Review 2: The Place Beyond the Pines

Seen twice and 7/16/15

4/4

The Place Beyond the Pines, a dark masterpiece of gritty power and beauty, is doubtlessly one of my favorite films. The legendary characters and tough-won performances are totally unforgettable. There is a grungy might to this film that can only be paralleled by Cianfrance’s first work: both tear the heart and soul out of struggling American families, with the supremely perfect Ryan Gosling playing the young, hard-working fathers. Compared to Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines has gigantic scope, delivering dirty punch after dirty punch on an epic scale. This movie has a darkness that doesn’t really show up in the other. The impact of this film is enormous, and I can’t speak enough of the sensational people. This film is beautiful, a painful glory.

Review: Blue Valentine

Seen twice and 7/5/15

4/4

Blue Valentine is amazing; almost like a miracle to me. It is on the level of intimacy, vulnerability, and authentic despair of only Blue is the Warmest Color. Dean and Cindy are some kind of Adele and Emma. The performances are unforgettable, impossibly strong and real, and the characters experience the full scope of human-to-human contact in brutal swings. Blue Valentine is a project of three people; director/writer Derek Cianfrance and lead actors / executive producers Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. This team is a powerhouse that produces one of the finest-tuned portraits of a relationship that exists in film. Ryan Gosling is the greatest hero of them all to me: he improvises up a character that is one of my few favorites in all of cinema, giving incredible charisma, warmth and pure passion to the character of Dean. Gosling as Dean could be the most personally profound thing I have ever found in a movie, perhaps only rivaled by Synecdoche's atmosphere and Magnolia's emotional impact. Michelle Williams is also incredible, but portraying a character I find ages less heroic than Gosling.

This film is extremely meaningful in my view, extremely authentic and insightful. It's a monument.

Review: Babel

Seen once and 6/28/15

3.5/4

Babel is a beautiful, powerful, and meaningful film. It is all at once a heart-pounding human thriller, a class in cultural sensitivity and a breathtaking emotional tidal wave. This film mines deep, and by its incredible finale strikes the core of humanity. All sides of culture are observed and contemplated, all with a profoundly humane understanding by the divinely empathetic Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I am convinced that Inarritu understands humanity better than anyone in cinema. He is also a purely brilliant filmmaker. I feel that I could watch his movies over and over again and by that alone grow as a person, humanize my soul. His control of diverse cultures and complicated characters is flawless, and his artistry is beautiful.

Babel's name tells its greatest theme in one word: the misunderstandings between supposedly different peoples and the importance of overcoming this. A united human population would have prevented the crises of this film by communication and trust and support.

The first time I saw this film, I didn't appreciate it. I was a little bored at times, and didn't get much out of it other than some emotional power towards the end. My total appreciation of the film now is a testament to my growth as a viewer over the past few years, and encourages me as I venture into new territories in which I am not very appreciative. My experiences with Bergman have been exactly like my old experiences with Inarritu. But things change, clearly: I now consider Inarritu one of my few favorite directors, and I am confident that I understand Babel to its core. I loved every story, every amazing actor, Brad Pitt is one of my favorites in all of movies, I thought that the ending was perfect, and the themes were meaningful enough to actually teach me something after the film was over, which is very rare for me in film; everything worked exquisitely. This is a film that is almost exactly at my level right now: I understand it, appreciate it and love it. I can now store it away in my list of great films before continuing to move forward into more ambitious realms.

New blog

See andrewtalksaboutmoviesetc.blogspot.com for a more serious look at film, along with other kinds of culture.

Review: No Country for Old Men

Seen three times and 6/15/15

4/4

The most valuable thing I gained from my fourth viewing of No Country for Old Men is realizing that it's not about Llewelyn; it's not about Anton, nor Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff, nor the great cat-and-mouse game. No Country for Old Men is about evil. It is also about the degradation of society. That Llewelyn dies off-screen and in a middle section of the movie shows us how the narrative here is secondary. The character of Anton Chigurh personifies evil at its purest, most beautiful and untouchable form. He is no villain; he stands by his principles as well as anyone in the senseless world does, and he deserves to be respected for that. Tommy Lee Jones is our insight into the thematic core of this story; he is an older man who has witnessed the decay of society firsthand; being a sheriff, he has even seen the villains of the world grow deeper and darker and greater. He can't wrap his traditional head around the apparent lack of principles driving these men, but what he doesn't see is that either everyone has principles or no one does; he is perhaps immensely disturbed to find that he and the psychopath may be in the same boat.

The Coen brothers' film is fantastic in every way. They understand the message of the book, and portray it with brilliant consistency and artistic vision. They are gifted enough to even place their signature humor amidst a story so coated in blackness. The lack of music is perfect to communicate the blank brutality of this world. The performances are terrific, and the characters even better. This time, surprisingly, I was more interested in the sheriff, and even in Llewelyn, than in Anton. I was fascinated by the sheriff's simple expectations for the universe, and his both naive and wise acceptance of the succession of events. He absorbed them plaintively, with a firm knowledge that he was completely lost. He is a hero in my view, definitively.

The film is a minimalist reflection on God's absence from this world, and the subsequent free evil. The darkness is unrestrained and unstoppable: frightening and expected. It rules in this film, but the character of the sheriff gives me the hint that sometime in the future it can be fought, with the correct understanding of it.

Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Seen once and 6/14/15

3/4

While Pan's Labyrinth has the credit of being probably the world's premier adult fairytale--and one of only a few; a true revolutionary of its kind--my second viewing informed me that the film is basically no more than that; a conventional fairytale structure, only with enhanced effects, thicker background thematic content and a higher level of grotesqueness and brutality which are what allow the visionary Guillermo del Toro to drive his fantasy in deeper. del Toro is the auter here; this is his movie, and it's exclusively his child-like mind that gives the movie its worth and wonder. Judging this as an adult film, having a place in the real and harsh cinematic jungle, it isn't quite enough to be considered "great". It's a little too cheap and archetypal. But it is its own: very unique, and extremely valuable to that group of humans who has aged externally but not so much internally.

Review: Season 1: Sherlock

3/4

The show is good. Definitely. The lead is very likable to me, especially in the last episode. Perhaps even more than John Watson. The rush of the first episode is over, and I still can't figure out why that happened, but what I'm left with is a solid show. The dialogue and characters are great. I wouldn't mind continuing.