Perhaps lacking in plot but mostly enjoyable, it has worthwhile things to say about small business, creativity, and community -- and if those aren't ingredients for making a movie "human," I don't know what is. The presence of Jack Black may make people expect obnoxious slapstick, but this rings closer to Richard Linklater's "School of Rock," a mostly-mainstream light comedy that's really an excuse to espouse underdog values to a mass audience.
Metropolitan (1990, Whit Stillman)
While it's mostly genial, and admittedly the last little bit has some good absurdist one-liners, I feel like there are better movies about young college folk having discussions about life; albeit not as lofty, you may look to what has unfortunately been deemed "mumblecore" and been widely denigrated for examples of young people struggling with their own existence and love lives. While their dialogue is less precise than Stillman's, their aims are more of stilted bursts of expression and young thought processes, however selfish and pretentious they may be. Stillman's characters have the kinds of discussions that screenwriter's think up, and while he thankfully doesn't ridicule these rich Manhattan whites in the current fashionable mode, his eye and ear is less critical than I would like. I find his visuals to be bland, along with the majority of his actors (Chris Eigeman excepted), and his insights are closer to that of a director than a human being.
A Sight for Sore Eyes (2003, Gilles Bourdos)
Mostly a mood piece, but when the mood is informed by one of the cinematographers of "In the Mood for Love," the very fine score by Alexandre Desplat, a story by Ruth Rendell, and the big dark eyes of Gregoire Colin, mood is mostly enough. It may short-change the considerable accomplishments of the film not to note the confidence the director shows in allowing his story to progress quite slowly; a fair share of time is allotted to scenes of Colin, an artist, to spray paint walls and engage in other kinds of physical art-making. An equal amount of consideration is given to simple moments in life. The murders that occur are at first deaths of necessity, and from there morph into continual acts of covering-up until eventually becoming merely preferential. Although early scenes depict childhood tragedies for its main stars, the story mostly avoids psychological explanations, either for murder or the emotional attachment the two young characters develop for each other. The look of the film is somewhat stunning; objects that obstruct view, gorgeous, minimal white space. While the string of deaths don't attain the awful Greek tragedy accumulation that the best murder dramas do, the mess and degeneration -- slow, mostly wordless -- rises above the beautiful moodiness.
1 comment:
Nice reviews.
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