Welcome to the Cinema archives. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.
![2009_it_might_get_loud_002[1]](http://www.sarcastigate.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/2009_it_might_get_loud_0021.jpg "2009_it_might_get_loud_002[1]")
Jack White > Jimmy Page > The Edge
Documentaries With Conflict > Those Without (which is why this one is an interesting failure.)
Also not sure why they chose The Edge — his style is without doubt different than the other two, but during the jam session he just looks lost. Jack White astounds.
Rating: 5/10
![ballast03[1]](http://www.sarcastigate.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ballast031.jpg "ballast03[1]")
This one has me conflicted. It’s beautiful. It’s stark. It’s well acted by a cast of Alabama locals that basically improvised the script. The hand-held cameras do an unbelievable job of masking how much work must have gone into every shot. It’s sad. It’s so sad that it hits me RIGHT THERE.
Add up all of those and you’ll get a movie that I’ll love. A movie that I’ll rave about and tell you to watch. A movie I’ll sit through again just because the Blu-Ray copy looks so DAMN good for an indie film.
And then I’ll tell you that I won’t recommend this movie to you. That I found myself just a little too bored for too much of this film. Curious of where it was going but finding myself uncaring about where it could have ended up. I didn’t predict any endings. I didn’t call out any characters as “changed” or “fixed” or “better.” I just watched it. And it ended. And that was that. I went about my day much like the characters must have. And therein lies the problem: it was just too much like real life. Sure, Ebert loved it. Sure, critics raved about it. Sure, it wasn’t at all about MY life… but it was about real life and the way we all spend so much time finding ways to struggle. And, in the end, it was so beautiful, and so sad, and so “life-like” that I just wanted to get back to life. Take from that what you will.
Ballast, 2009
5/10 (but as close to a perfect 5/10 as you will ever find.)
Probably one of the best movies I have seen so far this year. Yes, it’s about baseball. No, that doesn’t make it any less beautiful, touching or genuine. It’s shot really well by the pair that made Half Nelson. It has a breakout performance from a former dominican baseball player that has never acted before. It was a summer night well spent.
It even gets bonus points for making you think the emotional climax was going to be a montage with the Buckley cover of Hallelujah. I laughed when it flipped it on me.
Rating: 9.5/10
Economy Allegory > Economy Apathy
Freedom Tickler > The Moldy Peaches
Rating: 9.2/10
The grass over there > The grass right here.
The Direction (AMAZING.) > The Narration (AWFUL.)
Idealism > Materialism…. or is it?
Vickys’ > Cristinas’ (as a general rule.)
Javier Bardem >>>>>
Real Life < The Inherent Honesty of Every Character in This.
Rating: 8.9/10
Charlie Kaufman is, without a doubt, one of the most creative and ambitious writers working in the world today. Though this movie is ultimately a miserable failure, his ambition and gift still allow me to understand how it was elevated to numerous top-10 lists for 2008.
First, and most notably, the ambition of it all. This movie did not reveal itself to me as much as a movie as it did an experience akin to waterboarding — not in the tortuous sense but in the sensory. I was completely sucked in, seduced by the developments of the characters and the incredible furtherance of metaphor. The beauty in the character development may have only been eclipsed by the profound sadness and the pronounced misery that was in the screenplay.
The same unraveling that exists in the fictional Cadens’ work is exactly the cause for the movie to result in incredible failure. Cadens theatrical work sprawls and expands and overflows and just grows to be too damn big to ever be possible. Spectacular stories and relationships exist as disconnected (but never really so) from each other and from the “outside world.” In the same way, Kaufman begins with an idea for a movie, then 2 movies, then 100 movies, and then every movie ever created that will ever be created. In typical Kaufman fashion, the viewer is never quite sure where the film and the meta-film and reality truly overlap (and in my case, the continuation of the film into my Kaufman-edited dreams.) The problem, however, is that this movie is finished. It’s a complete representative of a work that will never and can, by definition, never be complete. It’s not the happy medium between Cadens’ unfortunately enormous work and Adeles’ unfortunately small. It’s failure. It’s surrender. It’s reality — or, at least, some trippy representation of the limitations of cinema. (Or, at the very, very least — a trippy representation as Kaufmans failure as a director.) And yes, I understand, that’s exactly what the literary allusion in the title refers to. A piece representing a larger whole. My head continues to hurt.
I’d love to be able to rewind the entire experience and allow Spike Jonze to more deftly steer this. As a directorial debut it was just too much, too much, too much.
A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states — which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.
Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. [...]
Utah has the nation’s highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.
Full Article at The Salt Lake Tribune (via KFB)
For this film, I feel compelled to depart from my typical “greater than vs less than” structured film reviews. The reason is simple: this film is far too complex for such distinctions.
First, however, an acknoweldgement — I’m incredibly late to the game on this one. It came out in 2006. I’ve already seen this, written about it, drunkenly discussed it ad naseum (with no recollection of any previous opinion.) Just recently, however, they began screening this in HD and it gave me reason to re-watch it since it’s a movie that I greatly enjoyed and always suspected it may make it on to my all-time favorites list.
This is a film what’s stark (beautiful) cinematography stands in sharp contrast to its murky (beautiful) moral distinctions. Through the main characters we are pulled through a study of romance vs realism and chemistry vs projected-perfection not by our noses but rather by a faint coaxing of our emotions. Kate Winslet (who is somehow becoming my favorite actress in the world) turns in a subtle but powerful performance and is complemented by the rest of a well-acted cast. The entire film lays perfectly in the tension between bucolic humanism and ironic detachment and gives the viewer enough credit to not become preachy or definitive. The second half of the film hinges on a discussion of the book Madame Bovary. Just as the book-group discussion feels conflicted in the justification (or lack-of) the female protagonists actions — the viewer of this film is continuously rooting for both enthusiastic sex (Kathy and Brad) and the application of oneself to control such carnal urges (Ronnie.)
Seemingly misunderstood in many reviews of this film is the voice-over narration. Yes, it’s a little corny. Yes, at the beginning I’m thinking to myself, “this shot would work just as well without the narrator spelling out exactly what the character is thinking.” But… as the movie proceeds, as we understand the characters more, as we begin to grasp their intentions and they drop their pretensions — the narrator disappears. He doesn’t seem to return until the very end — until the characters have made up their minds about what paths they’d like their ethical experiment to follow: one that may require a little bit of narration to help communication and understanding along.
Little Children is full of sharp dialogue, solid performances, and an intelligence that I find hard to find. The entire execution is superb and makes me wonder just how good the book must be. This one will make it to my collection just as soon as it hits BluRay. Yes… it’s that stunningly beautiful.
Rating: 9.5/10
(if you’d like some idea of where the last .5 went…. I suggest this Salon.com review. It touches on a couple of the minor shortfalls in the film (Winslet not being homely enough looking) but the reviewer sorely misses (or fails to mention) the entire juxtaposition that this film relies on.)
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July 16th, 2010
Sarcastigate at the Cinema: Inception.
Inception is great. It will make a billion dollars. Chris Nolan is going to have an even blanker check for the next film that he writes/directs and it showcases that he can, in fact, still write. I enjoyed it greatly and will watch it again when it comes out on BluRay. There are some major problems with it (or at least things that irritated me), though.
- It’s dumbed down. Following in the footsteps of other big-dollar, mainstream, intellectual, recursive thrillers, Nolan takes some short cuts. I watched the film once, late at night, and it all made painfully perfect sense. The characters spend a lot of time explaining things to each other that would be criminally obvious for anyone in their shoes. The explanation is clearly exclusively for the audiences benefit. Ellen Pages character serves as an extremely laughable outsider and an excuse to hold the audiences hand even tighter. There may be better precedent for this but the 2004 film Primer serves as a better example in how to challenge the audience through recursion interference (see also Solaris, Following, and even portions of the Matrix series.) Nolan didn’t have to take it to Primer extremes but he also didn’t have to rewrite this down to an elementary level. As a result, I’m not sure it merits the chronic rewatching that other recursive thrillers have leveraged into cultural phenomenons. But it will make a billion dollars.
- Skiing/shooting action scene. Has this ever been done well? Ever? Did Nolan think he could pull it off? As soon as I saw them near the skis I absolutely cringed. The only thing saving this entire ”level” is that they didn’t have Ellen Page strap on a snowboard. I thought for sure it was headed that way. Ouch. Truly awful.
- The effects. Some of them were incredible. Some of them were downright cheesy, though. CGI has come a long way since the Matrix but I still don’t think that this movie is going to age very well. In 20 years it’s going to look like a cartoon. I think it’s fine to be ambitious with your screenwriting but don’t assume you can build worlds from scratch.
- The heavy handedness of Leo’s familial faithfulness. Come on… give me a break…. the only thing driving him was his love for his kids and his wife? He’s really just a big softie that enjoys the game of experimenting in other peoples brains? Buhgaw.
You want to know all the good about the movie? Read another review. They are all covering it pretty well and I agree that the good stuff in this movie is REALLY good. The score is phenomenal (and Nolan didn’t allow the composer to see the movie before he scored it!!), the sound amazing. The cinematography and the set design are astounding. The fight scenes are (mostly) brilliant. Leo is going to be up for many awards. Did I mention that this movie will make a billion dollars? It will. You’ll love it.
My last prediction, though: Contrary to what so many critics are trumpeting this week… this will be nowhere near the best picture nominees come 2011. It just doesn’t have the legs.
Rating: 8/10
Postscript: The lucky gal I was watching this movie with was dozing on and off throughout the movie. It wasn’t because the movie was boring, it’s because it was LATE. While I was watching the movie I was actually thinking about how unnerving it would be to half sleep through… to wake up and feel like you hadn’t really missed anything (or had you?) I can’t imagine that experience. I wonder if it was pleasant or terrifying?