July Movie Roundup

Some thoughts on films I've seen recently

Rashômon (1950) -It's sorta hard to approach this one with fresh eyes. Rashômon is one of those cinematic classics where much of its classic nature comes from its originality and innovative film-making technique, namely the use of conflicting perspectives in flashbacks, which has been co-opted by so many films since then that the initial thrill that film-goers must have felt coming out of the theater 60 years ago has largely worn off. The storytelling innovations in Inception, another film that I saw this month, make the plot of Rashômon seem pretty quaint. All of this makes it pretty hard to judge the film on its own merits, but I have to say that I enjoyed it. The performances were over the top, but effective and the message about how people will always distort the truth is moving and still relevant. This is only the second film by Akira Kurosawa that I've seen, but I'll be sure to check out more.

Hannah and Her Sisters - Though Annie Hall is still my favorite Woody Allen film, it now has some fierce competition from Hannah and Her Sisters. Hannah and Her Sisters is warm, funny, sad and filled with fantastic performances, especially by Michael Caine as Elliott, who is married to Hannah (Mia Farrow), but is in love with her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey). Allen himself is Hannah's ex-husband, who is the showrunner for for an SNL-like sketch-comedy show and experiences an existential crisis where he considers converting to Catholicism, Buddhism and Krishna after a cancer scare. The real star of the film is Hannah's other sister Holly, played by Dianne Wiest (who won an Oscar for her performance, as did Caine), a plucky drug-addicted single woman who works for a catering company. She's probably pretty similar to a younger version of Jane Lynch's character in Party Down. I feel ashamed for sleeping on this one for so long.

Lone Star (pictured) - Lone Star is an under-seen classic from 1996, directed by John Sayles. For some reason, movies and TV series that take place near the US-Mexico border are inherently interesting to me, probably because it's sort of the last region in the United States that seems to have a sense of lawlessness, reminiscent of the Old West. Rio County, where Lone Star takes place, is a melting pot of African-American, Texan, Mexican and Native American cultures, and the central mystery of Lone Star, about the 30-year-old murder of a loathsome sheriff, draws from all these traditions to create a compelling story. The film is richer and deeper than almost any other film that I've ever seen. Sayles creates over a dozen compelling, well-drawn out characters and drafting a self-contained arc for pretty much all of them. Sayles seamlessly intertwines the two subplots, creating a real relationship between past and present events, fleshing out the town with a comprehensiveness that writers and directors rarely attempt to achieve. Chris Cooper provided a calming presence throughout the movie, helping the audience make sense of the action and connecting the past to the present. Matthew McConaughey is wisely not given very much to do except for act Texan, which is pretty much all he can do. Kris Kristofferson is not his typical gentle self, but a snarling, smug, racist and evil presence as the murdered Sheriff Wade. I wish more films were like Lone Star.

Inception - Oh man. Where to begin? Let me start by saying that Inception's plot is so intricate that at one point in the film, Nolan weaves together FIVE different levels of reality (yes, reality) without it being confusing to the attentive viewer. It's a breakthrough in storytelling technique and in visual effects. Lately, it seems like special effects aren't so special anymore. Anyone can make things explode and create giant CGI monsters (I wasn't impressed by Transformers or Clash of the Titans). Inception, however, was almost Matrix-like in its ability to manipulate the laws of physics and present the visual effects in a way that it both satisfy the eye and serve the story. The stretch of Inception near the end with Joseph Gordon-Levitt battling enemies in an environment with shifting gravity, and then with zero gravity is among the most visually arresting sequences I've seen in years. Though the first hour was largely expository, Inception deserves points for setting some ground rules for the fantastical world and sticking to them throughout the film. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a heartfelt performance that emotionally ground the movie, and Tom Hardy is immensely entertaining as the token British guy and deserves bigger roles elsewhere. Christopher Nolan has proven himself as one of the best directors working today, combining the commercial appeal of Spielberg with the mind-bending nihilism of Stanley Kubrick, with a little Hitchcockian tension thrown in for good measure.

This film was made for about $200 million more than Joe Gordon-Levitt's breakthrough Brick