It’s time for another round of Six-Minute Reviews. I have the timer right here. I sent The Beau a long list of movies I hadn’t reviewed, and he sent me a magical URL that picks the titles for me, one at a time, in random order. (I was too lazy to rip up bits of paper and stick them in a hat.)
I have a huge backlog of films to review, including a few I didn’t include on the list because they haven’t been released in theaters yet (like The Ice Harvest). I’m going to review some of those for Cinematical and hopefully will find time to talk about the others here. Maybe they can get more attention than a six-minute review, but don’t count on it. I also didn’t include movies for which I already have a half-written review; I will deal with them later.
But for now, how about six reviews at six minutes each?
1. Strings: 2004, dir. Anders Ronnow Klarlund. Seen at Alamo South Lamar (Oct. 8).
I saw Strings during Fantastic Fest and wrote a short review for Cinematical.
I loved this movie. I read about it months beforehand in Twitch and wondered if I would ever get to see it, so you can imagine my delight to see that it was showing during Fantastic Fest. There was no way I was going to miss that particular film.
And I was so happy not to be disappointed.
Strings is an odd movie, to be sure—it’s all puppets. In fact, it’s an epic puppet movie. But Strings is like no other puppet movie you’ll ever see. Not mocking like Team America or cute and childish like the Muppets.
Strings treats the puppets like puppets: they are aware they have strings, and their head strings are their life force. They don’t know what’s up there in the sky, holding up their strings; they don’t know if they are being moved by some other force not their own. But of course we can tie that in with human questions about spirituality and religion. The “birth” scene in which a newly carved puppet gets its strings is surprisingly touching and moving.
Strings has a simple, mythic story about a young prince with a usurping uncle, a growing rebellious group trying to overthrow his family’s regime, a sweet sister imperilled by the evil uncle and his minions … it sounds predictable, but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re watching it. The movie is absolutely riveting.
Strings is now available on DVD in Region 1. You can get it from Netflix. It’s dubbed for American release, but since the puppets’ mouths don’t move, this does not look obtrusive and works quite well. It’s not going to feel quite as impressive on smaller screens, but it’s still worth watching. Breathtaking. Find this and see it.
2. The Dying Gaul: 2005, dir. Craig Lucas. Seen at The Paramount (Oct. 24).
I wrote a full review of this movie for Cinematical, and also wrote about it briefly as part of my Austin Film Festival coverage. I don’t have anything else to say about it except that I’m becoming very fond of Peter Sarsgaard. It’s a good movie but rather draining and the end is messy. I have no real desire to see it again.
3. The Jerk: 1979, dir. Carl Reiner. Seen on DVD (Nov. 6).
I’d seen The Jerk way back when, maybe in high school or college. I can’t remember very clearly. I do remember seeing a heavily edited version for network TV once in which the dog’s name was changed, but since I knew the dog’s uncensored name I must have seen it uncut at a later time.
The Jerk took awhile to get funny for me. I wasn’t laughing much until Bernadette Peters showed up. The whole “I was born a poor black child” shtick didn’t quite work for me, although at least the black family was treated respectfully in the film. In fact, surprisingly enough, most of the characters in the film are treated with respect; it is not a mean-spirited film.
I felt like the film took too much time to warm up, but that might be because I wasn’t finding the earlier scenes to be funny.
I did like Bernadette Peters in the film. The role she’s playing is nothing special but she added a dimension of wistful charm that raised it above the level of a standard Seventies pretty girl playing the straight role in a comedy.
Also, I love the Thermos song. We may or may not have been singing it around the house.
I like Steve Martin just fine in this movie and in others, but this movie didn’t wow me and it didn’t make me laugh my ass off. (I like Roxanne much better.) Some of the humor is dated, but maybe this is the kind of movie that you need to see in a full theater with a receptive audience. Watching it on the sofa with my boyfriend wasn’t quite the same. Maybe I’ll give it another chance when the Alamo Drafthouse shows it again with their “free pizza in a cup” special.
4. The Brothers Grimm: 2005, dir. Terry Gilliam. Seen at Alamo Village (Sept. 10).
I am sorry I didn’t write a full review of The Brothers Grimm the day we saw it, and that I didn’t post it to the Web site and summon everyone I knew to read it, because maybe more of you would have seen this film.
The Brothers Grimm opened in the U.S. to terrible reviews and I was a little reluctant to see it. But I have seen all Terry Gilliam’s movies in a theater and I hated to break my record. And I figured I would like the movie at least a little even if it was mediocre. I was more worried about my boyfriend, who is not a big Terry Gilliam fan, and who might find the fairy-tale theme a little too precious. My boyfriend despised Baron Muchausen, which I liked even though it is seriously flawed. Also, the trailer started with that “In a world” voiceover that is usually a very bad sign.
Turns out that both my boyfriend and I very much enjoyed The Brothers Grimm. I don’t quite understand why everyone else hated it. Heath Ledger and Matt Damon were charming, the humor was generally subtle (and occasionally silly), and it captured the dark side of fairy tales that I love to see in movies.
The Brothers Grimm does not have as much of the standard Terry Gilliam look and feel to it as his other films do. Would you know this was a Gilliam film if no one told you? Probably, because it has his type of humor throughout, and touches on the kinds of themes he likes to address, and has Jonathan Pryce in a similar role as in Baron Munchausen. Still, it isn’t quite as Gilliam-esque, and perhaps that’s what turned off many fans of the director’s work. I don’t think the lack of unique directorial style was a drawback; the look of the film suited it very well.
Were people expecting Matt Damon to act different? We aren’t used to seeing Heath Ledger as a bumbling nerd, and we certainly aren’t accustomed to seeing them in women’s headgear or clothing (which happens not once but twice in the film, inexplicably enough). Maybe that turned off many filmgoers.
Maybe it was marketed improperly. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m very glad I didn’t pay attention to the many negative and lukewarm reviews and went to see The Brothers Grimm in a theater while I still could. I think it will look fine on DVD too. I hope people rediscover this film when it is released on DVD, and enjoy it, and that it does better than it fared in U.S. theaters (it did better overseas).
5. G.O.R.A.: 2004, dir. Omer Faruk Sorak. Seen at Alamo South Lamar (Oct. 7).
I reviewed GORA briefly during my Fantastic Fest coverage for Cinematical. I don’t have much more to say beyond that.
I confess I would probably not have seen GORA of my own accord. I would have gone to see Feast instead. My little brother persuaded me to see it, and I wanted to see a movie with him while he was in town.
GORA is allegedly the most expensive Turkish film ever made, and also the highest-grossing. It is a spoof of science-fiction films and it is exceptionally silly. An obnoxious Turkish carpet salesman is abducted by aliens and refuses to go quietly.
GORA was an ideal movie to see with my little brother, who caught and loved every reference to other science-fiction films like The Fifth Element, The Matrix, and of course the Star Wars franchise. I mean, I got the obvious ones, but he didn’t miss a thing. We particularly loved the way the guy’s cell phone worked even in outer space.
I think I would have enjoyed the movie even more if it wasn’t a midnight showing. I hate to admit this, but I am starting to get a little old for midnight movies, especially if I haven’t had a nap beforehand. I was feeling sleepy and the theater was unusually cold and I suspect that made me more resistant to the silly charms of GORA than I would have at, say, an afternoon screening.
I am really tempted to buy the GORA DVD for my brother for Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion. And then he can inflict it on others! I will have to see if it’s available.
6. Good Night, and Good Luck: 2005, dir. George Clooney. Seen at Embarcadero Center in San Francisco (Oct. 30).
Good Night, and Good Luck is another movie I wish I’d reviewed immediately after seeing it, with a full review that urged everyone to see the film if at all possible. I realize it’s only playing in arthouse theaters, which is too bad. For example, the greater New Orleans area has no arthouse theater screens open right now, so my sister is having to miss a George Clooney movie, and you can imagine her distress.
Good Night, and Good Luck is a flawed movie but an interesting one that I would recommend anyway. The movie is about Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly’s attempts to expose Sen. McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunting techniques in the 1950s. The movie is filmed in black-and-white, nearly all of it takes place in the studio building, none of it is set outdoors, and McCarthy is seen only in stock footage from the 1950s—no actor actually portrays him.
David Strathairn is just right as Murrow. Clooney isn’t too recognizeable or obtrusive as Friendly, surprisingly enough. The only actor who seems too recognizeable is Robert Downey, Jr., but it’s not jarring enough to spoil the film.
However, the subplot with Downey and Patricia Clarkson seems irrelevant and doesn’t quite make sense. Are we supposed to think they’re hiding secret Communist ties instead of their marriage? Or is it just a parallel being drawn? You could yank this whole storyline out of the film and not notice a thing.
One small detail I particularly enjoyed was the cigarette smoke. Nearly everyone in the movie smokes, because it’s the 1950s, and it is a small shock to see newsmen smoking on camera. But that cigarette smoke looks lovely in the black-and-white film, adding an artistic touch to what is supposed to be gritty and realistic.
Good Night, and Good Luck would be a good film to see with a group and talk about afterwards, especially if you include a few journalism majors. It’ll play just fine on DVD on a TV screen, too.
I’m curious to see The Dying Gaul if only to compare it to Loggerheads, which gets my vote for the most draining but satisfying film of the year. Wanna go see Brokeback Mountain? Or Rent?
I was extremely uncomfortable during most of The Brothers Grimm primarily because of the relationship between the two brothers. Their solidarity-despite-squabbles took a LOT longer to come out than it should, to my mind; if they had been allowed to have that supporting characteristic it might have alleviated the fact that, for me, they were both fairly unlikeable people. In short, for a lot of the movie, I found myself thinking “Why in hell should I care what happens to these two?” which is NOT what you want me thinking about your protagonists. The only sympathetic (or even halfway interesting) character through most of the film was the female lead. Also, the whole subplot with the French occupation could have been omitted, taking Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare and their horribly-done “comic” accents with it, and the film would have been better and purer for it.
Good Night and Good Luck, on the other hand, is a fairly wonderful film and proof that not only is Clooney developing into a really first-rate director (I’m really interested to see what Syriana is like) but that he understands how to film in black-and-white and has watched a few noirs in his time.
I like Steve Martin’s comedy but he’s one of those actors, like Bill Murray, who seems so much better when he’s allowed to do dramatic roles. He was brilliant in “The Spanish Prisoner”.