2013, Logged and Transferred: From the Favorites to the Trash Heap
2013 is now almost two months gone and as part of the commonfolk I'm still catching up on all the notable releases of the year. It was one of the best in recent memory in regards to original visions and stories. A few high-profile or acclaimed ones I didn't see won't be included due to the lack of a decent-quality screener, a nearby theatrical release or screener at all, or I just plain didn't get to it, such as Blue Is The Warmest Color, A Touch Of Sin, The Hunt, and At Berkeley. In addition, although I have seen mostly all of The Great Beauty, I won't count it since I never sat down to watch it straight through.
Before Midnight gets a special note because I never made time to catch up on either of the previous Before films and I felt it wrong to watch Midnight without context. Another special note goes to Malick's To The Wonder since I'll need to see that a few more times to do it justice.
A short list of films I haven’t yet seen. Missing a ton but whatever:
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
At Berkley
Anchorman 2
A Touch of Sin
Bestiaire
Before Midnight
Blue Caprice
Blue Is The Warmest Color
Borgman
The Canyons
Catching Fire
The Counselor
The Dirties
Fruitvale Station
The Great Beauty (Seen most)
The Hunt
I Used To Be Darker
Laurence, Anyways
Much Ado About Nothing
Museum Hours
The Past (Seen most)
Pieta
Post Tenebras Lux
Prince Avalanche
The Square
This Is Martin Bonner
The Unspeakable Act
Viola
What Richard Did
Wrong
You're Next
In any case, I have the entire list of what I've seen up with blurbs for at least half of the films on my Letterboxd profile here: http://www.letterboxd.com/bupp/list/2013-logged-and-transferred-from-the-favorites/
I'm only posting my top 10 here, so head to my Letterboxd for the whole list. Feel free to check out the rest of my profile too to watch as I keep adding to my viewing diary. Also, it'd be great if y'all would join up to the site and start logging your own. I'd love to see what you watch!
Please disagree with me on every entry. Enjoy!
The Top 10
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Inside Llewyn Davis
Perfect in its own insular way, Inside Llewyn Davis encapsulates the existential angst of the growing person/artist. The film follows Llewyn's traipse through a purgatory-on-earth, haunted by his memories and snobbish, misanthropic attitude. Whether or not Llewyn himself is any good at music is up for healthy debate, but it's entirely beside the point -- "How good you are doesn't always matter," explains Joel Coen.
The certainty of the film's success lies in the Coens' rock-solid craft and keen sense of dramatic and comedic purpose wherein not one beautifully composed frame is wasted. While repeated viewings of Her resonated with me more on a spiritual level, Inside Llewyn Davis is a film that fully fits my own sensibilities and insecurities as a person, and the depth of the metaphors, the poignant reflection of life in the wake of a suicide, along with its addicting full-length musical performances make it just so damn rewatchable.
Her
What a strange and profound story, bursting with color and spirit! Spike Jonze delivers a curveball after his previously disappointing Where The Wild Things Are (set up for failure by Dave Eggers' script) and returns to form with his own unique vision of how sentient beings relate, connect, and grow. Being human is more than just a chemical makeup of carbon atoms, and our place and purpose in the universe is much bigger than we even realize. In Her, Jonze has created a future in which technological solipsism has diminished the power of spirit, and only love and understanding of ourselves and each other can right the ship.
Spring Breakers
Going by reviews and reactions across the internet, Spring Breakers was the most divisive film of the year. It's a terrifying and beautiful film that purposefully avoids a traditional, literal-minded narrative (Is it all just a dream/nightmare of Alien's subconscious?) and truly makes you question what you've seen connected in each scene. Operating on more levels than you can shake a stick at, it's at once a celebratory journey to escape the ennui of banal undergrad dorm life, a tense satire of youthful debauchery and dark influence of American pop culture, as well as a fascinating examination of race relations and female empowerment through a lens of gangsta slumlord fabulosity, a quasi-State-of-the-Youth address from Harmony Korine.
(Also-- DEAR GOD! THAT BRITNEY MONTAGE!)
The Act of Killing
Do 'they' still say that if we don't learn from history we are more likely to repeat it? A lesser documentary film on this historical topic of genocide might've still been compelling, despite a predictably trite use of function over form in factual narration or talking head interviews and testimonials. Joshua Oppenheimer eschews these conceits to shatter the way we as a film audience and citizens of governments absorb media, confronting both his subjects and us with unending questions of how we see ourselves.
Leviathan
A horror documentary if there ever was one. Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab have created an experimental observational thesis more than a standard documentary, culled from hundreds of hours of footage. Sitting in the theater I felt helpless, at the mercy of nature via the film's unblinking camera, strapped into something I had never before seen. It witnesses the relationship between man and animal on a fishing vessel, and uses the juxtaposition of visceral images to tell its tale.
Computer Chess
What begins as a normal mockumentary about some 80s tech-geeks pimping their newest wares quickly turns into a bizarre weekend in a two-star hotel. Cats flood the hallways at night and are gone by sun-up. Awkward hotel nights turn into chess-frenzy days. Computers learn to feel and respond to humans, and humans are androids. Shot on one of the first video cameras, Computer Chess makes no bones about its technical qualities, and instead focuses on technology as spurring social interaction, change, and the occasionally hilarious philosophical banter between geeks about computers, the future, and chess.
Short Term 12
"Once they're a foot outside the gate we can't touch 'em."
Private and public space -- raw emotions, raw experiences, raw talent. Our personal space and experiences are most important to us, but keeping quiet about our troubles helps no one. Destin Daniel Cretton's Short Term 12 wears its heart on its sleeve, but, like lead staff member Grace, played by Brie Larson in one hell of a breakout, holds its traumas and abuses close until it becomes full to bursting. Destin's camera notices the little things: the self-harm when razors aren't around, the delicate glances, the small smiles at the corners of the mouth, all of which combine to add glorious texture and realism to the day-to-day life, the kind of life these kids are living. It's a celebration and a call to arms to help all kids grow into healthy and successful people, and one of the most genuine humanist films of 2013.
Nebraska
There is a melancholy sense of regret and loss lingering over the charming Nebraska. Alexander Payne embraces an "indie" approach, and finds real poetry in the screenplay from rookie Bob Nelson. The story of broken-down Woody Grant inadvertently looking back into his own past reflects our own inward search as a country to find what makes America America. Yet humor abounds from the quirky rhythms of Midwestern life captured here in nice form. It's understated, but tasteful and moving.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese's new bout of controversy unleashed upon the world involves the various sexual and financial orgies of unfeeling Wall Street pricks. At three hours, The Wolf of Wall Street is the representation of excess, yet it moves at the rapid pace of a cocaine high. To say the film is ultimately boring, empty, or worse, glorifying, does it a disservice, and fails to take into account the film's goals and just how damn engaging it is in spite of the film's length. The final shot works a summary, a frame fixated on eager faces listening to Jordan Belfort's latest motivational speech serves two purposes: that any of us could be Jordan Belfort, given enough money and power, and that he isn't wholly the monster deserving all the blame. What sort of culture allows for this behavior that we've sat witnessing for the previous three hours? In a very clever decision, Scorsese forgoes any kind of heavy-handed moralizing that would hinder that critique.
The World's End
On any given day I could deem any one member of Edgar Wright's 'Cornetto Trilogy' as my favorite of the bunch. Wright, as always, understands that the best genre flicks speak in allegory rather than just use generic tropes for plain entertainment or kitsch. The action is top-notch and while the humor of The World's End might not be as immediate or satisfying as Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz upon your first viewing, it's more substantial and light-years ahead in its subtext. I expect only more greatness from Wright going forward.
Special notes regarding some of my favorite performances from 2013:
Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis (INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS)
Llewyn is a man constantly confused by the world. His partner's death has pushed him off its wavelength. Oscar performs onscreen with such pathos that it becomes hard to loathe this character who's an asshole, wrapped up in his idea of his artistic self, and yet clearly hurting intensely on the inside. Also, playing guitar himself lends the film the best kind of verisimilitude, which applies to even his non-musical scenes, as, in interviews, Isaac has said he even assigned "a time signature" to his walk. It's hard to find where Oscar Isaac becomes Llewyn Davis, and vice versa.
Greta Gerwig as Frances Halladay (FRANCES HA)
Greta's Frances Halladay in Frances Ha hears the music of the NYC streets and dances her way home in the wee hours of the morning. Her joy is infectious, but unrealistic. Even with the advantage of having co-written the film's script, Greta could have played Frances in a cheeky, self-aware manner, but she never lets up on her consistency between scenes, and understands that Frances is relatively oblivious to how she comes off to others. This is not moreso apparent as in the scene I mention in the first sentence, wherein after Frances reaches her current apartment she closes the door with a flourish and the biggest smile known to man; a performer for one, herself.
James Franco as Alien (SPRING BREAKERS)
Showing up only halfway-through the film, Franco does some immediate heavy-lifting to embody someone sinister, someone the girls should not be associating with. However, he peels back the layers of "Al" like an onion, revealing a very seriously troubled faker, a man-child grown up in poverty-stricken areas of Florida where posturing as a gangster is how you stay alive. No other male actor in 2013 had transformed himself the way Franco had. We should celebrate.
Brie Larson as Grace (Short Term 12)
Brie finally breaks out in Short Term 12 with a brilliant portrayal of a woman who keeps her traumas close her chest but has enough love for all the kids in the group home. She's just as snarky as a 16-year-old, but allows this defense to come down in private in startlingly realistic ways.
“He’ll give us what we need/It may not be what we want…”
A Review of YEEZUS
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Kanye West is losing his mind. His usual musical inclinations are splintering in every extreme direction, but YEEZUS overall is a schizophrenic success.
On the whole, this is so far from commercial rap it’s hard to classify it as such. YEEZUS breathes with various styles, opening all the doors between house, acid house, glitch, ambient, trap, dancehall, reggae, and R&B. Even chiptune arpeggiations show up. And while chipmunk-pitched soul occasionally returns, it’s only there to challenge our expectation for more like his previous music. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the album’s loud opener, “On Sight,” in which acidic synths overpower the sharp cutaway to the sample. The track straddles a strange line of hostile noise before morphing into a distant bastard third cousin twice-removed of Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock.”
Shades of contemporary acts prove Kanye keeps his ear to the ground as well. There’s a Ratatat-esque guitar swell on the gloriously pensive highlight “Hold My Liquor,” which not only achieves the sedation of Chief Keef and possibly features the best Justin Vernon collaboration ever, but coasts to a surprising glitchy-scratchy finish styled like Fuck Buttons’ dynamic “Surf Solar.” On “Send It Up,” harsh drill-like horns/synths(?) invoke songs from M.I.A’s digital ruckus, MAYA. TNGHT’s “Blood On The Leaves’ utilizes their signature staccato farty-trombone, and Daft Punk’s three tracks may just be the most confrontational they’ve overseen.
YEEZUS hauls ass through ten songs, the longest being six minutes and the album’s climax. The aforementioned “Blood On The Leaves” takes center stage with a haunting Nina Simone rendition of the American protest classic, “Strange Fruit.” However, the track is a double-edged sword, shining a light on a weakness. Kanye’s manipulation of samples is and always has been admirable, but the feeling that the original sources are stronger than his own music continues to nag. For all of Kanye’s emotive conviction, he still can’t achieve that same pure level of Nina Simone’s sheer ability. Like much of his sample work, it can come off a bit forced.
For better or worse, YEEZUS will cause knee-jerk reactions in many fans, but even long-time dissenters might at least raise an eyebrow upon hearing the musical progress he’s made.
"Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep..." (Job 7:12)
A Review of Leviathan
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As a result, Leviathan is a documentary only in the strictest definition of it being observational non-fiction. Co-directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, anthropologist-documentarians from the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, throw standard cinematic safety to the winds. For this film, they've attached over a dozen GoPro cameras in the oddest places around a fishing vessel off the Atlantic coast, losing some in the process, and have amassed a stockpile of fascinating footage. The completed film is experimental in nature, eighty-seven minutes of visceral bombardment; ambiguous, unsettling, absurd, and romantic, where being at the mercy of nature is the overwhelming sense.
One good instance of this sensory overload can be seen in the film’s trailer: a camera, affixed to view the ship’s massive bow, takes the audience thirty feet into the air and back down into the ocean repeatedly. We can feel the gravity shift, like riding a roller coaster. It’s an incredible feeling of cinematic possibility, and solely because of these tiny cameras.
Beauty is captured at every turn, and a thematic duality of light and dark emerges. The directors dip viewers down into magic-hour brine to swim with schools of fish, and fly the audience up into the sky with the gulls overhead, as if the camera were attached to a kite, before again plunging into darkness. Since the fishermen work mostly at night, this terrifying darkness tends to cover the majority of scenes. In this way, Leviathan could just be seen as a full-fledged horror film. Accompanying the visuals is a tumultuous, industrial soundscape, which slams home the horrific slasher-flick atmosphere.
When presenting the film at the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore, I Used To Be Darker director Matt Porterfield imparted a quote from fellow Baltimorean John Waters upon seeing Leviathan: “It’s a fish holocaust.”
And what a holocaust it is. On several occasions, the film spends time on gruesome images as fishermen sever heads from countless fish. For a minute, one head slides back and forth into a fixed camera while the ship rocks with the waves. Fish also aren’t the only victims of the ship: a wounded seagull, unable to fly, plummets off the deck to, presumably, its death. A crushed soda can rolls around as idle litter until it inevitably slips into the ocean. By not interacting with the world around them, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor seemingly ask open-ended questions for what could be done in a perfectly ethical world where fishing might not be an enormous commercial endeavor. Leviathan provokes in these moments, and it’s not hard to develop our own opinions.
Whether in the pursuit of authentic documentation or ethical allegory, the intention remains somewhat a mystery. However, another disconcerting thought surfaces. While we only endure this reality for eighty-seven minutes, these fishermen make a career of it. Leviathan shows the crew reverence in a dedication to ships and souls lost at sea, but it occurs to me that, since we're only on the ship for the film's duration, there’s no sense that the landlubbers in Corporate are in touch or even aware of these gruff, chain-smoking titans of the sea doing the dirty work of the industry. A disconnect between the two worlds is expressed in a long-take which observes the Captain, alone in his galley, slowly falling asleep from exhaustion as an unidentifiable episode of “The Deadliest Catch” runs from an off-camera television.
Despite occasional tedium, Leviathan remains an engrossing ride. Its oppressive atmospherics are ultimately its greatest strength. As anthropologists, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor have taken their subject matter seriously, and as documentarians they refuse to compromise or apologize for their decisions. It’s in their experimental tendencies that make their subjects, man and animal, effigies of an industry that reaps but does not sow.
A lack of empathy can make or break stories just as easily as our real-life relationships. It's also a quality of the textbook sociopath. In director Steven Soderbergh’s newest release, Side Effects, what begins as a portrayal of medical irresponsibility and the pitfalls of depression transforms into a toxic conspiracy of conniving wits.
That’s just the surface. The patient/therapist dynamic is certainly no stranger to thrillers, and Soderbergh has always reworked genres to complicate conventional story and character. In doing so, he destroys his named nemesis, the “tyranny of narrative.” Side Effects is no different. This time, he uses our empathy against us to upend the psychological thriller and explore the essence of motive.
Frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!) provides a hefty script to aid in Soderbergh’s pursuit of cinematic subversion. It’s filled with rich, verifiable details, a virtual sandbox for the director. The best moments of the story tap right into questions on the general ethics of pharmaceutical business, and yet also the callousness of contemporary America. Creating role reversals and characters acting so coldly is a staple of Soderbergh’s brand at this point in his career. Therefore, I would submit that the plot opens doors into a different conversation.
Indeed, various medications are prescribed every day to thousands of people. Over the last decade however, the health care industry has been criticized of over-diagnosing and over-prescribing drugs to patients, with concerns growing on the prevalence of psychosomatic illness. Are we over-medicated? Does reliance on medication lead to an emotional disconnection or does it cover up a disconnection previously present? Chicken, or the egg? Who needs medication and who does not? How can doctors really know the intentions of each individual patient they meet? Side Effects works itself out in this tough, ambiguous area. Without spoiling the film’s fun, it presents to us disturbing results of people who act on their detached inhumanity.
Technically, the film is outstanding in expressing this. Under familiar pseudonym Peter Andrews, Soderbergh’s observational style clouds the film in dour visuals, styling the film’s tonal ugliness diametrically opposite to sunny anti-depressant commercials. His compositions do well to distance characters from the truth and his editing is impeccable. Interactions between Emily and Jonathan play out like a tennis match. They’re mostly sectioned off in medium close-ups, never joining the two within one frame. When Emily opens up and Banks is a more willing participant in her therapy, they’re framed together. Jude Law and Rooney Mara are electric in their work here and their adversarial chemistry is a goldmine. Law’s turn as a man willing to fight fire with fire to restore his reputation is wonderfully conflicting.
As Banks ends his journey, nothing feels fully resolved. The emotional closure is not really there and this may not jive with everyone. It's nothing new for Soderbergh, though. In his well-publicized Vulture interview, he comments on the experience of witnessing the audience's reaction to Contagion, "...I remember during previews how upset the audience was by the Jude Law character. The fact that he created a sort of mixed reaction was viewed as a flaw in the filmmaking. Not, 'Oh, that’s interesting, I’m not sure if this guy is an asshole or a hero.' People were really annoyed by that. And I thought, Wow, so ambiguity is not on the table anymore." Clearly he’s more interested in the story’s political and moral quagmires and how those issues might represent a United States at large.
But it's in trying to contextualize those issues where the director shines so brightly. In each one of his pictures, Soderbergh wades through distractions to understand, and then criticize, just how this world operates. Side Effects could possibly stand on its own with only a twisty-turny plot of intrigue to rely on, but the murky thematic undercurrents of sociopathic intent and pharmaceutical capitalism add a horribly troublesome edge.
The word for a film developed over four years, independently funded, and spanning six separate vignettes between the year 1849 and some decades after 2321 might be ‘ambitious,’ but the right word for the end result is ‘masterful.’ While watching Cloud Atlas, it is clear we are moving toward some kind of new cinema, one not bound by commonplace narrative continuity and single genre dabbling. I have not seen such a complete multi-narrative since 2006’s Babel, except that film still only operates within one genre -- drama.
It was clearly a challenge to put this together. The co-directors have praised editor Alex Berner in interviews for his superb handling of the footage. Thematic, graphic, action, music cue, and even actor matching from scene to scene are all utilized here to great effect to keep the story moving and connect each vignette. The photography by cinematographers John Toll and Frank Griebe is evocative, daring and always at the service of the narrative. Emotional catharsis is truly earned by the time the credits roll.
The key to this successful catharsis is the wise choice to have the same actors portray different characters in each time period. It shines as a secret weapon of the film and a wonderful translation of author David Mitchell’s intent for Cloud Atlas. We should applaud every actor in this film for their brilliant efforts. Some blend so well into their different roles that only upon repeated viewings can one realize where every actor appears. It is quite exciting, and importantly, fun, to find each actor, especially for those in cross-dressed, gender bending roles wearing heavy makeup. Watching the filmmakers use males and females so interchangeably it is hard to ignore, but never distracting, and considering the enlightenment of Lana Wachowski, this decision must be very personal.
Underneath it all, the film shows immense respect for storytelling as art. Different mediums abound throughout: a journalist speaks her experiences into a tape recorder, a corrupt CEO speaks on television, a snooping teen neighbor writes the screenplay of the journalist’s murder mystery, a book publisher reminisces about a past love and his ordeal at a nursing home is portrayed in a future film, a music composer writes numerous letters to his lover, and an old man’s vague speech is a dramatic campfire tale for children. Through the depiction of the arts, Cloud Atlas pays homage to the durability of storytelling and expresses the necessity of passing on lessons to future generations.
As for the storytelling itself, the film transcends the “good guys versus bad guys” quagmire with a very simple idea, an idea that is the glue between theme and narrative: each soul in the stories presented is on a path to progress. Whether good or bad, each character has the opportunity to save their soul and alter their future. By the end of the film’s timeline, Hugh Grant is barely recognizable and Hugo Weaving is GREEN. Their souls have become so corrupted that the positive forces in the world have no choice but to defeat them.
Experiencing this film superficially is a big mistake. With its big, blustery heart and emphatic message, Cloud Atlas might just be a towering landmark in modern cinema. Only time will tell. It is not a bombastic, pretentious or naïve pseudo-intellectual affair but beautiful and truthful. It digs up and confronts the dirty truths of oppression, whether it is slavery, fascism, corporate corruption and greed, or even savage tribal fear mongering.
Though these “human connection” and “defeat oppression” themes sound cliché, the film never rings false. Yes, the narrative’s message is blatant. The theatricality of the costuming and makeup is not subtle. But whatever criticisms pinned to the film, I believe this overtness is to the point the directors are trying to make. In fact, it is refreshing. Subtlety is overrated, and for this story it would undermine everything. The understated nature of many films released in the past five years has become a chore to slog through. For Cloud Atlas to be so bold in its approach and boast so much confidence doing it, and succeed, is most certainly an achievement.
As each story concludes, the film’s understanding of the human condition becomes clear: in order to survive, we must love one another. Recalling the Wachowskis’ penchant for religious allegory, it is no surprise that this is the “new commandment” Jesus gives to his followers at the Last Supper. Love is what we humans practice in all shapes and sizes. Friendship can be found in the most unlikely of places. It’s how we express our love that is the challenge. It changes us. And once we are changed, we must do all we can to spread that to others. Love conquers all, indeed.
Greetings, and welcome to Peanut Butter Mother Fucker! For the foreseeable future, this will be my home for unintelligible ramblings about movies and possibly other fun subjects! I’ll be a little rusty for awhile since it’s been ~2 years since I did this, so stick around and keep checking for new updates as I start getting back into the habit of writing. Feel free to poke, prod, or question me on anything you read.
