Monday, June 26th, 2006
René Clément – Purple Noon (2)
Better than its modern incarnation, this thriller might not capture Highsmith’s story completely, but it works fairly nicely as a movie standing on its own. The moral ending is disappointing in principle, but also because it’s unconvincing, it being such a stupid oversight for Ripley not to have gotten rid of the anchor, and it seeming unlikely that people would drag a yacht out of the water with its anchor still lowered.
I have seen Frears version of de Laclos’ awesome book multiple times, and wasn’t surprised that a movie from the 1950s fails to stand up to Malkovich, Close and Pfeiffer. I was surprised, however, to see the plot transplanted to the present, and Valmont and Merteuil made into a married couple, odd decisions both, and while interesting, not helping the movie. But the real weakness is Vadims failure to convey any of the intricate psychology of de Laclos’ plot and the beautyfully crafted letters it consists of. Having seen this certainly makes me appreciate Frears quite a bit more. And as a final note, I’m not sure I’d want to see another movie with eternally sulky femme banale Jeanne Moreau any time soon.
I had heard that his movie was good, but I was surprised to find just how well this 1951 SciFi-Horror crossover has withstood the test of time. An intelligent script and believable characters, a stroy relying on try suspense instead of cheap effects, a truly frightening creature and well acted and filmed scenes all make this a gem worth remembering. While Carpenter’s remake, especially its intense atmosphere of paranoia, is superior in some ways, I would find it hard to compare the two overall. Which means that for its sheer age, Nyby’s version wins. Yay Nyby!
This could have been another movie using a feel-good story to enahnce understanding an accepance for a minority by depicting some of its members as struggling, but good humans-like-us. That is an approach that is both commendable for its beneficial impact on society mores and slightly suspicious for its tendency to avoid the more troubling aspects or consequences of the problem under study. On an abstract level this movie falls into this category, as the storyline feels improbably constructed from the standard ingredients of such fare, but the detail, and the performance of its leads, catapult it onto a different level. It’s too bad Huffman was up against Witherspoon’s more broadly appealing performance in Walk the Line at the Academy Awards.
Watching movies about the holocaust, even – or especially – ones that are as well made as this one, is exhausting and disturbing, and I’m not entirely sure why I keep doing it again and again. Partly it’s the general feeling that an evil forgotten is one likely to be repeated, but there also is the irrational, yet very compelling obligation to understand the monstrosity which seems to stem from my being a member of the culture that committed this singular crime. These matters aside, this particular documentary, drawn from material collected for Spielberg’s Visual History Foundation, is masterfully composed and edited, and should be seen by many, including you.
Jeanne Moreau’s sulking femme-fatale act is annoying to watch, and parts of the story don’t seem to make sense – why did Tavernier not escape through the floor after the elevator had gone almost all the way down to the ground floor? Why would a Jury let the murderer off easily, while being harsh on Moreau’s scheming wife? But these minor quibbles aside, it’s a very original story, and a very entertaining movie. As a window into history, I found the German characters, with their obvious postwar Wirtschaftswunder wealth and ruthless joviality particularly fascinating.
The odd and interesting concept of combining three short disturbing cinematic visions from Korea, Hong Kong and Japan into a single feature film pays off mostly because of the contrast between the three directors’ very distinctive approaches to scaring or shocking the audience. Where Chan uses colourful unscrupulous hedonism to post a moral warning, Park delves almost sadistically in his usual subject of revenge, guilt and the impact of violence and Miike creates a rigid, melancholy and inescapable atmosphere of enormous and unresolvable guilt. I’m not sure any of the three stories would have worked as standalone works, but seen together they seem to take on a deeper meaning and complement one another.
A powerful meditation on innocence lost and the mixed blessings of civilization and progress, this is essential Malick. Of course that also means a healthy dose of pathos and a certain slowness of plot, but when so beautifully shot and arranged, who would want to bicker. I have not seen the story of Pocahontas told any other way before, and I don’t think I shall.
It could have been a delightful superhero spoof, with touching undertones of melancholy and underdog happyness. But bad direction, design and editing destroy much of the movie, which occasionally shines (the confrontation betwen Captain Amazing and Casanova Frankenstein is hilarious, for example), but most of the time drags. It’s too bad, the writing is good, and some of the acting and improv (Stiller mentions in the specials that the script wasn’t fixed and actors would ad lib) could have been quite hilarious. Maybe it was meant to be watched in large groups, and the gaps are so people can finish laughing without missing a joke, but I’m not sure whether that would make the bad editing better or worse.
I enjoy watching movies with advertised surprise endings, not attempting to guess the twist beforehand so that it can have maximum impact. Here, I vaguely suspected the ending about halfway through, enough to take away the bottomless feeling I distinctly remember from having in The Sixth Sense, which is too bad. That doesn’t say anything bad about the movie, and I just mention it to justify my not talking at all about the plot of Oldboy. I cherish surprises, and so should you. Besides, if you want to be spoiled, there are plenty of places online for that.