The Films of 2007

[Orphic Lycidas]

While I doubt it's possible to make a particularly good film about suburban alienation and yuppie anx Hollywood has had an especially abysmal track record with horrifically bad pieces of fluff like "American Beauty," "In the Bedroom," "Little Children" and I don't know if there's any reason to expect this to be any better. All of these films deal with potentially serious subject matter but end up as rather silly and superficial. An interesting cast, though (is it my imagination or has it been years since Mira Sorvino made a film?).

[Steven H]

Here's another interview, very recent, about developments with this film. I'll post the relevant excerpts (I never posted a source in the first post for this information.)

Andrey Maksimov: I see. Thank you... I wanted... well, since he asked, you see I wanted to ask about this a little later... I understand that there is finally a concrete sense of optimism about "The Overcoat".

Yuri Norshtein: Yes. At the end of last year, Sberbank gave us money for the film. It gave us enough money for the whole film at once. Now, how it will be spent... that's our job... in this sense, we are free. But I think that by the end of this year we will complete 30 minutes of the film... meaning, we will record the sound, the music, and finish some scenes which must be finished, and I would like to release these 30 minutes onto the screen.

AM: So this would be...?

YN: So that I could have a chance to continue after that, while earning some money.

AM: And how many minutes will there be in total?

YN: In total, the film was planned to be 65 minutes.

AM: So this is almost half...

YN: This is almost half... or actually a little less...

AM: But if you make 32.5 minutes, this would be exactly half. Or is it definitely 30?

YN: You see, mathematics doesn't have any meaning here; it could be 32.5, I don't know.

[Jem]

Like Transformers but with Dragons. :-k

IMDb

Official site

Trailer

[zombeaner]

I want to see it, but every review I see says it is horrible. My favorite is this from PopSeoul:

[quote]We are sorry that Dragon Wars will open in the U.S.

Ex-comedian Hyung Rae-shim's new wannabe Hollywood movie, D-Wars will be coming to a U.S. theater near you. I pray that the movie has been re-edited so that the storyline is not so choppy, the acting not so bad, the computer graphics not so fake, the war scene not so unnecessarily long, the story more believable and the CG monsters borrowed from the Lord of the Rings go back home. But I doubt it. Instead, D-wars has been been superficially re-packaged as “Dragon Warsâ€

[Antoine Doinel]

Activist and writer Naomi Klein teamed up Alfonso Cuaron and his son Jonas Cuaron to create a short film documentary. It's available for free download from Klein's site here.

[Oedipax]

Really makes one long for the deeper analysis and restraint of Adam Curtis, whose films nonetheless arrive at similarly bold conclusions without making the audience feel quite as beat-over-the-head.

Also: what was the point of Jonas directing it if they're calling it "a film by Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuaron"?

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer

[portnoy]

This movie's gonna eat a whole lot of shit from critics, but it's pretty good. Solidly constructed, subtly acted domestic melodrama that might've come out of the 1950s. Not great filmmaking by any means, but classical, moving (the audience I saw it with was misty-eyed throughout) and without any unnecessary flash. She is her father's daughter.

[ranaing83]

I just got back from this film, and I must say it is one of the most uplifting and transcendent films I have seen in a while. It is a far more traditional documentary than Al Reinert's For All Mankind, but it is equally compelling, a deeply humanist work. There is, of course, a spirit of patriotism that courses through the film, yet it never feels in the least bit jingoistic or forceful in its approach, and it is supplemented by a truly heartfelt feeling that we are all in it together, no matter what nationality. (It should be noted, and it is quite funny/interesting, that the film was made by Brits) I'm surprised that there is no discussion yet for this film, which must surely be one of the best docs of the year. I have to admit that I'm a bit of a space junkie, but I took my parents and sister and they loved it as well. I'm curious to know what you all thought of it.

[John Cope]

Senki, also known as Shadows, is the new film by Milcho Manchevski, director of Before the Rain and Dust. I'm a huge fan of his earlier work and was very excited to hear about this new one. Since it premiered at Toronto, however, I haven't been able to find much in the way of responses to it. Only just recently I came across this excellent review in Stylus magazine, along with an equally excellent and thorough new interview. Further info can be downloaded as a pdf pressbook (which also contains a terrific interview with Manchevski). Oh, and the trailer is also now available.

For those interested, I can point you to Manchevski's official web page which contains a huge amount of supporting and supplementary material; really, a genuine treasure to sort through.

Now, I guess the question to ask is whether anyone has seen Senki yet (and why Before the Rain has no decent DVD representation, but this is a long held bone of contention with me and ultimately more appropriate to another thread).

[mogwai]

I went on a bit of a movie binge today, seeing this, Assassination of Jesse James, and Lust, Caution. I thought the latter two were terrific and amongst the better films I've seen this year. Yet, it was this little documentary that proved the most enjoyable experience.

This film was filled with such passion. I've always been fascinated with space exploration, and I've seen quite a bit of footage from the Apollo missions, but Sington must've scoured the NASA archives because there is some startling footage here. Partnered with a beautiful score, viewing the footage is quite a powerful experience. Hearing the very real emotions and descriptions of events from those who were part of the Apollo missions was also wonderful. The approach of this documentary was certainly more humanistic than technical.

The focus here is obviously on Apollo 11, but the other missions are touched upon briefly. I would've gladly sat there all day listening to these men describe their experiences with each and every Apollo mission.

I find it remarkable that while technology continues to expand, it seems as though humankind's inspirations and those things we aspire to accomplish seem to narrow. Approaching forty years since we landed on the moon, it's amazing that the event can still strike such an emotional core. Watching this footage is both extremely joyous and incredibly nostalgic.

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer.

[pemmican]

Hm. Is there a consensus about Adam Rifkin as a director? I quite liked the one film I've seen, Denial (though it was a VERY long time ago that I saw it) -- it was one of those straight-to-video things a buddy convinced me to rent, and maybe because I was expecting incompetent crap, I was really, really surprised (I think I would have been even more surprised if I'd rented it under the American video release title, Something About Sex. Yikes). Don't know if it holds up, but it makes me think this guy might be someone to explore further. Anyone see Detroit Rock City, or Night at the Golden Eagle? (I think it was...).

P.

[MichaelB]

Saw this earlier today. For all its pretensions towards authenticity (shooting in Mongolia and Mongolian), this biopic of Genghis Khan - part one of three, apparently - is no more historically convincing than any other version, and has apparently had real Mongolians up in arms over its liberties with fact and some significant cultural missteps. As a Mongolian IMDB commenter said:

Imagine that somebody makes a movie about Abraham Lincoln and his great history of uniting the USA. What if he invites an actor barely speaks English from Mexico to play as President Lincoln, and brings an actor from Quebec, Canada with heavy french accent to play as Lincoln's close friend (in this case Jamuha, Temujin's friend) and rest of the people borrowed from all of the Mexico, Haiti and Puerto Rico. And they rewrote the actual history and changed it into something incorrect and ordered all actors to speak (in very bad) English in order to create an impression to feel original. May be an ordinary person lives in Asia who knows not much about Lincoln and his history may receive this movie "fine and nice" to watch, but I'm sure it will not touch Americans, it will rather disturb them and make them angry or disgusted.

All of which makes me feel slightly guilty about recommending it as the rip-roaring actioner that Sergei Bodrov clearly intended it to be - strongly reminiscent of the medieval scenes in Night Watch and Day Watch with more than a touch of Zhang Yimou's Hero, it looks absolutely stunning (the Mongolian landscape is caught at every seasonal stage), moves like a rocket, and has some of the most exhilarating large-scale battle scenes I've seen in ages. (YouTube has a five-minute sample).

The story, on the other hand, is simplistic in the extreme (some twaddle about fraternal loyalties on opposing sides) and in no way comes close to offering a plausible explanation as to how the warrior Temujin (the future Genghis Khan) managed to amass such an implausibly huge army only just after being sprung from prison. And that's just one of many, many nits that are ripe for the picking.

UPDATE: I've just watched the YouTube clip myself, and should probably reassure people that the international release version does not have a Russian voiceover, or indeed any Russian at all - it's in spoken Mongolian with English credits and titles.

[John Cope]

I'm still breathlessly waiting for the long lost 1992 version featuring Charlton Heston, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita and Richard "Kindergarten Cop" Tyson as Genghis Kahn. A look at this doomed effort here.

[jmj713]

Sa majesté Minor

Just by chance found out that one of my favorite modern directors has a new film out. Has anyone heard anything about a US release (it was out in France in October and is out now in Russia, and that's it)?

[Tom Peeping]

In France, the film has been one of the worst critical and public flops of the last decade, if not more. Nobody knows what Annaud thought he was doing with this one.

[sevenarts]

Official Site

I just saw this yesterday afternoon, it's a great animated anthology film with six segments by six different cartoonists and designers, some of which should definitely be familiar to alt-comics fans: Charles Burns, Richard McGuire, Blutch, Lorenzo Mattotti, Marie Caillou, and Pierre di Sciullo. It's pretty much all great, the only part I didn't like was Caillou's faux-manga ghost story -- all the others are creepy, formally inventive, and just beautiful to look at.

I've posted my full review of the film on my blog.

Also, after yesterday's screening at Lincoln Center, Burns and McGuire themselves were on hand (along with the film's producer) to answer some questions and speak briefly about the production. Burns talked about the difficulty of learning how to animate his static drawings, a process that he engaged in almost entirely on the computer (there's one short sequence, a film within the film, that's done with traditional hand-drawn animation). McGuire unfortunately had a bit less to say. Somebody also asked Burns about the upcoming Black Hole movie, and his response was basically that we know as much as he does, just that Fincher has been attached as director.

As for Peur(s) du noir, its limited engagement (just 3 showings) in New York is done for now, but it has been picked up by IFC and should be back in a more widespread release at some point this year. It definitely deserves every bit of the attention that Persepolis got, since this is possibly an even better comics-to-film transition.

[lady wakasa]

I saw Peur(s) du noir yesterday as well; while I really enjoyed bits (especially Richard McGuire's segment), my lack of animation / cartoon exposure was probably a minus. Spiegelman I know, Crumb I know somewhat, but the artists here were new to me and there were a couple of stories that left me feeling a bit incomplete.

I was supposed to go with a friend who wasn't able to make it, so there's a good chance I'll see it again at IFC.

[psufootball07]

This film won best short at Cannes. Just saw it online and thought it was worth a viewing.

[Anhedionisiac]

Oh, god. Not this again. Just when I thought the noise had gone away, they post it in this forum.

Number one: The competition it won on is a pretty humble one, it barely merits mention. If it got attention, it's because it happened to take place in Cannes.

Number two: The short film itself is pretty bad. Awfully so. It's a cynical parable that is usually mentioned in advertising circles but reworked as one of those life-lessons punchlines of the "teach a man to fish..." variety. You know those horrible powerpoint presentations that soccer moms send to each other through e-mail? Yup.

Number two: for a couple days, the mexican media went bonkers over a mexican winning an award at Cannes (especially in the wake of Elisa Miller's success the year before, not to mention the boom in mexican cinema) and worked up the angle that the filmmaker was rejected in the most prestigious film schools of the nation. "Blue-collar chap makes good, socks the elite"

Number three: However, a few days later the ballyhoo went sour and turned into backlash since another short film, shot a year before, got the spotlight on account of its being uncannily similar. The result was that several people asked that the award be returned or withdrawn on the grounds that the "written by" credit was false. These requests were ignored. Uproar.

Number four: As lousy as the short film is, any plagiarism claims are ridiculous since it's a public domain story that has been long widespread and, as proof of it, there are several short films that use it as a subject. Unoriginal? Absolutely. Plagiarims? Not so, at least not legally.
This has been finally acknowledged, thanks to a few clear-eyed people who pointed it out.

Number five: Can't we all just forget this ever happened? Not worth anybody's time, really.

[John Cope]

Well, this is finally getting a release in NY at the Cinema Village, so I hope some in the area will check it out.

Anyway, most of the reviews from the American press have not been good but considering that at least two I have seen have mentioned the "risible" aspect of Manchevski's mysticism, I have to tentatively conclude that what he is going for may simply not be in vogue. I cannot imagine, for instance, that what he is doing here could possibly be any less fully envisioned and fully realized than, say, Ceylan's Three Monkeys, which, while haunting and stylistically unique, was ultimately not much more than the sum of its rather familiar parts.

Antipathy for "familiar" parts used in a familiar way is common to these critical reviews and betrays an unacknowledged knee jerk preference for the familiarity of European art movie tropes instead. Nick McCarthy in L Magazine is particularly disdainful and makes this point:

Despite the subtitles, candid sex and gothic Macedonian setting, Shadows is a hackneyed horror film more reminiscent of an artless American knock-off than a truly enigmatic European original.

Manchevski responds to this in a recent interview by saying:

There are some really good things about Hollywood. One is that it's very legible – there's no fudging what the writer wanted to say, so it's very viewer friendly. The problem is that it usually has nothing to say – it says it beautifully, but it has nothing to say. [laughs] The other reason why it's done this way is that's my style, that's who I am. I cannot make a film out of mimicry, trying to make it Eastern European or whatnot. I did have somebody in France object to me about Before the Rain not looking Eastern European enough – him being French, he probably had a good idea of what an Eastern European country looked like... [laughs]

I can't agree with his assessment of Kubrick however and if anything strikes a worrisome note for me considering the subject matter of his new film then this is it.

[King Prendergast]

This looks like an interesting take on a little known chapter in American history. Good Viking films are few and far between, and this looks like the closest thing to my dream adaptation which would be William Vollmann's The Ice-Shirt.

[Sanjuro]

The divided 10-star / 1-star reviews has me interested. Especially as most of the bad reviews seem to boil down to 'nothing happens'. I love watching 'nothing happen' when it's done well. Has anyone around here seen it yet?

[Barmy]

If Kelly Reichart were to make a Viking movie produced by Michael Bay (on a C$5000 budget) and scored by Spınal Tap, it would be not unlike Severed Ways.

One would have to be braindead to give this a 10. I can easily see why it would get a 0. I would give it a 5.5 (0 + 11 ÷ 2).

It is not "insanely beautiful" or whatever. It's color-manipulated DV with maybe 2 or 3 arresting images and some decent "running through the forest" bits. Parts of it are EXTREMELY irritating but if you smoke a joint and just go with it, you'll be OK.

In my audience it got fewer giggles than it deserved and a surprising smattering of applause (unusual for a multiplex).