The Dead Girl (2006)
Dir. By: Karen Moncrieff
Starring: Toni Collette, Brittany Murphy, Marcia Gay Harden.
If you've lost faith in independent films, this is the movie to brighten your eyes. It was an even greater gust of fresh air to watch a film with such strong female characters, written and directed by a woman. I'm a walking, talking Jamba Juice FemBoost.
What's worth acknowledging about The Dead Girl is how far a strong script will go. The visual style and structure were left simple (usually the downfall of indie films), and created room to carve out each of the characters within their separate acts. There's a secret recipe of depth, variety, and drama that thread interwoven lives together in this genre, and Karen Moncrieff got it just right. Of course the subtle performances in this highly emotional setting carried the whole movie to sweet perfection, but all rely first on that delicate balance in the script.
Other amazing feats of The Dead Girl:
1. Giovanni Ribisi played his same character... but different! There was a ton of complexity to such a seemingly stock character.
2. James Franco's claymation face.
3. Brittany Murphy's accent. (What the hell?)
4. Avoiding on-screen violence in a movie about a violent murder. It ruins so many low-budg films and it would have ruined this one.
My advice: Don't go chasing artsy first-time director's indie films all willynilly now, but see this one.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Love Actually vs. Paris Je T'aime
Love Actually (2003)
Dir. by: Richard Curtis
Starring: everyone ever
Paris Je T'aime (2006)
Dir. by: most directors
Starring: almost everyone
I pair these films based on the proximity of when I first viewed them, and how they each deal with the intersecting-vignette genre. As an added bonus, they both concern LOVE. Being in love, not being in love, loving things that aren't real, fighting for love, and giving up on it...they really get into it.
Love Actually pumps the warmth straight to your left ventricle. It's set during Christmas, book-ended by airport welcomes and farewells, and ties each tiny story together with a little bow that's so cute you can't throw away. So many tiny stories, in fact, with just the right amount of depth, that when you make the first round and revisit a couple, you had almost forgot they were there. It's creepy. You find yourself enjoying Hugh Grant, despite yourself. You accept the coincidental interlacing of lives, despite your hatred of Crash. You don't mind sappy back stories, dramatic expressions of love, or unrealistic gambles of the heart- and it's not just the British accents. All these despite-yourselves are the direct result of pervasive subtlety, amusing dialogue, and full-bodied characters. And let's not forget Christmas. You have surrendered your hard heart to two hours of ensembley goodness.
Paris Je T'aime is a collection of 18 short films, based in love on the streets of Paris. Star-studded to blindness, this collection takes the back alley to love, with many shorts dealing with love in the least likely places: divorced lovers, a drug dealer and his client, even vampires. Not surprisingly, the most enjoyable shorts are mainly from the most acclaimed directors, and between those you'll count how many shorts are left to go before the long list of credits roll. You will not get lost in these stories, that seemingly do not intertwine save for a feeble montage attempt at the very end, not because they are so short and so separate, but because the elements of exposition, political divides, and character development often lack that crucial slight-of-hand necessary in romance stories. It is a great experiment with some very valuable shorts that whisk you away to the heart of Paris, but more often than not lacks a perceptible pulse.
And this is why Love Actually is a guilty pleasure for some grown men and many many women, and why Paris Je T'aime will be found on Netflix ten years from now by about 15 people, who will think it looks like an epic film that somehow slipped under the radar, and will most likely be turned off less than halfway through, and returned with something like shame.
My advice: If you haven't seen Love Actually, just buy it. If you've seen Paris Je T'aime, watch it with someone who hasn't, and sift out the gems by the Coen Bros, Nobuhiro Suwa, Gena Rowlands, and Alexander Payne, with your finger on fast-forward. Or skip, or whatever those new-fangled dvd remotes have. Watching the films in succession will illustrate the do's and do not's of vignette films, for sure.
Dir. by: Richard Curtis
Starring: everyone ever
Paris Je T'aime (2006)
Dir. by: most directors
Starring: almost everyone
I pair these films based on the proximity of when I first viewed them, and how they each deal with the intersecting-vignette genre. As an added bonus, they both concern LOVE. Being in love, not being in love, loving things that aren't real, fighting for love, and giving up on it...they really get into it.
Love Actually pumps the warmth straight to your left ventricle. It's set during Christmas, book-ended by airport welcomes and farewells, and ties each tiny story together with a little bow that's so cute you can't throw away. So many tiny stories, in fact, with just the right amount of depth, that when you make the first round and revisit a couple, you had almost forgot they were there. It's creepy. You find yourself enjoying Hugh Grant, despite yourself. You accept the coincidental interlacing of lives, despite your hatred of Crash. You don't mind sappy back stories, dramatic expressions of love, or unrealistic gambles of the heart- and it's not just the British accents. All these despite-yourselves are the direct result of pervasive subtlety, amusing dialogue, and full-bodied characters. And let's not forget Christmas. You have surrendered your hard heart to two hours of ensembley goodness.
Paris Je T'aime is a collection of 18 short films, based in love on the streets of Paris. Star-studded to blindness, this collection takes the back alley to love, with many shorts dealing with love in the least likely places: divorced lovers, a drug dealer and his client, even vampires. Not surprisingly, the most enjoyable shorts are mainly from the most acclaimed directors, and between those you'll count how many shorts are left to go before the long list of credits roll. You will not get lost in these stories, that seemingly do not intertwine save for a feeble montage attempt at the very end, not because they are so short and so separate, but because the elements of exposition, political divides, and character development often lack that crucial slight-of-hand necessary in romance stories. It is a great experiment with some very valuable shorts that whisk you away to the heart of Paris, but more often than not lacks a perceptible pulse.
And this is why Love Actually is a guilty pleasure for some grown men and many many women, and why Paris Je T'aime will be found on Netflix ten years from now by about 15 people, who will think it looks like an epic film that somehow slipped under the radar, and will most likely be turned off less than halfway through, and returned with something like shame.
My advice: If you haven't seen Love Actually, just buy it. If you've seen Paris Je T'aime, watch it with someone who hasn't, and sift out the gems by the Coen Bros, Nobuhiro Suwa, Gena Rowlands, and Alexander Payne, with your finger on fast-forward. Or skip, or whatever those new-fangled dvd remotes have. Watching the films in succession will illustrate the do's and do not's of vignette films, for sure.
Spiderman 3 vs. Waitress
Spiderman 3 (2007)
Dir. by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco
Waitress (2007)
Dir. by: Adrienne Shelly
Starring: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines
Hm...Is pitting these two summer films against each other unfair, and merely an excuse to slam Spiderman 3? Perhaps.
I went to see Spiderman 3 at the first midnight screening, at Hollywood's Arclight Cinema. (This firmly establishes my dedication and credibility.) I left around 3 am, my mind tangled in, yes, webs of horrible dialogue, stomach-churning awkward subplots, and the most under-whelming fight scenes of any graphic novel set to motion, that I've seen. (Meaning that my strict standard of movie-viewing absolutely prevented me from seeing comic adaptations on the level of, say, Daredevil.) About half way through the film, I realized I was having the opposite of fun, right around the time that the film lamp went wonky and distorted the coloring of a few scenes. This tiny defect was enough to earn a free admission ticket, one that I felt entirely deserved.
I used this free pass not much more than 12 hours later, at a matinee of Waitress. My reasoning, knowing only that Keri Russell starred, was that even a romantic comedy starring Keri Russell would be better than Spidercrap 3.
To my great surprise, it was!
That afternoon, I had big plans for this review. Comparing how each film treated the elderly, how a more simple visual style can be more captivating than an influx of unmotivated action sequences, how stories can be new even within very stylized genres, et cetera.
Since then, one major issue has stuck in my side when I think about these films. Even after weeks of not writing this review, I feel this one argument still worth exploring - that old stand-by: female characters.
Love Story involving Abuse : Mary Jane vs. Keri Russell
Everyone knows that old comics, especially Spiderman, are all about love. What's the greatest motivation for Peter Parker? MJ. It's a soap opera under the thinly veiled auspices of an action movie, and everyone is happy to be fooled. Spiderman 3, for some reason, incorporated abuse within Peter and Mary Jane's otherwise wholesome relationship. An hour through Spiderman 3, Mary Jane has endured a great deal of public humiliation and relationship deal-breakers... and says nothing... does nothing to defend herself... weakly moving through the scenes as the most transparent and simplistic device.
Similarly, everyone knows that romantic comedies are about love! It's inherent. Waitress, an anti-love story, also revolves around domestic abuse. For a good part of the film, we see Jenna (Keri Russell) withstand verbal and emotional abuse, including public humiliation. However, her goal throughout the film is to set her pregnant self free, and after many, yes, baby steps, she eventually divorces her abusive husband. AND creates a successful business.
At the end of Spiderman 3, Mary Jane steps off the stage after singing at a small club, right back into the arms of her abusive boyfriend, without a word to explain Venom, or whatever evil possessed Peter to strike her. It was so beautiful, I almost left the theater. I know she's supposed to be the love interest, the thing that Spiderman has to save from falling or something falling on, I get it. I just want to care about the characters. If you let your boyfriend hit you, then yes, maybe a taxi cab should crush you. I'm not saying on-screen violence, to a man or woman, is wrong. In fact, I love violent movies. I just want to see characters fight back. Or leave. Or start a pie business. Anything. Otherwise, I could go watch the evening news.
Dir. by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco
Waitress (2007)
Dir. by: Adrienne Shelly
Starring: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines
Hm...Is pitting these two summer films against each other unfair, and merely an excuse to slam Spiderman 3? Perhaps.
I went to see Spiderman 3 at the first midnight screening, at Hollywood's Arclight Cinema. (This firmly establishes my dedication and credibility.) I left around 3 am, my mind tangled in, yes, webs of horrible dialogue, stomach-churning awkward subplots, and the most under-whelming fight scenes of any graphic novel set to motion, that I've seen. (Meaning that my strict standard of movie-viewing absolutely prevented me from seeing comic adaptations on the level of, say, Daredevil.) About half way through the film, I realized I was having the opposite of fun, right around the time that the film lamp went wonky and distorted the coloring of a few scenes. This tiny defect was enough to earn a free admission ticket, one that I felt entirely deserved.
I used this free pass not much more than 12 hours later, at a matinee of Waitress. My reasoning, knowing only that Keri Russell starred, was that even a romantic comedy starring Keri Russell would be better than Spidercrap 3.
To my great surprise, it was!
That afternoon, I had big plans for this review. Comparing how each film treated the elderly, how a more simple visual style can be more captivating than an influx of unmotivated action sequences, how stories can be new even within very stylized genres, et cetera.
Since then, one major issue has stuck in my side when I think about these films. Even after weeks of not writing this review, I feel this one argument still worth exploring - that old stand-by: female characters.
Love Story involving Abuse : Mary Jane vs. Keri Russell
Everyone knows that old comics, especially Spiderman, are all about love. What's the greatest motivation for Peter Parker? MJ. It's a soap opera under the thinly veiled auspices of an action movie, and everyone is happy to be fooled. Spiderman 3, for some reason, incorporated abuse within Peter and Mary Jane's otherwise wholesome relationship. An hour through Spiderman 3, Mary Jane has endured a great deal of public humiliation and relationship deal-breakers... and says nothing... does nothing to defend herself... weakly moving through the scenes as the most transparent and simplistic device.
Similarly, everyone knows that romantic comedies are about love! It's inherent. Waitress, an anti-love story, also revolves around domestic abuse. For a good part of the film, we see Jenna (Keri Russell) withstand verbal and emotional abuse, including public humiliation. However, her goal throughout the film is to set her pregnant self free, and after many, yes, baby steps, she eventually divorces her abusive husband. AND creates a successful business.
At the end of Spiderman 3, Mary Jane steps off the stage after singing at a small club, right back into the arms of her abusive boyfriend, without a word to explain Venom, or whatever evil possessed Peter to strike her. It was so beautiful, I almost left the theater. I know she's supposed to be the love interest, the thing that Spiderman has to save from falling or something falling on, I get it. I just want to care about the characters. If you let your boyfriend hit you, then yes, maybe a taxi cab should crush you. I'm not saying on-screen violence, to a man or woman, is wrong. In fact, I love violent movies. I just want to see characters fight back. Or leave. Or start a pie business. Anything. Otherwise, I could go watch the evening news.
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