Revanche ****

Director: Götz Spielmann
Cast: Johannes Krisch, Andreas Lust
Irina Potapenko, Ursula Strauss, Johannes Thanheiser

The central themes in "Revanche" can be compared to a folded piece of blank paper; no matter which half you're looking at they appear to be made out of the same, but the potential differences of what you could do with each halve are their real essence.
Alex (Krisch) is an ex-convict working as errand boy for a brothel owner (a creepy Hanno Poeschl) in Vienna. He's also having a secret affair with one of the prostitutes who work there, the Ukranian Tamara (Potapenko).
Trying to escape the sordid life he's leading, Alex figures out the safest choice would be a bankrobbery in the small rural town where his grandfather Hausner (Thanheiser) lives.
Convinced that nothing can go wrong he brings Tamara along for the ride and then things of course go wrong.
An unexpected death links the vengeful Alex to Robert (Lust) a local policeman with whom he shares more than he'd ever know.
Even if the setup of "Revanche" is the stuff noirish revenge thrillers are made of, Spielmann puts a sudden halt to pulpy expectations and creates an elegant, taut psychological piece that chooses to elongate the tension by extracting it from within the characters and not the situations.
At first we are led to think it might turn into an exploration of what settings do to people, "in the city you end up arrogant or a scoundrel" states Hausner as he proceeds to attach one of the labels to his grandson.
And in a way, this point of view works, if only in a superficial way. Vienna brings nothing but stress and economic troubles to Alex and Tamara, but the quietness of the country life isn't helpful to Robert either.
His wife Susanne (Strauss) can't conceive a baby and he'd rather work late at night than spend time with her in their empty home.
Perhaps the setting does help in determining what their priorities will be, family and money in this case, and while the plot would have us become convinced Alex and Robert stand at completely opposite extremes, it slowly reveals that they might be sides of the very same coin.
Carefully and brilliantly lensed by Martin Gschlacht, "Revanche" might perfectly spoil itself by the apt way in which it expresses itself through its images.
Most of the time the camera remains fixed, letting the characters walk in and out of the frame; which leads to some surprising moments of emotional outburst (aided grandly by a superb sound mixing) where the characters seem to be hiding from the audience.
When the camera does move, mostly in slow, precise pans and dolly movements as it follows people walking or vehicles along the road it's with a determined purpose.
One particular moment has the camera stop at what looks like a normal curve on a highway, if we look closer some of the trees give the impression of crosses, which depending of your intellectual or spiritual take will suggest either a religious checkpoint or simply evoke the word "crossroad".
When you see this spot again it will make sense depending under what light you examined it. Throughout most of the film Gschlacht seems to be dividing the screen in half; there is always a predominant element in one of the halves that pulls our attention to it, but after a while (cuts aren't that common in this film) we also start to notice the "lack" of something in the other half. Is it suggesting perhaps that Robert and Alex's stories are compliments of each another? Or that in fact all of the characters are seeking to fill an emptiness?
It's of great help that the performances from all the actors are splendid. Krisch who can be brutal and animalistic (recurring scenes where we see him chopping wood for his grandpa are scary) is also able to convey a disarming sweetness. His scenes with Potapenko are perfect examples as he proceeds from lustful lovemaking to protectiveness.
Lust is sensitive and enigmatic, his character is described by others as "athletic" and unbelievably it's in scenes where we see him running that his compromise to the character becomes more obvious, it's as if only when he's alone and in motion he can be himself.
Strauss embodies a maternality that forces the audience to reexamine what they believe about her and her character along with Thanheiser's moving grandfather give the film another layer related to faith and redemption.
After a morally condmenable act one character asks Susanne "what does your God say about this?" without hesitating she replies "He understands".
In another moment Hausner proclaims Alex was "born and bred a heathen" as he goes to church with Susanne. By grouping these two characters together it's as if Spielmann is declaring his plot will eventually steer towards a conversion of sorts as the lead men are forced to reach out to a force beyond them.
But this never happens, because Spielmann also makes sure that Alex and Robert have a different kind of force to lean on: fate.
"Why do I always get plagued with bad luck?" asks Alex, while Robert wonders why his life puts him in the situations he stands in, can it be some sort of cosmic comeuppance? Little do these characters ever know how alike they think.
What is in God's hands and what rests on ours' is perhaps the strongest idea in the film, which also studies the roles of men in this equation.
Robert can't give life while his job forces him to take it away. Alex can't reccur to "traditional" means of justice because he owes some penitences of his own.
They're both emasculated, one biologically, the other socially. Therefore wood chopping becomes more than an action, it's almost a symbol of castration.
"Revanche" never provides clear answers about anything, instead fascinated with parallels and unexplored possibilities, even the title has a double meaning as it can signify "revenge" or "a second chance".
It's ironic that a film that dives into ambiguity so much never takes a false step.

A Christmas Tale ***1/2

Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon
Anne Consigny, Mathieu Amalric, Melvil Poupaud
Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos, Chiara Mastroianni
Laurent Capelluto, Emile Berling, Thomas Obled, Clément Obled

Junon Vuillard (a truly splendid Deneuve) has been diagnosed with a form of degenerative cancer, she needs a bone marrow transplant that might aid her or kill her.
Her husband Abel (Roussillon moving and warm) invites their whole family to come together for the first time in years and celebrate the holidays. But this brings trouble with the return of the prodigal son Henri (Amalric who is brilliant) who was banished years before by his older sister Elizabeth (Consigny) who's dealing with her son Paul's (Berling) suicide attempt.
There's also an uncomfortable love triangle between their youngest brother Ivan (Poupaud), his wife Sylvia (a sparkling Mastroianni) and their cousin Simon (Capelluto). Plus Henri's new girlfriend Faunia (Devos who injects the film with a delightful sort of selfaware humor) who is Jewish and refuses to participate in Christian celebrations.
With as much balls as patience, director Desplechin puts all these people under the same roof, along with their feuds, secrets, genetic troubles, illnesses and inner demons, for the space of four days with some brilliant, unexpected results.
"A Christmas Tale" could've easily turned into one of the following: the rehearsal for a reality show, one of those quirky dysfunctional family dramas that rely heavily on eccentricity or one of those sappy American dramas where forgiveness and enlightenment come to the melody of Bing Crosby.
What this film turns out to be is something quite different; an amalgam of sorts of film styles, self conscious references, acting methods, moods, colors and emotions, something that sounds chaotic but actually makes more sense than it should and feels right because it manages to represent the tension that arises whenever families come together.
Sometimes it feels as if Desplechin himself doesn't want for these people to solve their problems (which he probably never intended to do), because instead of uniting their themes, he stresses out how different they are.
Therefore Consigny's scenes, some of which involve an analyst, feel extracted from a Bergman play, Poupaud's have picaresque Truffaut strokes, Amalric's seem to be have been written by Moliére on steroids and a particular scene involving Devos and Deneuve practically screams Hitchcock.
He grabs them, splits them in unorthodox ways, puts them together like he wishes, breaks the fourth wall constantly and even has time to include flashbacks, shadow theater, a wonderful Angela Bassett reference, Charlton Heston shouting in French and an improvised play before dinner. How this odes to individuality play together beautifully like a choir is one of the many miracles in Desplechin's Christmas.

The Reader ****

Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross
Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Volker Bruch, Lena Olin

Exploring the notions of guilt, emotional restraint, literature and survival, Stephen Daldry's "The Reader" reaffirms the director's ability to deliver films that are capable of serving as erudite, if sometimes too cerebral, essays, emotional time bombs or both.
Mostly set in Germany, the plot centers on the life of Michael who as an older man (Fiennes) reflects on his past and remembers the summer when he was fifteen (played by Kross who is a true revelation) and met Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), a tram conductor in her mid thirties who in a way exerted great power over his entire life.
After she aided him when he got sick on his way home, the two began an affair during which he explored his blossoming sexuality with the older woman, who asked nothing in return but to have books read out loud for her.
One day when he goes to her apartment, Michael discovers that Hanna has disappeared; he sees her again almost ten years later when, as a law student, he attends a trial against Nazi criminals where Hanna is one of the accused.
Still hurt from the way she abandoned him years before and somewhat disgusted by the fact that he loved someone who might've murdered people in concentration camps, Michael comes to an ethical and moral dilemma when he realizes he has information that might change the course of Hanna's verdict.
But "The Reader" isn't half as easy to absorb as a synopsis would have it seem, its implications go deeper and touch on several levels of humanity and even the lack of it.
"The notion of secrecy is central to Western literature" exclaims one of Michael's professors, "you may say the whole idea of character is defined by people holding specific information which for various reasons, sometimes perverse sometimes noble, they are determined not to disclose."
Based on the brilliant book by Bernhard Schlink, the film adaptation is above all a fascinating ode to literature and how we write other people's roles in our own (his)story.
Not in a fantastic way, but as in the means we have of perceiving others. Hanna therefore switches from being "heroine" and "villain" to Michael who as a kid worships her, but during the trial seems to understand her strange behavior (even their sex life "first you read to me, then we make love" was like a regime of sorts) while abhorring her existence and their relationship.
During one chilling scene Michael learns how Hanna chose the people she'd sent off to kill; she'd usually go for young, vulnerable, sickly types who read out loud to her and actually thought they'd be safe as long as they stayed under her care. For the witnesses, the mere idea sounds perverse and evil, to Michael however it's even more affecting because he sees himself as those victims: in a way he played their very role.
Several situations within the film lead to various degrees of "reading" and none dare to proclaim they have an absolute truth.
Among these situations is the idea of Nazism itself, "The Reader" isn't about the Holocaust or good vs. evil within this context; it elevates itself in order to cast a wider net of possibilities.
Notice how there is nary a sign or symbol of Nazism in the entire movie, we never see a single swastika or any sort of extermination footage a la "Sophie's Choice". The only time we even see a concentration camp is when Michael visits one, but consider how if we didn't know the context it could appear to be an empty warehouse.
We never see Hanna wearing an SS uniform or killing anyone, but like Michael we're led to draw our own conclusions ignoring her "big" secret (a twist of sorts that is brilliantly underplayed by a masterful editing job) one that may not absolve or justify her, but definitely casts her under a different light.
In the film's most haunting moment, Hanna attends the day of the trial when she will be sentenced. She wears a dark suit and tie that give the illusion of a severe uniform; upon entering the room she is welcomed by cries of "Nazi!" and boos from the crowd, who in her sober dress choice detect perverse defiance. Their case of imaginary Nazi imagery is only more affecting because it serves as a bleak metaphor for what has remained the "elephant in the room" for entire generations and a whole country.
It's been made a standard of sorts by the media to assume that Jews were the only victims of the Holocaust, and while their extermination is one of the darkest pages in history, little has been made about the consequences it had on others, least of all Germans.
Touching the subject of German Holocaust guilt is certainly quite uncommon and doing so by using a highly sexual, seemingly shallow analogy might not be the easiest choice, but by reducing two extremes to just people, the film is able to encompass more than it appears to be doing.
This is anchored by the sublime performance by Kate Winslet who doesn't care if the audience likes Hanna or not as long as she remains true to herself.
The actress, known for her colorful performances usually playing rebellious characters, gives Hanna an affecting, pragmatic dignity.
When she engages in the affair with Michael, she doesn't allow her to ask if what she's doing is right, for Hanna sex is something natural and sometimes she hints at vulnerability by the fact that her detachment is perhaps the only way she knows of providing love.
In the trial scenes, where Hanna only speaks when questioned, Winslet's eyes are filled with rage, confusion and despair; but the cold, commanding way in which she delivers her lines offer something quite different.
When confronted by the judge about her actions while working for the SS, she asks "what would you have done?", for Hanna the question is logical, for those listening to her it's the justification of a monster. Winslet turns her character into an unkowing seductress who remains ignorant of her effect on people, not because she plays the fool, but precisely because she allows others to project themselves into her.
It's remarkable that by film's end it's almost impossible to describe Hanna, because calling her a martyr, victim, villain, criminal, monster or any other adjective would be reducing her to an archetype and to do so would imply that you're also limiting the events she was involved in to a cliché situation with just two possible outcomes and instantly recognizable motives.
By making Hanna Schmitz someone you could actually love Winslet delivers one of the greatest performances of her career.
It's not an accident then that the film doesn't highlight the May/December nature of Hanna and Michael's affair (age of consent in Germany is much lower than 18), most of the audience after all will choose to understand this is wrong, or will they?
The movie daringly pushes the audience to ask themselves who are they to condemn and to judge. Why is one crime bigger than another? Why are some people more vulnerable than others? Was Hanna being a patriot by serving the SS? Who makes up the rules for things that happen after wars? What exactly makes Hanna guiltier than Michael?
"How do you know when you've no idea what it means?" asks Michael to Hanna after she declares a line in Greek to be beautiful. This simple truth can also be applied to the larger shape of things.
Not so surprisingly as it approaches its end the film seems to return to its literary source by becoming cyclical (Michael becoming as impenetrable as Hanna). It almost ends where it starts, offering more questions than answers.
As the older Michael, infused with a sterile conviction and guilt by Fiennes, approaches a Holocaust survivor (a superbly complex Olin who shines in one scene) you sense there is still a disconnection with the past and present (which might be hard to fathom for some viewers but actually plays a significant role in creating the whole mood of the film, while enhancing the theory of German survivor guilt).
It should result ironic that this woman, who wrote the book that helped convict Hanna, seems to have no grasp of the fact that she also might have aided in the imparting of injustice.
Perhaps another film would've attached these scenes with facile, didactic resolutions and moral compromises, "The Reader" doesn't even try, instead offering yet another intellectual dilemma by forcing us to wonder if lives can ever be summed up by words.

Changeling **

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich
Jeffrey Donovan, Amy Ryan, Denis O'Hare, Colm Feore
Jason Butler Harner, Michael Kelly

Based on a true story, "Changeling" explores the strange case of Christine Collins (Jolie) a single mother living in Los Angeles whose son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) disappeared on March 10th 1928. After reporting her case to the Police Department she received notice five months later that her son had been found; upon the reunion she claimed that the child who had come back was not her son.
This led to her being committed into a mental institution by orders from LAPD captain J.J Jones (Donovan) "you're in shock and he's changed" is his reasoning, where she was kept without proper charges, turning Collins' case into a fairly unknown piece of civil rights history that led to severe changes in the police.
Debating whether to concentrate on the struggle of a mother or the uncovering of a historical piece, Clint Eastwood ends with a film that is certainly entertaining but shemfully aimless.
Once again reducing everything to extreme opposites, Eastwood divides his characters between the bad and the good sometimes pushing situations into the territory of selfparody.
When asking for references from people who knew Walter, Christine approaches his former teacher played by Pamela Dunlap who squeezes all of the Judi Dench within her in a few minutes making for a bizarre occasion of actors being too conscious about when to act, while Walter's doppelganger (Devon Conti) would seem more adequate for yet another remake of "The Omen".
In the same way Eastwood grabs the police with the intention of showing us that Rodney King was nothing new and trying hard to ridicule the idea of LA as a city of dreams or angels.
He desperately wants us to root for Christine and most of the things that happen to her feel more like the way to martyrdom, than the account of an actual human being.
Jolie's performance doesn't help either way, her features too exotic for the settings, she tries her best not to pout too much, give sensual looks or abuse her sexual voice leaving us with absolutely nothing.
She is not subtle, she simply is not there. Jolie lets the story happen to Christine as opposed to having her be the driving force of the plot. Approached by a pastor (Malkovich) who wants to make her a heroine, she immediately goes to his office where she just sits and listens while Malkovich chews the scenery, she pretty much gets lost in the decor. When she is in the mental asylum it's as if she's completely forgotten about her missing son and just concentrates on the "insane" experience. And in the final sequence where she needed to muster some of the post-Obama optimism, it seems she just wanted to get it over and done with. This doesn't mean that her performance should've been a that of a big drama queen, but at least of someone who cared about just anything.
Besides she isn't onscreen as much as you'd think she would and this proves that Jolie's most respected, if not respectable, work comes when her director and editor know just when enough is enough.
In the same way Donovan lingers between bad and cartoon villain, Ryan as a fellow asylum inmate is underused even if her character is the only one who for a second seems made out of flesh and blood.
In "Changeling" the conception of acting is that you should repeat the same line three or more times, while raising the tone, changing the enunciation and looking fierce.
Therefore Jolie's performance consists of her repeated versions of "I want my son back", while wearing simply fabulous hats.
And in the technical department the film more than makes up for most of its flaws; the art direction is stunning and very detail oriented (the roller skating in the phone operators' room is a brilliant touch), Tom Stern's cinematography steals the show, it seems that being allowed by Eastwood to photograph things in something other than blue or gray-ish filters paid off superbly and the film presents us with sepias, reds, very noir-ish blacks, some blues and a postcard like view that might be the worthiest thing in the whole movie. Even in the final "Chinatown"-esque scene where Eastwood's odd jazzy score (think "Misty" and a very famous Charles Trenet song from where he obviously drew "inspiration" from) drowns everything, there is a sense of loss becuase of the visuals. With its look he gives the movie a strange sense of nostalgia despite the horrors hidden in the era.
But besides the barely there ensemble what hurts the film the most is a battle between the power of the story and the director's conception.
Eastwood here seems to have some trouble related to misogyny because for most of the film, even when the dialogues, plot and intentions seem to make us root for Christine, the director has a hard time making us feel that; the lines and events seem to make her be the responsible one because of the actress and her director.
When Christine says "I promised Walter I'd take him to the movies" it doesn't work like normal, reasonable guilt, it plays out like the reaction of someone who is a bad mother because she left the house in the first place.
Eastwood's Christine thinks her place should've been at home with her kid, making her feel bad for her career and while Jolie tries to follow instructions, by the end you can't help but feel she comes out looking like a more virginal version of Roxie Hart (a scene where she delights herself with Oscar predictions is nothing short of morbid).
"Everybody knows women are fragile, just emotions, nothing upstairs" says Ryan's character and with that she sums up what seems to be Eastwood's conception as well.
Because while the men aren't written or portrayed any better, it's the women who often look like parodies; an evil nurse comes straight from "Saw" and Christine's passiveness makes it obvious that for Eastwood, Penelope could've never been the heroine in "The Odyssey".
Whenever the film centers on Christine her scenes come off looking as if they don't belong, watch how in a key scene she is rescued by another character just when she's mid-faint. Her sequences are the kind Mary Pickford would've been perfect for.
The men come right out of a Raymond Chandler film adaptation and if you take into account the slight time difference between both currents it's like mixing water and oil.
On one part there's innocence and movie cliché, on the other the darkest of human nature seen in contrast with the law; if you don't find middle ground for them to share (like it's done in "The Night of the Hunter") the movie will be like a tug of war where nobody comes out winning.
Eastwood tries for this and in a trial sequence he decides cross-editing would add up to the tension instead coming off with a mess of perception.
It is in moments like these when the usually detached, sober Eastwood comes off looking as vulgar and sensationalist.

Nothing But the Truth ***1/2

Director: Rod Lurie
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga
Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, David Schwimmer, Alan Alda, Noah Wyle

Thanks to the course the world has taken in the last couple of decades the idea of politics has turned into something that implies corruption, naïve idealism and/or loss of time.
It’s not by chance that political films have also turned into grandiose, self conscious attempts of unmasking deeper truths about the dark ways of the feared “system”.
Along the way we’ve forgotten that, most of the time, it’s us who put the governments where they are (despite which of the parties we voted for) and that essentially politics are about us.
Rod Lurie’s clever, incredibly entertaining “Nothing But the Truth” is a reminder of what political films should be all about.
It starts by taking an underdog of sorts and having them fight the “big guys”, but then turns its very premise upside down into the kind of straightforward tale one might imagine someone like Plato or Aristotle using to teach because of all its repercussions.
Kate Beckinsale plays Rachel Armstrong, a reporter for “The Capitol Post” who has uncovered a juicy story involving CIA agent Erica Van Doren (Farmiga) and her connection to a cover up mission which the President of the United States used to invade Venezuela.
If all this screams Iraq and 9/11 it should, because as we learn from the start the film is “based” on actual facts.
After publishing the story and exposing the identity of agent Van Doren, whose daughter goes to school with her son, Rachel is prosecuted in the name of the almighty “national security” and is jailed until she reveals her original source.
In jail, like a Capra heroine, Rachel remains true to her values and the film becomes a day-by-day account of her endurance and the way it becomes a thorn in the lives of her family and the people trying to get the truth out of her.
Lurie’s narrative approach is by all means traditional; Rachel ends up fighting for her bunk with a violent cellmate and her attorney (a fantastic Alda) ends up delivering an inspiring speech to the Supreme Court.
It strays from most genre films in a couple of distinctive ways; the first being its powerful ensemble.
Beckinsale has been imprisoned in movies before, but never had she been such a screen presence as with Rachel. As a reporter, her hair up in a slightly intimidating bun, she embodies dignity, fearlessness and courage. In prison with her hair down and no make up she preserves the dignity, but adds warmth, fear and hurtful pride to the character.
In one of the best scenes in the movie she is interviewed by a Barbara Walters like journalist who pretends to be interested in their professional bond, but goes straight for the sensationalism only to bring out Beckinsale’s best responses and reactions.
Farmiga, who has got to be one of the most underrated actresses working out there, brings a distinctive charm and appeal to Erica. You imagine Farmiga to be someone doing international espionage during office hours only to come to her daughter’s soccer game in the evenings.
She gets some of the best dialogue in the film as she can go from scared and sweet to utterly bitchy; when she refers to Rachel as “Lois Lane” you can’t help but giggle, but she makes the hairs in your neck raise when she calls her an “unpatriotic little c…” and means it.
Dillon is great as a federal prosecutor with no obvious villainous traits and Bassett, also greatly underused and underrated, brings gravitas playing Rachel’s editor.
The ensemble even as good as it is wouldn’t be anything without what’s arguably the film’s greatest asset: its screenplay.
Lurie’s dialogues are delicious and wildly satiric, that he can use references from “The Sopranos”, Paris Hilton and Ermenegildo Zegna suits without falling into the kind of dragging obvious cynicism found in recent independent “comedies” is nothing if not breathtaking.
With this film he finds the balance between cinema and reality as he can easily go from over the top speeches and one-liners that couldn’t breathe outside a movie, to intimate almost silent moments based on heartbreaking reality.
This also aids him in his creation of characters that are essentially human; you can’t justify, condemn or vilify any of the people in this film without a greater debate.
Is Rachel right by staying true to her principles while she is recurring to the sort of pride easily condemned by religious people? Is she wrong because she is putting her career before her family life? Is there any difference between career and self in this case?
Should Erica have exposed her case without the need of a leak? Is she as unpatriotic as Rachel? And for that matter is patriotism related to your obedience of the executive power, the Constitution or your ethical and human knowledge of right and wrong?
Lurie’s film offers questions like that while demonstrating how unstable the judicial and penal systems can be.
This doesn’t try to defend the press either, because Lurie knows how stories nowadays are only as good as they sell, so it would be useless to pretend his film is about defending a lost cause.
What Lurie’s film is about is our perception of the truth. He’s asking us, now that we can’ trust the government, the law, the press or the media who will help us decide what’s true?
This cleverly executed discourse is suggested from the film’s title which reminds us of the oath used for justice purposes, but also implies that what we’re watching is a truth of sorts.
Perhaps not the “truth” from the “real story” with different names and events (if so, can this truth come in fictitious packages?) but also of the truth which these people as movie characters have to deal with.
They exist in the cinematic universe and watching them we are often asked to make compromises with ourselves that we wouldn’t consider doing for real people.
The reality/fiction parallels Lurie draws out between our perception of what we see in the news and what we see in our everyday life are chilling.
After all we often label people as “terrorists” by their looks, nationality or some other superficial element, without taking a single moment to try and look what’s beyond the surface.
Lurie however is smart enough to acknowledge that he’s no better than us and uses the mystery of Rachel’s source to point this out.
For some this need to find out who the source is will be persistent throughout the running time, while for others it will be a McGuffin of sorts that just helped propel the rest of the plot.
“Nothing But the Truth” ends where it began, in an obvious and implicit way. Rachel first sat on a school bus where her son accused someone of being a “tattle”. Later Rachel sits in a prison bus where she remained because she avoided being a “tattle”.
The visual element of the bus can be seen as a facile metaphor for the “journey of life”; however, the psychological implications of comparing essential childhood lessons to the distorted version of good and evil we deal with as grownups are far from being easy to digest and perhaps the only truth Lurie could come up with in his movie is that for all we know even kids know better.

Waltz With Bashir ***1/2

Director: Ari Folman

"Waltz With Bashir" is a strange creature in every aspect; it belongs to the odd genre of "animated documentaries" an already contradictory and troubling statement even if the subject wasn't a former soldier's search of redemption.
Based on the memories, or lack of them, of director Folman who served as an Israeli soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War, the plot has him tracking down people who were with him in the army in order to help him put together the pieces of what happened exactly during the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Visually engaging from the minute it starts the animation, which evokes comic book style, was developed by Folman's team using traditional 2D technique, Flash pieces and some 3D.
The fact that it's not nearly as realistic as CGI gives the entire film a surrealistic touch that might not be the most traditional choice to represent such a harsh subject matter but makes perfect sense in an artistic point of view.
It's not about animation as a gimmick, but as the fullest way Folman found to convey all he needed to say; art after all doesn't have to be a representation of life as we see it.
Perhaps the typical documentary approach of using interviews, archival footage and some reenactments might've gotten Folman's vision lost in the process, the fact that here we can't identify so easily what's supposed to be "real" and "reenactment" only serve to affirm one of the film's most challenging ideas; that there is no right and wrong during a war, just destruction.
"Can't films be therapeutic?" asks one of Folman's interviewees and it's only appropriate given that the director reccurs to advice from psychologists and therapists who try to explain to him the reasons of his amnesia and attempt at interpretations of the dreams he has.
During these interviews we come to know of curious cases about the way in which soldiers cope with their duty using all kinds of mental resources; a photographer who found himself in the middle of a war imagined he was viewing everything through a lense which gave him a sense of protection, another one finding himself alone in enemy territory swims deep into the ocean where he felt he could escape and yet another soldier being showered by bullets erupts into a sudden dance which surprisingly helps him evade the shots being fired at him.
All of these sequences come to life and obtain a haunting kind of beauty which resonates ironically in a man's suggestion to Folman that "it's fine as long as you draw, don't film".
Given the state of the world and how little the situation in the Middle East has changed since the events depicted in the film, "Waltz With Bashir" often dallies on a very thin dangerous line as its implications might result offensive, condemning or just plain biased to either side.
And for a while, when a character gives an all too facile psychological interpretation related to Jewish guilt and the Holocaust, it almost falls for choosing sides.
But Folman picks up on this and turns his film towards the less traveled path pushing his search forward even when the results might dehumanize him; while some of his countrymen find a certain justification in the role their spiritual beliefs have given them, the director goes above this and declares that no God is excuse enough to commit murder.
When the movie is about to reach its most troublesome sequence Folman has what can only be likened to a psychoanalytical breakthrough, he realizes that like the people in one of the anecdotes he listens about, he was also looking at his subject "as if it was a film", perhaps the whole experience of making the project was merely a mechanism he was using to remain outside the events.
Then as if the movie was creating itself in front of our eyes we let go of our preconceived images of war, soldiers, the Middle East and religion, giving path to an utmostly human elegy.
During the last, brilliant, tensely constructed, scene when the actual emotional truth behind them finally materializes the pain is impossible to contain.

In the City of Sylvia ****

Director: José Luis Guerín
Cast: Pilar López de Ayala, Xavier Lafitte

"In the City of Sylvia" is an aesthetical study of light, form and perspective, a short genre-bending story under construction and a psychological experiment in voyeurism that as a whole works as wonderful cinema.
Playing with our fascination with the unknown, the forbidden and lost opportunities, director Guerín crafts a poetic piece that functions in mysterious ways.
It opens with a young man (the ethereally beautiful Lafitte) sitting on his hotel bed at night; he restlessly writes and sketches in a notebook, you can guess he's the "artistic" type who would rather remain insomniac than to deny a solution for his apparent creative block.
The following morning we see him sitting in a café where the camera carefully captures some of the other patrons. Then we notice the young man seems to be looking for someone, stretching his neck and staring at some people more than others.
He scribbles "in the city of Sylvia" in his notebook as he sketches some of the girls in the café.
He finally sets his eyes on a girl (López de Ayala), a spark of recognition lights his face, as the girl leaves he hesitatingly decides to follow her and the camera does as well.
For almost an hour we will follow the man as he tries to approach the woman, chasing her all over the streets of Strasbourg.
In the way he bumps into passersby, dead ends, a recurring graffiti scribbled on the walls and a train that more often than not difficults his search.
Can this be the Sylvia from his notes? If so why is he, and why are we, following her? In a bold move Guerín includes almost no dialogue in his film and he makes it obvious that he's not worried in the least about narrative purposes.
Those who wait for something to "happen" will come out frustrated and angry, those who succumb to the possible, but not assured, consequences of the chase will find a lush, sensual experience.
The film is based entirely on our perception of things on several levels.
Natasha Braier's camera work sometimes functions as a study of proxemics, images, planes and perspective. The café sequence is reminiscent of a Renoir because the way in which we look at the people and props affect our ideas of them.
A woman kissing a man in the background seems to be whispering something to a character in a closer plane, a woman sitting between two men forces us to wonder which one did she get there with (or if they even have to be in couples!). This playfulness isn't as obvious in latter sequences but helps sets the mood for all the other ideas.
It also deals with voyeurism and how we sometimes can't help but look somewhere else. While many studies have compared cinema to this practice, this film takes it to a whole new level by making us spy on the voyeur, we're watching a movie about someone who's watching someone and while this plays out in a slightly obvious way it leads to some of the other aspects studied.
Have you ever played that game where you watch unknown people and try to imagine the history behind their faces? As a kid did you ever wonder what lied beyond the corner your parents wouldn't let you go to alone? And growing up did you ever fantasize about the passionate love affair you might've had with a stranger you saw once in the street?
While concentrating on actual voyeurism, Guerín goes a step further and relates this to our need to create. He asks why else would we create art if it wasn't for the reason of having ideas, people and emotions in a determined place where we know we can have unrestricted access to them?
The camera identifies with Lafitte's character, but during some sequences it strays behind or pops up in places he hasn't even walked by, reminding us of the limitations and possibilities we have as artists and as people (and the camera and human eye respectively).
Visually the film, like the male lead, seems to ache with the knowledge that they'll never be able to see it all, to take everything in at once.
Guerín could've concentrated merely on the intellectual and still deliver an interesting film, but the central plot makes the emotional implications impossible to avoid.
Here the director makes us observe what our stances are on love and romance. For some the young man will result a creep, his smile a chilling sign of perversion and the chase will become persecution and stalking.
To some the melancholy of fleeting love and a possibly cyclical, hopeless quest will echo the stuff Greek tragedy was made of.
For others it might come off as breathtakingly romantic and will root for the "hero" to find his Sylvia and for others this will all have been the metaphoric journey of an artist trying to rekindle his relationship with his, perhaps non existent, muse. Yet it works as all of these things.
In the end, not surprisingly, it all depends on how you've been watching.

Doubt **1/2

Director: John Patrick Shanley
Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

Perhaps not all theater was meant to be adapted into cinema. Even if the notion that both mediums share a fraternal link has existed since movies began, the truth is that they are completely different experiences and the same screenplay performed in each of the mediums will create a distinct effect in the audience.
"Doubt" probably plays better on the stage, with its small cast limited to a reduced space and the omnipresence of the audience whose eyes add weight to the characters' burdens.
As a movie it lacks a certain punch and urgency which ultimately affects its entire purpose.
Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a nun serving as principal for a Catholic school in 1964 Bronx. Conservative in every aspect she commands respect and fear from the students and her fellow nuns including the naive Sister James (Adams).
Intent on maintaining a certain order she sets her eyes on Father Flynn (Hoffman) a revolutionary priest who people like even if he suggests they use a "secular" song for the school's Christmas pageant.
After alerting Sister James to watch out for the priest, she receives notice that Father Flynn has had a private meeting with Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), the only African American student in the school who has become victim to pranks and isolation, convinced that the priest molested the child Sister Aloysius goes on a campaign to destroy him.
Based on his own play Shanley's adaptation offers some moral, spiritual and ethical questions that make for a fascinating piece. "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty" affirms Father Flynn during one of his sermons and after a too obvious shot of Sister Aloysius and Sister James, Shanley makes it obvious that this is entirely an actor's showcase.
Adams gives an effective portrayal of innocence; she suggests maliciousness when interacting with Sister Aloysius, but ends up being a naive girl torn apart between right, wrong and her commitment to her profession.
Davis has two scenes as David's mother Mrs. Miller, but in just one makes an absolutely indelible impression; as she walks with Sister Aloysius listening to what might be happening to her son she walks through a whole life, Davis' face contains the entire history of this woman who might be the only character in the film who really knows who she is.
Hoffman has the face to pull off both a pedophile and a saint and does so portraying Father Flynn like a man who can only give love, in whatever way the audience chooses to conceive it.
His character could've ended up being a villain or a martyr and Hoffman avoids both making his character completely human.
The film is ambiguous about what really happened and watching Hoffman you have to become judge and decide for yourself.
Then there's Streep who makes sure she commands all the attention as Sister Aloysius, the brilliant actress seems to have trouble getting into character; known for her subtle immersion into her roles, during her first scenes in the film she still seems to be adjusting to the character.
She twitches, purses her lips and provides more affecting mannerisms than a mime but just as you're about to condemn the actress for showing the tactics of her craft you realize that this has been Sister Aloysius all along.
Like a diva, she is so sure about her ability to cause fear, her self imposed superiority and her overall power that she lets us know she can do whatever she wants to do with it.
Those who know people raised in Catholic schools will recognize Sister Aloysius in stories they've heard or people they know.
If she wants to offer grandiose displays of histrionics who among her congregation will dare to tell her she's wrong? Streep finds a certain vulnerability in Sister Aloysius because more than the other characters she is the one with the crisis of faith, more precisely who or what to have faith in.
Should it be her pride, her position, her God or her need to do good even if she must hurt others?
She proclaims herself as the one to "outshine the fox in cleverness", but Streep knows better than to reduce this woman to a psychopath, a woman with penis envy looking for gender equality or a villain.
It's a shame then that Shanley doesn't seem to know his characters the way his ensemble does. While it seems he's putting his faith in them, his directorial skills prove otherwise as he uses every trick in the book to convey ideas and emotions.
He directs with the insecure eagerness of someone who landed a movie star for the high school theater production.
Big scenes are done with tilted Hitchcokian angles and moments of revelation are accompanied by storms and wind.
While it's understandable that the director would want to highlight dramatic moments, truth is all along you feel almost as if Shanley was hovering above the screen with little puppet strings, then running off to bang the metal for the thunder effects, then run again once more to play the wicked organ music and so on.
For a subject which deals so much with our own power to choose, and a last scene that relies heavily on this, it's a shame that for his film Shanley has no belief in free will.

Wendy and Lucy *

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Michelle Williams, Walter Dalton
Will Oldham, John Robinson, Will Patton

Some of the greatest films of all time have dealt with the simplest kind of situations and have found universal truths in their quest and resolution.
Like the man looking for his bicycle without which he's unemployed, the sick man who won't get medical care for bureaucracy and the single mother trying to protect her daughter in a war savaged country, Wendy (Williams) is looking for a new job in Alaska taking only her dog Lucy, that is until her dog disappears in a strange town, leaving Wendy heartbroken.
What Neorrealist masters, modern Romanians and documentary makers have found in similar situations, director Kelly Reichardt never even comes close to achieving.
Williams gives a subtle performance as Wendy and her scenes with the dog achieve a kind of urgency most people who've owned pets will recognize.
But when she tries to touch social problems in which we find her stealing groceries, sleeping in her car and washing herself in public restrooms, Wendy comes off looking as an arrogant woman looking for the easiest way out.
Williams doesn't give her enough of a background for us to understand why is she putting herself through this misery and when an offended clerk tells her that people who can't afford food for their pets shouldn't be owning one, it's impossible not to agree with him.
The film's problem might be then that Wendy's struggles stay at a very local level and people outside the United States will find her hassles as those of a drama queen who always had another option to fight her poverty.
Who cares that Wendy can't start her car to travel when there is people around the world who don't even have the dream of owning a car?
Who can understand her shoplifting for food when later we find out she has money to pay her bail?
Eventually the situations Reichardt puts Wendy through come off looking as "now what?" instead of being empathic buildups to the film's climax.
When the movie reaches its final scene it strikes a chord but for all the wrong reasons, instead of having worked harder to show that Lucy meant the only love left for Wendy in the world, it highlights her selfishness.
The plot also has trouble convincing us that this trip would help Wendy, what if there was no job in Alaska? There is never much of a clue that Wendy has thought of anything before we meet her, it's as if the character started existing once the cameras started rolling.
Sadly the film begins rather well, even hinting at some moments of greatness and inventive cinematic qualities.
One scene particularly has a great transition where Wendy observes a group of homeless people, the camera shifts from her face to the people she's watching and immediately the camera becomes her eyes.
During this scene Williams proves what a great actress she can be as she simply listens to everyone else and doesn't try to hog the spotlight.
Despite Williams' best efforts, for Reichardt Wendy never materializes beyond gender studies and economic critiques.
She's thesis material, not an actual person.

Valkyrie **

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Tom Cruise

Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten

Thomas Kretschmann, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard

It takes but a slight knowledge of history to know how "Valkyrie" will end. The film chronicles the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) on July 20th 1944.

Teaming with high rank members of the German Army Stauffenberg planned a coup that would use the Fuhrer's very own "Operation Valkyrie" to take over Germany and make a truce with the Allies putting an end to World War II.

When the key members of the army are played by character actors like Branagh, Stamp and Nighy the idea of the kind of prestige drama this could amount to would get any film lover salivating.

But when this remarkable team is led by Tom Cruise, it works in a completely different way. Not even attempting to have a German accent, Cruise doesn't make a clown out of von Staffenberg, because we never even get to see past the actor playing him.

Whenever Cruise tries to be serious and muster some sort of gravitas, all we really see is Tom Cruise wearing an eyepatch and trying to kill Hitler.

Rarely has the public perception of an actor affected so much the outcome of an entire movie, but it seems that deep down Cruise has come to terms with the fact that he's a movie star and if you stop taking the film as a serious historical piece and choose to view it as an action thriller the results can be obscenely entertaining.

Singer, who directs like a stock filmmaker under the studio system, just goes with the flow and lets his star shine.

The director's meticulousness is outstanding in the small flashes he let's us see, like the care he has taken in showing us bureaucratic and logistic methods of the era.

Since there is absolutely no regard for character growth and background, scenes with extras and unknown actors in small roles showing the chilling efficiency of the Nazi regime make for a treat.

Singer choreographs the action sequences with just as much care, giving the plot an actual tension even if you know how everything will end.

"Valkyrie" often plays out like an appointed B movie made for propagandistic reasons, after all movie stars were used to draft people during WWII and watching Tom Cruise battling the Nazis, although preposterous and somewhat disrespectful, still is able to engage the audience on a primal level.

When it comes to entertainment "Valkyrie" is an effective, if inconsequential, accomplished mission, as cinema it stays merely as a drill.

Love Songs ***1/2

Director: Christophe Honoré
Cast: Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme
Chiara Mastroianni, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Brigitte Rouan

"...and these songs that we sing, do they mean anything to the people that we're singing them to?"
"The Songs That We Sing" by Charlotte Gainsbourg

From its title sequence reminiscent of "The 400 Blows" to its odd sense of existence, without falling into self awareness, Christophe Honoré's refreshing musical "Love Songs" just exudes nouvelle vague-ness.
"I'm sick of movies alone" sighs Julie (Sagnier) to her boyfriend Ismael (Garrel) over the phone, while she waits for him outside a theater. They have been together for, what we can assume has been, a significant amount of time and have fallen into the kind of rut they try to solve by adding a third person to the relationship.
Said person comes in the shape of Alice (Hesme), Ismael's co-worker, who shares their bed and unusual sexual life.
But the film isn't about their unorthodox way of life, nor how they got there or what the social/moral implications are, it's about the way in which people deal with love nowadays, searching for new options in whatever shape they come, it deals with a youthful world view where everything seems possible.
That is until reality comes and spoils everything. The reality here comes in the unexpected death of one of them, who literally drops dead, sending the other two in opposite directions trying to get back in a game they thought they'd already won.
Using Alex Beaupain's delightful songs to craft this musical, director Honoré comes up with an invigorating way of approaching what has become a feared cinematic style.
"Is it your pretty bum, fear of loneliness?" sings Garrel to his girlfriend wondering what is it that makes him attracted to her. The directness of some of the lyrics smooths the suspension of disbelief, but Beaupain equally falls into epically romantic lines, "have you ever loved for the sheer sake of it?", that make for a curiously effective combination of harsh reality with fablesque optimism.
In his previous film, Honoré paid homage to Jean Luc Godard and here he continues his tradition with a liberating outlook on relationships straight out of "A Woman is a Woman", but unlike that film's obtuse technique with musical scenes, "Love Songs" owes its fluidity to Jacques Démy who indulged the viewer with epic song and dance moments that felt inherent to the story being told.
Godard-ian in spirit but Truffaut-esque in execution the director's biggest misstep might be in the feeling of disconnectedness perceived in the transitions from musical sequences to dialogue.
He never musters up the same emotional flow, but is that actually a bad thing or can it be argued that by making this disconnection so obvious he's in fact making a point?
When looking back at life most people will forget names, places and persons but they somehow never forget the music that accompanied them.
In the very same way the characters sing, not because they are aware of it, but as if they'd become possessed by an other worldly force.
Garrel gives his most complete performance to date, making Ismael both lovable and sort of an asshole, while the divine Sagnier seems to float over the film (both have sweet, honest singing voices).
Yet the real find is Leprince-Ringuet as Erwann, whose baby face and innocence give the film its entire sense of meaning. His character becomes infatuated with Ismael, going to the point of following him just to convince him that he is the one.
Again, sexuality becomes completely irrelevant as the camera sweeps us and the film finds an intense, but unadorned, emotional sincerity as it tries to find love amidst grief.
In the same way Erwann dives fearlessly into the the unknown with the hopes of love (even in the face of heartbreak), Honoré throws us and himself into this gorgeous film.

Up the Yangtze ***

Director: Yung Chang

Can you imagine the surreal experience of working in a boat over the place where your house used to be?
For sixteen year old Yu Shui it's a reality; growing up poor in the Yangtze riverbank forces her to take a job in a tourists' cruise to save money for high school. Her parents are being relocated to the city before the place where they live is flooded due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
Now the largest hydroelectric dam in the planet, its construction which encompasses almost a century of planning has become controversial because of the social, ecological and cultural implications.
Director Yung Chang deals mostly with the social and psychological issues that come to people who have to adjust to the fact that their world is changing.
He cleverly juxtaposes Yu Shui's story with that of Chen Bo Yu, a middle class nineteen year old who also gets a job aboard the cruise.
By following their parallel stories the director is able to create what feels like a full bodied portrait of modern China as seen by members of the social circles more affected by change.
Yu Shui and Chen Bo Yu receive Western names, Cindy and Jerry respectively, and are trained in etiquette to serve tourists better.
Cindy is a shy, introverted girl who has probably never been away from her family and knows without the job she won't finish school, Jerry on the other side is an energetic, outgoing people's person who enjoys being the center of attention and is working for the extra cash (and to be the biggest earner in his family).
They are given a three month probation aboard the ship and the film draws from the audience fascination with competition to see if both will make it through. Although they are not savagely pitted against each other, their struggle for survival in the workplace gets you interested in the story.
Once Chang grabs your attention with this he will also introduce profound dilemmas that range from the spiritual to the monetary.
Being Canadian, Chang is able to detach himself from the reality of his characters and acknowledges that he went to see the China his grandfather talked about. But upon finding himself in a nation on the verge of economic boom he finds he is in an even stranger place where his features may feel appropriate, but his mind is in another hemisphere.
It's no coincidence that you feel his identification when he mentions that tourists "come here to see an ancient version of China that doesn't exist anymore".
Both unaware and in awe of their effect in this society the tourists arrive with completely different expectations. But this isn't a film about the Western way of life applied to China or one that would simply blame Capitalists (although a moment when cruise workers are lectured about not calling the people "old, pale or fat" comes off as unintentionally funny), but of the country's necessity to keep up with this world it doesn't fully understand.
When asked by some tourists about how people are dealing with being displaced from their homes, a smiling tour guide replies "they are all happy".
Reality is that the look of discontent and fear in the people we see comes far from that description. "Up the Yangtze" isn't critical of the Dam, because what can be done after it's been built?
Chang mostly relies on a humanist approach that makes of his movie a moving experience. In one of the film's most striking moments Yu Shui's father has to carry an enormous piece of furniture up a hill before the flood.
Chang doesn't intervene or help and you wonder if he is merely adding to the drama or is in fact avoiding an intrusion because he knows his help would strip the moment of its documentary quality.
With all of its ghost towns, poverty and sadness, the film has an undeniable beauty that is captured by cinematographer Shi Qing Wang who gives some images a truly haunting quality.
When all is said and done, the film doesn't come up with life changing revelations or moral lessons, but it will raise questions that it knows it can't answer.
Perhaps Chang's need to reencounter himself with his history is what gives the film it's most personal and general moment.
Thinking of his grandfather's stories and the rich mythology of the country he says "the Mountain Goddess, if she is still there, will marvel at a world so changed".
It's in the doubt in that sentence where the film's soul lies as it wonders if there can be progress without sacrifice.

RocknRolla **

Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson
Mark Strong, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven, Jimy Mistry

Tom Wilkinson seems to draw immense pleasure from unleashing his inner sleaze playing Lenny Cole, a London crime boss negotiating a multimillion deal with a Russian property dealer (Karel Roden).
There’s also One Two (a hilarious Butler), Mumbles (Elba) and “Handsome” Bob (the scene stealing Hardy) a group of crooks trying to intercept the money from the deal with the aid of a sly accountant (Newton). Add to this an allegedly dead junkie rock star named Johnny Quid (Kebbell), a stolen painting (and ingenious McGuffin), carnivorous crawfish and a duo of Russian hitmen. Put all of those characters, situations and items together and you end with this movie, where the plot is the last thing that matters, but that doesn’t keep Lenny’s assistant Archie (the wonderful Mark Strong who by far owns the movie with his mixture of tough and coolness) from trying to narrate everything.
Guy Ritchie has a knack for brutal comedy (and his writing isn’t half bad) that gives the movie its intense energy and entertainment value, but he also has some deep rooted issues that make the movie lack something.
One of them is his insistence with gay jokes; from Brad Pitt’s ultra toned physique in “Snatch”, to Adriano Giannini’s scruffy appeal in “Swept Away” Ritchie has a weird ability to capture the beauty of the male body that would make Derek Jarman’s eyebrows give an ironic raise (and who can blame him when he was married to the gay icon by excellence…).
In this film he makes one of his characters gay, but instead of using this to stereotyped, yet effective, comedy purposes he has several other characters become fascinated by what this homosexuality implies about them.
This discomfort would’ve been effective (gay crooks!?! A riot!) if the director wasn’t drawing unintentional homoerotic attention to random moments of the film.
Ritchie turns a chase sequence of ACME proportions into a Hugo Boss perfume ad by having a very fit thug take his shirt off to reveal his extremely ripped physique…in slow motion.
The same two characters will later become involved in a torture scene which includes gagging, policemen hats and vodka. And “I’m not gay” becomes almost a catchphrase within the movie.
Another of Ricthie’s problems is his need to create his own language and untie himself from other currents. While it’s immediately obvious that “RocknRolla” draws heavily from the filmographies of Tarantino, Scorsese and even the Rat Pack (going by way of Steven Soderbergh), Lenny often reminds other characters and the viewers that they aren’t gangsters.
This constant need of Ritchie to reaffirm his role, which here evokes vintage James Bond and Sam Peckinpah, only comes off looking as a slightly pathetic fear of being emasculated (again…he was married to Madonna, one can’t blame him entirely).
“RocknRolla” spends far too much time worrying about what it’s not that it ends up not knowing what it actually is.

Still Life ***

Director: Jia Zhangke
Cast: Han Sanming, Zhao Tao
Li Zhubing, Wang Hongwei, Zhou Lin, Ma Lizhen

A clash of contrasts, ideas and symbols Jia Zhangke's evocative "Still Life" is the kind of film that can linger with you indefinitely because of all the meanings you can find in it.
Narratively simple and direct it follows a husband and wife looking for their respective spouses in the small Chinese town of Fengjie, which is being demolished to give path to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
Han Sanming (Sanming) is a coal miner from the province of Shanxi whose wife (Lizhen) ran away sixteen years before taking their daughter. Once in Fengjie he finds that the street where she used to live is now underwater; he decides to wait until she comes back and finds work with a demolition company, paving the way for the subsequent flood.
Later we meet Shen Hong (Tao) a nurse looking for her husband (Zhubing), who works in the Dam, to deliver some news.
Even if the stories are never meant to intersect, you can draw parallels in them that go beyond the obvious search each character is doing.
There will be no dramatic climaxes, big twists or unexpected arch in the plot, Zhangke's objective was not to tell a story but to represent life under the modern China.
Shot in high definition digital video by Yu Lik-wai, the film proves once and for all that the inability to grasp beauty with the medium is up to each filmmaker.
This film could've looked like a documentary or like a home movie, instead Zhangke finds a strange beauty in the starkness of digital video. The images acquire a kind of texture that evokes frescoes, but upon realizing that what we find in them isn't antique but rather new, it makes for an interesting debate.
The director wants to take it all in and does so with stunning 360 degree vistas where the camera doesn't just pan, but glides taking in the majestic nature of the landscapes and the violent shock of the decaying infrastructure.
The characters walk while buildings collapse behind them which, more than symbols for their collapsing emotions, become evidence of an ever changing world.
There is political content within the film but the director just implies it, one of the characters laments "a city with 2000 years of history was demolished in 2 years" regarding his town and several other moments lead us to ponder on how the people living in current China inherited the dreams of past generations.
The Dam becomes the best example as a monument to progress that demands destruction in order to be erected (perhaps an analogy for the country itself?) and using it as backdrop Zhangke creates all kinds of interpretations to his film.
The director has a fascination with transcendence and while you can argue that every moment in life is impossible to repeat, the film makes its uniqueness more obvious because these places knowingly would case to exist to these people.
It is no coincidence that Han says "you never know who will survive" regarding his line of work and hinting at the cruelty of life.
"Still Life" also deals with language and perception. Several characters have trouble understanding each other because of their accents (microcosm?) and how could they not when they live in such a giant country that most of their citizens will never know in its entirety.
"My part of China is on a banknote too" says someone to Han and with this we are reminded of how many of these people have traveled far from home and the people they left behind are still connected to them (if by no other reason than the eventual effect of the dam in the Yangtze).
The movie offers its most fascinating element in its title, where the union of two words gives path to as many answers as it offers questions.
Does the "still" in the title refer to lack of movement or continuous existence? It may serve both purposes because at some point or other the characters' lives become stuck because they can't complete their missions. They are unable to go anywhere until they find their purpose.
The same can be said for the setting which are still, but changing and its only the characters living their lives that pass through them.
The word also serves the purpose of a life that hasn't ceased to be despite its shortcomings. The characters are poor, emotionally and/or economically, but they are still alive, while the town they are in will soon cease to exist.
Does the still imply a level of complacency or in fact invites them to gratitude? The issues regarding this probably are easily solved by anyone who knows Chinese grammar, but for those who know only the English title and are perplexed by the meanings, the mystery remains.
After watching the movie, it becomes just as tough to decide if it was coincidence or not.

The Edge of Heaven **1/2

Director: Fatih Akin
Cast: Baki Davrak, Nurgul Yesilcay, Hanna Schygulla
Tuncel Kurtiz, Patrycia Ziolkowska, Nursel Kose

The entire plot of "The Edge of Heaven" is contained in its first sequence. College professor Nejat Aksu (an efficient Davrak) enters a service station in Turkey where he asks the cashier who is the singer on the radio. He answers and provides Nejat with some pop culture trivia revealing that the singer had died a few years ago, and quite young, from cancer.
"It's all Chernobyl" he adds.
With this statement director Fatih Akin sets in motion an ambitious film that chooses the interconnections of human beings as its axis. Just because we don't know something it doesn't mean it won't affect us. A character later adds that only "God is entitled to solitude" making this interrelationships inevitable.
We later move to Germany where we meet Nejat's father Ali (a wonderful Kurtiz) who has just begun a "business" relationship with middle aged prostitute Yeter (Kose who is detached yet moving).
Yeter's daughter Ayten (Yesilcay) lives in Istanbul where she is short of becoming a terrorist. Soon she will become romantically involved with German student Lotte (a naive Ziolkowska) who lives in Bremen with her mother Susanne (Schygulla).
Travelling constantly back and forth between Istanbul and Bremen, Akin structures his film around two major deaths and the relationships between three sets of parents and children, all of which will become linked before the end in completely unexpected ways.
Akin's intentions are obviously not to show off how many degrees of separation he can find between these people and his film obtains a certain beauty because of it, but the scope of what he's trying to say becomes redundant and obvious because he doesn't trust his images as much as he trusts his words.
Akin has trouble conveying believable space/time situations, which become more obvious in Lotte and Ayetn's relationship.
While supposedly they have been together for a year, the actresses don't muster this kind of connection. Their lust is forced and their eventual love comes off looking awkward and impossible to understand. You can't blame this on the limited screentime of the "year", because cinema after all is supposed to condense vastness, but on the situations Akin chooses to show us.
When Lotte eventually leaves her mother to go help her girlfriend, what we find in her is ingratitude and stupidity instead of admiration.
Then again you can't blame Akin, because only after this happens do we see the wonderful work of Hanna Schygulla who steals the film with a moving portrayal of maternal love and dignity.
It is with her with whom Akin makes his palindrome of a film work at its best, whenever she's onscreen even the most ridiculous plot twists make sense and the forced dialogues become moving.
The actress has the sort of familiarity (even for those who don't know her work with Fassbinder) that make her seem the only one whose life you believe existed before the screenplay was written.
In what could've been one of the film's most moving moments her Susanne goes to Istanbul where she remembers a trip she had made to India decades before.
Those who had been paying attention to the movie carefully will draw parallels between her life and her daughter's without an eventual journal narration that steals the moment of its intimacy.
With this, and a tacky Biblical metaphor about sacrificed children, Akin seems to have forgotten that, while we might all indeed connected by a mysterious force, the moments of utmost spiritual realization often occur quietly inside each of us.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button **1/2

Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett
Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Jason Flemyng

There is something unnatural about watching a child die, which is why from the minute this film sets its premise you just know it's headed for a difficult place where you will be either deeply moved or disturbed.
Benjamin Button (Pitt) is a man who is born old and ages backwards, meaning that he will die young. As a baby, his father (Flemyng) conveniently abandons him in a nursing home where he is raised by Queenie (Henson in full Hattie McDaniel mode) who looks after the residents of the house.
He meets Daisy (Elle Fanning) with whom he develops a crush all the way until she becomes Cate Blanchett (who not so curiously gives the film's best performance).
The romance between Daisy and Benjamin is supposed to give the film its epic feel and while it certainly makes for some of the most compelling drama the plot offers it isn't completely able to shake off the awkwardness of the movie.
Penned by Eric Roth as an extension from F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, the screenplay takes only Fitzgerald's twist and crafts something completely new, a sort of requiem for the 20th century shaped after a classic Hollywood epic.
Roth who also wrote "Forrest Gump" seems to be the go-to-guy for stories about life-through-the-eyes-of-out-of-the-ordinary-men and with Benjamin is never able to justify what exactly makes the world through his eyes seem worthier than through anyone else's.
Why is the story relevant only when the narrator isn't ordinary if later the film will try to convince us that what matters the most is what we have inside?
The suspension of disbelief is awkward because the audience at first takes for granted the fact that nobody seems to make an issue out of Benjamin's situation.
Nobody ever thinks it's weird that a little girl and an old man are hiding under a table or that this same girl will grow old and have feelings for a child. If nobody makes a deal out of it, why to even use the gimmick, why not make Benjamin an average Joe?
Roth aims to make the doomed lovers approach the one that makes the story easy to sell, but with David Fincher directing this never materializes, especially because they never make it through to the fact that if it wasn't for the growing backwards novelty, there isn't much of a story to tell here.
With Claudio Miranda's cinematography which bathes everything in a golden fablesque light, the look of the film makes us view at the cruelty of death under a honey dipped innocence.
The movie also becomes a benchmark for visual effects and makeup (Pitt's entire performance is owed to these departments), as the digital process used to manipulate Pitt's look is pure cinema magic and we never doubt what we're seeing is actually happening.
Production wise, it's a real treat for the senses as every aspect is carefully taken care of, but at the center of it all lies a colliding contrast between what we watch and what we feel, or don't feel.
Fincher who is more cerebral becomes fascinated with the essence of time and visually makes a motif out of the way it passes us by (a beautiful prologue starring Elias Koteas encompasses what the latter two hours and forty minutes never come close to).
The director who is an expert at creating moods goes for the least expected road here and practically obsesses with the need to control time.
When the plot becomes too extensive, it's as if Fincher is so fascinated by controlling the lives of his characters that he just looks for more ways to manipulate their lives.
While in "Zodiac" he practically recreated the frustration of not getting where you want, in this movie his reluctance to accept the passing of time and what can be taken as fear of death makes him completely detach from his material. The film like Benjamin has the wrong soul in the wrong body.
While Roth is giving us conventional, somewhat contrived and lazy, storytelling (including tacky Hurricane Katrina references), Fincher is tackling on to the metaphysical so much that he refuses to even care for his characters.
What is the point if they too will go away once the projector stops running?

Gomorrah ***1/2

Director: Matteo Garrone
Cast: Toni Servillo, Salvatore Cantalupo, Nicolo Manta
Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone, Gianfelice Imparato, Carmine Paternoster

In its opening sequence "Gomorrah" states why it borrows its title from the infamous Biblical city when several mafia members are assassinated while they have manicures and instant tans, out of all things. With this combination of decadence and perdition the film sets its mood, but it cheats the audience because those expecting "fire and brimstone" in the end will be essentially disappointed.
Matteo Garrone chronicles the effect of the Camorra (organized crime) in Naples and Caserta through a mosaic consisting of five stories, which are interconnected but never intersect in the way we've come to see in recent films that reccur to this narrative style.
The stories involve people from all the circles of life: Don Ciro (Imparato), a middleman, who makes payments for imprisoned bosses finds himself in the middle of a raging war; in another one, 13 year old, Totò (Manta) becomes involved with a group of gang members who he wishes to join; Roberto (Paternoster) a recent college graduate becomes disappointed with his job as the assistant of businessman Franco (Servillo) who works in toxic waste management; Pasquale (Cantalupo) is a haute couture tailor who compromises loyalty to his company (as well as his artistry and trade) when he aides a rival Chinese mass producer; finally we have Marco (Macor) and Ciro (Petrone) two wannabe gangsters who steal a stash of weapons to make a reputation of their own.
There isn't much of a narrative to follow as "Gomorrah" becomes a sinister "slice of life" kind of film that suggests we could've started watching at any moment and still would get the same results in the end. Garrone's audatious style pays off in unexpected ways (there won't be instant gratification here) as he ends up weaving an epic tapestry that reveals the way in which crime has seeped under the very notions we have of society.
While Hollywood films have always romanticized the mafia, this film has absolutely no glamour and becomes almost vicious in its documentary like approach.
The gangsters here don't wear luxurious clothes or live in ivory towers, they wear flip flops and football team jerseys; death to them comes as an every day thing, which is why bullets here are as unexpected as they are effective.
The film was inspired by the best selling book written by Roberto Saviano, who revealed so much about the Camorra's practices that he has remained under police guard after the book was published.
Garrone takes this idea and gets really close to the action as well, his work with cinematographer Marco Onorato captures this reality as something urgent. The places where the camera is placed suggest it might be the eyes of one of the mafia members because the plot unfolds from within.
The idea that the police or the government will become involved at some moment isn't of concern to the characters here who have become members of an unofficial system.
Still there is haunting beauty to the film, which takes a Neorrealist aesthetic that somehow still manages to feel detached.
Most of the scenes are accompanied by an eerie silence that scares because we never know what to expect. But don't confuse this with suspense, it's just that the we're nothing but foreigners in this land, the people who live there probably don't even notice this.
The scariest thing about "Gomorrah" is that you can't deny there is a certain kind of lawfulness to the way these people live; they all know the set of rules and should live in accordance to them.
For those who don't, like the main characters in each of the stories, the consequences come as no surprise and the idea that they chose to defy these rules makes them seem stupid.
In this way Garrone succeeds, because while he doesn't make the violence justifiable, he makes it understandable within its context.
In the trademark sequence Marco and Ciro fire machine guns in a desolated river, the camera captures their playfulness as if they were little kids building sand castles, they might be criminals but they have not been depraved of their humanity.
For the people in "Gomorrah" death and crime have become the norm.

Bolt **

Director: Byron Howard, Chris Williams

Bolt is like the 21st century version of Rin-Tin-Tin; geared with super canine powers and undying loyalty towards his master Penny he's always ready to battle the evil Dr. Calico and save the day.
At least until the director yells "cut" because Bolt is the star of a television show, something which he has no idea of. Everyone in the show makes sure that Bolt believes everything in the show is real, including his superpowers,
When network executives demand the show worries more about the feared 18-35 demographic, a cliffhanger that involves Penny being kidnapped sets Bolt loose on a cross country adventure where he does everything to reunite with his "person".
The film is the kind of family friendly fluff we've come to expect from Disney sans-Pixar which have become great looking, fun to watch, with a slight edge but without any transcendence.
"Bolt" features some truly breathtaking animation (the action scenes are better than most things released during the summer season) and the characters are homogeneously likable.
But the movie often turns too referential, something that has arguably become a thorn in the back of recent CGI animated films, instead of focusing on more timeless values to be funny or touching.
And at the center of everything is a conflict of interest between the message it sends out and the one it wants to send, because after glamorizing Hollywood life (every little kid watching this will want their pet to shoot laser beams out of their eyes when they get home) regardless of whether it's in a show or in real life and then the movie comes and demonizes the shallowness and lack of love within the industry.
If it can point fingers so easily why do we never find out how did Penny and Bolt get in the TV show in the first place?
For the whole movie to have happened, and its message of the evil in corporations who deem creatures as disposable, to have worked, we should trust Penny all the way through and truth is that it's hard to believe someone who forces her dog into Method acting for who knows what reason would mind him getting lost.
You can't even blame the studio mom this time (Penny's mom is actually a very ineffective, passive character) but hey if the kids don't notice it, maybe the fun action and facile laughs will suffice.

Slumdog Millionaire ***

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto
Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan

Sitting on the brink of obtaining the ultimate prize in the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", there is only one thing 18 year old Jamal (the charming, in an Aladdin kind of way, Patel) knows for sure: he doesn't belong there. Or does he?
The same facts might be applicable to the film itself, which could muster screams of "sell out" if its existence wasn't so rooted in traditional Hollywood values which we've come to accept as "universal". A fairy tale with a social twist.
After growing up in a slum, having seen his mother killed by an anti-Muslim mob and running away from a gangster out to murder him Jamal is an unlikely choice to become a millionaire, which is why he's arrested after his first day on the show and questioned by a police inspector (the wonderful Khan) who suspects him of cheating.
Using this premise director Danny Boyle fashions a Dickensian tale about life, love and destiny using Jamal's past as the source of his correct answers.
The plot travels between the game, the police interrogation and Jamal's experiences which include his relationship with his troubled brother Salim (Mittal), his undying love for Latika (the luminous Pinto) and his ever present struggle for survival.
Boyle, of zombies and junkies fame, had never made a film with such mainstream intentions and whenever the story hurts the movie, the energy which Boyle puts into each of his projects makes it worthy.
With Anthony Dod Mantle's camera he gets right into the slums in Mumbai giving the visuals the labyrinthine dazzle the plot unsuccessfully aims for.
If there's another thing we've come to learn from films set in India, is that everything will look "exotic" and "vibrant" and Boyle follows the same path (even using a Bollywood meets hip hop score by A.R. Rahman which like everything else in the film wins over you even if you're aware of its contrivedness).
The film bursts with color and texture, or what we can perceive with Chris Dickens' hyperactive editing.
Despite its somewhat traditional style with which Boyle never encompasses the meaningfulness behind the poverty other than for dramatic backdrop purposes, the film's most complex matter lies in how it unconsciously captures a fast changing country.
This isn't the India of E.M Forster's "Passage" or the romanticized version of Bollywood musicals, but a country violently steering towards the nonexistent limbo between the third world and industrialization.
An India where luxury cars travel on unpaved roads, where people earning extremely low wages build the apartment complexes movie stars will inhabit.
Where call center employees solve problems for strangers across the globe and where gangsters roam the streets and become role models.
But for all the hardship, violence and tragedy shown, Boyle reminds us that it all has a purpose.
With his "suffering as means to heaven" theory he justifies viciousness and makes it easy for the audience to swallow child abuse, prostitution and human beings bathed in feces.
Boyle proves that he is a great manipulator and you have to ask yourself how do you make this manipulation work?
Is the director so efficient that he knows what buttons to push in his viewers in order to obtain certain emotions or is the film working at such a primordial level because of the historical context it's being released in?
Would "Slumdong Millionaire" have worked in a world without economic recession, war, environment chaos and hopelessness?
Is the movie a cause of this or an antidote? If Boyle had been a little bit less Spielberg and a bit more Rossellini he would've helped the film find answers within itself.
Because when it works, this movie convinces us that its success is written, but because it lets the bolts and screws behind its machinery show it leads to a different kind of realization.
When the movie starts it asks the audience if Jamal's success is due to cheating, luck, genius or fate, at the end when the film chooses to answer this for us we're on to its game.
It justifies its laziness with the premise that everything is "written" (which it obviously is considering this is a film and films come from screenplays and screenplays are written...) but its attempts at cosmic relevance prove that actually it's greatly underwritten and it shows.
However the truth is that "Slumdog Millionaire" believes, or rather buys, its own message so much that you don't know how to contradict it.
But like the rush you got watching the "Millionaire" show and rooting for a complete stranger, once you turn the television off you're left with nothing.