Sunday, June 15, 2008
This may be the last entry in Shenan's and my Spanish-Language-a-thon, since I think we're out of suggestions at this point. This is another in our backwards journey through the films of Pedro Almodovar... I thought we'd stop after All About My Mother, but I'm glad we didn't since this one was pretty good. I don't know if we'll go any further, though, as I feel like the other's aren't supposed to be as good. I dunno, we'll see.
Showing posts with label Spanish-Language-A-Thon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish-Language-A-Thon. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Intacto
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Man, I guess Shenan and I got too caught up in Homicide and Weeds and all that, and we totally forgot that it had been our "thing" to watch some Spanish- language movies. I think it had happened by accident, when I started watching Pedro Almodovar movies and we both started getting into Gael Garcia Bernal, and we realized we had been watching a lot of Spanish language movies and we should just go with it.
We're trying to pick it back up again, although with new seasons of Weeds and Rescue Me out now on DVD, and like 4 seasons of Homicide left, and our newfound love of Six Feet Under, who knows if we'll remember to keep it going.
This was Shenan's pick, but I was rather curious to see it once I did a little research. Why? It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who did 28 Weeks Later, one of the best horror films of the last several years, and a rare sequel to a great horror movie that does the original justice. After watching Intacto, (which is not a horror movie) I think this guy's got the goods. It's one of the more captivatingly oddball movies I've seen in a while, which manages to create a dark and fascinating tone out of a ludicrous premise.
And guess who's in the movie? Max Von Sydow. And what a career this guy has had. He's been acting for, what, a billion years now? He started off working with Ingmar Bergman, has been steadily working since the 50's, still lands roles in major films by people like Spielberg and Scorsese, but has also found time in recent years to show up in smaller, artier fare (Snow Falling on Cedars), weird-ass Spanish language movies (this one), and he even managed to squeeze in an Argento movie (Sleepless). I love this guy!
Man, I guess Shenan and I got too caught up in Homicide and Weeds and all that, and we totally forgot that it had been our "thing" to watch some Spanish- language movies. I think it had happened by accident, when I started watching Pedro Almodovar movies and we both started getting into Gael Garcia Bernal, and we realized we had been watching a lot of Spanish language movies and we should just go with it.
We're trying to pick it back up again, although with new seasons of Weeds and Rescue Me out now on DVD, and like 4 seasons of Homicide left, and our newfound love of Six Feet Under, who knows if we'll remember to keep it going.
This was Shenan's pick, but I was rather curious to see it once I did a little research. Why? It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who did 28 Weeks Later, one of the best horror films of the last several years, and a rare sequel to a great horror movie that does the original justice. After watching Intacto, (which is not a horror movie) I think this guy's got the goods. It's one of the more captivatingly oddball movies I've seen in a while, which manages to create a dark and fascinating tone out of a ludicrous premise.
And guess who's in the movie? Max Von Sydow. And what a career this guy has had. He's been acting for, what, a billion years now? He started off working with Ingmar Bergman, has been steadily working since the 50's, still lands roles in major films by people like Spielberg and Scorsese, but has also found time in recent years to show up in smaller, artier fare (Snow Falling on Cedars), weird-ass Spanish language movies (this one), and he even managed to squeeze in an Argento movie (Sleepless). I love this guy!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Orphanage
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about The Orphanage, but I suspect that I can't quite give it the a-ok. Which makes me feel guilty. I mean, here we have an honest-to-goodness earnest attempt at making a serious, mature, well-shot horror film, with fleshed out characters, complex themes, heavy atmosphere, that takes it's time and tries to build real suspense. Pretty much exactly the kind of horror movie I'm always begging for. I guess the operative word, though, is "attempt," because I'm not convinced it's too successful at reaching its goals.
It left me at times a little bored, and in the end unsatisfied. Where as a lot of less-artisitc, atmosphere-lacking, suspense-free Friday the 13th movies have given me a much better time at the movies. It's like I tried some new, fancy expensive Belgian Ale that I should love, only it wasn't all that good and I'd rather have a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I feel a bit like an uncultured ass for not liking it, but I gotta remind myself of all the good, sophisticated horror films I do love.
OK, let me try this from a different angle. You know what I don't want to see again in a horror movie? A precocious little kid who tells his parents about his imaginary friends, and then the kid starts behaving strangely and weird things are afoot and the parents become worried that the kid is losing his shit. Because the moment a kid in a horror movie says he has an imaginary friend, a little bell goes off in my head and I immediately know that this will be an important plot point and that his friends are most certainly not imaginary. They are most likely ghosts, or I guess there was that one shitty Rober DeNiro movie where he had a split personality that befriended Dakota Fanning. (Don't read that last sentance if you wanted to see Hide and Seek.) So right there, all the suspense for the first act is gone, because we never for a second worry that the kid is just looney tunes, we know he's telling the truth.
Hey, that would be something though... how about a horror movie that actually makes us wonder if the kid is a nutjob? I'll still let the answer to the mystery be "ghosts" if you really want it to be, but maybe we just don't have the kid talk about his imaginary friends, or at least not until later in the picture. That way it might actually be a little spookier when a little kid in a fucked-up mask starts running around the house.
Let me digress off my digression here for one second about that fucked-up mask. It's really damn eerie, and one of the coolest things in the movie. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. It's suppossed to be a mask that was worn by a little kid to hide his deformed face. I'm guessing this was done to avoid embarassment and prevent him from scaring other children... but then why the hell would his mother make the mask way, way scarier than his actual face? You think she would have made him a cute mask or something, not the weird, lopsided, clown/rapist nightmare he wears. Ick.
OK, digression over.
I'm also not keen on mediums and ghost hunters popping up in horror films to create some additional suspense scenes and I guess to try to lend some realism or science to the story. In fact, I'm not inherently into ghost stories, so you're already asking me to swallow a lot in believing that there is an afterlife and that ghosts have magical powers and also they still wear clothes (are their clothes the ghosts of their clothes when they were alive?) and they can talk so I guess they have, like, fully functioning organs and a voice box and shit otherwise I'm not sure how they generate sound, and they are intangible sometimes and solid others, and there don't seem to be any rules and they do a lot of arbitrary spooky things. I'm willing to go along with that, if the movie is a good one. But then if you throw in psychics and pseudo-science and it gets to be too much for me.
Actually, you know what, I'll even accept psychics and mediums, even though they are horseshit too, because this is a movie and not real life and fantastical shit is cool. But ghost hunters have to be the corniest, stupidest group of pseudo-scientific charlatans ever and I will not tolerate any treatment of them in a serious light. You gotta go the 1408 route and acknowledge that their profession is silly (even if there really are ghosts in the movie), otherwise save it for Ghostbusters 3. To The Orphanage's credit, some of the characters are skeptical of the ghost hunter guys, but the scene is still played as seriously creepy and it seems like the movie ultimately falls in their favor.
Then there's the ending, which struck me as too pat and maybe upbeat. I mean, I don't object to a horror movie having a happy ending, because sometimes it can provide a very satisfying catharsis. But the ending here borders on corny, and then makes the rest of the movie seem not-scary in retrospect. I mean, seriously, when you think about what happens at the end, you realize that there was nothing to fear the whole time.
There are definitely some effective scenes and images and ideas at play here, it strikes the right tone, it actually tries to flesh out the characters. I've been trying to decide whether or not to give it a 2 or 3 on Netflix, and I'm considering the 3 just because I have a lot of respect for what The Orphanage is trying to do. But I don't think it works.
I've rambled on a lot, but if I could sum everything up into one main point for what didn't work for me, I would say it's the complexity of the story. After watching Them the other night, and then seeing this one, it's clear to me that simplicity is often a virtue in a horror movie. With Them, there's a lean efficiency to the suspense... oh shit, someone's in our house and they are trying to kill us. That's all, there's no more "plot" to speak of, and it's enough to get your blood pumping. The Orphange has so many different elements to it... the creepy kid, imaginary friends, weird mask, ghosts, videos of an old orphanage, a murderous caregiver, a creepy old house full of secrets, ghost hunters, a psychic, on and on. Much of it is well done, but I'm not sure the complexity makes the movie scarier. The most effective scenes of tension really could succeed with or without the complicated plot. It doesn't reach Neil Jordan's In Dreams levels of convoluted, distracting storytelling, but I think maybe there's still more going on than neccesary. I can even understand the need for a central mystery, which can add a spooky sense of the unknown, but I don't see how having this much plot makes the movie any more effective.
I'm still debating how to rate this on Netflix, but it's starting to fall into There Will Be Blood territory of uncertainty. I guess I appreciated the effort much more than the final product.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about The Orphanage, but I suspect that I can't quite give it the a-ok. Which makes me feel guilty. I mean, here we have an honest-to-goodness earnest attempt at making a serious, mature, well-shot horror film, with fleshed out characters, complex themes, heavy atmosphere, that takes it's time and tries to build real suspense. Pretty much exactly the kind of horror movie I'm always begging for. I guess the operative word, though, is "attempt," because I'm not convinced it's too successful at reaching its goals.
It left me at times a little bored, and in the end unsatisfied. Where as a lot of less-artisitc, atmosphere-lacking, suspense-free Friday the 13th movies have given me a much better time at the movies. It's like I tried some new, fancy expensive Belgian Ale that I should love, only it wasn't all that good and I'd rather have a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I feel a bit like an uncultured ass for not liking it, but I gotta remind myself of all the good, sophisticated horror films I do love.
OK, let me try this from a different angle. You know what I don't want to see again in a horror movie? A precocious little kid who tells his parents about his imaginary friends, and then the kid starts behaving strangely and weird things are afoot and the parents become worried that the kid is losing his shit. Because the moment a kid in a horror movie says he has an imaginary friend, a little bell goes off in my head and I immediately know that this will be an important plot point and that his friends are most certainly not imaginary. They are most likely ghosts, or I guess there was that one shitty Rober DeNiro movie where he had a split personality that befriended Dakota Fanning. (Don't read that last sentance if you wanted to see Hide and Seek.) So right there, all the suspense for the first act is gone, because we never for a second worry that the kid is just looney tunes, we know he's telling the truth.
Hey, that would be something though... how about a horror movie that actually makes us wonder if the kid is a nutjob? I'll still let the answer to the mystery be "ghosts" if you really want it to be, but maybe we just don't have the kid talk about his imaginary friends, or at least not until later in the picture. That way it might actually be a little spookier when a little kid in a fucked-up mask starts running around the house.
Let me digress off my digression here for one second about that fucked-up mask. It's really damn eerie, and one of the coolest things in the movie. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. It's suppossed to be a mask that was worn by a little kid to hide his deformed face. I'm guessing this was done to avoid embarassment and prevent him from scaring other children... but then why the hell would his mother make the mask way, way scarier than his actual face? You think she would have made him a cute mask or something, not the weird, lopsided, clown/rapist nightmare he wears. Ick.
OK, digression over.
I'm also not keen on mediums and ghost hunters popping up in horror films to create some additional suspense scenes and I guess to try to lend some realism or science to the story. In fact, I'm not inherently into ghost stories, so you're already asking me to swallow a lot in believing that there is an afterlife and that ghosts have magical powers and also they still wear clothes (are their clothes the ghosts of their clothes when they were alive?) and they can talk so I guess they have, like, fully functioning organs and a voice box and shit otherwise I'm not sure how they generate sound, and they are intangible sometimes and solid others, and there don't seem to be any rules and they do a lot of arbitrary spooky things. I'm willing to go along with that, if the movie is a good one. But then if you throw in psychics and pseudo-science and it gets to be too much for me.
Actually, you know what, I'll even accept psychics and mediums, even though they are horseshit too, because this is a movie and not real life and fantastical shit is cool. But ghost hunters have to be the corniest, stupidest group of pseudo-scientific charlatans ever and I will not tolerate any treatment of them in a serious light. You gotta go the 1408 route and acknowledge that their profession is silly (even if there really are ghosts in the movie), otherwise save it for Ghostbusters 3. To The Orphanage's credit, some of the characters are skeptical of the ghost hunter guys, but the scene is still played as seriously creepy and it seems like the movie ultimately falls in their favor.
Then there's the ending, which struck me as too pat and maybe upbeat. I mean, I don't object to a horror movie having a happy ending, because sometimes it can provide a very satisfying catharsis. But the ending here borders on corny, and then makes the rest of the movie seem not-scary in retrospect. I mean, seriously, when you think about what happens at the end, you realize that there was nothing to fear the whole time.
There are definitely some effective scenes and images and ideas at play here, it strikes the right tone, it actually tries to flesh out the characters. I've been trying to decide whether or not to give it a 2 or 3 on Netflix, and I'm considering the 3 just because I have a lot of respect for what The Orphanage is trying to do. But I don't think it works.
I've rambled on a lot, but if I could sum everything up into one main point for what didn't work for me, I would say it's the complexity of the story. After watching Them the other night, and then seeing this one, it's clear to me that simplicity is often a virtue in a horror movie. With Them, there's a lean efficiency to the suspense... oh shit, someone's in our house and they are trying to kill us. That's all, there's no more "plot" to speak of, and it's enough to get your blood pumping. The Orphange has so many different elements to it... the creepy kid, imaginary friends, weird mask, ghosts, videos of an old orphanage, a murderous caregiver, a creepy old house full of secrets, ghost hunters, a psychic, on and on. Much of it is well done, but I'm not sure the complexity makes the movie scarier. The most effective scenes of tension really could succeed with or without the complicated plot. It doesn't reach Neil Jordan's In Dreams levels of convoluted, distracting storytelling, but I think maybe there's still more going on than neccesary. I can even understand the need for a central mystery, which can add a spooky sense of the unknown, but I don't see how having this much plot makes the movie any more effective.
I'm still debating how to rate this on Netflix, but it's starting to fall into There Will Be Blood territory of uncertainty. I guess I appreciated the effort much more than the final product.
Monday, December 31, 2007
All About My Mother
Friday, December 28, 2007
Here we are continuing to go backwards through the films of Pedro Almodovar. And actually, this may be a good place to stop for the time being. I get the sense, from what I've read, that his earlier films are more for fans only. I'm not sure I like him enough to peep his entire filmography.
I really liked, and maybe even kinda loved, The Bad Education and Talk to Her. This one, like Volver, I enjoyed but was kind of lukewarm on. It has the same colorful visual style of his other films, and the same odd, melodramatic story and plot twists. But at the end of Talk to Her, I found myself surprisingly moved, and at the end of All About My Mother I just didn't feel much.
I suspect maybe it has to do with the fact that this one and Volver are Almodovar's tribute to women. (And people who want to be women). Maybe I just empathize more with the male leads in the other movies. Maybe these are working on some frequency that gets interference from my dick.
Oh, one note. I did appreciate the "Two Years Later" ending, which was so abrupt, and almost needless, that I think it may have been an intentional parody of movies that tack on an epilogue just to have a happy ending. Kudos.
Here we are continuing to go backwards through the films of Pedro Almodovar. And actually, this may be a good place to stop for the time being. I get the sense, from what I've read, that his earlier films are more for fans only. I'm not sure I like him enough to peep his entire filmography.
I really liked, and maybe even kinda loved, The Bad Education and Talk to Her. This one, like Volver, I enjoyed but was kind of lukewarm on. It has the same colorful visual style of his other films, and the same odd, melodramatic story and plot twists. But at the end of Talk to Her, I found myself surprisingly moved, and at the end of All About My Mother I just didn't feel much.
I suspect maybe it has to do with the fact that this one and Volver are Almodovar's tribute to women. (And people who want to be women). Maybe I just empathize more with the male leads in the other movies. Maybe these are working on some frequency that gets interference from my dick.
Oh, one note. I did appreciate the "Two Years Later" ending, which was so abrupt, and almost needless, that I think it may have been an intentional parody of movies that tack on an epilogue just to have a happy ending. Kudos.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The Crime of Padre Amaro
Monday, December 17, 2007
Have you seen this Gael Garcia Bernal fellow yet? I've heard him described somewhere as the Mexican Johnny Depp, and that's not a bad comparison. He's an impressively versatile young actor who is practically hot enough to be a model. I am starting to become a fan of his, so that's why I checked out The Crime of Padre Amaro.
This is the story of a young priest who has an affair with a... parishoner? Deciple? Church Goer? Attendee? Whatever Catholics call people at church.
Anyway, he nails this broad and falls in love with her, but he tries to keep it under wraps because he is trying to work his way up God's corporate ladder.
This is great fodder for an introspective character study, or even some good old fashioned melodrama. You have an opportunity to explore the contradicitons within this character... how he justifies or rationalizes his actions versus his beliefs, etc.
Only the movie is not really that. It keeps trying to frame Padre Amaro's transgressions and corruptions in terms of the larger transgressions and corruptions within the Catholic church. The movie always wants to pull back to the bigger story of how the church deals with scandal, and some of the politics involved. Early on we see them silence an unfavorable news story with questionable methods, and we see Amaro as very willing to play his part in it. He is meant to be seen as one flawed cog in a bigger, more flawed machine.
Well, I'll be honest, as someone who is not at all religious, this stuff wasn't very compelling to me. The central idea, on a human level, is interesting, but all the church-y politics left me uninterested. Maybe if it had been a more multi-faceted, thorough examination of the institution, like The Wire, that could have been up my alley. But it seemed like more of a vague and unfocused attempt to show how the church is wrong about some things.
Then, not only is the human drama downplayed a little, but then they don't really make us empathize with the characters much either. As I mentioned above, I think Garcia Bernal may just very well be a great actor, but he does not have much of a character here. I got that he was an ambitious but flawed priest, willing to manipulate to save his ass, but I never understood what was going on internally with him. Did he feel any guilt over his actions? Was there any crisis of faith? How serious is his faith? And so on. These are all important questions, and I don't think they were clearly answered.
It doesn't help that he's the main character, but we never feel any sypathy for him. He's kind of the bad guy of the story, or certainly not a good guy, and without any access to his inner-self, the movie is a bit of a hollow experience. Most of the other characters are equally bad or ambiguous. There is no real entry-point for our emotions.
The bottom line is, the movie falls flat dramatically, despite the inherent melodrama of the plot. It's hard to care about a bunch of bad things happening to a character you not only don't like, but don't really understand anything about under the surface.
Have you seen this Gael Garcia Bernal fellow yet? I've heard him described somewhere as the Mexican Johnny Depp, and that's not a bad comparison. He's an impressively versatile young actor who is practically hot enough to be a model. I am starting to become a fan of his, so that's why I checked out The Crime of Padre Amaro.
This is the story of a young priest who has an affair with a... parishoner? Deciple? Church Goer? Attendee? Whatever Catholics call people at church.
Anyway, he nails this broad and falls in love with her, but he tries to keep it under wraps because he is trying to work his way up God's corporate ladder.
This is great fodder for an introspective character study, or even some good old fashioned melodrama. You have an opportunity to explore the contradicitons within this character... how he justifies or rationalizes his actions versus his beliefs, etc.
Only the movie is not really that. It keeps trying to frame Padre Amaro's transgressions and corruptions in terms of the larger transgressions and corruptions within the Catholic church. The movie always wants to pull back to the bigger story of how the church deals with scandal, and some of the politics involved. Early on we see them silence an unfavorable news story with questionable methods, and we see Amaro as very willing to play his part in it. He is meant to be seen as one flawed cog in a bigger, more flawed machine.
Well, I'll be honest, as someone who is not at all religious, this stuff wasn't very compelling to me. The central idea, on a human level, is interesting, but all the church-y politics left me uninterested. Maybe if it had been a more multi-faceted, thorough examination of the institution, like The Wire, that could have been up my alley. But it seemed like more of a vague and unfocused attempt to show how the church is wrong about some things.
Then, not only is the human drama downplayed a little, but then they don't really make us empathize with the characters much either. As I mentioned above, I think Garcia Bernal may just very well be a great actor, but he does not have much of a character here. I got that he was an ambitious but flawed priest, willing to manipulate to save his ass, but I never understood what was going on internally with him. Did he feel any guilt over his actions? Was there any crisis of faith? How serious is his faith? And so on. These are all important questions, and I don't think they were clearly answered.
It doesn't help that he's the main character, but we never feel any sypathy for him. He's kind of the bad guy of the story, or certainly not a good guy, and without any access to his inner-self, the movie is a bit of a hollow experience. Most of the other characters are equally bad or ambiguous. There is no real entry-point for our emotions.
The bottom line is, the movie falls flat dramatically, despite the inherent melodrama of the plot. It's hard to care about a bunch of bad things happening to a character you not only don't like, but don't really understand anything about under the surface.
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