419) Trash Humpers (2009)

419) Trash Humpers (2009) Dir: Harmony Korine Not Yet Released Date Seen: November 28, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5

Redundant as it is, Trash Humpers, idiot savant Harmony Korine's confrontational sensation dares its viewer to wonder, "Well, what's the point?" It's a celebration of cultural junking and of the destruction of utility so technically, that's the wrong question. Follow Korine's naive logic, if you will: because art and the aesthetically beautiful has no use value, it is necessarily grotesque (it's pretty--pretty ugly, that is, ehhhhhhahaha). This makes Trash Humpers, 78 minutes of digital video recordings presented as a VHS found item of young people in old people masks humping trashes and celebrating obsolescence and pointlessness, a defense of itself. Technology is destroyed, trash cans are molested, soap is poured on pancakes and even the utilitarian mantra of "Make it, make it, don't fake it" is chanted and screwed up so many different times and in so many different ways that it all loses any immediate meaning ("Suck it, suck it, don't fuck it" is my favorite variation). There's no payoff because there shouldn't be, because art is technically garbage and refuse is its own reward. As an ardent admirer of Korine's work, I appreciate that kind of crude zeal, even if I feel Trash Humpers is often dull. It's a necessary provocation but he's done it better before.

322) Independencia (2009)

322) Independencia (2009) Dir: Raya Martin Not Yet Released Date Seen: October 2, 2009 Rating: 2.5/5

The turgid pacing and broadness of the allegory kills my interest. See my review for Slant Magazine.

321) Bluebeard (2009)

321) Bluebeard (2009) Dir: Catherine Breillat Not Yet Released Date Seen: October 2, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat's dramatization of the French fairy tale based on the infamous murders of Gilles De Rais, is a predictable, though unfortunately toothless, provocation. The bulk of the film's suggestion is loaded into its final 20 minutes and even then, Breillat's not telling us anything that she hasn't already before (women use fairy tale archetypes to enact their latent masochistic sexual fantasies, even at an early age, when they can dissolve the part of their psyche that objects to their ingrained moral objections). The twin girl storytellers are cute but they're just an intellectually justified version of the usual "Have children say nasty things for a yuk" routine. Cheap but satisfying.

Note: After the first time we see Bluebeard on screen, I was constantly wondering rhetorically: what metal band is that guy the lead singer for and what kind of metal is it? He kinda reminds me of the Euro-version of Andrew W.K. Quand il est le temps pour feter, nous toujour fetons lourd (shit, that sucked; apologies to French speakers)!

ISF: Love Child (2008)

ISF: Love Child (2008) Dir: Daniel Wirtberg Date Seen: October 2, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

While I'm tempted to agree with fellow Slantketeer Andrew Schenker that I mostly liked this one because of my affection for my house cat, I can't help but feel that this short, save for its ambiguous endings, perfectly visually mimicked the beats of a fairy tale. The fact that there's a cat in a bow tie and vest is just icing on the cake (but what delicious icing). The joke of the set-up is one-note so yes, if you don't like cats for some reason, this probably will leave you unfazed. I thought it was a hoot.

320) Mother (2009)

320) Mother (2009) Dir: Bong Joon-Ho Not Yet Released Date Seen: October 1, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5

I've never felt as cold about a Bong Joon-Ho film as I do about Mother. He remains one of the most shrewd pop draftsmen working today, proven by the myriad of wonderful sequences his latest feature boasts. But there's no spark of consistent feeling in it. After Barking Dogs Never Bite, Mother is Bong's most elaborate generic allegory about contemporary South Korean identity but here, he feels like he's reaching for an emotional resonance that came so effortlessly during that latter spazzfest. Mother's memorable final scene establishes how the "incident-induced" form of memory loss that both Bong and Lucrecia Martel use to critique bourgie norms has created a writhing mass of bodies with no clear direction of where it's going. And it's kind of awesome and it's kind of cool to look at--Bong effortlessly synthesizes a Speilbergian sense of awe with his own unique brand of black humor--but it's also pretty empty of satsifying emotional resonance.

319) Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire (2009)

319) Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire (2009) Dir: Lee Daniels Date Released: November 2009 Date Seen: October 1, 2009 Rating: 1/5

Manipulative, hollow dreck. See my review for The L Magazine.

318) Ne Change Rien (2009)

318) Ne Change Rien (2009) Dir: Pedro Costa Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 30, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

Pedro Costa handily hypnotized me with Ne Change Rien, a tantalizingly surreal look at the monotony and the ecstasy of French chanteuse Jeanne Balibar's overlapping recording sessions and live performances. Costa lulls the viewer into a daze with sparingly and naturally lit long takes that film various her singing, in its various stages of the creative process, like alien rituals. Costa's cryptic, laconic style of filming courts your boredom but also encourages patient viewers, most immediately in certain scenes where he simulates the feeling of having one's eyes adjust to any given room's darkness (almost none of the diegetic lights are stronger than a desk lamp). Eerie and persistently mesmerizing.

ISF: Final Cut Template #2: Hollis Frampton (2009)

ISF: Final Cut Template #2: Hollis Frampton (2009) Dir: Doug Henry Date Seen: September 30, 2009 Rating: 2/5

So this guy wants to push the limits of audience participation in moviegoing and decides to mentally engage us, the passive moviegoing audience, right? How does he do it? A card trick involving basic arithmetic. No, seriously. Cute trick but....what am I supposed to do with this? Yes, yes, another world is possible, another viewing experience, et cetera. But really? Um, ok.

Note: That's not an actual film still. I wish.

316) Life During Wartime (2009)

316) Life During Wartime (2009) Dir: Todd Solondz Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 29, 2009 Rating: 4/5

The palpable acrimony Todd Solondz invests in his characters' personalities is dialed down significantly in Life During Wartime, a black comedy that is unjustly being dismissed as more of the same from the morose American agitator. Here his fixation with caricaturing the schnooks he sympathizes with most is more palatable than his previous successes as it's more pointed but no less searing in its impact. His characters' affected voices just barely hide the aching humanity in even the most churlishly funny among them. Solondz's confrontational style is a gimmick to be sure but the urgency of Life During Wartime has effectively channeled his usual blustery dual fascination/frustration with the stereotypical behavior of status quo-upholding psychotics. Thanks once again to another excellent eclectic cast of performers, especially Charlotte Rampling, Ciaran Hinds and Paul Reubens, the moral center of Solondz's latest is dense enough and certainly macabrely humorous enough to pack a devastating punch. Hurts so good.

ISF: Soccarrat (2009)

ISF: Socarrat (2009) Dir: David Moreno Date Seen: September 29, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5

10 minutes is not long enough of a time to make me feel properly nettled, even in the most confrontational short film. David Moreno's Socarrat is mildly insidious and certainly funny but never so direct in its depiction of a dysfunctional family that it really got under my skin. We're deprived of a truly normative setting within which we can contextualize the family's actions as the sets, ordered fresh out of a Sears catalogue, are filmed in a hyper-glossy style that removes them from any identifiable, human setting. To that end, the family is supposed to seem that much more wonky and ambiguous but their actions aren't developed enough to be thoughtful enough to be provocative.

311) Police, Adjective (2009)

311) Police, Adjective (2009) Dir: Corneliu Porumboiu Date Released: December 2009 Date Seen: September 25, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

 Retrospectively appreciate it more but the above rating (a B+) reflects my feelings immediately after watching the film. I may like it more second time around. Or not. See my review for The House Next Door.

ISF: The Funk (2008)

ISF: The Funk (2008) Dir: Cris Jones Date Seen: September 25, 2009 Rating: 2.75/5

I'm very much enamored with the kind of stop-motion animation Cris Jones uses in The Funk but I'm not sure why considering how tepid the film itself is. Jones' cartoon is only valuable as a formal experiment to show off the technological limits of his brand of animation, which animates still photographs to create the illusion of motion, both realistic and otherwise. He knows this as well as the viewer does and relishes the opportunity to makes a story about a mysterious "funk" that leads a worker drone to commit suicide a playful trip to a slap in the face. I was impressed when our possessed/depressed protag's trippy nausea propelled him through a hall of mirrors or a zoetrope but then the punchline kicked in. Look forward to seeing more from Jones and hope the mean streak this short exhibits is short-lived.

310) Hadewijch (2009)

310) Hadewijch (2009) Dir: Bruno Dumont Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 24, 2009 Rating: 4/5

The best of the 8 (of 29 main slate) films I've seen at the New York Film Festival thus far. See my review for The L Magazine.

ISF: Lili's Head (2009)

ISF: Lili's Paradise (2009) Dir: Melina Leon Date Seen: September 24, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

Lili's Paradise is in many ways an idiosyncratic and intriguing look at what growing up in Peru in the '80s was like for the spoiled children of lower-upper class intellectuals. It's also too direct to resonate beyond a point--a good indicator of its patronizing view of its eponymous adolescent is that her fantasy world is filmed in color while everything else in black-and-white. Looks great though and its fun to see a character give the finger to teachers at school by calling them "Fascists!" But....meh.

309) Everyone Else (2009)

309) Everyone Else (2009) Dir: Maren Ade Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 24, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

The only thing I could possibly complain about German filmmaker Maren Ade's Everyone Else, an involving and rich portrait of a couple as their relationship disintegrates, is its apparent bias. Ade's scenario focuses almost entirely on Gitti's (Birgit Minichmayr) perspective though that's partly out of necessity because Chris (Lars Eidinger) is usually too distant to be read. My complaint is minor considering how the nervous tension never slackens and none of its inter-related episodes ever feel extraneous. 

Ade achieves a level of intimacy with her characters that neither feels forced nor like its based on overt judgments of their behavior. She allows them to be brutally honest, even when they don't feel like explicitly sharing their emotions with each other and thanks to a terrific cast all around, including Hans-Jochen Wagner and Nicole Marischka as the couple's foil, it seems all too real. I need to rewatch this one.

307) Lebanon (2009)

307) Lebanon (2009) Dir: Samuel Maoz Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 23, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

The ponderous mechanical whirring that accompanies the camera's (as gunner's sight) every movement in Lebanon is inescapable. As we see much of the film's events through this peephole-sized lens, the persistent noise it generates is one of a handful of ways writer/director Samuel Maoz ineffectually strives to remind us that his film is grounded in the muck and the blood and the grease of real-life events. He doesn't go much farther than that in dirtying up his film though, instead preferring the clarity of emotionally distant images whose deceptive coherence is only gained through retro-active contemplation. 

Which is funny because Sony Pictures Classics is distributing the film in the US because of the success of Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir, which is also takes place during the First Lebanon War. The key difference between the two films however is that Waltz with Bashir is a playful interrogation of the deceptive and surreal nature of veterans' memories while Lebanon supplies a series of horrifying episodes without pausing to interrogate their meaning. 

The most immediate sign of Maoz's conflicting tendency towards prettying up his unclean war story is the way that he films the interior of the tank his small cadre of Israeli soldiers are stuck in. The tank's interior has no clear dimensions, filmed as if it were a stretch limo with room in the back for a fridge, TV, Syrian POW, what have you. The only convincing signs that the group is cramped, tired and dehydrated comes from their increasingly greasy make-up, worthy of Clouzot's Wages of Fear and the constant reverse shots of the gunner's dilated eyeball we get every third minute after he's looked outside of the tank to the decimated world outside. Their grounding effect is dismally brief however. Maoz's glass just isn't dark enough to be convincingly menacing as even the cobweb-like cracks on the gunner's periscope lens do nothing to diminish its uncannily crisp, nigh-HD-quality view. 

These little touches are omnipresent reminders that the events they/we're watching have been collected and reforged into a singular, coherent narrative. Though the terror that infects the Israelis comes from their inability to know what comes next or whose orders to follow, the film, both aesthetically and narratively, is just too composed to affect us with any kind of immediate tension.

The only time Lebanon is convincingly grungy is when the tank is stranded and the men, who by now have already spent hours within the film's subjective time feeling completely rudderless, are being led into what looks like an ambush in spite of themselves. Here Maoz batters the viewer with a battery of shaky cam close-ups but too little, too late. There's plenty of tension in the scene leading up to that manic, last-ditch lo-fi assault but everything else is too cool to be worth much consideration.

ISF: The Slow Game (2009)

ISF: The Slow Game (2009) Dir: Paolo Sorrentino Date Seen: September 23, 2009 Rating: 3/5

Sorrentino continues his distressing trend towards mediocrity in The Slow Game, a worldless but no less bombastic short about his pet concern, being alone together. The short follows a group of men as they prepare for some mysterious ritual together with all the solemnity and menace of criminals on their way to a heist. But no, instead, they're on their way to a rugby game, an event Sorrentino is only really interested in for its team dynamic and its clearly defined goals. Like some kind of hipster alien, he sees the game as the perfect setting for a mute story of betrayal between two team-mates and the woman they both love. Ironic! Tragic! Completely derivative of everything he's done, especially in One Man Up! Looks great and the sense of mystery and menace is palpable. But Sorrentino could've done this in his sleep.

302) Vincere (2009)

302) Vincere (2009) Dir: Marco Bellocchio Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 19, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5

Improperly translated as it is,* the title of Marco Bellocchio's film about Ida Daiser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), the real-life unrecognized mistress of Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) and their bastard son, Benito Albino (also Timi), looks like "Win" when in fact it means "To win." The latter interpretation recognizes the possibility of an alternative result. That hint of doubt is integral to Bellocchio's film. Though she didn't deliver a victorious blow against Mussolini's Fascist ideology or get something more substantial from the tyrant in her lifetime, Daiser's existence today can be reimagined as a symbolic gesture of defiance. Vincere's a real-life "David vs. Goliath" story except here, while Goliath wins, David's presence is worth more than an actual victory.

That kind of short-sighted progressivism fits here better than most other biopics because of Mussolini's insistence on a rigid, hierarchy-bound society where ultimately everybody is subordinate to "Il Duce" but that doesn't make Vincere a more compelling film. Because Daiser opposes a monumental foe, her story is painted in broad, operatic strokes. To wit, the narrative and aesthetic details Bellocchio invests in each scene are never intimate enough to establish a lasting connection. There's just not enough depth of detail in any given encounter, reducing them to handsome blips on an alternate reality's timeline.

I keep stressing that Vincere's like the historical melodrama equivalent of a "What If" story not because its events are untrue but because they exist out of the contemporary political climate's reality. Mussolini's greatest political weapon was his ability to exploit the Italians' nationalist by projecting it back through a prism of jingoism. The best scene in Vincere comes early on when he and Daiser are watching newsreel footage of Italian soldiers in action and he exclaims to his fellow moviegoers what he sees--in this case, the need to go to war--as if he were divining the shapes of clouds on the horizon. Cries of "Pace" are in turned drowned out by taunts of "Guerra," showing how dissent was just steamrolled over in Mussolini's Italy. The film's major coup then is the scene where, after Daiser escape from one of the handful of asylums she's committed to, she is greeted by a mob of incensed supporters. Daiser cannot be shut up now but why that matters today is anyone's guess (if this is a dig at Berlusconi, I don't see it; the film's only really effective as vague political allegory, to my mind).

*This applies to the UK version of the film; not sure how the US version translates "Vincere."

301) Kanikosen (2009)

301) Kanikosen (2009) Dir: Hiroyuki Tanaka (aka: Sabu) Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 18, 2009 Rating: 2.75/5

Based on a novel from the '30s by the same name, Hiroyuki Tanaka's adaptation of Takiji Kobayashi's Kanikosen feels like an adaptation that adapts its sources material too literally. Everything, from its fleeting traces of absurdist black humor to its grandstanding speeches about how we're all just cogs in the machine, appears much too obvious to be original. The only significant additions that Tanaka looks to have made in his dismally straight-forward and earnest adaptation is his attempt to connect with a younger audience. The film's "manga-flavored" aesthetic is best evinced by the film's costumes, especially for the film's big baddie (above, on the left), a scarred foreman that struts around in a beige pormanteau brandishing a pimp cane like a cudgel. 

The other more obvious sign that the film is targeted for 20-30 year olds is its choice to cast pretty boy pop star Ryuhei Matsuda (on the right) as the rabble-rouser that leads a group of workers on a crab-canning ship to revolt. This is cruelly ironic considering how charmless and easily forgettable Matsuda is. He's perfectly adequate in whatever role he's in but don't expect him, or this star vehicle, to make much of an impression.

300) Wild Grass (2009)

300) Wild Grass (2009) Dir: Alain Resnais Not Yet Released Date Seen: September 17, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

Based on "The Accident," a novel by Christian Gailly, Alain Resnais' Wild Grass is a head-scratcher's delight, a berserk black comedy whose plot is buffeted every which-way at any given moment. Resnais seizes every opportunity to frustrate his protagonists desperate quest for closure after the eponymous event leaves them all out of sorts, to put it mildly. Despite the characters' best efforts to regain some semblance of emotional equilibrium--sometimes with spa treatments, sometimes with a favorite film from childhood--everyone ends up flailing their arms and instantly regretting their hilariously knee-jerk actions. You know the characters are being fucked with when the story ends with a line about cat munchies from a character we've never seen in the film until that point. It's a very mean film but also a very strange and exciting one.

Trying to describe Wild Grass's plot, which constantly meanders wherever Resnais' perverse heart desires, is pretty futile and almost certainly an inconsequential task. All you need to know is that Bobo fuddy-duddy Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azema) has her purse stolen and, purely by coincidence, unhinged middle-aged patriarch Georges Palet (Andre Dussolier) finds it. They each want to thank each other and form a bond that may or may not be amorous in nature. Then again, they unfortunately also share a tendency to ram their foots up their mouths and to Resnais' warped mind, that's just exactly why they'll spend as much time rebuffing each other's advances as they do trying to get closer.

If he needs an excuse, Resnais torments his characters because they don't seek so much as they demand balance from their lives. As funhouse caricatures of the kind of "headless" bourgies, they act like they have Trauma-induced Tourettes and can't stop themselves from spazzing out at a moment's notice and almost always in public. Their fear of being transplanted into new and uncomfortable settings dominates their post-"accident" lives and leads them to burble incoherently, leave strange notes for each other and then slash each others tires. Altercations are rehearsed a thousand times before they actually occur for fear that they'll come to the messy conclusion that they always do anyway. In thwarting his characters' desires at every turn, Resnais has made the film that Private Fears in Public Places should have been.