The Descendants (2011) is director Alexander Payne’s eagerly awaited follow up to Sideways. It is an adaptation of a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings about Hawaii, family, legacy, and weathering the storms of life. The fact that the story is set in Hawaii is significant because it affects the plot in the form of a trust of a large landholding that the family is planning to sell is a major issue in the film. Matt King (George Clooney) is a wealthy white (haole) lawyer from a prominent Hawaiian family whose world collapses when his wife goes into a coma after a boating accident. It is further complicated when learns that his wife had been cheating on him and was planning on leaving him. It is up to King to deal with her condition, the trust, and his two daughters despite his having been a distant father figure. His 17 year old wayward daughter (played by Shailene Woodley in an astonishing film debut) whom they have stuck in a boarding school is brought home to deal with the situation and helps him find his bearings as they bond in the pursuit of finding the man whom his wife was cheating with to gain some sort of closure to the issue. There is comic relief provided by his daughter Alex’s childhood friend Sid (nick Krause) and younger socially adrift grade school aged sister. There are some nice cameos from the likes of Robert Forrester (as the wife’s hard to please father) and Beau Bridges as Cousin High who has a stake in the estate trust. It is yet another story of a middle aged man in crisis which is becoming Payne’s forte-I would like to see him take on some other sort of genre to see what else he is capable of. But this sort of film is something he has down pat with previous success like About Schmidt, Election, and Sideways.
I remember reading a lot of good things about Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s black comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). It was an interesting film that was supposedly inspired by the syndication of ER in Romania where the director noticed never moved as fast as they do in the TV series. Anyway, Lazarescu, divorced living alone with a daughter settled in Canada, finds that he has a major headache and stomach ache and asks his neighbors for help and they suggest that he call an ambulance after he vomits blood in their presence. From there he is on an odyssey or patronizing, arrogant doctors and hospital staff that belittle him for drinking and he must go from hospital to hospital since his visit coincides with a grizzly bus accident where 11 people have died. It is also said that Puiu was influenced by Jim Jarmusch and it show in his pacing which is glacial in a 153 minute film that mostly takes place in hospitals. It is easy to see how this film didn’t take off despite glowing critical reviews.
Uncle Boombee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul was the winner of the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and was just released in the US this year. I have seen only one of Weerasethakul’s previous films, Tropical Malady, but it is safe to say there are some common traits between the films: location (jungle), inventive and impressive cinematography, nods to traditional folk traditions, and a leisurely pace. In a sense, this film calls to mind Mizoguchi’s masterpiece Ugetsu, in that it is another exotic ghost film from an Asian country. It is a challenging and curious film that goes through several cycles before coming back to the initial story of the film concerning Uncle Boombee and I can see why this director has been garnering such international praise through his original method of film making that is obscure and unfamiliar to most of the world.
I’ve been meaning to see a Fredrico Fellini film for some time, so I decided to start with La Dolce Vita (1960). It is a curious film and very visually striking. There are several sequences through out he film, which doesn’t really have a conventional plot and follows the comings and goings of Marcello, a journalist of celebrities and something of a playboy about town. I find it difficult to ascertain whether or not Fellini is glorifying his lifestyle or whether or not he is condemning it. There are several scenes of gravity where people die, but Marcello isn’t one for much introspection. The bookends of miscommunication at the beginning and the end of the film particularly seem pregnant with meaning. I also found Marcello’s behavior at the end at the home party a curious response to the tragedy that precedes it, but an honest enough response really. I think I would benefit from another viewing with the commentary. I found myself thinking about the film after I saw it, which is always a good sign. I look forward to watching other Fellini films in the future.
I think it was serendipity that earlier this year I saw Walter Hill’s underrated film The Driver (1978). It seems like an inspiration for Nicholas Winding Refn’s film Drive (2011), but it is actually base don a novel. Ryan Gosling like Ryan O’Neill works as a getaway driver who doesn’t carry a gun and has very little dialogue. Hill’s film is more about a battle of wits between the outlaw (O’Neill) and the cop (Bruce Dern). This film is essentially a heist film. There are several great cameos in the ensemble cast: Bryan Cranston is Gosling’s dollar chasing boss/mentor, Ron Perlman as a Jewish-wannabe Italian gangster, Albert Brooks is his equally vicious partner, Christian Hendricks (almost unrecognizable from her Mad Men role) is a member of the heist, Carey Mulligan is the love interest. There is some great cinematography and lots of stylized violence-not for the squeamish. It might be considered style without substance by some, but I found it to be an engaging and entertaining film.
Having seen two Steve McQueen films (Hunger and Shame) in as many weeks has made me a huge fan. The pairing of McQueen and his Irish leading man Michael Fassbender looks to be a fruitful paring ala Scorcese/DeNiro or Kurosawa/Mifune. Shame (2011) is a powerful and intense movie about sexual addiction, alienation, and family as the ties that bind. I am impressed by how much exposition can conveyed through sequences bereft of dialogue. It is an uncomfortable film to watch with a fearless performance by Fassbender, who appears in the full monty and does some very private things on screen. A seemingly soulless existence is created on screen that is disrupted by the messy, needy appearance of the protagonists’ sister (played by Carey Mulligan) who is clearly in need of guidance and support. (Mulligan also appeared in another great film in 2011 Drive and seems to be taking the roles that in the past would have gone to Maggie Gyllenhaal). It’s not necessarily a film I would want to re-watch, but it is a powerful statement that lingers in the mind after viewing.
I've become something of a John LeCarre fan of late after reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and The Tailor of Panama (not to mention enjoying the film version of the later and The Constant Gardner). Gary Oldman is excellent as the aging George Smiley in Tomas Alfredson's (Swedish director of the stylized Let The Right One In) version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). This film more than the others really captured the time and created a sort of dim, gray mood to the film that was populated with several great character actors (John Hurt, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, etc.) to pull the film together with imaginative cinematography.
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