bark like a dog. When we meet Tracey, she's wrapped in a blanket on a public bus; her brother has vanished and she seems both self-loathing and extremely defensive. We'll learn why as the narrative unfolds, jumping back and forth in time but following a certain logical thread.

The chronological hopscotch gimmick has been a ubiquitous cinematic device since at least Memento (2000) - though narratively fragmented films have been making waves for decades (see Rashomon in 1950 and Citizen Kane in 1941)). Lately, this approach is often tacked-on, to give relevance where none is warranted. In Tracey, the mystery quality of the tale - how did her brother disappear? is she responsible? why is she on a bus? - could for once justify the gimmick. However, for this to work the story would need to be framed more strongly (we may not even realize there is any mystery for a while) and the helter-skelter design of the images would probably have to be subdued. By pursuing fragmentation in script and onscreen, director Bruce Macdonald and writer Maureen Medved may have bitten off more than they could chew. The elements could complement each other, but it would take extreme focus and thematic depth behind the flash, and Tracey Fragments isn't really able to summon either.

Ultimately, when we take a step back and view the film without the interference of style, there isn't enough there to justify the adventurism. Tracey's situation is too cliched - her bullies too stereotypical, her parents underdeveloped, her shrink a cartoon - to warrant much investment. The brother, in whom emotional involvement is crucial for the film's ending to pack a wallop, comes off as too much a symbol of innocence, not enough an embodiment of it (we hardly get to know him at all). It's true that this may be intentional, that Tracey's viewpoint is meant to be flat, one-dimensional, underdeveloped. Yet we need a little something else to give us perspective on her plight - told entirely through her eyes, the ennui and alienation become unimpressive. Still, the film has a very strong climax - literally - in which Tracey's first sexual encounter builds up a romantic head of steam and then lands with a thud, after which she does too. Here the brother's symbolic value as a totem of innocence pays off (though we still wish we had more investment in him as a person).

At any rate, the wintry Toronto locales are often evocative (if underutilized and ill-served by the chopped-up look), the adventurous approach is intriguing, and the film - which really should be just awful, given the indicators (Page's propensity to annoy, the unironic attachment to a teenage perspective, the go-for-broke stylistic fireworks) - is not so bad after all. There are definitely possibilities here, and these fragments could coalesce eventually, if not quite in this particular movie.

Grizzly Man

My review of Grizzly Man is up.

Antichrist

My review of Antichrist is up.

This is England

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

It's 1983. Arch-conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is at 10 Downing Street. The UK has just recently emerged victorious from the brief Falklands War, in which a few hundred British troops died. And in the poorer and more working-class districts of England, gangs of skinheads roam the streets, albeit not with the connotations that term carries now...not yet anyway. Director Shane Meadows firmly places his story within this historical context, in an opening montage which combines images of 80s pop culture with documentary footage of political occasions and social unrest. Then he segues into the main narrative, a coming-of-age tale centered around Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), a 12-year-old whose father has died in the Falklands War. The boy misses his dad, is mercilessly teased, and seems vaguely lost until he is adopted into a good-natured gang of older skinheads.

These skins are a multiracial, goofy, fun-loving bunch and as Shaun marches through the wreckage of working-class England with them to the beat of reggae, he seems to have found his identity. At this point the movie is engaging and fun but seems relatively minor - yet another 00s nostalgia trip. The full force of its narrative, and the recognition of the aching pain behind Shaun's adolescent confusion and the underclass restlessness onscreen, comes bursting into the film with the appearance of Combo (Stephen Graham), an older member of the gang just out of prison. Nominal leader Woody (Joe Gilgun), who amiably brought Shaun under his wing, begins to lose his influence over the boy and really, it's no wonder.

For one thing, Woody seems completely cowed by Combo's presence; when Combo shares a racially offensive prison story with his buddies, humiliating the one black skin Milky (Andrew Shin), Woody fumes but says nothing. Woody eventually drifts away from the group, taking his girlfriend and several of the more peaceful skinheads with him, but others remain behind...including Shaun. Combo becomes something of an older brother/mentor figure to the boy, expressing his latent hostility and buried hurt with a litany of vitriol aimed at multiple targets, including Thatcher and her "phoney war," but also immigrants and racial minorities - despite his claim that he's not racist. Shaun falls under the spell of these more militant skins, helps rob and beat up a Pakistani, and proudly displays the St. George's Cross after nicking it from a National Front meeting.

Meadows clearly indicates his disapproval of the crypto-fascism on display, closely documenting the schisms and discomfort growing within the group, and scoring the montages with mournful music, lamenting the hardening of young Shaun's heart. But the writer/director doesn't make the mistake of disguising Combo's appeal. As played by Graham, Combo is as charismatic as he is intimidating, and we never lose sight of the genuine pain beneath his furious exterior. His early conversation with Shaun conveys a far deeper understanding of Shaun's malaise than the genial Woody could summon; even when the gang attacks the Pakistani shop, we remember how the shopowner was rude to Shaun early in the film - and thus how the confused boy could see him as another nasty elite rather than a frightened outsider in a hostile community.

So the film grows from an enjoyable if slight nostalgic piece to a more resonant, more conflicted portrait of unease and discontent as it approaches its climax. Following a scene which exposes, and lacerates, Combo's softer side, we reach the heart of the movie, in which Combo tentatively invites black skinhead Milky over for a smoke. This sequence is a small masterpiece, not only capturing the full gamut of the stoned experience from fraternity to paranoia, but conveying the essence of Combo's desire for companionship and suspicion of the rest of the world in one fell swoop. It's as powerful as is focused, and demonstrates how perfectly Meadow has captured not just a moment but a mindset by zeroing in on a particular. This is England's story is actually rather small-scale - there is never any rendezvous with a big historical event, not even a riot or demonstration, and the payoff to the narrative unfolds on a very personal level. Yet the film, with its opening montage and its casual references, but most of all with the burning intensity of its focus, has the latent feel of an epic. It's quite an achievement, and a very worthy film.

Coming up this week

Originally this provided a link to a preview of my upcoming work at the Examiner. Here are links to the new homes of the pieces written that week: This is England, Antichrist, Grizzly Man, The Tracey Fragments.

Capturing the Friedmans

My review of Capturing the Friedmans is up.

In Bruges

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Martin McDonagh apparently never received (or else discarded) the memo that Tarantino-style hip thrillers are out of fashion. Good thing too, because In Bruges is amusing fun, even if its conceptual hook is no longer fresh and the first and second halves of the black comic plot sit uneasily next to one another. The film ultimately displays a deft command of dialogue and character: its protagonists may seem stereotypical but, as embodied by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, they live and breathe relaxed charm - even in the more hyperkinetic moments. (Incidentally, minor spoilers ahead...) Ken (Gleeson) and his younger protege Ray (Farrell) have been exiled to Bruges following their latest hit (in what has become the default occupation of characters in need of a job, they are professional killers). Ken enjoys the prettily medieval scenery while Ray gripes, drinks, gay-baits, makes fun of midgets (er, dwarfs), punches out Americans, and woos a sexy drug dealer (Clémence Poésy). Finally their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes, sounding remarkably like Michael Caine over the phone, at least to this ignorant Yank's ears), calls Ken and deliver his troubling assignment: kill Ray.

Actually, this isn't so troubling given that Ray is an obnoxious (if entertaining) lout, but the screenplay has saddled Ray with a rather unconvincing intermittent conscience. Having accidentally shot a young boy (in the process of killing a priest, which goes unremarked-upon), Ray is frequently tormented by guilt and suicidal thoughts. This is why Harry wants him offed - the crude, vulgar, pathologically violent boss apparently has a strict sense of ethics - but it's also why Ken feels compassionate towards his younger partner and frets over his mission. Actually, this central plotline is resolved about an hour into the movie, leaving the story in need of a new turn. It finds this with the physical appearance of Harry, whose character is perfectly conveyed by his first scene: after receiving frustrating news over the phone, he smashes the instrument to pieces, shrieks at his wife (she tells him that he's screaming at an inanimate object and he responds "You're a f*cking inanimate object!"), and then tenderly - as best he can - apologizes for his outburst.

Fiennes portrays this crime kingpin, who ultimately takes it upon himself to mete out crude justice, as a thug with stubborn ideals: don't kill kids, shoot your opponent but not if he refuses to shoot back, stick to every resolution you've made, and blow your bloody brains out if any of your principles are violated. With his entry into the storyline, the movie heads in a new direction: at once cartoonish and graphically violent. This darkly exaggerated mode feels awkward following the more down-to-earth first half, in which the buddies' bored irritation and restless melancholy is allowed to pull us into the film's world bit by bit. The ending of the film even takes the characters' brewing self-consciousness to its logical conclusion, with Harry and Ray metatextually haggling over which direction the action sequence can take, given their self-imposed ethical limitations.

It's the film's climax which most recalls the heyday of Tarantino imitators (about ten years ago), and while the bloody mayhem is fun, one begins to miss the fresher feel of the early passages. The stylized postmodern crime milieu is not the only thing slightly past its sell-by date; the film contains numerous passages of rather hamhanded anti-Americanism which reflect the dark days of the Bush administration, when American tourists were told to inform their foreign hosts that they were Canadian. One Canadian fails to remember this rule and is assaulted for his mistake - with Farrell delivering one of the more inspired Yank-baiting quips: "That's for John Lennon!" as he pounds his victim. (Another anti-American scene, while embarrassingly obvious in its humor - three really, really obese tourists fret about their guidebook and a perceived insult - is partially redeemed by the fact that its targets are Yankees fans.)

McDonagh's attempt to bring some moral weight into his universe - with the death of a child at Ray's hands, conveyed in flashback - is handled with discomfort. On the one hand, it seems a mere signifier, placed in the film for plot purposes and to provide character motivation, but without any real depth or weight. On the other, McDonagh sometimes seems to give it import, using it to humanize Ray and raise the stakes of the ethical questions he poses, tongue half-in-cheek. Finally, whatever attempt McDonagh makes to flesh out his postmodern, self-aware lowlife universe is negated by his instinct for the sharp line, hilariously over-the-top characterization, or quirky story development. If one is inclined to dismiss hip crime comedies as old hat, In Bruges is probably best avoided.

However, if one has patience with the "genre," seeing it not as a flash-in-the-pan fad but rather a template providing numerous opportunities for funny dialogue and humorous characterizations, In Bruges will certainly entertain. Fiennes has a ferociously good time chewing up scenery, Gleeson is warm and human in the most sympathetic role, and Farrell knows exactly how to play the ignorant but charming lout so that we're alternately laughing at and with the impatient rogue. Most of all, In Bruges avoids the temptation to over-impress; its style is effective but subdued (despite the wild detours of the story) and its performances reign in the ridiculousness while still capturing the sharp flavor of absurdity. That's about as humanist as the Tarantino-inspired movement gets, but it's a welcome development.